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With a little under two weeks until Destiny launches its first expansion for Year 2, The Taken King , the developers at Bungie are now playing a careful game.
, the developers at Bungie are now playing a careful game. They still want to tease the new experiences in Destiny , but are choosing to avoid giving the full picture. That being said, there was still one major element of The Taken King expansion left to cover and as chance may have it one more livestream planned.
Today, Bungie finally gave players their first look at the Court of Oryx, a new public event in Destiny: The Taken King . The stream covered many of the basics of the Court of Oryx, including how the events are started and what some of the bosses may look like, but it didn’t show everything. Eager players curious to know what happens on tier 3 of the Court of Oryx, for example, will need to wait until September 15th to find out.
So, what do we know? Well, we know that the Court of Oryx public eventsneed to be activated by runes. These runes can be found as random drops during enemy encounters on the Dreadnaught, and once acquired these runes can be presented at the Court of Oryx.
Doing so will activate a timed battle with a random boss, or group of bosses. These bosses can range in design from Taken knights to Hive ogres, and each requires a little extra strategy to defeat. Some examples shown included two enemies that needed to be close to each other before their shields went down, and a set of three Hive wizards that had to be killed within quick succession of each other or else they would all respawn.
After completing three of these tier 1 encounters, players can charge up a tier 2 rune (found as a random drop) and present it for a more challenging public event. For these, two of the previously faced bosses will appear, upping the challenge and rejiggering strategies. On stream, it seemed to get pretty hectic at tier 2, but only because there was just a 3-person fireteam was present. In the live versions of Court of Oryx, up to 9 people can participate. It’s worth mentioning, though, that only the player who presents the rune gets loot rewards; the rest of players gain reputation and some materials.
Although Bungie did want to give players a comprehensive look at Court of Oryx, there were still some things they wanted to keep secret. Specifically, the stream did not give us a look at tier 3, which is said to include raid-level bosses and top tier rewards. However, unlocking tier 3 will require an ‘Antiquated Rune’, which reportedly has a chance to drop during raids, Nightfall strikes, or tier 2 Court of Oryx encounters. And like the tier 2 runes, the tier 3 runes will need to be charged by completing three lower level events first.
Some may say that Court of Oryx is just a reskinned version of Prison of Elders, but even if that is slightly true, what’s appealing about this public event is that it skips all of the unnecessary minion waves. Court of Oryx is like a boss rush mode that players can run with friends and strangers and in turn have a shot at worthwhile loot. And we can only imagine how intense tier 3 encounters will get with a 9-player group.
Destiny: The Taken King releases September 15, 2015 for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.