Hot Heart

Big thanks to my friend, JB, for more of his unwanted Loot Crate items.

Ah, good old They Might Be Giants. I think most people know them from Malcolm in the Middle. My friends and I tend to share this on birthdays.

As an aside...

Oh, it's been so long... Dean! Ban him! BAAAAN HIIIIIM!!11!!

Technically, you've not even absolutely, positively killed Crota, Skolas or Oryx until you do the related endgame content. Crota exists in some other "astral plane" from which his followers were trying to summon him (instead, you go in there to kill him). You've got to do the level 35 PoE to kill Skolas. And Oryx still exists in that same Hive plane of existence... in which you go to kill him. But yeah, you've finished all the main story paths. You're onto "The Taken War" which is a bunch of mini-quests, so still some simple story missions left. Sounds like we need to get a group up for running Vault of Glass, Crota's End and Skolas' Revenge.

What would you say is Cat.gif of the Year, Dean? Here, Dean, I'll alleviate your concern. And this is my parent's cat. This is where I find her whenever I go round for dinner in the evening. This is how she always reacts. She looks incy, but she's about 16 now (has an arthiritic leg, and I think her hearing's not so great). Funny thing is, she never used to purr much at all and she only started meowing so loudly and constantly after the last cat died.

250 light is okay, but yeah, you'll want to get into 290+ to tackle most things. "Kill by the Architects" is not usually a glitch, but being killed by exploding objects/your own grenades and stuff like that (sometimes, those are classed as "Misadventure" though). The Daily Heroic versions of the HoW story missions onwards do tend to be tougher. The one you mentioned sounds like yesterday's, which gets really tough at the end unless you know a decent spot of cover and have great gear/a fireteam. Today's is fairly easy, just catches you out because it has a time limit at the end which normal difficulty never had. Ranking up is a long and arduous process, especially for Queen's Wrath and House of Judgment now that TTK is out. Crota's Bane was also a lot simpler, but TTK contributes towards it somewhat. Queen's Wrath is now very slow because they no longer have loads of bounties at The Reef like they used to. In fact, you have to unlock them again by doing a few quests first, and then there's only 3 a week. Also gone are a special House of Wolves public event that popped up all over the place and helped. This thing. Like Queen's Wrath, Crota's Bane used to have a bunch of bounties from Eris as well, but people were doing those mainly to get shaders and the item needed to upgrade a particular weapon or to convert one raid material into the other one for upgrading weapons or armour. Long story short: you don't need to care about that anymore. You could get a 300 light class item from Eris as a package reward (as well as hadium flakes, which is related to a single exotic raid-related weapon) once you're above rank 3 but not really worth focusing on. House of Judgment comes almost entirely from doing PoE, which is what people used to do a lot in order to reach max level before TTK. Getting up to rank 2 at least (even rank 1 might be okay) gets you a package from Variks each week, that will contain destination materials (spinmetal, relic iron, etc.) as well as maybe etheric light (which can now be turned in for rep) and tokens (for shaders, ships after a certain rank... or just dismantled for rep). Level 28 PoE is the easy matchmade version; 30 and 32 is a rotating list of five different designed challenges (e.g. the final boss from 32 becomes the boss for 30 the next week) and the level 34 is a second showdown with Skolas being the "raid-equivalent" endgame before TTK. It's fun for just messing about but there's not much point doing it unless you have a bunch of treasure keys (for the big chest at the end) and are hunting for the three PoE-exclusive exotics (which are all currently at year 1 attack values). Either way, Queen's Wrath (Petra), Crota's Bane (Eris) and House of Judgment (Variks) rep really aren't that important anymore. Yeah, the Mercy rule in Crucible is new. Time-saving for dailies where the other team is literally just there to get their 15 legendary marks. Swords are a new TTK thing. If you've unlocked Prison of Elders, then you must be ready for The Taken King. Work through that and you'll see.

You know, it was a great feeling, watching it in the cinema and then I kind of started to be a bit down on it on reflection. But now I'm actually kind of excited, what with all the theories and Rian Johnson being involved in the next installment as well.

