It’s official – I CHANGED MY BUNGIE NAME! Oh, and I beat the new raid! I’ll share the details for how I got around the name issue at the end of this blog, but for the most part, we will be talking the new Vow of the Disciple raid! The atmosphere for this raid is so cool, but after finally completing all of the encounters, I have to say, I don’t think this raid is super difficult. What makes this raid difficult is the fact that they’re going out of their way to make it impossible to solo it by introducing mechanics revolving around reading symbols. Let’s talk more about that and my overall impressions of the latest raid. (You might notice some clips say “FatCatKookie” while others say “Machina” now – yay!)

Beating this raid was done over two sessions. We got through all of the encounters and saved Rhulk for another night. Once you get into a rhythm with how the encounters work, they aren’t hard in terms of mechanics. It’s really just coordinating the callouts of symbols and making sure people are paying attention. While there is a handy dandy chart floating around the Internet with all of the official names, I think using your own names makes it more fun. Let me share some examples by first showcasing the real names of the symbols:

Ahhh! There’s so many! Let me share some of our, ahem, unique calls. We have more than the ones listed, but here we go:

• Darkness = butthole or black butthole
• Black Garden = Texas (I don’t know why)
• Ascendant plane = boats or umbrellas
• Light = kaleidoscope or white butthole
• Worship = blowjob
• Drink = cup head or Nirvana
• Commune = jizzing triangle
• Give = Bloody hands

I honestly don’t have a ton of clips from the first encounters of the raid. After getting into the raid, the first encounter isn’t particularly compelling. It’s just running around, killing knights, reading symbols, and shooting totems. Reading symbols and finding them on totems is central to essentially every encounter of this raid.

The first major boss you fight is the Caretaker. Collect symbols, shoot totems, blast that fool, climb stairs, repeat! The damage phase for the Caretaker requires moving between three plates as they light up and unloading as much as possible before moving to the next floor. You need to be on the plate for the damage to count so be careful if you’re shooting rockets or using supers you can accidentally kill yourself with. Everyone is in close proximity and it is very easy to mess this up.

The Caretaker fight is fun, but we got through this a lot more quickly than I expected. A lot of bosses are using this ‘final stand’ mechanic now where you have a little window of time to unleash everything on the guy before the team wipes. It’s… fine. It can be dramatic sometimes, but I do find myself missing the approaches of old raids in D1. The token revive system plus all of these symbol mechanics has removed those clutch, heart-pounding moments where one person is left and trying to land one last good hit before getting crushed. Instead, the last person is trying to land a final blow AND… dies because the revive timer ran out. Lame. It is kind of a bummer too because this also means I can’t bring my niece into a raid for fun. I hope Bungie revisits that at some point. Anyway, here’s the final stand for Caretaker.

Like every other raid, you can expect a big, long jumping puzzle. These require coordination because you have to shoot objects in order to make ledges appear or make pieces move in the correct direction. Here is one of those jumping puzzles in action. While I am hopping across, there is someone shooting an object to make these spinning phallic things go back and forth. Once someone reaches the end, all the ledges stay in one place and everyone can hop across safely. Have fun watching everyone die as you race to be the first to cross.

Side note, I’m telling you things in whatever order I think of it. I don’t remember the exact order of everything in the raid. Just know these things happen. There’s a lot of jumping and climbing to get to Rhulk and closer to the coolest piece of art I’ve seen in Destiny yet.

We made our way to Rhulk and wiped to secure our checkpoint. Rhulk has a barrier around him that will launch you into space. It is also what will wipe your team if you don’t run from him once you’ve finished a damage phase so make sure you’re paying attention. It’s hilarious when it happens, but it’s also frustrating to lose revives over something so basic.

So when we came back to Rhulk on another night, we ran into some issues. After working through the rhythm and mechanics of the fight, we ended up having a couple of glitches. One of the first times we secured a successful first damage phase, he went into his “run away” pose, but then… he just stayed there. We had to wipe. Womp womp. There were only five us at the time anyway so whatever, I guess. We made him our 6th.

Back to the drawing board. Essentially this encounter has two teams. Three people are collecting buffs and passing them between each other (our callouts were “sharing” when it was time to shoot the crystals and then “caring” when we actually shot and got the buff) and the other three are on add management. Word of advice (or Word of Crota lol D1 joke), my brother ran Trinity Ghoul with the catalyst and I barely noticed the adds. I’m not going to explain the mechanics of this encounter in this post, but you’ll be working your way to a platform where Rhulk slinks around the arena, dashing into people and kicking them all over the place. Observe.

Anyway, try not to get kicked to death and get into your damage phases. You can beat him in two phases, but you better make sure there are supers and heavy galore because it’s a final stand encounter (of course). Drag it out to three to be safe if you need to. We were able to beat him twice that night (save that checkpoint!).

Obviously, it took us a long time to beat the raid because it was our first time. Now that we’ve officially completed it, I think it’ll be a lot easier. I do think Bungie is investing a lot in these symbol-driven raids to discourage solo attempts, so that is kind of annoying. The mechanics aren’t as fun and exciting as other raids have been. And again, I really wish they would revisit the token system (and also give warlocks the ability to self-res again!!!). Speaking of res, never miss an opportunity to troll.

Okay, last thing! Bungie STILL has not fixed the name change issue. I was unable to change my name and repeatedly tagged them asking for updates. Silence! One night, some random guy responds to me with these instructions:

1. Log into Bungie.net (use Firefox)
2. Go to your identity settings
3. Right-click on the name field
4. Click “Inspect”
5. Locate the word “disabled” and delete it (ONLY that word!)
6. Change your name!

I did this and it WORKED. I was so excited and helped my brother change his name too (Of course, the two people with identical names both experience this glitch). I’m officially Machina!

If you’re having trouble with the name change, let me know if this works for you! Have you completed the Vow of the Disciple raid? Heard any funny callouts for the symbols? Share your thoughts with me in the comments below!