And if you don't like the perks on your shiny new House of Wolves weapon, you can re-roll them. The latter is easy enough to come by, but I haven't seen a single Etheric Light drop in all my time with House of Wolves so far.Īscending weapons or armor won't reset the progress you've made in upgrading that gear, which corrects a serious misstep Bungie made with The Dark Below. Legendary gear is upgraded with a new token, Etheric Light, while exotic gear requires exotic shards. Instead, you can 'ascend' your old items. House of Wolves' new weapons and armor don't make your existing gear obsolete. As ever, Guardians are slaves to Destiny's capricious loot algorithm - the keys are just one more drop to hope for, another one of the tiny carrots on the stick Destiny hits you with. That's the one with the best stuff, of course. The treasure vault contains two small chests and a large one the normal ones are unlocked, but you need a special key, yet another piece of loot, to open the big one. This being Destiny, there's always a catch. And the gaudy treasure room at the end would make Scrooge McDuck blush. The higher-level challenges, like the best of Destiny, require you to formulate strategies between rounds and execute on them. Mid-round objectives force you to change up tactics on the fly. New gameplay modifiers akin to the skulls seen in nightfall strikes - like Trickle, which greatly reduces the recharge rate of your special abilities - can completely alter your squad's approach to a particular round. But Bungie at least manages to make some of the recycled content exciting: It's fun to revisit locations like the automobile graveyard from the very opening of Destiny and the Vault of Glass itself, and see them in new contexts with different objectives.Įach Prison of Elders run throws four rounds of three waves of enemies at you, with a final boss round. The missions suffer from The Dark Below's problem of retreading old ground - I'd estimate that only about one-fourth of the story takes place in never-before-seen areas. Destiny's main campaign is impenetrable sci-fi gobbledygook, but the more focused narratives in The Dark Below and House of Wolves prove that Bungie is indeed capable of telling a comprehensible story. This presents a clear objective that unifies all the associated missions, like a story should. It's your job to track and capture Skolas. A vicious Fallen leader, Skolas, is attempting to unite other Fallen houses to create a formidable rebellion against the Awoken. Variks and Venj are Destiny's best-written and best-voiced characters yet, with dialogue that generally favors clear explanation of events and conflicts over the inscrutable jargon and lore of the game's universe.

Destiny house of wolves quest line