Free 320 Light Level Ghost Shell in Destiny Taken King

OK so if you have been like me, and struggling to get a ghost shell to drop ANYWHERE and I really mean struggling. I have been doing a massive amount of activities on a daily basis for the past 2 weeks with no Ghost Shell in sight, let alone one that is even close to 320 Light Level.

There are a few reasons it’s so hard to get a Ghost Shell in Destiny Taken King. First of all decrypting engrams does not give you ghost shells. That is a HUGE part of how you increase your Light Level, especially with the Taken King expansion. Secondly in the cases where the Ghost Shell DOES drop like crucible or Nightfall or wherever else, the drop rate seems IMMENSLY low and even if you ARE one of the few lucky ones who does get a Ghost Shell, it’s probably nowhere close to being 320 Light Level. You can BUY a Ghost Shell from Vendors but even those cap out at 280 Light Level.

There is however a somewhat guaranteed placed to get a Ghost Shell that is above 300 Light Level, with a seemingly better drop rate than the aforementioned activities. This is by doing the new King’s Fall Raid, either in normal mode or Hard Mode. Completing the King’s Fall Raid on Hard mode has a very high chance of getting you a Ghost Shell that is 320 Light Level. This method however, may be extremely hard for some players, solo players especially, or people that are too low light level to even GET into a Raid party, even for normal mode.

**EDIT** This article was written for the Crimson Days event and since the April update there are actually a few places to get a 320+ ghost shell easily, such as Iron Banner rank 5 packages which is guaranteed I believe, Kings fall raid normal mode, trails and nightfall. If you are already close to 320 light level then the nightfall is likely to drop a ghost shell higher than 320 Light Level. 

How to fix this Ghost Shell Problem?

You will be glad to know that Bungie released an announcement the other day stating that you will receive a FREE 320 Ghost Shell.

As you all remember the Crimson Days event launched Tuesday February 9^th which announced a new PvP game mode AND new rewards such as a new chocolate colored OR Crimson Ghost Shell. This got players excited, especially people, like me, who had their light level dragged down by their currently equipped Ghost Shell. However, things didn’t go according to plan and the drop rate for these newly mentioned ghost shells were ABBISMAL to say the least. As an example, I played more than 50 matches myself and still somehow managed to NOT get one of the new ghost shells. I did get a ghost shell to drop but it was your run of the mill Rare Ghost Shell at 267 Light Level.

This in turn left many players, again, like me, frustrated so much so that some Destiny players came up with an idea to try and get a Ghost Shell from the event no matter what. The idea was that you grab a friend and head into the new Crimson Doubles PvP mode, but instead of competing properly, you suicide together, herby making games go by MUCH quicker and increasing your chances of finding that coveted 320 Ghost Shell as there is a chance for one to drop regardless of whether you win or loose.

Bungie probably got wind of this and reached out to the community with news that will be handing out FREE Ghost Shells that are 320 Light Level.

What do you need to do to get a Free 320 Ghost Shell?

OK, so it’s not COMPLETELY free but compared to the previous struggles of finding a Ghost Shell with respectable Light Levels, I think you’ll agree with me that this is as close to free as its going to get.

It’s quite simple really, all you need to do according to Bungie’s Tweet is: Compete in 7 matches in the newly released Crimson Days event and earn a GUARENTEED, that’s right, guaranteed 320 Ghost after the event is completed.

Now Bungie ALSO did mention some additional details in their Blog post which include:

• Actually competing in 7 matches, no suicide pacts like I mentioned before (seems fair to me)
• Your Ghost will be Chocolate or Crimson (Even odds for this, again seems fine)
• 320 Light will be guaranteed (now THIS is what I’m talking about)
• After the event is over the Ghost will be delivered to the postmaster, and addressed by account, NOT character (I take this to mean that each account will only receive ONE 320 Ghost, again perfectly fine by me)

As you’ve read above, seems like a relatively easy task of just competing in 7 games (Properly) in the new PvP game mode Crimson Doubles, and then you get a free Ghost Shell that is 320 Light Level. As I’ve already played around 50+ games on one of my characters, I think I already qualify, but just to be safe, I think I’ll play an additional 7-10 games on my second character.

Getting a 320 Light Level Ghost Shell should FINALLY push me over the 300 Light Level for each of my characters overall, and then maybe I can finally go do the King’s Fall Raid, Normal mode anyways.

