Destiny: Cryptarch changes coming this week

Bungie will patch the Cryptarch in Destiny on Tuesday so that engrams will only decode at their level or higher. For example, blue/rare engrams will only decode to blue or purple/legendary, and purple engrams will never decode to blue. Rare engrams will also have a higher chance of decoding to legendary. However, Bungie warns in their dev notes that any legendary engrams you find now but wait to decode until after the update will automatically decode into rare, so get them decoded now and look for your legendaries later. 

Daily and weekly challenges will also include more chances for rare and legendary rewards, and ascendant materials now have legendary status. 

Destiny: The Treasure Cave is no more

By Jenna Brown

This article was originally posted on 2014-09-25 13:05 MDT. It was updated on 2022-05-28 for clarity and to provide additional details.

Bungie has rendered the famed “treasure cave” at Skywatch on Earth effectively useless with Hot Fix 5, an update file released to consoles this morning. The patch notes indicate that the spawn time of every cave on Earth was increased to 40 seconds. For comparison, treasure cave monsters previously spawned every six seconds, the shortest on Earth. Three of the other four caves respawned every 10 seconds. The cave with the longest respawn cycle was in the Barrens at 20 seconds.

According to their Dev Notes, farming for loot does not align with Bungie’s tenuous "dream for how Destiny is played." One of the most compelling aspects of video games is when users find new ways to play a game and make it their own. Gaming becomes infinitely more fascinating when a game evolves into something other than its hardware and mechanics, providing a backdrop for a community to grow and greater entertainment value outside the campaigns and arenas.

For as much as Bungie claims that Destiny is a social experience, they certainly make it difficult to socialize. There's no proximity chat to help gamers group up and fight together while casually patrolling the open areas, and the "social" Tower area provides no method to communicate either, besides gestures and dancing. Loot farming was a great way to find a group of people to interact with while picking off the runners and hoping for Legendary drops.

Other popular farming method “waking the Hive” was nerfed with the Sept. 22 Update 1.0.1.4, but clarified with the rest of today’s Hot Fix notes: the engram drop rate is now temporarily reduced after a hard wipe, meaning you will have to wait longer between rounds of waking the Hive if you want any of your kills to drop loot.

Perhaps I'm being too emotional, but this update has certainly made Destiny less appealing to me. In my irrational fervor, I almost feel like organizing a protest, like a sit-in at the cave, or picking a day where no one plays Destiny as a kind of walk-out.

What do you think about the updates? Still in love with Destiny? Were you ever in love with Destiny to begin with? Let me know! 

Destiny: Farming Russia for fun and profit!

If you're playing Destiny, you may be nearing or have already reached the level cap of 20. But where are you going to get some nice loot for the raids that opened last week? Russia. That's right, low-level, introductory Old Russia. Before you begin your farming adventure, you'll need to take care of a few things first.

Make sure your rank with the Cryptarch is at 2 or higher. This will cause more Engrams to drop, the lower level ones automatically decrypted. Next, find someplace like the Moon to kill a bunch of Hive Ultras so that you will get a Black Wax Idol. Idols make dead Hive drop more Glimmer for 10 minutes. Now you're ready to patrol the Cosmodrome!

You're going to Skywatch, near the Hive Seeder. When you arrive in Old Russia, head toward the left, across the Mothyards, where all those rusted airplanes areThrallstunnels in the building on top of the hill will open out at Skywatch, and just on the other side of the short cliffs is the seeder. You will probably see a few people already farming.

If you stand any closer to the cave than these people are, then only Acolytes will come out, but you want Thralls as well for maximum profit. If other people are standing too close, you can try to stand in front of them and do the pointing gesture to get them to back up. If that doesn't work, try melee-ing them in the face a bit.

I can see my engrams from here!

Now comes the fun part! Consume one of your Black Wax Idols. From your vantage point, kill the Hive that come out of that cave and watch your Glimmer count skyrocket. If any Hive make it out of the cave without dying, you have to hunt them down and kill them, or no more will respawn from there.

Eventually, everyone will run out of ammo, resorting to shooting rockets into the cave, at which point, everyone will run into the cave together. Nothing will spawn while someone is in or near the cave.

