Here's something to watch out for. I've hit a wall where my primary exotic engrams are all decrypting to 391 light. About six in a row. There are various theories out there about what to do about this, e.g. "make sure the primary item you are holding is lower than your light level", or even "don't decrypt when you are 392 LL" (presumably you demote yourself to 391), but none helped whatsoever. The only good news is that I'm now out of primary exotic engrams, so I can stop fussing about it myself, but some of you might run into this problem. Watch for a patch or a better work-around from the community. It's likely that the issue has nothing specifically to do with the primary slot, but that happens to be where I saw it.
Edit: Forgot to say I was 392 LL at the time! So all these exotics were coming out at one lower than my light level.
Here's something to watch out for. I've hit a wall where my primary exotic engrams are all decrypting to 391 light. About six in a row. There are various theories out there about what to do about this, e.g. "make sure the primary item you are holding is lower than or light level", or even "don't decrypt when you are 392 LL" (presumably you demote yourself to 391), but none helped whatsoever. The only good news is that I'm now out of primary exotic engrams, so I can stop fussing about it myself, but some of you might run into this problem. Watch for a patch or a better work-around from the community. It's likely that the issue has nothing specifically to do with the primary slot, but that happens to be where I saw it.
Run Archon's Forge and crucible with your highest LL possible for chances at drops with higher LL, rinse and repeat, and keep burning those 3oCs. It's a grind but will slowly raise your light. Don't have to win crucible matches so no big deal.
The forge has yielded to me ghosts, artifacts and class items at 400. It wasn't easy. The closer to 400 hundred you get, the more likely you won't get more than a +1 LL increase per item over your current total LL. Same seems true for exotics too.
Exotics don't seem to drop as often as they were.
Heroic playlists give high LL if you have a key and that has been less that 50% for me.
Deep, my experience yesterday in the crucible was that the legendary weapons that dropped were usually +1 over my current light level. Only armor that dropped were blues, and those capped out at 365 (including the blue ghosts). I think the weekly Shaxx bounty is supposed to drop at higher light, but I haven't completed one for a while. Ranger did, and I have forgotten what he said he got, I think it was a higher light level exotic though.
The strike chest I claimed yesterday had a +1 legendary in it too. That grind between 390 to 400 is going to be rough. I still have a stock pile of exotic engrams and am slowly using them when one item is about 5 light levels below the rest. I may end up grinding at 3oC bosses, and in the forge for the artifacts/ghosts/class items. And eventually the herioc raid.
Dunno if I'm just having bad luck with the light level RNGods or if +1 is what we can expect to be the norm for 390+
I neglected to say above that I was 392 LL when I got (about) six primary exotic engrams decrypted at 391 LL. I'll take +1 LL over -1 LL any day! I have to believe there is a bug somewhere. I'm ok with slow progress, but no progress over 5 or 6 engrams is just crazy considering the drop rate on the things.
The RNGods are just mad at you Krak. What did you do to them? More sacrifices of engrams may be required.
On a more serious note, I do remember having that happen to me while I was infusing gear to raid with. I decrypted a couple of engrams to raise the light level of my dark-drinker. Got 3 388s before I got a 390. But then ofc, there is the rare occasion when you infuse a 390 into something and that item becomes a 391 instead of 390.
I'm seeing +1 to +3 LL increases on average for crucible & Archon's Forge drops, but the +3's seem to be coming mostly from crucible drops and the occasional artifact from AF. Ghosts from AF have been dropping, but nothing higher than 390 yet even though I'm over that.
Exotics have been -1 to +2 LL since hitting 390.
I'm still fighting the habit of automatically dismantling anything blue, and I almost dismantled a blue artifact that turned out to be my highest LL item yet.
I played at least 5 Siva Crisis Heroic strikes yesterday. Not one skeleton key. It has to be the least efficient method for collecting equipment above 385. Waste of time, except for the enjoyment of it.
Quitters weren't a problem because JIP always provided new players.