The Crimson Days Event comes to an end on the next weekly reset, which happens to be in 2 days’ time, on February 16^th 2016. So you STILL have some time to get your Free Ghost Shell, two days should be more than enough time to play 7 games of Crimson Doubles.

I hope everyone manages to get their free 320 Light Level Ghost Shell before the end of the event.

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Xur is Here! – Feb 12th, 2016

This week XUR is located in the Tower Hangar. He is on the right side at the bottom of the stairs. When you spawn at the Tower, head right towards the Tower Hangar. Once you are at the first set of stairs, turn right at the bottom and you should see our wonderful/creepy exotics salesman right away.

This week XUR’s inventory contains:

Peregrine Greaves (13 SC) – Exotic boots for the Titan where the main perk is that ‘Shoulder charge deals bonus damage when activated in the air.’ I don’t know about you but it’s hard enough moving around while airborne, for me anyways, let alone successfully activating a shoulder charge. Not the greatest Titan exotic in the world in my opinion, unless of course you’re a fan of shoulder charging people mid-air.

Celestial Nighthawk (13 SC) – Exotic Helmet for the Hunter where the main perk is golden Gun fires one shot, delivering 6x damage, while granting keyhole for overpenetration. I can see this helmet being really useful for Boss encounters, but not much else. Again, not the greatest hunter exotic in the world and VERY situational in my opinion.

Obsidian Mind (13 SC) – Helmet for the warlock and its major perk is that Nova Bomb kills recharge your NEXT nova bomb. This is actually a really good exotic for the warlock Voidwalker subclass. If you pair this exotic with max Intelligence, you can get your super pretty quickly in a repetitive cycle, making this helmet a strong candidate for PvE and possibly PvP.

So it looks like this week’s winners are the warlocks (again) with mediocre exotics for both the Titan AND the Hunter. Still no epic exotic weapons in sight, hopefully XUR brings us something better next week.

Xur is also selling:

Exotic Engrams (Gauntlet 19 SC) – Again buy one if you really want to, or have tons of coins to spare but spending the same amount on three of coins is more likely to net you more exotics.

Legacy Engram (Helmets) – This week’s legacy engram is an exotic helmet engram and probably not worth spending your coins on unless you have tons to spare and are looking to complete your year 1 collection. Getting a helmet you are missing in BOTH year 1 AND year 2 would be optimal but at 31 SC, you are probably better off saving your strange coins for something else.

If you already have most of these exotics or nothing really appeals to you, spending your Strange Coins on Three of coins is still probably your best bet.

Below is a video showing you exactly where to go when you first spawn in the Tower if my instructions at the top were a bit unclear. The video also shows the various items XUR is selling this week so you can have a look at those as well.

Overall not a great week for XUR again, I am STILL waiting for him to sell something like the RED DEATH or one of the warlock exotics I am missing, but I am probably better off just buying a bunch of three of coins as usual.

Let me know if XUR bought you something you really wanted this week or if you are waiting from him to bring a specific exotic in the comments section below.

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The wrong way to decrypt engrams in The Taken King

Ok so in vanilla Destiny and even in the DLC’s my usual method of opening engrams involved saving up about 40-50+ Rare, Legendary and sometimes Exotic engrams throughout the week and opening them on Friday, timed perfectly with XUR’s arrival. 

This to me was awesome for 2 reasons, one because saving up a whole bunch of engrams and opening them up all at once just felt awesome and I felt like a kid on Christmas morning. Secondly there was a popular theory that if you opened engrams on Fridays when XUR had arrived, you had more chances of getting strange coins from rare engrams, and this certainly seemed true for me. So if ever I was low on Strange Coins when XUR arrived this seemed to do the trick and give me just enough to buy some exotic gear from XUR.

Well, since I started playing The Taken King about 2 weeks ago, I thought a similar strategy would be in order and that’s what I did, saved up all rare engrams I got during the week and then proceeded to open all 50+ engrams on Friday when XUR had arrived. Not only did I get ONLY around 2-3 strange coins doing this, but then later found out that this was the WORST possible way to decrypt engrams in Destiny Year 2.

Why decrypting a lot of engrams at the same time is bad, especially in The Taken King you ask?

Well the Cryptarch works a bit differently in The Taken King than in the previous DLC’s or vanilla Destiny. Before it was mostly RNG and the Cryptarch usually tried to screw you over anyways, so opening more at once seemed more fun and probably also had a better chance at giving you good gear.