No shortage of ammo, Glimmer, or Engrams! 

As you can see, there are lots of treasures to be found in the cave. Two people found Legendary Engrams in the ten minutes I farmed this cave. You can farm this cave all day if you want to, and maybe you'll experience the roughly once-per-day surge of ten times as many Hive at one time. You might have to clear out your inventory periodically when you get too much stuff (that's where having Engrams decrypt automatically becomes helpful).

Some additional notes: The public event of "Defend the Warsat" occurs every thirty minutes in this area. You'll know if it's about to happen if the sky turns a weird blue color. I suggest running into the cave at this point, or the Warsat may drop right on top of you and kill every one in the area. It's happened before.

If you're near a group of people that doesn't seem to get how to farm the ideal way, and you can't get them to do it right, you can always return to orbit and try landing in a Russia on another server. Good luck!

Mobile game review: Kami

KAMI - State of Play

How can something be so challenging and relaxing at the same time? Kami is a puzzle game whose difficulty is offset by simple visuals and hypnotic sounds. The object of the game is to unfold paper to make the screen a single color in as few moves as possible, which - like many puzzle games - is harder than it sounds. Each new level challenges you to think in a different way.

With each touch, a new color of paper unfolds outward from that point in an intricate manner, accompanied by the soft noise of rustling paper. Changing the color of the board is therapeutic and addictive enough to repeat each level to get the perfect score.

The first few levels of the game are free, and unlocking a set of new challenges costs 99 cents. Kami is from independent developer State of Play and is available on Android, iOS, and Steam.

I give Kami a grade of A.

Warning from Bungie about poor early reviews for "Destiny"

If you see a bad review for "Destiny" in the next couple of days, Bungie says it might be because the reviewer didn't play it enough. 

Developer Bungie is not allowing reviewers to play the first-person shooter until it has been released to the public so that the reviewers experience the world fully populated with other players. For their most recent and final weekly update before the launch on September 9,  Bungie expressed that reviews for the game would be incomplete if they were written before playing for a few days. The developer has said that you can play through missions on your own without running into too many people, but their vision for the game's full experience involves working with others and teaming up for missions and raids. 

Half a game: Review of The Sims 4

By Jenna Brown

This review was originally published on 2014-09-06. It was updated on 2022-05-27 for clarity and to provide additional information, as well as to revise the grade from C+ after further consideration of the base game’s content.

I'm not sure whether I'm flirting with a teenager or a senior, but at least I look good doing it.

The Sims 4 features a more complex balance of emotions and needs, but is missing too many other elements that were established in The Sims 3 for me to feel comfortable encouraging anyone to buy it. For example, people who are teenagers or older are all the same height, and there are only a handful of lots to visit in each world map. Above all, it is missing the Create a Style function!

Complete customization of characters and the environment was one of the most creative aspects of TS3 and, while I enjoy the fun updates to clothing and hairstyles, I miss designing the textile, pattern, and color of every outfit or object. Apparently, the engine in which TS4 was built was not capable of supporting Create a Style. How much consideration was given when deciding to eliminate this compelling and popular feature?

Additionally, there are fewer than 25 home lots in a world, all of which have completely flat and unchangeable terrain. TS4 does not have an open world, so each lot requires a loading screen to get to ‒ no more walking, driving, or cycling between places. In fact, there are no cars or bikes at all. Your Sim just walks off the lot, and you enter a loading screen. Also missing is the option to choose your Sim’s quality of performance or area of focus while working: instead, your Sim's career status and promotion rate are determined by completing assigned tasks outside of work hours. This is beginning to get a little too close to reality…

Unfortunately, the game is lacking too many features considered standard from TS3 for The Sims 4 to be a true sequel. Rather, you might play it and its predecessor alternately for different experiences, if you play The Sims 4 yet at all. It's as though it's half of a game, albeit an interestingly novel half wrought with mixed feelings and more of the usual wild reactions.

I give The Sims 4 a grade of B-.

The Sims 4 was released Sept. 2. For a laundry list of everything missing from TS4, check out this mega-post by Sims4News, a fan-owned and operated website devoted to discussion of the game.