Have we all caught up? Good stuff! Now, the purpose of this piece is to let you in on a little bit of extra info – an insight to your Guardian’s life after you hit the “soft level cap” of 20.
The gear that you’ll find throughout the first 20 levels on the game will sometimes offer you specific stats that aid your character in different ways. These stats come in the forms of Strength, Discipline and Intellect, and they’ll affect how fast you can melee, throw grenades and use your super attack.
When you hit level 20 though, you’ll start finding gear with an extra stat – Light.
As you achieve higher “light levels”, harder strike missions, heroic versions of the story mode and even (as of right now) a six-man raid become available to you.
Essentially, Destiny follows in Diablo’s footsteps from this point onwards – it becomes all about bettering your gear.
The problem with this is that nothing is explained particularly well. When the game decides it’s time to throw a piece of level 20 gear at you, it doesn’t come in the traditional “you got a chest item dropped, look how shiny it is”. No no no, it comes in the form of an “Engram”.
Engrams can come in three different colours; blue (rare), purple (legendary) and gold (exotic), each increasing in quality.
There’s an Engram for each armour and weapon slot, so you’ll always know which slot is going to be filled. The problem is, the colour of the Engram doesn’t guarantee that your item will be of the same quality.
I’ve had about eight legendary engrams through my Destiny career, and I’ve received absolutely no legendary gear from them. The Cryptark is a bully. He stands there in the tower accepting your purple engrams and dumping you with (mostly) useless blue gear, the smug bastard.
Don’t get me wrong, things can go the opposite way. You can trade in blue engrams and sometimes be rewarded with a purple piece of gear – apparently.
What’s even worse than the chance of getting purple (or exotic) loot, is that the engrams don’t guarantee that the gear inside will be for your class. I have a lovely exotic chest in my bank… unfortunately it’s for a Hunter, and I play as a Warlock.
This wouldn’t usually be much of a problem, level doesn’t mean that much does it? Well, in games like Call of Duty and Titanfall, no, your level really doesn’t make much of a difference. Hell, I didn’t even care for the first couple of days in Destiny, until the infamous 'Vault of glass' raid was released.
When I was a young teen, I played a whole lot of World of Warcraft. I just couldn’t get enough of raiding. I knew what to do in order to obtain the gear to enter the low level raids, and from there how to progress to the harder ones. Bearing that in mind, you can imagine my frustration when I loaded up Destiny and received a message which read “The Vault of Glass awaits”.
Well no, Bungie, it doesn’t. It could do, if these f@cking purple engrams gave me some f@cking purple gear you f@cking f@ckers.
I decided to investigate what these marks were for, and, lo and behold, I could spend them on purple gear – providing I had a reputation level of 2 with those factions.
I didn’t have a reputation level of 2 with either of those factions.
I did, however, know what I had to do to further progress in Destiny, and this motivated me to get back to playing through the strike missions and the crucible PvP mode.
After a few hours' grind, I had the rep I needed to buy myself some purples, and now, well, I guess I’ll see you on the other side of the Vault of Glass!
Be it the intense firefights, the breathtaking landscapes, the PvE, the PvP, the battle with your friends to get an edge on their gear, who knows, but all I’ll say is that I can’t wait for the first lot of DLC to be released.