I am a new Destiny player. I generally play solo but am interested in doing Crucible, Nightfall and Raids. But I don't know which I can jump into without forming a party. There seems to be very little info on what one can do or not do solo. Can these be done like the Public Events in which I can just run up and join others...no real communication needed? The game doesn't seem to tell you anything.

I watched an hour of a live Raid stream on IGN last night and has no effin idea what was going on. They were shouting stuff and couldn't tell what they were doing or SUPPOSED to do. Where do you find out what you are supposed to do? Is this another example where one has to did deep on the internets to find the rules? Is this really for experienced players only who know what to do? I'm frustrated and ready to throw in the towel!!! Arrrrrgh!!!

That is the beauty to Destiny raids when they first release. They are full of complex things and puzzle solving and teams having to figure out what the hell to do since it doesn't bother to hold your hand and tell you what exactly to do. I find the raids far less interesting once people break it down into what to step by step.

Raids are always like this. In fact, the very fist raid in D1, Vault of Glass, took 14 hours to complete. There are just many different mechanics to learn on the fly, puzzles to figure out, and there is always the threat of instant death. Then, as people play it, the mechanics and puzzle solutions get completely mapped out, in-depth guides are written, and it becomes just a hard thing to run where it becomes all about execution. The early days of the Raid are all about discovery and pressing every which way to see what works.

I love watching people on the first day of raids, or the first day they play a raid and don't know what is going on or what the encounters entail. Then, eventually, you get to see people race through it, or even try to solo it, glitch it, break it, all the crazy stuff that the Destiny community is so good at.

So yeah, Raid day 1 is a mess usually, but that's just because everyone is on the same level of knowledge and the mechanics and puzzles can be so unlike the normal base experience.

Crucible has matchmaking, Nightfalls and Raids do not.

The guided games system they are rolling out will let you enter into a kind of LFG channel to help if you don't have a friend group. That's only in for the Nightfall at the moment.

@jadegl: 14 hours? Do you have to sit through the whole thing at once or does it save your progress and can come back later?

@evilcalvin: it took 14 hours the first time, but once people figured out the mechanics you could knock it out in one or less. Though, yes the raids did (do?) have checkpoints.

@evilcalvin: give it a few days and people will have the raid all mapped out. Then you can go in with a good group and get it done.

Raids are the most complex part of the game and have lots of mechanics that you won't have used anywhere else. It's what makes them exciting.

As for knowing if you need a team or not. When you hover over an activity, like the Raid, or Strikes, it will say whether Matchmaking is available or not. If it's not, then you need to go in with your pre-made team.

@evilcalvin: raids are broken down into encounters with checkpoints in between. Each encounter involves a bunch of different steps and a lot of team coordination. Your team leader keeps the checkpoint for anyone on his fireteam if you want to jump back in the next day. Checkpoints reset with the weekly reset on Tuesday. Raids can be run with less than 6 people who communicate but not this early. Wait a few weeks or a month if you want to just go through it as a tourist. If you want the full raid experience you can always form a team of 6 with other gb people. I think a lot of people on here are playing and would probably be looking for a group.

@evilcalvin: Yeah, Day 1 Raiding in Destiny in not for the faint of heart. Us extremely Hardcore Destiny players spent most of the first week a Raid is out trying to dissect it and figure out how all the moving parts work and perfect how we will be running it for the future. That's what Raiding is about. It often takes most of that first week for most of us going in Blind, or 4-5 hours if people look up Guides made by the Streamers who beat it on Day 1. The first completion of Leviathan yesterday was done in 5 and a half hours. The Legend Himself clan are also some of the best players in all of Destiny, as they also hold the records for fastest Solo Raid kills and several other Raid feats other teams never even think of accomplishing. Now that is has been beated by several teams though strategies are starting to form on places like Reddit and Youtube. Once my group beats it on our own we will look that stuff up and figure out the most efficient way to beat the Raid each week. An efficient Raid shouldn't take more than 90 minutes once all of the strategies are known. But this is with Groups that know all of the encounters, how to work with each other, and what each other will do in almost every circumstance. Add to that the active communication that is required to generally call out things like active buffs and who is moving where, Raids with Groups unfamiliar with each other can take significantly longer than that 90 minutes, even if everyone knows the encounters.