In The Taken King expansion however the Cryptarch looks at your light level and then there is a fairly large chance that he will decrypt something that is higher than you current light level.

Why is this important?

To increase your light level as fast as possible of course. In The Taken King after you reach the max level of 40 all your experience goes towards gaining motes of light, which are quite important, but that’s a story for another time. So after you are the max level of 40 in The Taken King the only thing that matters is your light level. Your light level is an average of attack/defense stats of all the weapons and armor you have equipped and this includes a ghost shell and a class specific relic now. So if your light level is around 270 and you take something to the Cryptarch to decrypt it, he is likely to give you something similar in light level or higher. This is not ALWAYS the case, but more likely than not the Cryptarch seems generous these days, at least for me.

What is the correct way to decrypt engrams?

So a popular strategy, which I only came across AFTER I had already wasted about 50 engrams is to decrypt ONE engram and then check if its light level is higher than the current item of the same slot you have equipped. If it is, then replace the item with the new one the Cryptarch gave you and THEN decrypt another engram. If it is a lower light level you can either dismantle it and move on to decrypting your second engram.

You do this essentially opening ONE engram at a time and checking the light level and then opening another and so on and so forth, gradually increasing your light level in a matter of minutes, quite smart really.

So you can still save up tons of engrams during the week but then when you get to the Cryptarch open them one at a time and check the item level. It’s a much more tedious method and a real buzzkill in my opinion but it’ll help you get raid ready MUCH faster or to that coveted 320.

At the end of the day though, they are YOUR engrams and you can damn well do WHATEVER YOU want with them and don’t let me or anyone else tell you otherwise. This is just a tip for those who are trying desperately to get to 290+ light levels or want a method to do so in the shortest time possible. Now that both my characters are 295+ I still open engrams the old fashioned way, which involves 40-50 at a time and it's STILL a lot of fun!

Posted below is a video of me literally wasting a TON of engrams by opening them up all at once and so I made a video on how NOT to decrypt engrams in The Taken King, especially if you are racing to get to above 295 light levels.

Let me know if you found this method useful or if you already knew about it, as well as which method of opening engrams you prefer, down in the comments section below.

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Lunar New Year Steam Sale

So yesterday was the Lunar new year and with that in mind Steam is having a huge sale on a whole bunch of different games. This Lunar New Year sale from Steam has already begun and lasts till February 12^th.

The whole Assassins Creed franchise is on sale, so if you’ve been meaning to pick up any of the Assassins Creed games or are missing one from your collection, now would be a good time to pick them up as they are anywhere from 40-70% off. Assassin’s Creed Black Flag is 75% off. Assassin’s Creed Unity and Rogue are BOTH available for $11.99 each and Assassin’s Creed Syndicate is on sale for $47.99

The Just Cause franchise is also on sale, with Just Cause One discounted at 75% off at $1.94. Just Cause 2 is ALSO discounted at 75% off at 3.99 and Just Cause 3 is on sale for $52.49. You can also buy the Just Cause collection for $5.24 which includes Just cause 1 and Just Cause 2 as well as some DLC content for both those games.

The Witcher franchise is another great franchise that is on sale for the Lunar New year Steam sale. The Witcher: Director’s cut is on sale for just $1.64, the Witcher 2 for $3.29 and Witcher 3 for $29.99. You can also buy the Witcher trilogy pack which includes all three games for just $34.39

Other notable sales are:

• Counter-Strike Complete for just $8.24 which includes Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Source, Condition Zero and the original Counter-Strike game.
• Rocket League for $14.29.
• The Crew for $14.99.
• Spore for $9.99
• Football Manager 2016 for $27.49
• The Entire Worms collection for $19.93
• Fallout 4 at $53.59
• Skyrim for $5.49
• Portal 1 and 2 for $5.59
• H1Z1 for $16.49
• Half life and Half life 2 for $2.74
• Left 4 Dead 2 for $4.39
• Age of Empires 2 for $4.39
• Borderlands 2 for $5.49
• Bioshock 2 for $4.39
• Mad Max for $20.39
• Payday 2 for $5.49
• Wolf Among Us for $6.99
• Deadpool for $21.99

Listed above are just SOME of the games on sale on Steam at the moment. There are obviously many other games on sale which I have not listed here, for a full list please visit the Steam store and check them all out. While not all the games have amazing discounts, I’m sure you’re bound to find a game or two that you might want to get, whether to add to your collection or just to play OR both.