Tried to avoid as much of the marketing, discussion, etc. as I could and went in with low expectations... ...and I really liked it.

Finished the final of the three challenge modes in the hard raid, yay! This one was actually pretty interesting, and we should've managed it much sooner but our group's weakest link let us down right at the end of one run... then we had all sorts of little mistakes until we got right to the end again... and someone got disconnected. ARRRRGH! It's done now though. Can focus on sparrow racing, which I both like but also really fucking hate. >=/

They used to be randomly-generated across all areas, but the newer patrol missions are only for specific places. I guess you can't go racing a Sparrow around all the areas, and I don't think Taken appear in patrol on the Moon because the Hive already control it. The Daily Crucible is an activity down to the bottom-left of the planet selection screen; second icon in from the left, I believe. Should be a red circle. It cycles through different game modes each day and awards you 15 legendary marks for participating. You might have a blank space or greyed out space to the right of it, which will be where the Daily Heroic Story Mission pops up. This cycles through story missions, making them "heroic" difficulty (very hard), so they won't be available for you yet. Once you get to the higher levels you'll be using legendary marks for buying legendary gear and infusing it to get higher levels, so those are a good source for that each day. No need to worry about that for the moment, though.

Most patrols should be easy. The icon for each tells you what it's going to be. Energy Spike has a sort of > inside a circle (I think it's meant to be a crude stopwatch). For those, you'll find them on Venus, around the Citadel area is probably the best place (they're also on the Dreadnaught but... yeah, you won't be getting there just yet). They might be in other places but Venus is your best bet for finding them. Here's a video of how to get to The Citadel and spot one: (They might also appear in that Ember Caves area they go through as well) Here's a basic guide to most patrol beacons. The ones to avoid right now are the ones Ethan mentioned (which will have a skull on them) and the VIP ones (because they also feature level 40 enemies now). What I tend to do is favour the Kill and Item ones first because the rest (Survey, Scan and VIP) are likely to take you to another area. Also, this is a very useful site for spotting public events. Completing one of those is actually part of that Refer-a-friend quest.