The other major activity that works similarly as an End Game activity in Destiny is Trials of the Nine. It's the End Game activity for PvP and is highly competitive. It requires a similar level of communication and team synergy, only you are playing against other human players since it's PvP. It also requires premade Fireteams, only instead of 6 it requires 4 (since all PvP in Destiny 2 is 4v4). That launches this Friday at 10am Pacific.

For Nightfalls, it also requires a premade Fireteam of 3 to complete. These are the Hardest non Raid PvE activities in the game. They are the Strike Playlist (which is matchmade) on steroids with Modifiers and timed.

Crucible has matchmaking, but without communication and the changes that were made to Destiny 2's PvP, it's very hard to succeed as a Solo player anymore. If you are going in Solo, I highly recommend following other players around and trying to just shoot with them at the angles they are pushing (since you can't count on them to follow you). Destiny 2's PvP is basically "Teamshot The Game". Avoid angles where you see multiple players (learning how to disengage is huge) and pounce on lone wolves and you will do well.

All of this said, Guided Games is in Beta for the Nightfall currently and will go live in Beta for the Leviathan Raid on September 26th. Though I highly recommend you checking out our Clans Post pinned at the top of this forum if you want to engage with other players. The Clan system for Destiny 2 is very robust and includes some very good rewards.

@pyrodactyl: @guybrush: @hestilllives19: Ok thanks. Good info. I think I will wait a bit to attempt those. I may try out the Crucible as I may be able to do that solo. Not quite ready to get with a group yet. But later I may join up with a GB clan.

You get a good weapon for PVP after doing two strikes for Zavala. He'll give you a choice of three. You can't really go wrong, but you should probably pick a weapon that fits your playstyle, and complements the other PVP weapons you have. If you're not sure, you should probably just go with Origin Story, unless you dislike auto rifles, or you really prefer pulse rifles or scout rifles. I already had a good auto rifle for PVP--Uriel's Gift--so I went with the scout rifle. Keeping effective weapon ranges in mind should help.

Just play to your weapon's strengths and stick with other players.

I can't wait for Destiny Raids. I've been WoW raiding for a decade so Destiny raids are typically a bit more subdued but man it is so fun. The Taken King raid was some of the most fun I have had playing video games.

I think Crucible is totally viable as a solo player. Just stick with the other players on your team and don't try to lone wolf it. As you learn the maps you'll find ways to work with your team (without communication needed) to flank enemies. Sometimes I come up against teams that are working together and crush us, but I've won a lot of games solo and had a lot of close matches as well.

This might be the hardest destiny raid so far; I did the first three and am about halfway through the new one, and this new one has some of the most complicated mechanics of any raid so far. In a couple of weeks though a lot of people will start to have it figured out, and it will become easier for more casual players to find a group of people that can help them breeze through it.

@evilcalvin: As a general rule of thumb, nothing in Destiny is built around solo play except for the story. If you play any mode alone you're not experiencing the way it was designed to be experienced. Raids are supposed to be endgame content that are unclear. You need to figure them out with your team. That is what it fun about them. The formula for first completion is World's First (the time it took for the first people to beat the Raid) x 2 + 10%. In this case the clan that bested the Raid first did it in 5,5 hours, so your first time will likely take somewhere around 12,5 hours.

Once you understand what to do and get better at it, that completion time will drastically decrease every week you do the Raid, often down to about an hour eventually. But to be clear, Raid are mechanically complex. If you are just interested in shooting guys, you should most definitely not attempt it as you will have no fun. The fun is in figuring out what you need to get done and then formulating a strategy to get it done, communicating with your team constantly.

It is by far the best part of Destiny for me, but others may think different.