As many of us are aware, there are a number of farming exploits in the game (magic cave, "We've awoken the hive!", Nexus goblins, Rocket yard chest runs, Public event loops etc.). So, my question is, why isn't any of this stuff patched? Is it because Bungie doesn't think they're exploits?

It's weird, because Bungie patched the Strange Coin purchasing exploit really quickly, but none of the other exploits seem to have been touched at all. So, I wondered whether they're exploits at all. But, they *must* be, right? Because, the "official" way Bungie has set up rewards for, for example, Strikes, just doesn't make sense if they also thought a great way of getting loot was to camp the magic cave. Because, the rewards are just so unbalanced. Furthermore, most of the farming, except for maybe the public event loops, are not at all fun. Rocket yard chest running is one of my least favourite, but the magic cave is the most laughable. If Bungie made a game that was supposed to consist of people shooting meaninglessly into one cave forever, then that's really scary.

So, what do y'all think? My thought is that Bungie is just confident in the ways they've artificially blocked access to upgrades (weekly mark limits, Xur only showing up on the weekends, horrible usable legendary drop-rates etc.), so they don't really care that all this weird farming exploitation is happening. Because, the alternative is probably worse: forcing players to run strikes and raids 100% of the time to get loot. As it is, if you try to get loot in the official ways, it's the most frustrating experience ever. Hell, it's even frustrating using the exploits, haha. And recall that the Strange Coins exploit was the only exploit that legitimately was giving players access to a lot of end game gear too quickly, whereas none of the current exploits are actually doing that (I know, I've done them a lot and only received one legendary item).

Anyway, wondered what y'all thought.

The cave exploit worked for me yesterday I ended up getting 11 Rares and 1 Legendary in about 40 minutes and that was even after the enemy swarming the group and doing a public mission, and in another session of doing it I got 8 Blues and 4 Legendary engrams (one was encrypted into an exotic auto rifle). I got a little disappointed getting legendary engrams only to find them being Warlock or Titan gear (the ones that I received from leveling up the NPC and playing the game in general not from the ones I got yesterday) when I'm a hunter, and the strikes I've done never give me anything worth while if I'm lucky I'll get one blue.

So, my question is, why isn't any of this stuff patched? Is it because Bungie doesn't think they're exploits?

Fixing bugs and exploits can take some time, especially in cases where you need to do a bunch of regression tests to make sure you didn't break anything else. The Strange Coin fix was likely just much easier for them to quickly address.

"We've awoken the Hive!" has been patched as far as I know, as it doesn't work any more. I guess the magic cave can't really be fixed, as they have to have a place to spawn enemies to repopulate the area, and the cave just happens to be it.

They could (probably, depending on how flexible the code is) set it so that enemies from that cave are less likely to drop loot, or won't drop loot until they've been in the world for at least 1 minute. They could also change the distance from the cave that triggers respawning, which appears to be the real issue there.

@boldfacedlies: I was convinced the cave got patched as I tried for an extended period and got next to nothing.

@crash_happy: When did you try it? I used the exploit last night if that makes any difference the "we've awoken the hive" exploit never gave me anything whenever I tried it. I'm assuming it will be patched at sometime....also when I tried this yesterday with a friend he didn't get any legendary drops only blues.

Can Bungie change quests & rewards server side without issuing patches for Destiny in the form of hotfixes?

I wouldn't really call any of the farming routes exploits. Your suppose to be finding chests to get upgrade material.

I've seen people do it but, I rather them not patch it out but maybe in the "magic cave" spot spawn in a bunch of high level ultras and elite hive and fallen into that spot and have a really fun warzone going... In that spot sometimes it does spawn a large mob to of enemies to go at each other, I'd like the world to reacted more to the exploits then a nurf the spawn times together....

@chaser324: Maybe. I don't know anything about doing regression testing, so I'm not claiming to have the answers, but consider: when Diablo 3 RoS launched, there were a lot of exploits. I know, because I used them myself, haha. But as they became popular (though less popular than the magic cave), Blizzard hotfixed them out quickly. I don't know who else was playing RoS when it was released, but I feel like the amount of changes in the first month was staggering. But, here we are almost two weeks out and there have barely been any changes to Destiny exploits. Perhaps Blizzard is just a lot better at testing and pushing hotfixes? I guess this is Bungie's first game of this kind. I'm not trying to be conspiratorial, and I think that Bungie having to test changes is a legitimate explanation, but it's just weird how long it's taking. And, in the midst of the exploits, they're releasing new content and pretending like none of the exploits exist.

