/dg/ Guide to Playing Destiny

A CRASH COURSE TO PLAYING DESTINY IN A FEW (hundred) EASY ENGRAMS

TABLE OF "DO I REALLY HAVE TO FUCKING READ ALL OF THIS":
I: INTRODUCTION TO DESTINY
II: THE CLASSES
III: STARTING OUT: FUCKING FINALLY
IV: I HIT LEVEL 20 WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO
V: DLC CONTENT AND WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (as of summer 2015)
VI: FINAL TIPS TO HELP YOU SURVIVE
VII: END

----I: INTRODUCTION TO DESTINY----
Destiny is a first person MMO released by Bungie released on september 9th, 2014, for Xbox One/360 and PS4/3. It is an absolutely terrible game that is also cripplingly addicting and somehow fun. Please do not play destiny if you have trouble with addiction or suffer from completionism. On the other hand, if you don't like first person shooters with barely any story that matters or grinding lootfests with RNG flowing out of every faucet, Destiny might not be for you.

All that being said, destiny has solid gunplay and interesting raids and modes to play and complete. While you need to matchmake with people to do the more interesting and high-level things, Destiny is a great social game if you find a group of non-shitters- as you can all band together and talk over mic about how shit this game is and how you didn't get the weapon you wanted.

If you had to explain destiny to a dumbass friend: It's borderlands without memes and better gunplay.

----II: THE CLASSES----
In Destiny, there are three classes: the Hunter, Warlock, and Titan. All three of them have special abilities to help you shoot stuff, and they're all balanced in their own ways. They have two subclasses, which are unique skillsets which you can swap out at any time. You can have 3 character slots, so there's no reason not to have one of each character. A brief summary:

~HUNTER: DO YOU LIKE KNIVES? DO YOU LIKE TALKING TO YOUR GUNS IN THE MOONLIGHT? DO YOU LIKE BEING THE EDGIEST MOTHERFUCKER IN THE TOWER?

As the Hunter, your two subclasses are Gunslinger and Bladedancer. They each specialize in extreme long range and extreme short range combat, respectively. The Gunslinger has the powerful Golden Gun ability which allows you to summon some sort of flaming magnum shit and shoot people down with burning lasers. The Bladedancer has Arc Blade (but you won't remember the name of it, you'll just call it "that fucking blade move") which allows them to zip around like an annoying fly with a knife and OHKO anyone who dares look at you wrong. The gunslinger's passives are more inclined to being a long range sniper who picks headshots while the bladedancer is more stealth and speed oriented, allowing your frail ass to gapclose like you need to.

http://destiny.wikia.com/wiki/Hunter

**note:** The hunter's damage types are Solar and Arc. This is not important if you are starting out and just want to scope individual playstyles, but keep this in mind for later.

~WARLOCK: DO YOU LIKE GRENADES AND ROBES? DO YOU LIKE BEING A NERD AND BEING SHOVED INTO LOCKERS? DO YOU LIKE CHEESING PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING IN THE GAME?

As the Warlock, your two subclasses are Voidwalker and Sunsinger. They both specialize in being a fucking space wizard and throwing a shitton of grenades- but the Voidwalker is slightly more offensive and the Sunsinger is slightly more defensive. The Voidwalker has the powerful Nova Bomb ability which allows you to throw a massive fucking spirit bomb at people obliterating anything that happens to be in the blast radius. The Sunsinger has Radiance, which gives all of your abilities extremely low cooldowns allowing you to chuck grenades everywhere and burn people alive. Even though I haven't mentioned the bonus passives you can add to your super on previous or future classes, it should be noted that Radiance can be specced to be used from death- allowing you to self revived with the cooldown bonus. The voidwalker's passives are more about speed and AoE effects, while the sunsinger's passives are kind of all over the fucking place but end up being more about damage over time.

http://destiny.wikia.com/wiki/Warlock

**note:** The warlock's damage types are Void and Solar. This is not important if you are starting out and just want to scope individual playstyles, but keep this in mind for later.

~TITAN: DO YOU LIKE PUNCHING PEOPLE UNTIL YOUR FIST BLEEDS? DO YOU LIKE BEING A JOCK WHO THINKS HE'S BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE? DO YOU LIKE BEING AN ARMOURED JUGGERNAUT?

As the Titan, your two subclasses are Striker and Defender. They are the most polarized subclasses in the game, one being for extreme offense and one being for extreme defense. The Striker has the powerful Fist of Havoc which allows them to "Go for the touchdown" and do a big jump into a ground pound, destroying anything they hit in a small radius. The Defender has the Ward of Dawn (or as you'll remember it: "the bubble") that allows them and teammates to sit inside completely safe from the outside world. The Striker's passives are more centered around being an unstoppable force, and the Defender is centered around being an immovable object.

http://destiny.wikia.com/wiki/Titan

**note:** The titan's damage types are Arc and Void. This is not important if you are starting out and just want to scope individual playstyles, but keep this in mind for later.