Heh... where to start? (Apologies in advance if any of this sounds like teaching your grandma to suck eggs, but I'll just do general "everything" guidance/advice) Have you chosen a class? All of them are good and can serve multiple roles, but since the subclasses can take a good while to level up, it might be worth prioritising one over others. Not that you can really go wrong with any. Warlock - I think by default, it makes you Voidwalker, which is decent but I find Sunsinger is a real powerhouse. You'll gain a melee ability that can grant you an overshield (real lifesaver), a super ability that allows you to revive from death (a real lifesaver) and the ability to carry two grenades (one is great for zoning, another is good for single target damage). Stormcaller is also decent, but is more of an weak-adds-killer (or PvP class) than anything else. Warlocks have better innate recovery (health regen) Hunter - default is Gunslinger, which is very good. Bladedancer is equally good, but might give you more utility/survivability with the invisibility perks. Nightstalker is a support class (and the only I haven't really tried). It's very good for endgame content and has some decent all-round abilities. No real preference here. Hunters have better innate agility (run speed and jump height). Titan - default is Striker, which is fun but probably the weakest of the choices. Defender is what most Titans play in PvE because it has an amazing super "bubble" ability that can grant shields or buff weapons. Sunbreaker is a fun, throwing hammers of flame class but seen more in PvP; worth considering though. Titans have better innate armour. If you decide on Warlock, their jump/glide is a bit funny. To get the most out of it, you need a quick double-tap. Titans have the most forgiving and useful jump. Hunters have a standard sort of jump, which is either great or unhelpful depending on what you're up to (endgame content has "jumping puzzles") Weapons There are four flavours of primary weapon: pulse rifle, scout rifle, auto rifle and handcannon. All are pretty good except maybe for handcannons now. Pulse rifles are an all-rounder, scout rifles are for longer range and auto rifles for closer. It all comes down to preference, but scout rifle always served me well for the main story stuff and all through Year One. There are four different special/secondary weapons (I think?): sniper rifles, shotguns, fusion rifles, sidearms. These will carry elements, which is how you'll break through certain shields. Certain factions' higher level enemies have elemental shields. There'll be a little white bar above their red health bar, plus they'll be surrounded by a certain coloured aura. If it's blue then it's arc (electricity), if it's orange then it's solar (fire) and if it's purple then it's void (uh... void). Hit the shields with a weapon matching the element and you'll do double damage to it (I think). You can't score precision damage while a shield is up, so you don't have to worry about nailing headshots (unless you're confident you'll burst through the shield and then some). Note: each subclass is also built around an element (you'll notice by the colour) so their abilities carry those as well, e.g. a Sunsinger's grenade and melee are solar, a Bladedancer's melee, grenade and super are all arc, etc. Really, you'll probably just want a shotgun and a sniper rifle in each flavour. That way you're covered for short and long-range. Fusion rifles aren't bad, just not as useful as the others. Sidearms are fairly puny... but they can be pretty fun and sound nice and snappy. Finally, heavy weapons will come in two types (until you get through the Taken King storyline): heavy machine gun and rocket launcher. I find heavy machine guns better in general (especially those that favour stability and impact over rate of fire) but rocket launchers are obviously very good. If you manage to get your hands on a Gjallahorn, worship it for the god weapon it is (until you get to TTK content and it becomes mostly obsolete). Heavy weapons also carry elements, so you could theoretically cover all bases by having your subclass for one element type, a special weapon for another and then your heavy for the third. There are differences for each weapon type when it comes to rate of fire versus. high damage and all sorts of other perks etc. but not worth going over that yet, since that's real min-maxing, endgame optimisation focus. As a general guide though, you'll find weapons are sort of balanced around the rate-of-fire/stability/impact (damage) trio in a sort of "you can have it fast-firing, very stable and high damage... but you can only pick two" way. You'll learn what you like though. Engrams These are your loot drops and how you'll get better armour and weapons. Standard MMO progression they go from white > green > blue > purple > yellow (exotic). However, Destiny's light level system is a bit funky, so you might find greens with higher values than blues, etc. Those values won't matter too much while you're just progressing through the main story path (I think), because level will govern more, I think. A general tip though, is that if you have multiple engrams to take to the Cryptarch, do them one-by-one so if each time you get a higher value, equip that new one straight away to raise your light level which will then adjust the parameters for future decryptions, meaning they could then decrypt at a higher value. This should help your light level climb a bit quicker in the long-term. The game has seen an overall in the "questification" so it should guide you through everything for the story (otherwise, level recommendations should). A big tip is that, as soon as you are able to grab bounties, do it. There are 6 new ones each day and they'll reward you a bunch of extra experience and reputation for completing them, which is very useful early on. The bounty-giver is a robot who stands by a noticeboard behind the stairwell immediately ahead as you enter the Tower (but I imagine the game will guide you to him when it's time) Your progression otherwise will be story missions while completing bounties (maybe some patrol mode just to clear up some extra kills or look for a public event) and then you'll move onto the strike playlists (quick 3-player matchmade missions) in order to really test yourself and hopefully get some better loot. After that, you can start looking into doing raids, nightfaills, heroic strikes, etc. I'll be on a bit today and this evening if you're about.

Oh my god, why does the actiony/Four Horsemen bit from 1:50-1:57 look so fucking terrible? Not getting my hopes up for this at all.

Haha. Says a lot for Witcher 3, doesn't it? Honestly, I don't think I've played a truly great 2015 board game, actually (the board game industry is doooooomed). Dogs of War is technically a 2014 release, but that would be a pretty good contender. Homeland, Burgle Bros. and Codenames are all great, but I haven't gotten to play them enough. Ghostbusters is merely alright and Why First? is just a silly little filler. There's also A Study In Emerald: Second Edition... but I haven't played it yet (love the first edition though).

Witcher 3 for the Kaer Morhen bit alone. Arkham Knight is great, but it has too many frustrations this time around.

No.

Don't have to have experienced Beatlemania to know that Something is the greatest love song ever.