Deep, try the normal siva crisis playlist. Folks are reporting that they see higher key drop rates in the normal playlist than heroics. It makes no sense to me, but from personal experience, Ranger and I have had almost no keys dropped in herioc, but have had them in normal. They are still rare, but definitely feel less rare than heroics. Your experience may vary of course, but we ground away at heroics one night trying to get a key to finish the thorn quest. Nada. First normal siva crisis, and a key dropped. It may have just been time, or the RNG may just be more generous in normal. Who knows!
Watched a video where someone described playing various strikes to get stats on how often keys dropped. Siva Heroic appeared to be worse than regular Siva. Over a 4 hour period he got 4 keys playing Siva (but not necessarily at one an hour), but only 3 playing Siva Heroic. He figured the drop rate might be skewed a little because a heroic strike takes longer to play than a regular strike. These were run with a full fire team and all members got the same number of keys.
It's frustrating because those keys are SO helpful when you have them. I ran my 2 alts through ROI and passed their keys to my 390 primary. Ran 2 strikes and about 5 rounds of forge to bump me to 392. Targeted the heavy weapon strike hoard to raise that LL to 391 (when it had been my lowest LL at 387). Got a 395 ghost and 392 blue artifact out of the forge. RNG has been pretty good to me. I don't play as often as many of the folks here, but I try to target my play and loot. I really wonder if the RNG some how tracks frequency of play and doles things out accordingly. I'll miss a few days, jump on and get great drops, but the relative quality of drops seem to decrease after playing for a bit. Probably just observation bias (or one of those logically fallacies) though.
PS - I got a 395 special running nightfall at LL 390 as well.
Managed to get a 397 helmet on a 392. Legendary helmet at that. Ran it twice last night and two fireteam members got equipment while 1 got either strange coins or 3oCs each time. NFs loot drop is either really kind or really mean sometimes.
This weeks NF will be a bit harder, abomination with arc burn, juggler, airborne, specialist. Not as much fun as Sunless Cell.. But NF is definitely a possibility for getting loot.
Astrogaming has a new A50 headset (Gen 3) which is truly wireless...however...game chat does not work in Destiny, but party chat does work. There is no magic fix here. It is a recognized problem in the Astrogaming forums. Thing is, where game chat is present in other games, like Forza, it works.
My thinking on this is that Bungie still expects game chat audio to route thru the controller -- i.e. head set "plugged in." There is no way to "plug in" the A50. Party chat is an XBL function so that is why it probably works.
Trying to decide now whether or not to return the A50's. I play mostly Destiny now and if I continue to use these everything will have to be thru party chat. Although not a major issue it still causes a bit of a bump for me when I join someone in game chat or vice versa.
I am sure Astrogaming and Bungie will point fingers at each other for some period of time and nothing will get done to fix this which is a shame because the new A50 headset is really comfortable to wear and the audio is really good.
That's great, DEEP! What's next? Simultaneous 400 on all three characters? Standing by for triumphant screen shot!
I just managed to ding 396 yesterday, which puts me in the top 1% of light levels. Good enough for this scrub. I'll just have to suffer a slight damage penalty while shooting at the 400s this IB. Oh, well. Light level is far from my main problem in IB!
That's great, DEEP! What's next? Simultaneous 400 on all three characters? Standing by for triumphant screen shot!
I just managed to ding 396 yesterday, which puts me in the top 1% of light levels. Good enough for this scrub. I'll just have to suffer a slight damage penalty while shooting at the 400s this IB. Oh, well. Light level is far from my main problem in IB!
From what I've read, you won't suffer any damage penalty until the LL difference is something like 10-20.
Is that really true, BLAM? I saw some curves showing a linear decrease in damage as a function of light level difference. But it was a bit old. Can anyone point me to something recent?
...until the next time my screen freezes.
Btw, legendary engrams are decrypting up to 385 now.