----III: STARTING OUT: FUCKING FINALLY----
So you picked out your shitty class and are ready to start playing Destiny. This point of the game is fairly linear, as you only really have to do the barebones story and then grind in crucible until you hit level 20. There are a few things you should know though:

~RARITY SCALING: The rarity scaling in this game works as follows (worst to best): White->Green->Blue->Purple->Yellow. In game they are known as Basic->Uncommon->Rare->Legendary->Exotic. Exotics are always the same for everyone except minor stat difference on armour, and every other type of loot is randomly generated except certain "story" weapons.

~DAMAGE TYPES: There are 4 damage types: Kinetic, Solar, Void, and Arc. Kinetic is a generic damage type and there is no reason to use it if you have a better weapon with any other damage (however, pretty much every primary in the game is kinetic save for a rare few). Solar, Void, and Arc damage are different damage types that all have the same functionality: When shot at a same colour shield that an enemy has, you deal critical damage to it making it go down much faster. There is no downside to shooting the wrong colour at a shield other than it doesn't take the bonus damage. There is also modifiers on later missions to make a certain damage type deal much much more damage, but that is very lategame so it is probably better to not worry about it now.

~THE TOWER AND WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU: The tower is the main hub world in destiny, and the game takes you through it and kind of explains a few things about it. There are a few things the game keeps hidden from you though:

-There are 3 factions you can """join""": Dead Orbit, Future War Cult, and New Monarchy. There is also the generic Crucible and Vanguard factions, but nobody cares about those. Don't worry about this until level 20, but try and look around for them and see what cool gear they have if you're interested.
-There's a creepy man with tentacles coming out of his face (Xur) that comes around every weekend to sell very overpowered items that you would usually have to commit your life to grinding to get. These items are called Exotics, and we'll talk about them more in depth later. But he takes Strange Coins and Motes of Light, so if you get these on your travels, don't throw them away.
-If you see an engram (think of it like unidentified loot) and you can't pick it up due to no space, the postmaster in the tower will keep it if it's blue rarity or above.

Other than that, there is not much else a brand new player in destiny absolutely needs to know. Just progress with the story like the game tells you to, play a match of PvP (crucible) or two if you want to grind your level up. Beating the game will net you around level ~17, assuming you do a bounty or two and play a tiny bit of crucible as well.

----IV: I HIT LEVEL 20 WHAT THE FUCK DO I DO----
Congratulations! You're level 20 now. You can either quit while you're still ahead pretending you "beat" the game, or you can becoming a grinding zombie and play the true "meat" of destiny.

There are three options you can take:
-You have 3 character slots. If you don't like your abilities or just want a change in pace you can make another one of a different class. There's nothing stopping you from making 3 of the same character, but you're going to get a rare item for another class eventually and you'll probably hate yourself.
-Continue levelling your main character using Light and get past 20.
-Shitpost on /dg/ and don't actually play the game. You'd be surprised how many people take this route.

~LIGHT, HOW THE FUCK DOES IT WORK?: You might notice that level 20 is the "level cap". While this is true for killing enemies and getting experience, there is a new type of experience you can gain to level past 20: Light. Light comes on all armour blue and above- in increasing quantity the more rare the type of armour is.

~LIGHT, HOW THE FUCK DO I GET IT?: Remember the factions I was talking about earlier? This is actually the easiest and probably only reliable way to get past the light gap of ~25 to ~28.

To get the faction legendary gear, you need three things: Commendations (for the chest only), Reputation, and Marks. Reputation is basically "experience" for factions- you get them for doing specific things like strikes or bounties and they either level up vanguard/crucible reputation or the faction of your choice depending on whose walking billboard you want to be. You get commendations whenever you level up a faction past 3, so don't worry too much about those. And finally, you need marks. They're a seperate resource you have to grind your ass off for, shown on the inventory screen and map screen of the game. You can only get 100 of each a week, and you probably need about 350 for a full set depending on how many legendaries you already have equipped.

So basically, bungie's got you by the balls.

~SO WHAT DO I DO FOR TWO WEEKS OTHER THAN GRIND MARKS AND REPUTATION: Well, here's where the main part of destiny comes in: Exotics. Despite what anyone else might say about destiny, Exotics are the main point of playing the game and are your main reward for continuing to play this shit. Each exotic has it's own unique gimmick, and allows you to become an overpowered macho man in your own special way. You can only equip one exotic armour and one exotic weapon however, limiting your selection and forcing you to make choices. You can shove all the rest of your exotics in your vault however, and sit upon your hoard of gold and ask yourself what you're doing with your life.