You have until February 12th to take advantage of these deals, so if there’s a game you’ve been waiting for to go on sale, have a look on Steam and who knows it might be on sale. Happy Lunar new year and Happy Hunting!

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Crimson Days event now Live in Destiny

Destiny’s very own Valentine’s Day event is now active, since the update this morning. The event is known as Crimson Days and starts today (February 9^th, 2016) and ends on February 16^th, 2016. 

As Bungie states on their website “Crimson Days celebrates two Guardians, united against the competition, watching one another’s backs and becoming legend together. A Crucible Fireteam, forging bonds of teamwork and friendship that even death only strengthens.”

All new PvP Quest and rewards

Basically find a friend and shoot things in the Crucible. With that in mind there is also a new PvP mode called the Crimson Doubles where you form a Fireteam with another person and play 2v2 Elimination Mode. You have to win five rounds against the other team to win the match.

Lord Shaxx also has a new quest waiting for you, as long as you are Level 40. The quest is called “Crimson Bonds” and upon completing the quest you get a new Crimson Days Emblem.

Playing the NEW Crimson Doubles game mode also has a chance to get you some other awesome rewards, such as, Shaders and ESPECIALLY ghost shells that can drop at 320 Light. Seeing as how difficult it has been for me to get a ghost shell to drop in The Taken King, I might have to spend a lot of time playing Crimson Doubles, IF I can find a friend to play with, that is(Forever Alone)

New Emotes available at the Tower

Eververse has some new emotes in stock and if you have ever wanted to do Drake’s Hot line bling dance in Destiny with your Titan, dressed in an all-pink Shader, now is your chance. Eververse also sells some other emotes suited for the Crimson Day’s event so go check them out at the tower.

Finally the new Destiny update also came with a whole bunch of fixes for the King’s fall raid as well as other bugs for weapons, ship drop rates and other such issues. For a full list of fixes head over to Bungie’s site and have a look.

To go along with the Crimson Day’s event Bungie has decided to redecorate the tower to match the occasion. Check out the video below to see what the new tower looks like, as well as the new quest from Lord Shaxx and the new Crucible bounties that are ALSO available via Lord Shaxx.

Happy Crimson Days to you all, and I hope you can get those new ghosts to drop at 320 light, because that is certainly MY main reason for wanting to participate in this event.

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What’s wrong with exotics in Destiny Taken King?

So I recently got back into destiny like I mentioned in one of my other posts, I have been playing the game quite a bit, even had a visit from XUR last Friday.

One of the biggest things I noticed after playing the game awhile and getting a few exotics of my own, is that well, they seem a bit lackluster. Most of the exotics carried over from year 1 weren’t the ‘best’ of the lot in my opinion and only the half decent ones got carried over. There are a few exceptions, such as the MIDA or Red Death of course, but very few that I noticed anyways.

Ok YES the exotics are now more easily attainable through quest lines that are also quite easily attainable. They still require quite a bit of work and grinding to ACTUALLY complete the quest but almost everyone can at least get access to the quest at some point. In that regard I think this is a big improvement for just getting quests available for exotics over Year one. This method that Bungie implemented for getting exotic quests is much better than just waiting around for lady luck to hand you an exotic bounty or hoping you will have enough strange coins the day XUR decides to swing by with YOUR favorite exotic which could take a while.

Another thing that Bungie added that makes exotics more accessible, way too accessible in my opinion, is the three of coins which from a little research I found was abused at the launch of The Taken King. Now the Three of Coins has been nerfed a bit since then and most glitches have been hotfixed but it is still relatively easy to get exotics engrams to drop in my opinion.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with what three of coins (3oC) is, it’s basically a consumable sold by XUR every week. He sells you 5 three of coins for 7 strange coins, not a bad offer at all; in fact it might be the BEST way to get exotics in Destiny The Taken King. So what three of coins does is, if you use or consume it, is increases your chances of getting an exotic engram the next time you win a crucible match or kill an ultra through any means. There are some bosses that do not count for the three of coins consumable but most of them seem to be fine. Also if you use a three of coins and DON’T get an exotic drop, the NEXT time you use a three of coins your chances are slightly improved. Now the BEST way at the moment for writing this article is to just do the normal level 36 strike playlist and keep using three of coins. This is because in Taken King the longer you continue doing strikes WITHOUT returning to orbit, the higher you chances of getting better loot.

