The Black Armory – One Week Later

So after a solid week of grinding for light level gear increases, and daily attempts at trying to complete the Volundr Forge – the very first forge in the game mind you – we were finally able to complete it, but our joyous victory was short lived.  Sure, Prime Engrams (from Prime Attunement) were raising individual slots by 10 points or more, but overall Light Level was slowly crawling up 1 point at a time. Trying to get light level increases wasn’t our only problem in trying to complete the forge for the first time.  We had constant issues trying to pick up the charges to throw in the forge and constant issues trying to get ammo of any kind to appear.

Once we completed the forge for the first time, I mistakenly got excited thinking “this is it, we’re in!”  But no, we were not, the misery was just beginning.  We rushed to the forge to collect our hard earned loot, only I was met with disappointment.  A sparrow and a heavy weapon that went straight to the postmaster since I was out of heavy slots for anymore weapons.  On the nail biting and excruciatingly long trip back to the tower to collect my prize, I found I got a new legendary machine gun with the exact same stats as Thunderlord only it was void, didn’t chain elemental attacks and was one point higher.

It looks nice though

Ok, I thought, don’t fret it’s only your first gear drop from the forge, there will be better ones.

We returned to Ada Wong triumphant that we did what she asked only to be met with more work to do.  We now had access to her bounties, which we had hoped were going to lead to new and better weapons. We each had received on our first completion of the forge 2 Modulus Reports.  Great, another fucking currency to keep up with. If you’re going to require us to carry 100 different currencies, this shit should not be taking up inventory space. Examining Ada’s list of Weapon Research Frames, we found you could only acquire one if you had 4.  After picking up her daily bounties we thought we could finish before bed (it was after 2am at this point) we headed back to the forge to perfect our technique so we could help fellow clan mates clear the forge as well.

After a couple more clears and some farting around in the EDZ to complete bounties in an easier fashion, we had enough Modulus Reports for one of Ada’s Weapon Research Frames.  I convinced my fireteam to pick up the one for completing 5 patrols in any area and headed back to the EDZ to grind it out. Once 5 patrols were done, we were prompted to go clear the forge again to complete the bounty, and off we went.  Once we finished the forge I hurriedly opened my menu to see what an Augmented Weapon was and was met with huge disappointment as the reward was another Badlander shotgun.  So we did all that shit to get a shotgun from the last expansion.  Great, thanks. Not only was it from the last expansion but it was also I lower light level than everything in my inventory.  John was met with the same disappointing reward and I was so angry I don’t know what Scott received.

At some point, either during the forge or when we were working on bounties, we each also got an item that prompted us to tell Ada about.

Again, back to the tower we went.  Showing it to her made her livid as it was a kitbash of her precious Black Armory garbage and Fallen tech.  Then we were sent on a wild goose chase to collect 35 whatevers from Fallen on the Tangled Shore. Since we tired of grinding the Forge and getting nowhere in terms of loot (I was getting the occasional 620 Prime Engram which was not at all useful in helping me to level since Masterwork Core scarcity is a thing) we decided to go and grind this out instead.  We rushed off to the shore to talk to Spider and went on our merry way murdering Fallen by the dozens.  We were met with more disappointment when we found that the thing we had to collect would only drop once in a while, so we split up so as not to compete for kills and the grind for this was ridiculous.  My strategy was to run the lost sector over and over again, which helped me collect all the items I needed after 4 or 5 runs. Once that was done, we went on to step 2 which was to melee punch 75 Fallen in the same area and complete the cryo pod public event on heroic.  After being griefed by the worthless troglodytes that fill the Destiny 2 community and having to switch instances of the shore so we could actually complete the quest, we completed the pod with little difficulty and then we were met with our next task: go back to the EDZ again.

Once back in the EDZ, we went on a rather annoying whirlwind tour of several lost sectors only to be ultimately sent to the planet that was our true destination and the home of the Gofannon forge – Nessus.  We landed next to Failsafe and waited for our target to appear. After an eternity of waiting, and John nearly shitting himself after using the conjure emote to get the fucker to appear, he appeared. After killing him, we were directed at last to our final destination – Artifact’s Edge to the place where Cayde crashed his ship.  After crawling through a narrow tunnel we finally found the Gofannon forge and it was, of course, surrounded by Fallen. After we finally killed them all, we decided we’d had enough. Oh yeah, there’s more Forges to uncover, but after all this disappointment, we just don’t care. Well, I don’t, I’ll not speak for the others.  Gofannon? Gofuckyourself.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still going to log in and do the weekly Dreaming City stuff, but Ada Wong and her forges, pissy attitude, bad writing and weapons can rot.  I think myself and my fireteam are off to play in the snow with Eva Levante and the other Guardians.

Right now I feel like I wasted $40 (or whatever it cost) on the Season Pass.  So far this experiment does not fill me with any confidence that Bungie has learned from their mistakes.  Not only is this first DLC very grindy like Curse of Osiris’ tablets, but I’d dare go so far as to say that Curse of Osiris is no longer the worst Destiny 2 DLC.  I get that there’s supposed to be some work involved and all, but that’s just too much misery to go through only to be ultimately disappointed.

I was also disappointed that none of these things changed once we started getting armory weapons.