@somberowl: If that's how Bungie wanted the game to be played, that's really weird and sad. How could they believe that running around an area farming chests is fun? And, furthermore, if they wanted the chests to be farmed, why make them spawn in weird, hidden areas? Why not just let you get the upgrade materials in a more straightforward way?

Funny thing is, none of this stuff works for me. I see people saying it works for them. But not a single one of these farming things has ever worked for me. I've spent hours up hours trying all of them. For nothing.

@sterling: With the magic cave, you have to make sure you kill the Acolytes by the truck who are supposed to be fighting the Fallen there. Actually, just kill any Hive in the area, and then run to the cave, and kill anymore that you see. You don't really need to wipe the area, but you do need to kill any of the enemies that came from the cave before you got there. This is something that took me a little while to figure out.

Funny you should say that, that happened to me last night. I was farming at the cave with a few random players, when the line "The enemies are moving against each other..." (or something along those lines) popped up in the lower left of the screen, and suddenly a huge number of various types of Hive started pouring out of the dark doorway of the building on the left, and masses of Fallen started dropping in on the right. The place turned into a complete war zone in a matter of seconds, and it lasted a good few minutes before the Hive started retreating back into the doorway.

That's probably the most uniquely emergent (or at least emergent-feeling) and exciting thing that I've experienced in Destiny so far. Awesome.

@dusker: I know how to do it. It doesn't work. I don't' get anything is what I am saying. I can spend an hour shooting them over and over and over and only get one fucking blue engram. I've tried the cave four times. Probably just over an hour each time. And total, I've gotten maybe 6 blue engrams and no purples. Its garbage. Not a single of these farming things has ever worked for me. I saw one last night about farming currency on the moon killing majors. They are supposed to drop an item. In the video the guy had 22 in an hour. I got 4 in a hour last night. Its all bullshit. They also seem to have patched event loops because I was getting upgrade materials after everyone until yesterday. Now I don't get anything from them but the very first one I do.

None of what you speak of are actually exploits. People are taking advantage of the game design a bit but who the fuck cares? I don't want Bungie defining players choices for things they find fun, as long as they aren't bugs, or real game breaking exploits, or some kind of modding/duping bullshit. It's PVE, stop already with the condescension TC.

Fixing bugs in a MMO need to be done carefully and planned. After all they could make it worse by breaking the entire area or making it more exploitable.

There are a lot of moving parts to any MMO style system. To say they should have caught it in testing belies the fact people notice patterns that can't be accounted in regression.

@sterling: Oh, haha. Well, maybe it was patched last night? I'm not sure. I haven't done any of the exploits since yesterday morning, and magic cave definitely worked then.

This sort of thing makes me sad. At the point you are farming with exploits in anything, what are you even doing with your life.

This is why microtransactions do so well.

It happened too in the beta to me a few times when on earth patrol in that area, I'd like for stuff like that to be triggered when a bunch of high-level players are in the same area like on Mars they could have the Vex and Cabla or Vex and Fallen on Venus, to me it'd make the world more lively to have random bigger battles spawn out, I'm not sure if the 360 or ps3 ports can be that dynamic but they should try and have the world more reactively rather than on a timer for the xb1 & ps4........

@rowr: Well, in Destiny it's because all of the ways of getting gear legitimately kind of suck (except Crucible, which I play a lot of).

@maddman60620: This happened to me when I was by myself at the magic cave, and it was crazy. I killed a bunch of enemies as they started to spawn, but there are just so fucking many. It was actually one of the coolest moments in Destiny so far, haha.

I agree with you, it's tedious and boring.

There is at least one area on Mars I've seen where a massive battle like that can happen between the Vex and Cabal.

@a_e_martin: they could easily extend the timer for the enemies to respawn in 30 seconds or one minute

@pyrodactyl: The problem is that they spawn so frequently because low level characters are actually completing missions, and you can't just have the world be barren of enemies. I guess they could just change this one spawn point.

There should be more "exploits". Unless....unless they're attempting to artificially pad the bare bones Destiny experience out...naw...