In case anyone hasn't seen it yet, festival of the lost is coming this next reset! The ghosts in the vid look sweet. October 25 to November 8.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVNnJEIALoo
edit: Found some images on instagram. The ghost ghost is a hoot!
https://www.instagram.com/destinythegame/
Just when you start thinking that the Aksis fight is really pretty tough....
https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/58txxi/solo_aksis/
Here's something to watch out for. I've hit a wall where my primary exotic engrams are all decrypting to 391 light. About six in a row. There are various theories out there about what to do about this, e.g. "make sure the primary item you are holding is lower than your light level", or even "don't decrypt when you are 392 LL" (presumably you demote yourself to 391), but none helped whatsoever. The only good news is that I'm now out of primary exotic engrams, so I can stop fussing about it myself, but some of you might run into this problem. Watch for a patch or a better work-around from the community. It's likely that the issue has nothing specifically to do with the primary slot, but that happens to be where I saw it.
Edit: Forgot to say I was 392 LL at the time! So all these exotics were coming out at one lower than my light level.
My lowest equipped item is a 392 heavy. Exotic decryption is suffering in LL for this one item. I'm out of heavy exotic engrams.
I still received up to 399 but things have slowed down a lot. I need to earn another exotic heavy engram.
The forge has yielded to me ghosts, artifacts and class items at 400. It wasn't easy. The closer to 400 hundred you get, the more likely you won't get more than a +1 LL increase per item over your current total LL. Same seems true for exotics too.
Exotics don't seem to drop as often as they were.
Heroic playlists give high LL if you have a key and that has been less that 50% for me.
I'm going to try Crucible next.
Deep, my experience yesterday in the crucible was that the legendary weapons that dropped were usually +1 over my current light level. Only armor that dropped were blues, and those capped out at 365 (including the blue ghosts). I think the weekly Shaxx bounty is supposed to drop at higher light, but I haven't completed one for a while. Ranger did, and I have forgotten what he said he got, I think it was a higher light level exotic though.
The strike chest I claimed yesterday had a +1 legendary in it too. That grind between 390 to 400 is going to be rough. I still have a stock pile of exotic engrams and am slowly using them when one item is about 5 light levels below the rest. I may end up grinding at 3oC bosses, and in the forge for the artifacts/ghosts/class items. And eventually the herioc raid.
Dunno if I'm just having bad luck with the light level RNGods or if +1 is what we can expect to be the norm for 390+
I neglected to say above that I was 392 LL when I got (about) six primary exotic engrams decrypted at 391 LL. I'll take +1 LL over -1 LL any day! I have to believe there is a bug somewhere. I'm ok with slow progress, but no progress over 5 or 6 engrams is just crazy considering the drop rate on the things.
The RNGods are just mad at you Krak. What did you do to them? More sacrifices of engrams may be required.
On a more serious note, I do remember having that happen to me while I was infusing gear to raid with. I decrypted a couple of engrams to raise the light level of my dark-drinker. Got 3 388s before I got a 390. But then ofc, there is the rare occasion when you infuse a 390 into something and that item becomes a 391 instead of 390.
I'm seeing +1 to +3 LL increases on average for crucible & Archon's Forge drops, but the +3's seem to be coming mostly from crucible drops and the occasional artifact from AF. Ghosts from AF have been dropping, but nothing higher than 390 yet even though I'm over that.
Exotics have been -1 to +2 LL since hitting 390.
I'm still fighting the habit of automatically dismantling anything blue, and I almost dismantled a blue artifact that turned out to be my highest LL item yet.
I played at least 5 Siva Crisis Heroic strikes yesterday. Not one skeleton key. It has to be the least efficient method for collecting equipment above 385. Waste of time, except for the enjoyment of it.
Quitters weren't a problem because JIP always provided new players.
Deep, try the normal siva crisis playlist. Folks are reporting that they see higher key drop rates in the normal playlist than heroics. It makes no sense to me, but from personal experience, Ranger and I have had almost no keys dropped in herioc, but have had them in normal. They are still rare, but definitely feel less rare than heroics. Your experience may vary of course, but we ground away at heroics one night trying to get a key to finish the thorn quest. Nada. First normal siva crisis, and a key dropped. It may have just been time, or the RNG may just be more generous in normal. Who knows!