So obviously I decided to try it out for myself and I know results will vary and they won’t be the same, even for me every time, but here is what my results looked like. The first time I used three of coins, it took me 5 strikes before I got an exotic drop, now remember XUR sells 5 three of coins for 7 strange coins so essentially I got an exotic for 7 strange coins, almost half the price that XUR himself sells them for. The second time it took me 8 strikes before I got an exotic, ok a little longer this time. These were all normal strikes by the way, not the heroic or nightfall. Now the last time I used three of coins I got an exotic to drop after just one heroic strike, so that time I paid just 1.4 strange coins for an exotic. With the rate the strange coins drop in Year 2 destiny, this was an amazing deal. My only complaint was that I didn’t buy enough strange coins from XUR to do this every day of the week until NEXT Friday.

Ok so three different runs is not a good sample size for testing but others I have spoken to have confirmed similar drop rates or BETTER for exotics using three of coins in strikes.

So getting exotics in Taken king seems relatively easy, even if your luck is bad and RNG is against you, you should eventually be able to get a few exotics, even ones that you really want.

So what then is wrong with exotics in Year 2 Destiny you ask?

Yeah, I can get all the exotics I want quite easily now, and even the quest specific ones, although they require some work are still fairly attainable, but what’s the point?

The perks on the new exotics all seem kinda dull and non-exciting. Again there are a few exceptions such as Zhao Supercell and the Jade Rabbit which is a playstation exclusive by the way, as some of examples of decent exotics. The black spindle is a wicked looking sniper with decent perks but there seems to be a better sniper for PvP that’s a legendary and does not use up a precious exotic slot so even that weapon is not as awesome as it can be.

Maybe I am making too much of this, but in my mind an exotic should be a rare item that most of the time will be amazing in both stats and perks and outperform most if not ALL Legendaries of the similar type. This just doesn’t seem to be the case in Year 2 Destiny. Even if you find an exotic you like in terms of perks or looks or stats, there is often a better option to be found in Legendaries.

Now I have no idea if Bungie did this on purpose because people in Year 1 complained that exotics were too hard to get or not, but that’s the way they SHOULD be. An exotic SHOULD be really rare, hard to get or take an extreme amount of work to obtain. And the rewards? Well an exotic item, one of the best items in the game of course, something to boast about to your friends or show off to new players. At least that’s how exotic items SHOULD work in MY mind.

In The Taken King some of the quests for weapons take quite a bit of effort for not that much of a reward, so what is the point in doing all that work then, even IF you can get the quest easily or eventually do all the tasks it takes to get the item. A prime example of this is an exotic weapon quest you get for reaching Rank 5 with the gunsmith. Once you get the quest there are a number of additional things you need to do, and once all of those are completed and you wait a week, you then get a handgun called the First Curse. Now I haven’t gotten one myself as I am only Rank 2 on each of my characters but the exotic handgun you get isn’t amazing, it’s not even the best Year 2 handgun, let alone the best exotic handgun. In fact I think the year 2 version of the last word or other carried over handguns perform better. It’s not a BAD gun and it looks decent, it just doesn’t FEEL like an exotic and THAT I find is the BIG problem with the majority of exotics in the Taken King expansion.

Now again, like I mentioned before, there are some decent exotics to get your hands on through a questline such as Touch of Malice which IS actually useful for the new Kings Fall Raid and looks pretty cool in my opinion. But exotics such as this are few and far in between. The few exotics I would like to get my hands on are only sold by XUR or by having the Year 1 version of the gun. For someone like me who started late in Year 1 of Destiny and had a total of about 5-6 exotics across all characters including both armor and weapons, that method is probably not the best option. So that leaves XUR and well its XUR, he brings what he wants, when he wants.

Conclusion:
The exotics in The Taken King all seem a bit lackluster to me in perks, looks and stats. Most of the exotic weapons you CAN get can also be replaced fairly easily by a Legendary item that performs better in most cases or just has better perks overall.

Even the exotics carried over from Year 1 are not the cream of the crop and if they did contain any perk which was exceptionally useful, it was mostly likely nerfed by Bungie.

This is mind boggling to me, as why would you take away something that players really enjoyed in Year 1 of Destiny and reduce its value by nerfing the item, granted that some items DID need to be nerfed but it seems to me like Bungie just made ALL exotics in The Taken King to be, WELL, less than exotic in my opinion.

