DLC #128 - Destiny - The Taken King

The Taken King is the first of two DLC packs released for Destiny, and also, without question, the most challenging element of the entire game, inclusive of the main list.

The package comes with 10 additional trophies, focused around Oryx (The Taken King), and his plot for revenge for the death of his son Crota, who is slain in a previous portion of the Destiny story.

This content also unlocks a new area of the game, a huge ship called the Dreadnaught, where most of the requirements of this trophy list are fulfilled through a variety of quests, Strikes and a new Raid, as well as a tough set of collectibles which turn out to provide one of the more difficult challenges within this selection of trophies.

There are a few important details to mention straight off the bat. You'll need to be level 25 in order to access this content with any given character, which is just simply a standard requirement of the game. Further to this, out of the 10 trophies within this list, 3 of them are awarded for unlocking the Taken King exclusive sub-class for each of the 3 character types, and you'll need to be level 25 for each of these characters in order to beat the first Taken King quest, unlock the sub-class, and therefore trigger the trophy. It's also important to make sure the first thing you do above anything else, is defeat the Taken King and beat the main story. This will net you "The Taken King" trophy, and most importantly, fulfills a pre-requisite that a handful of steps to various side missions have which require you to have defeated the Taken King before being able to proceed further.

The biggest thing to note about this DLC pack, is how confusing the trophy list is to get your head around, and that the majority of the trophies require a series of different steps to be completed prior to the final step towards unlocking the trophy. It also isn't always clear what you need to do in order to reach the final step, for example, the "Second Wind" trophy, requires you to complete the "Echoes of Oryx" quest, however when you work backwards from step 1, you eventually discover that you'll need to complete the entire Taken King questline, complete 1 additional side quest, which in turn unlocks 3 extra side quests which you must also complete, which then in turn allows you to accept another main quest.

At this point, you think you may be at the end, but then you realise this quest has further pre-requisites, which require you to complete another mission on the Dreadnaught, in order to access the King's Fall Raid, and then to finally complete the questline, you'll have to defeat 3 DLC bosses, all of which can only be defeated from within the Raid itself, which already has separate trophies accounted for it within the trophy list. This is probably the most obvious example, but more subtle ones exist within other areas of this list.

On top of all this, there is still some room to discuss a few stand-out trophies;

Hunger Pangs - Complete the "Old Hunger" quest.
Long Live the King - Complete the King's Fall Raid (Heroic).

The "Hunger Pangs" trophy, awarded for completing the "Old Hunger" quest, also falls into the above example of how trophy requirements can be more convoluted than initially led to be. In order to do this full justice, I'll pick out the most relevant parts of the questline;

• Firstly, you'll need to have beaten the main Taken King story arc.
• In order to officially trigger the quest to begin, you'll need to find just 1 Calcified Fragment either on the Dreadnaught via free roam patrol, or on any Dreadnaught related activity. This will unlock 3 different questlines you'll need to be complete as part of the bigger picture to this quest.
• Within one of these questlines, called "The Old Hunger", there is a step which requires you to collect 3 items, which correspond to beating the 3 bosses within the Taken King Raid, so you'll only progress further with this trophy once you beat the most difficult Raid in the entire game, so this is already a stumbling block. You can argue the point that you'll need to beat the Raid anyway if you want 100% completion, but you could in theory get so far down the line with this trophy before actually realising this, so it's still important to point out. The items also do not have a 100% drop-rate, so you could also be required to complete the Raid more than once, which is a pain, because if you beat the Raid on Heroic in your first attempt, that would mean you only need to visit it once if it wasn't for this questline.
• Within another questline called "Hunger Pangs", you'll need to collect 45/50 Calcified Fragments, which are obtained in a variety of different ways. These include being randomly scattered across the Dreadnaught to be found within free roam patrol mode, rewards as part of the Court of Oryx, beating King's Fall Raid bosses under specific challenge perimeters and other things. It's relatively plain sailing for around 35-40 of these, but then it becomes a struggle to get the remainder, and becomes an exercise of likeliness. King's Fall Challenge mode is best avoided for the purpose of this exercise, but you can only afford a margin of error of 5 Calcified Fragments, and challenge mode has 3 up for grabs, so you're already pushing the limits. It makes it tough to work out which ones you're best off leaving out, and the whole exercise is very time consuming.
• Still within the "Hunger Pangs" questline, once you've collected 45 fragments, there is a final quest to defeat a Wizard within a mission which will require a strong team to beat. It would be nice to be able to do it solo, but it's simply not possible, and getting to this point and still not being able to finish things off yourself is frustrating, and bearing in mind other players only ever really want to Raid, it can be hard to find partners both strong enough and willing enough. 

To summarise, you'll need to collect 45 out of the 50 Calcified Fragments, the requirements of which gradually become more and more challenging, beat every boss within the King's Fall Raid, and hope they drop the item you're after for the quest checklist (Which is effectively just beating the Raid anyway) and complete a final mission which will require support from fellow strong players, leaning on the game's constant insistence to have to play with others in order to beat it. This is by far the most challenging quest in the entire game, and that includes the main list and other DLC pack.