Watched a video where someone described playing various strikes to get stats on how often keys dropped. Siva Heroic appeared to be worse than regular Siva. Over a 4 hour period he got 4 keys playing Siva (but not necessarily at one an hour), but only 3 playing Siva Heroic. He figured the drop rate might be skewed a little because a heroic strike takes longer to play than a regular strike. These were run with a full fire team and all members got the same number of keys.
One can reach their own conclusions on this.
It's frustrating because those keys are SO helpful when you have them. I ran my 2 alts through ROI and passed their keys to my 390 primary. Ran 2 strikes and about 5 rounds of forge to bump me to 392. Targeted the heavy weapon strike hoard to raise that LL to 391 (when it had been my lowest LL at 387). Got a 395 ghost and 392 blue artifact out of the forge. RNG has been pretty good to me. I don't play as often as many of the folks here, but I try to target my play and loot. I really wonder if the RNG some how tracks frequency of play and doles things out accordingly. I'll miss a few days, jump on and get great drops, but the relative quality of drops seem to decrease after playing for a bit. Probably just observation bias (or one of those logically fallacies) though.
PS - I got a 395 special running nightfall at LL 390 as well.
Managed to get a 397 helmet on a 392. Legendary helmet at that. Ran it twice last night and two fireteam members got equipment while 1 got either strange coins or 3oCs each time. NFs loot drop is either really kind or really mean sometimes.
This weeks NF will be a bit harder, abomination with arc burn, juggler, airborne, specialist. Not as much fun as Sunless Cell.. But NF is definitely a possibility for getting loot.
Vosik raid challenge is active. Lots of speculation afoot, but nobody has confirmed what the actual challenge is yet or what the reward(s) might be.
Saw that. We can probably start a bet on how quickly it will be figured out, posted as a howto on reddit, with youtube video to accompany it.
Challenge has already been completed.
But has the howto and video howto for dummies been posted? :) That was about as long as I expected it to take. 1-2 hrs max.
Kal, here's a howto - writeup only. http://twinfinite.net/2016/11/destiny-rise-of-iron-how-to-complete-vosik...
Videos should be up soon, I'm sure.
Iron Banner is coming next week! Pulse rifle, machine gun, chest & boots and control!
Astrogaming has a new A50 headset (Gen 3) which is truly wireless...however...game chat does not work in Destiny, but party chat does work. There is no magic fix here. It is a recognized problem in the Astrogaming forums. Thing is, where game chat is present in other games, like Forza, it works.
My thinking on this is that Bungie still expects game chat audio to route thru the controller -- i.e. head set "plugged in." There is no way to "plug in" the A50. Party chat is an XBL function so that is why it probably works.
Trying to decide now whether or not to return the A50's. I play mostly Destiny now and if I continue to use these everything will have to be thru party chat. Although not a major issue it still causes a bit of a bump for me when I join someone in game chat or vice versa.
I am sure Astrogaming and Bungie will point fingers at each other for some period of time and nothing will get done to fix this which is a shame because the new A50 headset is really comfortable to wear and the audio is really good.
I'm now a member of the 400 club.
Outstanding! Do you get a strange glow or something?
He already had a strange glow...
Congrats, DEEP!
Congrats Deep.
I'm hoping IB will be kind and give me lots of goodies to boost me.
That's great, DEEP! What's next? Simultaneous 400 on all three characters? Standing by for triumphant screen shot!
I just managed to ding 396 yesterday, which puts me in the top 1% of light levels. Good enough for this scrub. I'll just have to suffer a slight damage penalty while shooting at the 400s this IB. Oh, well. Light level is far from my main problem in IB!
Is that really true, BLAM? I saw some curves showing a linear decrease in damage as a function of light level difference. But it was a bit old. Can anyone point me to something recent?