Last week, Bungie finally launched Destiny’s first downloadable content expansion, The Dark Below. One of the key features of The Dark Below is a brand-new player Raid for the Guardian characters, dubbed Crota’s End. The major theme of The Dark Below is the Guardians vs. the Hive. The Warlock Guardian Eris Morn returns to the Tower with crucial information about the Hive. Throughout the story missions of The Dark Below, Guardians perform various quests and missions for Eris to defeat Crota’s generals and to prevent Crota from emerging on Earth. In Crota’s End, the time comes for the Guardians to travel into the depths of the Hellmouth and confront Crota, the leader and God of the Hive, head on.
The Hive are interesting aliens. They are living organisms, but they also appear to be reanimated corpses. Some players have noted that the Hive share similar features to the Fallen aliens. However, the Hive appear to be direct servants to the ambiguous enemy known as the Darkness. The full origin and backstory of the Hive are not revealed in the expansion. The Hive aliens’ relationship with the Darkness is not really addressed. However, the expansion does give ideas and suggestions about the Hive’s lairs and hierarchy. The threat of the Hive has grown, and The Dark Below is all about putting that threat down. The Crota’s End Raid provides a nice sense of progression with the Hive conflict and how the Guardians strike at the heart of the enemy.
Earlier, I did make an early attempt at Crota’s End as a level 29 Titan. My team was not very successful. The early part of the Raid puts the Guardians in a sort of entrance. The start of the Raid drops you to the bottom of the Hellmouth, an amazing set-piece depicted on the Moon. Later, I got the chance to try Crota’s End again after I finally got my Titan up to level 30. The team I played with was on the same page; and overall, the team strategy worked. For the first leg of the Raid, the key was to stick together as a group to circle the light pillars in the area. There are very strong and powerful Thrall minions in this stage. In addition, a Hive spell slows down Guardian movements and jumping abilities. Getting close to the lights in the area briefly breaks the spell, but not for long. Eventually, after all the lights have been activated, the Guardians have to find a center crest on the floor to activate a bridge to escape the entrance of the Hive lair.
The rest of the Raid is pretty straight forward. The team had to activate some other crest plates and fend off hordes of enemies. Eventually, it takes the players to Crota’s lair to actually face Crota. Crota gets somewhat of an epic entrance. His design is a bit uninspired. He’s a scaled-up, re-skinned version of the Hive knight minions. The Crota stage is difficult since the Guardians cannot self-heal automatically. There is a chalice relic that the Guardian team can pass around to heal damage. As a Titan, I luckily have a Defender sub-class, and the energy shield was able to help with inflicted damage. My team’s strategy was to unload rockets to disable Crota’s armor shield. Once that was done, another team member was ready to attack with a Hive sword picked up from a Blade of Crota enemy.
Overall, it was a pretty straightforward Raid mission. Would I say it was easier on Normal than the Vault of Glass Raid? Yes. However, I have no problem with that. Unfortunately, the gear drops for my attempts at the Raid were less than satisfying, much like when I played the Vault of Glass. I got tons of Radiant Shards, but next to no Raid gear or weapons. I have had the same problems with Vault of Glass. This is why players look for shortcuts and hotfixes. The random loot drops are an unforgiving pain. Still, getting with a good team and fighting through the Crota’s End Raid was an enjoyable co-operative gameplay experience.
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