One MAJOR exception to all of this is the addition of Exotic Swords in Destiny Taken King, which is probably one of my favorite exotics to use in the game, especially for PvE. The Exotic Sword actually FEELS exotic and although it takes quite a bit of work to obtain one, its well worth it in the end. If you want to know more about it or how you go about obtaining an Exotic Sword in Destiny, I wrote a post about it here.

I would really like to hear your (fellow Destiny players) thoughts on this matter. Am I making too much of this? Or do you feel the same way? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section below and let me know what YOU think of exotics in The Taken King.

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How to get the Immobius Shotgun in Destiny Taken King

First of all WHAT is the Immobius?

The Immobius shotgun is a Legendary Shotgun that can ONLY be equipped by Titans. This shotgun was made available via The Taken King expansion.

What makes the Immobius so special?

It has a perk that is very unique. The perk is called Bouncer and rightly so, as kills inside Ward of Dawn with Armor of Light do not expend ammo. Now I don’t know about you but this sounds like a pretty decent perk to me, especially for a Legendary shotgun. Obviously this shotgun is MOST suited for the defender subclass of the Titans but other Titan subclasses can use it as well, just not as effectively.

So, how to get the Immobius in The Taken King?

Step 1 

In order to get the quest for the shotgun you need to get to Rank 2 with the gunsmith on your Titan. You rank up with the gunsmith by ‘testing’ weapons for him each week. You can only test a maximum of 5 weapons a week for 250 experience each weapon. The other way to get gunsmith experience is by finding an ingame item that drops from random kills in the game. This means that to get to Rank 2 can take you at least 2 weeks, depending on when you start, because of the weekly limit and reset. The gunsmith resets on Wednesdays so plan accordingly.

Step 2 

Now as soon as you reach Rank 2 with your Titan you will receive a quest from the gunsmith to obtain the Immobius Shotgun.

The gunsmith hands out a quest called ‘Back in the Saddle’ which is a fairly straightforward quest.

All this step requires you to do is get 75 kills with any shotgun, while having a special weapons Telemetry active. You can buy a special weapons telemetry for 250 glimmer from the gunsmith. It is a consumable that increases your shotgun experience gained while active and lasts 30 minutes.

Now you don’t actually need to buy a Telemetry if you have a Titan mark that has a similar perk which is ‘increase shotgun reputation gains’ and the titan mark perk doesn’t expire after 30 minutes, although 30 minutes is more than enough time to get the required number of kills. The easiest way is to load an easy story mission that has lots of enemies running at you OR earth patrol and then make your way around shot-gunning everything in sight. Now I just got this quest on my Titan and I know for a fact that using a Titan mark instead of Telemetry works just fine.

Step 3 

Once you have the required number of kills (75 kills) with a Telemetry active OR a Titan mark with a similar perk, then all you have to do is talk to the gunsmith in the Tower again. Once you talk to him he will give you another task to complete

Step 4 

This is the continuation of the ‘Back in the Saddle’ quest and now Banshee-44, the gunsmith, wants you to dismantle weapons in order to gather weapons parts to make the gun. He needs 10 weapon parts in total. **Just a reminder that ONLY dismantling Rare or Legendary SHOTGUNS will count towards the weapon parts Banshee-44 needs.** 

Dismantling a rare shotgun gives you 2 weapon parts towards the quest and dismantling a legendary shotgun gives you 5 weapons parts towards the quest. YEAR 1 shotguns also DO count, in case you have some lying around in your vault. This part was a bit tricky for me as I didn’t have many shotguns lying around so if you plan on doing this quest keep a few rare or legendary shoguns that you plan on dismantling anyways, handy for this quest.

But again this part of the quest is relatively easy and straightforward to do and once you have the 10 required special weapon parts (check the quest objectives to make sure you have 10/10) then go ahead and talk to Banshee-44, the gunsmith again.

Step 5 

The final step is to talk to Banshee-44, the gunsmith for one final time where he will finally give you your Legendary shotgun Immobius.

Step 6 

Enjoy being a bouncer with your Immobuis shotgun as a Titan Defender, it IS actually quite a bit of fun especially in PvP.

