So there is an achievement in Destiny called “Flawless Raider,” which is earned when all members of your fireteam complete a raid without dying. This is not a thing that I ever aspire to do, because I tend to die a lot. That being said, I have done the raids a few times. The first time I went through the Vault of Glass (the first raid), we made it all the way through, but couldn’t kill Atheon, the final boss. We tried lots of times, and I learned a whole lot, including that if I had to, I could carry the relic after being teleported, but I wasn’t the best at it.
The issue with Destiny’s raids is that they require everyone to not screw up. In the Vault of Glass, 3 people are teleported to either a past or a future version of the vault, filled with nasty enemies. Even worse, glowing balls called Oracles spawn, and, if they are not killed quickly enough, everyone dies and it’s back to the checkpoint. So if someone dies after being teleported, it can spell doom. Those left unteleported need to kill a bunch of enemies and stand in a certain spot to open the gate to allow the others to get back. If they fail, everyone dies. Falls and enemies can kill players as well, so it is a challenge. And in hard mode, you can’t even revive a downed teammate.
The new Raid is, if anything, worse. Instead of relying on 3 people at a time, the success depends on one sword carrier who must whack Crota with a sword. Sure, the others have to take down Crota’s shield, kill various enemies, stop pairs of Hive knights that are shooting deadly weapons down on everyone, etc. If anyone dies, there is a new mechanic called the Oversoul that everyone else must attack or else everyone dies. So if the sword carrier dies, it is very bad news, but if even one of the others dies, killing the Oversoul is tough. In general, if someone dies, we all just get wiped by the Oversoul and start again.
So the group I sometimes play with have the Vault of Glass down to a science. Some time ago, I got invited and we finished it one normal mode. Then a few weeks ago, I went with them and finished it on hard mode on all my characters. I ended up with a few nice goodies, but the raid armor is no longer very good, since the DLC bumped the levels up.
Still, Crota tasked me. I tried once with a group that was mostly not the folks I play with regularly, but we tried for hours and couldn’t beat Crota. We mostly knew what to do, but always someone made a mistake and we wiped. Once or twice, we even managed to kill the Oversoul so we could continue, but that was a terrible waste of precious ammo.
So last Thursday night, the group I sometimes play with invited me for a normal mode Crota’s End raid. We made it through and killed the bugger! Yay! And my Hunter, who didn’t have a tracking rocket launcher got the Hunger of Crota which does track, so I was happy. Finishing a raid, even in normal mode, is quite an accomplishment for me!
Then on Friday night, the group invited me again, but for hard mode this time. My Warlock couldn’t quite get to level 32, but was close (limited only by 1 or 2 Radiant Shards), so I brought him along. Despite a few glitches, mistakes, and problems, we got it, and I got the raid scout rifle, which I like quite a bit! Then the group decided we needed to go kill Atheon in hard mode on all three of our characters. So while we needed a few tries to kill him, we took down Atheon 3 times in about an hour (from the Gatekeeper checkpoint, so we didn’t do the entire raid).
Because of all this, I went from having exactly one primary weapon that caused elemental damage (Vision of Confluence – a great scout rifle) to 8 or so in the space of a week. I got an auto rifle and 2 pulse rifles from the Crota raid, as well as a couple of the raid auto rifles and pulse rifles from the Vault of Glass.
That being said, I didn’t get the holy grail of guns, the Vex Mythoclast, nor have I got the Black Hammer sniper from Crota. So one of these days, I suppose I’ll have to try again to complete these raids. While Destiny’s raids are stressful and challenging, it feels great to finish them!