Been using the Earth cave for the last few nights. It's pretty swell. Even better you can level up pretty quickly with it. Technically you don't even have to fire a weapon. Just be nearby and you'll get exp. I was messing around in my menu and I leveled up...lol.

Capping vanguard/crucible marks to 100 a week? Terrible drop rate on gear? Legendary engrams with the chance to spawn uncommon or crappy gear? Nope, definitely not artificially trying to pad out their game.

I wouldn't really call any of those exploits, and has already been shown, Bungie doesn't really know what it's doing with its loot system. I'm guessing they're just going "whatever floats your boat". It's not like any of the alternatives are that much more appealing anyways. I tried doing the cave for a while myself and can't say I found it to be much more rewarding than what I'd been doing previously, so there's probably no major incentive for Bungie to fix it as far as loot inflation goes.

Hell, in the end loot is so incredibly meaningless in this game anyways. The only thing that really matters is your light rating and whatever special property your weapon has.

I'm usually against cheesing, but since the loot drops are so bad I think they should patch in more magic caves. Although i'm still not getting anything decent just a bunch of greens and blues, useless crap tbh

I went from level 17 to level 20 by just standing around and shooting that stupid cave for probably under just an hour. Only had like 3 blues drop but whatever. They really weren't kidding when they said all this extra stuff opens up after level 20 - suddenly I'm getting armor shaders, cooler drops and all these extra playlists have opened up. What a brilliant idea to hide all the more interesting aspect of the game after level 20.

Best part is that I'm on my way to being level 21 and I've just finished the moon story missions.

In my mind the cave shouldn't be fixed because there is technically nothing wrong with it. People found a clever way to make all the enemies be in one place and easier to hit. They are still shooting those enemies, but they have found the most efficient possible way of doing it.

So what level mobs co.e out of this loot cave and what level gear so they drop? In a typical farming scenario you are killing similarly leveled mobs over and over. It is a grind but still considered legit.

It is sounding like part of people's issue with the loot cave is in how Bungie crafted the zones allowing high level characters to repeat low level areas and still have a chance to get a drop at the players level. Typically, farming low level zones would only produce low level drops.

Until Bungie provides a way for players who do not enjoy PvP to get gear in PVE as fast as you can in PVP, those players will continue to find unusual ways to increase loot obtainment. Unfortunately, even the loot cave isn't quite as fast as doing PVP, from what I've seen. I just wish I didn't find the competitive multiplayer in this game so unbalanced and monotonous.

Also, I don't know that you can fix something like the loot cave. The methodology works at any spawn point in any map. The loot cave is just the easiest known one (there's another on Venus). Unless they change how drops work altogether and remove in-map spawn points, I'm not sure how this can be patched.

A couple things.

Loot drops have nothing to do with the enemies you kill. Every kill, be it a level 1 dreg or level 28 strike boss, has the same chance of dropping something. However, blues and purples won't drop until your character is a high enough level.

Also, this game doesn't ever let you get to point of being so overleveled you're invincible. In terms of how much damage you deal and how much damage gets dealt to you, there isn't really any difference between a mob 5 levels under you or a mob 25 levels under you. A headshot will likely kill these enemies in one hit, but they can still take a few body shots and they can kill you if you're careless.

Finally, there are no high level mobs just hanging around in the open world. The most difficult enemies in public spaces are on Mars, but they're still only like 16-18, meaning they're really no different to a character in the mid to high 20s than level 5 mobs. So, going by your definition the only way to farm "legit" would be to undergo level 20+ story missions or strikes over and over again.

There is a place on Venus where I consistently see two level 23 Vex guys. Also, the stuff I get from the cave varies wildly, some of the stuff is at my level, some of it is level 5 stuff.

This game. Spent an hour trying to glimmer farm, get shafted (only earned about 1/3rd of what I should due to not getting drops). Then spent 90 minutes trying to engram farm, get shafted and get two blues only. But then, I turn in my daily bounties, and the game gives me my second exotic bounty in two days. What. The. Fuck. Its not letting me do what others are doing for farming, so I'm probably done even attempting. Wont let me farm, but keeps giving me crazy rewards that others are not getting. I have three active exotic bounties, one primary, secondary and heavy weapon (sucks you can only use one at a time). I also played 8 games in the crucible today and got two purple engrams, both of which actually turned into legendary items. I don't get it. What is happening. I mean I'm not so upset about being shafted on the farming now. But, honestly. WTF.