As a final note I would just like to say that this shotgun isn’t the greatest shotgun in The Taken King or anything like that. It’s not a BAD shotgun by any means, it’s just the perk on the shotgun makes it close to an exotic level shotgun for Titan DEFENDERS. That brings me to my next point, you can ONLY use this shotgun as a Titan regardless of the Titan subclass, which also means that you can ONLY get the quest for this gun from the gunsmith AS a Titan. If you reach Rank 2 with the gunsmith as, say a hunter or warlock, you will receive a similar quest but for different weapons, a sniper and a fusion rifle respectively, I believe. Just something to keep in mind when trying to Rank up with the gunsmith.

Let me know what you think of the Immobius, if you had a chance to use it and whether or not you like the shotgun.

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Xur is Here! – Feb 5th, 2016

This week XUR is located in the North Tower near where the speaker is located. You head towards the entrance of the Speaker’s room but keep going PAST the entrance all the way to the end and XUR will be on your left side. You should be able to see him right away on your way to the speaker anyways.

This week XUR’s inventory contains:

Immolation Fists (13 SC) – Gauntlets for the Titan that unlocks explosive Pyre for the Sunbreaker subclass of Titans. Pretty decent exotic if you’re using the Sunbreaker class otherwise rather useless.

Radiant Dance Machines (13 SC) – Boots for the Hunter and its major perk is that you move more quickly while aiming your weapon. Cool I guess….At least the look funky so there’s that.

The Stag (13 SC) – Helmet for the warlock and its major perk is that once per life your super charges really fast if all your teammates are dead and a chance to spawn with an overshield. I can see this helmet being really useful in certain situations but there are probably better exotics out there depending on what subclass you are playing.

So it looks like this week’s winners are the titans and possibly the warlocks.

Xur is also selling:

SUROS Regime (23 SC) – One of my personal favorite exotic auto rifles but Year 2 entices players to save their exotic NOT for the primary weapon slot but rather the special weapon slot OR ESPECIALLY the heavy weapon slot with the introduction of exotic swords. If you have coins to spare, it is definitely worth trying out as you may come to love the gun regardless of the fact that it takes up an exotic slot.

Legacy Engram (Special Weapons) – This week’s legacy engram is a special weapons engram and probably not worth spending your strange coins on unless you have tons to spare and are looking to complete your year 1 collection. Getting an icebreaker if you didn’t have it in Year 1 would still be pretty nice.

If you already have most of these exotics or nothing really appeals to you, spending your Strange Coins on Three of coins is still probably your best bet.

Below is a video showing you exactly where to go when you first spawn in the Tower if my instructions at the top were a bit unclear. The video also shows the various items XUR is selling so you can have a look at those as well.

Overall not a great week for XUR, still waiting for him to sell something like the RED DEATH or one of the warlock chest exotics I am missing, but I am probably better off just buying a bunch of three of coins at this point.

Let me know if XUR bought you something you really wanted this week or if you are waiting from him to bring a specific exotic in the comments section below.

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Getting back into Destiny with The Taken King expansion

So I’ve recently got back into Destiny with The Taken King. I’d only ever played vanilla destiny for a few months before this and then went on a 5 month hiatus. Needless to say, for someone like me, A LOT has changed since I last logged onto destiny. Some of these changes are good and others not so much.

Let’s start with the new content because that’s what it all comes down to right, content. The story missions were fun, quite a few recycled maps but they did add a whole new section with Saturn/Dreadnaught. I must say that The Taken King story missions were by far the most fun to play and least convoluted among all the other Destiny story missions, DLC’s included.

The new raid, although I haven’t done it yet, looks wicked and the boss Oryx looks like a complete badass.

Outlined below are some of the changes in Year 2 Destiny that really caught my attention.

•  XUR – The person who I eagerly waited for every Friday when I played vanilla Destiny, I was glad to find out, STILL arrives every Friday with goodies, only this time he’s changed a little. He still brings ONE exotic item for each class just like before, but now instead of bringing an exotic weapon and a random exotic engram, he now brings an Exoic Weapon OR an Exotic engram. With this change he now brings an additional engram known as an Exotic Legacy Engram. The legacy engram is an engram of either a weapon or armor slot but exclusively from year 1 containing year one stats and perks. This is mostly for the collectors or hoarders of Destiny. While I think this legacy engram is an amazing idea, people should be careful and double check before buying one since it looks exactly like an Exotic engram from year 2 but costs way more Strange Coins at 31. 31 strange coins may seem like a lot for a year 1 item but strange coins are easy enough to get and for someone looking to complete their collection or just get that year 1 item they always wanted but never got, this is the perfect engram for them to buy. XUR also sells an item known as 3 of coins which is a consumable, which when used increases your chances of getting an exotic engram on your next ultra-kill or next crucible win. More on this later. Needless to say, this nifty consumable makes getting exotics engrams quite easy. Other than that XUR is still your friendly neighborhood agent of nine who arrives promptly on Friday 5AM EST and leaves on Sunday at 5AM just like in Year 1 of Destiny.

