Further to the brief appearance at the Sony press conference to announce Destiny: The Taken King, Bungie have released a video that explains and shows off a lot of what’s going to be happening in the major expansion of the game.
There was a lot of speculation in the run up to its announcement as to whether or not the Taken are a new race to the world or not, and this quite definitely answers that with a rousing “kind of”. Oryx is coming to our solar system to get revenge on those who killed Crota, his son, but rather than bringing a bunch of bog standard hive with him, he’s ripped aliens from the four races that we know out of our dimension, altered, corrupted and augmented them and sent them back with new abilities that wouldn’t be out of place in a supernatural survival horror game.
Those enemies will appear in the game world on patrol, it seems, and on a grander scale than with The Dark Below and House of Wolves, we’ll see new patrols, new strikes – with more interesting boss battles – and a new raid which aims to recapture some of the magic of the Vault of Glass. This will see you heading into Oryx’ huge dreadnaught, a new location in the game alongside Phobos.
It’s the need to combat this new force which leads the Vanguard to searching out the lost abilitis for each class, with the new sub-classes that add whatever elemental damage they were missing before.
The Nightstalker gives Hunters a Void bow and arrow that lets you bind enemies to the ground and to each other, making them much easier targets to hit, and adding a support element to the class. The Warlock’s Stormcaller effectively turns them into a floating Emperor Palpatine, unleashing lightning from their hands at will. Finally, the Titan’s Sunbreaker sub-class gives them a flaming hammer that you can throw at enemies. All I know is that I want Dave Samuels – the guy with the awesome moustache – to do all the sound effects for this DLC pack.
All those abilities will come to the fore in a new multiplayer mode called, quite appropriately, Mayhem. This amps up the ability and super recharge rate significantly, so that supers will be flying around everywhere. I’ll be honest, and say this doesn’t sound particularly appealing to me, but there’s always Rift, which is a form of one flag Capture The Flag, with bonus points for delivering the flag with a backflip.
The Taken King will, obviously, be available digitally for those who already have the game, but will also appear in physical form. The Legendary Edition bundles it together with the main game and the first two expansion packs for $60 – the standard price for a new game in the US – while a Collector’s Edition features a Strange Coin replica and lots of other trinkets for $80, which has allowed people on Reddit to figure out that $1 is equivalent to 235.7 Glimmer.
Update: Unfortunately, Activision and Bungie are persisting with the notion that $1 is the same as £1, meaning that The Taken King on its own costs $39.99 and £39.99. It would almost work out cheaper to buy the Legendary Edition from the US. (Thanks, kjkg)
Source: YouTube
JustTaylorNow
This looks so cool, made me want to put my destiny on & start playing again but I jut can’t pass level 20, I don’t know how to get light armour
PoorPaddy89
You’ve got a couple of options. The best armour is from the Raids (dunno about the latest DLC pack though as I have yet to play it) but you can also purchase armour from the vanguard of your class at the Tower.
Forrest_01
You are actually technically correct about the raid gear (& now prison of elders gear after the latest dlc), but it’s worth noting that any purple/legendary gear can now be ascended to the highest level (at present) by using some etheric light on it.
You could technically have a full vanguard set that is level 34 if you were prepared to spend 3x etheric light on it (& have an exotic piece to go along with it of course – otherwise, 4x etheric light).
Kevin M
I thought Atheric light was only obtainable through:
Iron Banner – which has expired
Prison of Elders lvl 32 – which requeires the House of Wolves dlc
Kevin M
*Etheric
Forrest_01
See below (which this may have been intended as a response to anyway?).
Etheric light has a chance to drop in Nightfalls & Iron Banner & is a guaranteed reward for Prison runs on 34 or 35. That’s it though I believe.
Definitely drops in Nightfalls, as I have gotten two from that in the last two weeks. Iron banner I had forgotten about as I never play it.
Forrest_01
You can get blue armour from pretty much any activity in the world (dropped engrams, strike/crucible playlist rewards etc) – This will have light attributed to it & carry you past the 20 threshold you get to from just playing story missions.
Then you have the various vendors in the tower who you can purchase armour from that can take you to level 32 or thereabouts (cant remember if you need to add an exotic piece into the mix for this).
The thing that some people get caught out by is wearing incorrect class items – If for example, you are wearing a dead orbit, future war cult or new monarchy (the three factions dotted around the tower) class item & don’t play PVP, you are effectively pumping xp into a faction where you can never buy the armour. Faction armour is purchased with crucible marks.
If however you are wearing vanguard class items then any activity that you do in PVE (patrols, bounties etc) will likely up your rank & standing with them & earn you vanguard marks. These can be spent at the vanguard quartermasters on new weapons & that slightly higher level (purple) gear.
You will know which you have on, as it will be marked with the name of the faction (& may even be obvious from the item itself). Vanguard ones won’t be marked in the same way, but that is how you know it will attribute vanguard rank & marks rather than being pumped into a specific faction.
To reach the highest tiers (33/34), you will need to do higher level prison runs or ascend some gear through etheric light though (etheric light drops occasionally from nightfalls & is a guaranteed reward from higher prison runs).
kjkg
£39.99 in the UK…….
Stefan L
Ugh. They’re still doing that? I’ll update the post.
Tuffcub
I like the sound of Mayhem. Sounds smashy fun!
Stefan L
It sounds horrific.
dogsuk
Wow £40 for an expansion. That’s extremely expensive. It would need to be as big as the original destiny game to warrant that price tag
Forrest_01
Whilst I do like the sound of this (& god knows, I have missed raiding this time around!), I am not sure I am prepared to drop another £40 on some glorified DLC for Destiny.
I don’t think it would need to be quite as big as a full release for that price tag (being as new games tend to be in the £50-£55 range at the mo), but it would certainly need to be sizable & at least approaching that kind of size. A couple of hours of missions, a couple of new strikes & a raid (& those new abilities of course) for £40 just isn’t going to cut it for me.
dogsuk
They make an extra £10 off the UK even if you Inc the VAT. That’s just ridiculous. They may need to sack either their accountants or PR group.
Forrest_01
A lot of companies use the ‘like for like’ model – It’s unfortunately nothing new. Still disappointing of course, but nothing new.
As an aside though, I saw a picture taken from the Xbox store earlier that was stating it was around £27. So question is, who has it wrong?
dogsuk
Really hope we don’t have to pay more than Xbox. I love destiny with nearly 800 hours in it so far. So many good games out in a space of 6 weeks or so.