There's a few high level guys outside the vault of glass, but that's really it for high level mobs in public spaces.

I really hope they don't patch the cave at Skywatch. It's not that I go there to farm to get gear to replace what I have. I go there to get greens to dismantle them for upgrade materials, primarily weapon parts, because someone over at Bungie thought it would be funny if the only way to get upgrade materials is to dismantle weapons and then severely limit the drop rate. I'm not saying that all upgrade materials should be ridiculously easy to get, but weapon parts are the lowest level and most widely needed, at least as far as I can tell, especially early on. Even a bunch of my friends say they never have enough. It wouldn't be so bad if I could buy them too, since glimmer is much easier to come by. I always need weapon parts, and during missions and strikes, I just don't get enough drops.

@tyrrael: I don't get how people don't have enough. I have 200+ at all times. I never need them. As long as you are junking everything you don't need you should never need to grind for weapon parts.

Depends how many weapons you like to try out and try to upgrade. For people who find a gun and stick with it until there's a significant upgrade there are plenty of weapon parts. For people who switch more frequently therea re not enough.

@sterling: I absolutely agree with you. I shouldn't have to grind for weapon parts, but I do need to. Judging from the drop rates I've had on missions and strikes, I'd have to do literally (yes, literally) a dozen or more just to get the same number that I would have from farming the cave for less than an hour. If I'm lucky, I maybe get 5 drops during one strike, and that includes the end rewards. Keep in mind that not all of these are going to be weapons either. I seem to get way more armor than weapons when greens drop, and I actually have well over 100 sapphire wire. It's a little aggravating that I haven't been getting enough of the equivalent of vendor trash just so I can upgrade actual good weapons.

@tyrrael: I don't have 200, but I'm not short on weapon parts either. I don't always do the (swap out current item insert green prior to cashing out) bounty thing though.

The problem is not the methods listed that people are using to game the systems. It's the ass backwards systems of Destiny itself that make people do this in the first place.

Such as: loot drops scale to your level not the enemy, hard limits on vanguard/crucible marks, purple engrams giving purples only like 10% of the time, exotic vendor being time limited, running high level strikes giving too few rewards, low strike variety (after you've run the same strike 20+ times, there is no difference to doing that or just shooting the same cave entrance), gear upgrade requirements.

If it wasn't for those methods my titan would still be 25 after 2 weeks of grinding strikes, with only 2 purples and maybe 1 exotic.

I don't see anything wrong with the treasure cave and other places like it. If Bungie has a problem with it they need to recognize why players are doing it and make adjustments to the underlying issues. Simply patching out the "exploit" doesn't solve anything.

These are pretty clearly not ways Bungie intended the game to be played, but these are all indicative of larger, more complicated issues. The kind you can't patch out. The players are responding in their play to the way the world and the game treats them.

Exactly this, to some extent. Either you and some pals are dumping ammo into Phogoth from a location where he can't hit you, or you and some pals are dumping ammo into a cave from a location where the spawns can't hit you. The difference--and it is the difference--is that you aren't getting anything of value from Phogoth.

I don't think anyone has a problem with farming boss runs. Or running Strikes. Or pushing into the Vault of Glass or the Nightfall missions. Problem is, the game doesn't accommodate or reward this in any way. It's too hard to get a group together, and the time investment isn't worth it.

@humanity: man, I'm level 18 and I haven't even started the moon stuff. I've just been playing crucible stuff. I think if they added matchmaking to story missions I'd be more interested in playing em.

@historyinrust: Very true.

@planetfunksquad: they are actually pretty quick

though you do get good gear in crucible sometimes, my only exotic is cruicible

In all honesty other than unlocking the exploration maps there is no long term reason to do the story. There are tons of faster ways to level that will also help you grind the reps you need at 20 on your way to 20. Story missions just give you exp and some items you could get as random drops anyway. You don't even need to unlock the strikes to get them in the vanguard strike roulette. I guess for those who want to do the story mission bounties there is that but I normally find it far faster and easier to just go grind some easy "kill a bunch of dudes" patrols for rep.