You can get exotics from:
-Getting a random legendary engram and randomly having a random chance to get a random exotic of the same (random) type of the engram
-Completing the weekly nightfall, a fucking hard strike with a "sorta-permadeath" system
-Opening certain chests in raids
-Beating raids
-Exotic bounties, bounties that you only get by turning in a random amount of other bounties which allow you to get exotics that are impossible to get from other methods
-Paying Xur strange coins or buying exotic engrams from him
-House of Wolves DLC gives one confirmed exotic per character completion and allows you to loot a chest repeatedly for exotics using treasure chest keys which randomly spawn in randomly spawning ether chests that only pop up after randomly spawning groups of enemies spawn randomly all over the world. Basically, it's kind of a clusterfuck.

~SO IS THAT IT?: Basically: Yes. You can do the easiest raid once you reach level 26, and you can always play crucible which is pretty fun. The light gap until you reach about 26 is probably one of the most frustrating and boring parts of the game, with the DLC and raid content too far away to be playable and the rest of the game too easy and boring to grind. But if you want to keep yourself motivated, look towards the gold and hope that the cryptarch blesses you and gives you the shiny exotic you always wanted. However, the light gap is made easier with...

----V: DLC CONTENT AND WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW (as of may 2015)----
Destiny, like every game made in the last 5 years, has DLC. While it is vastly superior to the base game and you basically need it to enjoy anything past the shitty subpar story at this point, it is also more expensive than a used copy of destiny right now, so it's up to you to decide if you like this game enough to warrant buying it. As somebody who bought the legendary edition on release which came with the expansion pass, I unfortunately do not know how much content is DLC locked, so if there are any errors in the following section I apologize.

~CROTA'S END: Crota's end was the first DLC released, and features a bunch of new exotics, a raid, and a small story about the hive and some crying bitch whose life was ruined by crota. Unless you care a lot about the lore and new niche things added in the story missions, the main draw for this DLC is making the light gap easier, the raid, and the new exotics. Most of the new exotics are more fun gimmicks than actually being good, the most extreme example being the No Land Beyond- a bolt action primary sniper rifle that is fun to use but disappointingly shitty. The raid is hive themed and (in personal opinion) is better than the one bundled with the game.

~HOUSE OF WOLVES: House of wolves is the second DLC to be released, and once again adds new exotics, but no raid this time- instead adding a "horde mode" that gives you great rewards each time completed. There is also another side story, featuring a girl who likes to juggle knives, some dreg who sounds exactly like the Ilwrath from star control 2, and a buff as shit fallen who would rather run away multiple times than actually fight you like a man. Once again the main draw for this DLC is the exotics, which are much more impressive this time around- but the story is also actually pretty good for once as well. There is also the fabled "Trials of Osiris", a mode similar to competitive gamemodes like "Search and Destroy" with rewards for winning multiple matches without losing.

Each DLC increases the level cap. Crota's end increased it from 30 to 32, and House of Wolves increased it further from 32 to 34.

----VI: FINAL TIPS TO HELP YOU SURVIVE----

-Get the official destiny app or destiny item manager for chrome, they allow you to switch items over from your vault and between your characters without having to go through multiple loading screens.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/destiny-item-manager/apghicjnekejhfancbkahkhdckhdagna?hl=en

-The Gjallarhorn and Hawkmoon are the most sought after exotics in the game, so if you get one make sure to circlejerk about it on /dg/. If you get multiple, hoard them all and make a video of you deconstructing them all for exotic shards and post it as a webm.

-If you're bored of the game or feel yourself walking down that path, find ways to exploit and break the game. Search up ways to grind 10 times faster than you're supposed to. Glitch through walls with your sparrow and find on disc DLC content. Try and cheese/break everything you do, it's more fun than playing the game properly!

-Never use DestinyLFG to matchmake. People on /dg/ may be elitist shitflinger drama queens, but they are infinitely better at the game than 90% of people you will find on DestinyLFG.

-The crucible is a good way to "take breaks" from the more repetitive forms of grinding. Try out your new weapons/exotics and see how they fare against other guardians!

-The cryptarch upon being levelled up gives a high chance of giving you legendary engrams.

----VII: END----
Thank you for reading this far. Or thank you for at least scrolling to the bottom of the page to see how long this is.

I wanted to make this to help out people who were wondering what to do in destiny without having to answer the same questions over and over again. I hope I at least answered some questions you had.

- K-A-K / PB