Destiny: Become the light in the dark

The Dark Below expansion pack lands on Destiny featuring new challenges to the dedicated player.

Recently, Bungie released their first game expansion for their hit game Destiny, this downloadable content is known as: Destiny Expansion I The Dark Below, adding in a new raid, strike (two for Playstation users), stronger gear, Crucible maps and missions for those getting bored of the base game.

Here’s a summary of what the base game’s storyline is all about: In the future known as The Golden Age of exploration, peace and prosperity, a sentient being known as: The Traveller appears in our star system. This sentient being’s power is to make any planet, life sustainable, with this power technological advances, colonization and peace arose.

With this another sentient being known as: The Darkness arrives to kill The Traveller, wiping out the human race to the brink of extinction. The Darkness however fails, leaving The Traveller in a dormant state which only allows it to defend the last remaining city on Earth.

Now where does the player come in? Servants of The Traveller who contain its light called: Ghosts are out in search for soldiers named Guardians who use the power of The Traveller’s light to push back The Darkness. During the collapse of The Golden Age most Guardians fell to the power of The Darkness, waiting to be revived by the light of The Traveller.

Players start the game waking up from hibernation/death, revived by a Ghost who becomes your own personal door opener and navigation system. He restores your power and tells you what has happened since the end of the collapse of The Golden Age, he then proceeds to escort you back to The Tower, the home base for all Guardians where you can purchase equipment, meet other players and hang out.

There’s a total of three playable classes, each with two different subclasses available to the player to accommodate their play style. These classes include: The Hunter class, Titan class and the Warlock class, which add in the basic classic play styles of most MMORPG’s despite the fact that this is a first person shooter.

The Hunter Class is known as the rogue/thief class of most games, its two subclasses are: The Gunslinger with the ability to summon a golden revolver firing flaming bullets, and The Bladedancer with the power to charge its dagger with Arclight (lightning) and hack and slash its way through a battlefield of enemies.

The Titan Class is basically the attacker/defender with two entirely different subclasses. These include The Striker, which is the straight forward run in and destroy subclass with the ability to use an attack known as the Fist of Havoc which can clear out a group of enemies like a storm against a pile of leaves. Its Defender class can put up a shield of light that can buff its teammates increasing their overall damage and it also grants them a temporary shield.

Finally the Warlock class is like the magician in every game, usually you would have to stand back and support the group with this class, but in Destiny that is not the case; some would say that’s it’s the most overpowered class of the three. Its Voidwalker class can fire a nova bomb annihilating its enemies with so much ease, and its Sunsinger class can revive itself from death and spam all of its solar-related abilities non-stop.

So that’s the summary, now let’s get into detail what The Dark Below adds into the game.

With the new raid it features the boss known as: Crota, the revered god of the Hive army. He wields a sword so powerful that it completely drains the light out of the Guardians, which in combat it prevents the player’s health from regenerating at all. The raid itself contains a total of four phases, each with its own requirements to pass as well as extremely difficult challenges for the players.

New gear is available for purchase at The Vanguard, Crucible, Dead Orbit, New Monarchy and Future Warcult vendors. These items have the ability to get a player’s character to the new level cap of 32 and the weapons are stronger than that of their predecessors in the base game.

New story missions are available for completion when you download this expansion pack; you would have to head to The Tower and speak with Eris, The Bane of Crota to obtain these missions. The missions are quite rewarding as they give free new gear to the player upon completion and they are definitely some beautiful pieces of equipment.

The main strike that comes with the expansion available for all platforms is known as: The Will of Crota, featuring Crota’s servant: Omnigul. Her ability is her horrid scream that can be easily compared to the famous myth of the Banshee. This ability of hers can summon 30-40 soldiers of The Hive to aid her in her battle against the players. The strike itself, not entirely difficult, just extremely occupied with a ton of enemies all the time.

The new Crucible (player versus player) maps are: Pantheon, Skyshock and The Cauldron. There really isn’t much to say for the Crucible maps, just new terrain to traverse as you compete against fellow players.

Bungie’s first expansion has been extremely successful and has plenty of players enjoying it right now. The expansion is on sale for $20 unless you bought it with the expansion pass for $34.99.  Go pick up Destiny and its expansion if you enjoy an first person shooter with the feel of an MMORPG.