• Gunsmith – the gunsmith still sells basic guns but now he also sells Legendary weapons that you can place through an armsday order which you will receive the following Wednesday as that is the weekly reset day for the gunsmith. In order to place an armsday order you have to be at least Rank 1 with the gunsmith. At Rank 2 and Rank 3 the gunsmith will also give out a quest for class specific Legendary and exotic weapon respectively, which I think is really neat. The Tlaloc exotic for warlocks is an especially awesome gun. I am still working on getting to Rank 3 with my warlock for that one and will post the results when I finally get one. And finally at Rank 5 you get an exotic quest for a handgun which is decent but nothing out of this world, so I’ll probably only get that for collection purposes eventually.

• Marks – There are no longer separate marks for vanguard and crucible, there is only ONE type of mark in The Taken King and they are called Legendary Marks. You can get them from the daily crucible activity (15 marks), weekly crucible activity (max of 10 x 3 for the week for winning ONLY), daily heroic story (15 marks), weekly heroic strikes (10 x 3 for the week) as well as from some story missions and dismantling YEAR 2 Legendary gear. All in all I am quite happy they made it only 1 type of mark and it is still fairly easy to reach the cap of 200 marks if you do all the activities. These marks are also used for infusing weapons and armor to make them stronger and if you happen to have some extra lying around after all that is done you can also trade them in at the vanguard for materials like spinmetal and so on.

• Strange Coins – Strange coins no longer drops from the heroic/ nightfall strikes, they CAN drop randomly but they are no longer a guaranteed drop from there. Not to worry thought, as far as I’ve seen its literally raining strange coins in Year 2 Destiny. If you play the game quite a bit you can easily get anywhere from 50-100 strange coins a week just from playing the game. If you don’t play the game as much you can still get anywhere from 30-60 strange coins is what I’ve found. This is more than enough to buy 2-3 pieces of gear from XUR on a weekly bases.

• Motes of Light – One of my favorite upgrades in Destiny Taken king is motes of light. Apart from being used to bolster reputation with factions motes of light can now also be used as a consumable to level up weapons and armor, something I didn’t learn about until a week into The Taken King.

• Kiosks – Ok this is hands down the best upgrade to Destiny in my opinion. There are a number of different kiosks located in the Tower for different things such as shaders, emblems, ships, sparrows, exotic weapons and exotic armor. What kiosks are essentially a memory vault containing a ‘blueprint’ of a specific type of item you owned or unlocked. Say for example this week you bought an exotic titan helmet from XUR. This titan helmet is now forever unlocked in the kiosk regardless if you dismantle the helmet or not. So in a situation where you loose your helmet and later down the road would like to have it again for some reason, new build tryouts perhaps, who knows, then all you need to do is go to the kiosk pay a bit of glimmer and 1 exotic shard and boom the helmet is yours again. This works similarly for exotic weapons as well as everything else. However the kiosks for ships, emblems and shaders you don’t even need to pay any money, just click 'acquire' and now ALL you characters can have that awesome legendary ship you just unlocked from the raid. This feature to me is an absolute lifesaver and a brilliant idea on Bungie’s part.

• Factions – Mostly the same from Year 1, factions still sell armor and weapons at Rank 1, 2 and 3 respectively. However now, once you reach Rank 25 you get a faction/class- specific quest to obtain a faction exotic class item such as a titan mark, warlock bond or hunter cloak depending on which character you leveled up the faction to Rank 25 with. The cool thing about THIS class specific exotic is that it lets you equip it at the SAME time as another armor exotic, a trait which is exclusive ONLY to these exotic faction class-specific items.

So lots of changes with The Taken King, some really positive ones, others not so great but the game is still amazingly fun to play especially after a 5 month Hiatus. Obviously I didn't go through ALL the changes that came with the Taken King like the three new classes and exotic swords and such or this would probably be a never-ending post.

Feel free to let me know what your thoughts are on the Taken King and all the various changes that came with the expansion in the comments section below.

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