WestofHouse

It officially launches tomorrow, November 12. I'm more excited about it than I should be. Thought I'd start a thread for comments, tips, and bug reports for it. I'm looking forward to the new interface, which is supposed to be much faster than the current one, and I'm also happy to be getting Cortana. Backward compatibility is a great bonus, too.

Someone on Reddit just posted a method for Three of Coins that they claim nets them exotics 90% of the time: Make sure that you do not have the 3oC buff active (kill a ultra if you do) Load into the vanguard strike playlist (Heroic strikes seem to work as well) Complete two strikes without 3oC On the beginning of the third strike (once you have loaded in, and are on the ground) activate a Three of Coin and proceed the strike as normal Killing an ultra has given us a 90% chance of an exotic In other news, I played Destiny so much over the weekend that my trigger finger hurts. I'm going to have to go on the DL.

The best part is this month's GWG freebie for the 360, Dirt 3, is on the list. I heard somewhere that all future GWG 360 titles will be BC as well, so that's an extra free game or two every month. That's pretty nifty.

Microsoft released the list of the first batch of BC games available with the NXOE on November 12. CLICKY

It certainly looks great, but since it is just a single player game there's no hurry to jump in. I'm thinking this is a "game of the year edition" purchase down the road.

I bought it ages ago but it's still in my back catalog. I may fire it up soon.

The RNG was good to me yesterday. I ended up with two exotics and a rare after the nightly strike (with matchmaking). Since I can't go up anymore without raiding (which I don't have time for) I think I'm going to go sideways and try to have fun with different builds. Sunbreaker is unquestionably the flavor of the month, so I think I'll get nutty and try a Defender build focused on close-up fighting. I have two exotic shotguns to choose from -- Invective and The 4th Horsemen (I'm leaning toward the former) -- and the No Backup Plans exotic gauntlets, which trigger the Defender's shield with shotgun kills and increase the reload speed of shotguns. I'm going to work towards a mostly discipline/strength build for grenades and melee, and basically become a walking tank. Of course I'm keeping other gear for PVP, but I'm looking forward to pleasantly surprising random teammates in strikes with Ward of Dawn.

That was my plan with the marks, but you need an exotic shard too, don't you? I wish you could just save up marks and buy whatever weapon/armor you want rather than wait for Xur to offer it or get it from RNG. I use 3 of coins constantly but my luck has been horrible with them. And since the strange coin drop was nerfed I'm going to have fewer of them to use.

I hit 293 and I think I'm capped there unless I can find the time and desire to do raids over and over. So basically I'm spinning my wheels and just doing whatever daily activities interest me. I wish I had something to spend my legendary marks and glimmer on. The RNG nature of this game that I hated so much in year one is coming back to haunt me with a vengeance, and I'm getting tired of the "play and pray" nature of the game.

VoG was so confusing that even after being led through it once I couldn't tell you how to do it.

I've noticed that, too. I think I'm going to switch strategies a bit and buy the Monte Carlo AR. It speeds up melee cooldown when it damages enemies and can refresh it instantly on a kill. As a Titan I rely heavily on melee, but I hate to sacrifice the intelligence and discipline boosts for my super and grenades. Using the Monte Carlo would give me the best of both worlds as I could rely on that to replace strength bonuses for melee cooldown and I could keep my INT and DIS armor. As soon as I finish leveling sunbreaker and striker I'll start working on defender so I can switch roles as needed when in a team. I've also switched factions. I made it to level 3 with FWC so I don't really need to keep going with them right now, so I switched to Dead Orbit in order to get Hung Jury for PVP. After getting that to 3 I'll probably switch to NM and level it to 3 as well, then decide on which one I want to stick with permanently.

I finally got to do the Vault of Glass, my first raid ever, thanks to a kindly sherpa in my "the100" group. That took just over an hour and that was about as long a gaming session as I could stand. Also yesterday I farmed Court of Oryx for about an hour and didn't get a single legendary. Sigh. I did, however, get a few high rares that took me to 292.

So just like the Wii U handles Wii games. Annoying, but I'll take it.

Xur has some good offerings this week! I have my eye on the Zhalo Supercell. I know pulse rifles are in vogue right now but I just love a good auto rifle, and I haven't lucked an exotic primary drop yet so this would be my first. I really like the Telesto, but it makes more sense to have an exotic primary than secondary since you're using it so much more.

I still think I'm going to wait, too, but I'm going to take advantage of the early access (courtesy of EA Access) to try it before release to see how much -- if at all -- it has improved since beta.

Have you seen the launch trailer? It's so good it makes me want to pre-order the game again! That doesn't look anything like the beta I played. And hello, Han and Leia!

I hit 290 last night! I don't know why but that feels like a major milestone. I think I'll spend some time in the Court of Oryx this weekend.

Wow Wow. I've been curious about that one for a while, but it seems like the type of game that wouldn't be fun unless you have friends playing because of the co-op nature.

I still can't get to 290! I'm at 289. Managed to gain a whole point yesterday! =\ Still having fun with it, though. The Festival of Light is a wonderful distraction. I love the random screams throughout the Tower. The hammer is phenomenal. So much fun to use. I've maxed the Sunbreaker skills so I'm working on Defender a bit now.

Awesome, thanks. I need all the help I can get. Have you done any of the Halloween quests at the tower? I might look into those tonight if I have time. I have not pre-ordered Halo. I never did get into Halo, but I'm curious about 5. Actually I had pre-ordered Star Wars Battlefront and figured that would take a lot of time away from Destiny, but the beta was so mediocre that I cancelled my order.

You're killing me. That looks fantastic. I didn't do too much over the weekend. Sunday I tried unsuccessfully to solo the quest of killing the three Taken champions on Earth. I got the ones in the Divide and Skywatch thanks to other guardians who were in the area who ganged up on them. I couldn't beat the one in the Rocket Yard, though. There were never any other guardians around when he spawned and I couldn't take him down alone. After that I was somewhat discouraged so I put it down for the rest of the weekend. Before quitting I did luck into a rare mark that I used to infuse my FWC mark, bringing it up to 295. I'm still 288 overall, though. Sigh.

That is the Court of Oryx, right? I have several runes but haven't ventured back there yet.

I've hit a wall. I've been stuck in the 280s for a week. I'm not sure if it's because of my bad luck or if I'm just not doing the right things. I did get another exotic drop yesterday while doing the strike playlist, but it was the Crest of Alpha Lupi again. I've received 5 exotics total, and three of those have been that crest. The worst part is none of them had the stats I really want. My weakest links are my primary weapon (283), my ghost (280), and my gauntlets (275). I'm just having a hard time finding anything better. Despite that I'm still having fun with the game. I actually did pretty well in a free-for-all crucible match last night, finishing a close second. And there is still a lot of content I haven't been able to try yet.

I've been curious about the X-wing miniatures game. What is so expensive about it?

I cancelled my pre-order. I was still considering it despite the uninspiring game play (because Star Wars), but the season pass announcement killed it for me. I'm with Cimerians -- I'll wait for the "Game of the Year" edition next year. I'm still having fun with Destiny, and Battlefield Hardline just dropped in the EA Access vault, so I'll have another game to keep me occupied for a while.