Early Saturday morning, a Destiny player and YouTuber by the name of ScaRdrow accomplished the nearly unimaginable: he soloed the final boss in Wrath of the Machine and lived to tell the tale.
Ever since the game’s latest expansion, Rise of Iron, arrived last month, players in Bungie’s online first-person shooter have been banding together to complete its new raid in record time. Having accomplished that, players are now hard at work trying to do those same things without the extra help, and yesterday ScaRdrow became the first to do just that. After completing it, ScaRdrow asked on Twitter if he was dreaming.
In a post on Reddit, ScaRdrow explained his character build and strategy at length,
I did this as a 399 Sunsinger Warlock. My build included: Solar Grenade, Focused Burst, Fireborn, Flameshield, Arcane Force, Viking Funeral, Chaos Order and Gift of the Sun.
...
Every frame had to be used to get as much damage as was possible each round. His damage threshold is insanely tight, so you need to put in all the damage you can at every possible chance.
When I was streaming last wesneday, someone in my chat mentionned that I could melee while I was shoting the boss. I can’t remember your name but that definitely helped me.
Aksis’ teleport can actually be predicted too. He leaves a red blurr that indicates where his next position will be. Without this red blur the solo would be impossible, as you wouldn’t be able to predict where he was going for the stun. Thanks Bungie <3
In the fight against Aksis, the raid’s final boss, players have to use an “empowerment” buff to strike him where he’s standing in order to stun him and make him vulnerable. As you can imagine, the encounter is designed for multiple people so that no matter where Aksis teleports to, someone will nearby enough to deliver the stun. There’s also a phase where if enough damage isn’t done to Aksis, he will automatically kill the entire party, leaving no room for error.
After ScaRdrow’s run, sc_slayerage from The Legend Himself clan followed with his own successful attempt which he uploaded today. He came away from the fight with 247 kills and over 11,782,276 damage dealt, calling it”the most technically demanding challenge I’ve ever done in Destiny.”
Watching both videos, it almost feels like ScaRdrow and sc_slayerage are playing a completely different game from the rest of us. It almost feels like they are playing the game in double-time, throwing grenades, launching rockets, and hop-scotching around the bunker as if they’ve don’t it all before countless times. And of course, they probably have.