The "Long Live the King" trophy, awarded for Completing the King's Fall Raid (Heroic), requires you to beat the newly added Raid exclusive to this content, and where I would normally be discussing the concept of Raids as part of the main trophy list, it wouldn't feel right to leave the detail out during the first instance of discussing them, so here we go;

Raids are co-operative missions, specifically designed to be tackled in large fireteams, and require high levels of co-operation and strength in order to clear and succeed. They contain sub-sections which will either involve co-operative activities or big boss battles which always require everyone to be on the same page in order to emerge victorious.

The King's Fall Raid is the toughest raid in Destiny, and the Heroic modifier only serves to amplify that challenge. There is a trophy available within this list for beating the Raid on any difficulty, and it wouldn't be the worst idea to suggest running this Raid on a lower difficulty first, just to be able to get to grips with how each sub-section plays out and also earn some exceptional loot to increase the strength of your character, and subsequently better equip yourself for the Heroic version of the Raid.

There are 2 things that are of essential importance to understand about Raiding in Destiny;

Firstly, you have to know the Raid inside out. This includes knowing how to beat each sub-section and the various roles each player could be tasked with throughout the Raid. Whether you do this via playing through on a lower difficulty first for the experience or studying walkthrough videos to take it all in doesn't really matter, but if you approach any Raid unprepared, you'll be in serious danger of letting the side down, and the margin of error for lapses in co-operation is small, and it's very easy for one person to become the single point of failure. If one person dies, the entire effort will fail and you'll find yourself restarting from checkpoints way too often if you don't truly know what you're doing, or if you're not strong enough in light level and die too easily. You'll need to be around light level 340 out of a possible 400 to stand a reasonable chance within the King's Fall Heroic Raid, just for added context.

Secondly, Raid's are not quick exercises, and King's Fall on Heroic difficulty took around 3 to 3.5 hours alone to beat, so make sure you've got the free time if you want to tackle this trophy. Even the strongest fireteams (and it is important to note, you will definitely need at least 5 people, maybe even a full 6 to beat this Raid), will be susceptible to deaths and restarts caused by failures in communication and being overpowered by enemies, so be prepared for worst case scenarios and having to stick it out to the end in order to make sure you trigger the trophy.

For what it's worth. I jumped straight in and went for the Heroic Raid on my first go, though I did ensure I researched the Raid before hand, and also leveled up my character to a reasonable enough point where I didn't need to be carried through by my teammates and wasn't deemed a weak link. Most parties will reject you if you're not of a high enough light level anyway, so it's important to make sure you're strong enough to compete within the Raid, if not out of respect for the rest of the team if nothing else.

There is always the very slight off-chance you could get lucky and jump in with a group who will be willing to carry you through, but most people, from my own experiences, only want to raid with players who are confident in their understanding of the level, able to physically communicate via a headset and have a strong character, and this should be considered the absolute minimum anyway, as success relies heavily on all of the above.

Here's the thing about Destiny;

It's not a game built with the intentions of getting by yourself, and large parts of your success with these trophy lists will be down to how well you play with others. Even if you're looking to just get by, and have fireteams carry you through Raids, there seems to be a reluctance for players to accept you into raiding parties if you're not up an adequate level of strength, so you'll more than likely end up spending loads of time grinding quests on your own or playing against others within Crucible mode in order to increase your light level, obtain better weapons and gain acceptance into raiding with other players.

That's more down to player behavior, than any actual faults with the game, but as someone who's here to just simply finish the trophy list and move on, it was very frustrating to have to grind my light level with extra-curricular activities, just to be able to become deemed relevant enough within the community to be welcome to raid with others, when all I wanted to do was finish the trophy list and move on. For the benefit of a balanced argument, I do get the importance of not being a passenger if you're wanting to raid, given the fact that Raids are designed in such intricate ways that, you can ill afford to have cannon-fodder team-mates, especially for Heroic Raids, which are the peak of this games difficulty levels, otherwise it hinders the experience for those who have put the extra effort in and want to raid to their own high standards.

Similiar logic applies to Nightfall Strikes and other high-level missions, and although these are more about total strength of the party, rather than co-operative logic puzzles like Raids are, the same guidelines above are applicable in the sense that you'll need to grind and invest in your character to be able to beat them, and other players won't be able to carry you through.

All of this combined makes for a strong challenge, and the overall completion time is somewhat hard to gauge, as I was completing parts of the main Destiny list in tandem with the Taken King, but it isn't a quick one by any means, and you'll absolutely need to plug the hours in if you want to complete it in full. 

There are some genuine challenges of skill along with some grinding and confusing questlines, with the added burden of some extra-curricular grinding in order to make sure you're up to certain lofty standards to complete some specific tasks. 

This is a good completion to have within the collection, but I'm not sure I'd ever do it again at the loosely estimated completion time of around 60-70 hours.