Forsaken Is At Its Best When You're In Over Your Head

Last night, with the help of the Internet, I found and completed a harrowing challenge Destiny 2'S new Forsaken expansion. I was not supposed to be powerful, but after some creative trial and error, I found a way.

Just a note up front that this post involves discussion of late-game areas and mechanics Destiny 2: Forsaken! I will not directly see any specifics from the story. Consider yourself warned.

Forsaken has mostly been described as a tale of revenge. Your Guardian sets out on a new patrol space called The Tangled Shore in the face of the death of Cayde-6 at the hands of the Awoken Prince Uldren. And while that is indeed the "main" story of Forsaken, the actual expansion is a lot bigger and more mysterious than that, both in terms of narrative scope and geographic size. The story of Uldren, Cayde, and the Tangled Shore is a narrative that takes place within a mystical interdimensional puzzle-box called the Dreaming City.

Once you finish the Forsaken story, you're given a lot of luck to the Dreaming City. Turns out the city is an entire second world filled with mysterious challenges, high-level enemies, and unique public events. Its closest destiny analog is The Taken King'S Dreadnaught, but it seems like an incomplete comparison, if only because of the Dreadnaught is mostly brown and green, and the Dreaming City looks like this:

I've been poking around the City for the last day or so and really enjoying myself. As I arrived at the Dreaming City, a mysterious NPC warned me that I would find no guides here. So far Bungie has held to that pledge. I can not find it, but I can not find it, and I can not find it. I've found my chests with mysterious poems, and I found a little cat statue, to which I traded a "small gift" in exchange for some armor. But nowhere have I found a tutorial, or any explanation of what I'm supposed to do.

My character's power level is currently a little above 500, which is the soft cap at which your progress slows down. Everything in the Dreaming City is above 500 power; most events are in the 530-540 range, which is well out of my league. If I go up against a 550-level enemy, it can often kill me with a single shot. I'm hopelessly outmatched by the mobs and bosses I come across. Of course, that has not stopped me from exploring.

Trying to avoid looking up solutions and tips destiny secrets, it can be so much more rewarding to find things on my own. But after a few hours of exploring and experimenting in the Dreaming City, I decided to go to the Internet and let myself look up one thing. I had a bounty that required me to complete an "Ascendant Challenge." What was that? How could I complete it? I had to know.

Over at the lively destiny subreddit, I found that a poster named MrWhizKid97 had shared a guide on "how to easily complete your first Ascendent Challenge." I was swallowed up and read the post. What happened after the strangest and most harrowing thing I've done in Forsaken, and I'm glad I took the time to look it up.

The first thing I had to take some drugs. While performing in the Dreaming City, you will be rewarded with a consumable called "Tincture of Queensfoil." Its item description is purposefully vague, saying only that it will "open your mind to the secrets of the Dreaming City." MrWhizKid's instructions, I would take some Tincture and headed into the Lost Sector dungeon located under where Petra Venj, your Dreaming City contact, stands. I had now "become ascendant," the game told me, without explaining what that meant. I assumed that my character was now tripping balls.

I fought my way into the Lost Sector, and I thought it would be a hell of a while to get in the air.

I ran through the portal and was transported into a dark arena. I figured I must be in the Realm Ascendant, a dark dimension that works kinda like the destiny version of Stranger Things'Upside Down. A huge Hive Knight teleported into the space in front of me. To each side of me, catwalks stretched away to floating platforms, all suspended above a bottomless chasm. Everything was covered in darkness and fog. Remembering the instructions in the post, I turned my head away from my starting point, towards Taken Blight that I could just make out in the distance. I could not really see where I was going, and started to jump around half-blindly.

I was being chased by shadow thrall who were so much higher than me that they had skull marks next to them. One of them hit me and took a huge chunk of my health. Additional Knights started to appear. I could hear them coming for me. Seemingly everywhere I turned, I found myself face to face with one.

I was going to keep moving, because I thought it would be enough to finish me off. I got the oven Blights cleared, then jumped to the center and began running in a circle, avoiding enemies while clearing out the white crystals. I was doing pretty well, then I got killed by a stray Knight attack. I got bounced back into the Lost Sector with nothing to show for my work.

Fortunately, the Tincture was still in effect, so I could still see the portal. I tried again … and fell to my death while jumping into the darkness between the Taken Blights. I died a few times after that, usually by falling. I kept trying, though, growing up to the nightmarish tempo of the encounter. It was largely silent in there, for the screaming of the Thralls and the steady stomp of the chasing Knights' footsteps. I realized I was hunching forward over my mouse and keyboard, sitting with my shoulders up by my ears. I forced myself to relax. Eventually, I blew up the last crystal and completed the challenge. All the Knights disappeared, and I could breathe easy. I cracked open a chest, completed the bounty, and got a pretty powerful rocket launcher as a reward.

That strange, stressful Ascending encounters one of my favorite things about a new destiny Expansion, particularly one of full secrets Forsaken has so far proved to be. I love the feeling of going where I'm not yet ready to go. I love how to play with the game, and how do we collectively bend the game to our will. I think back to running, alone and underleveled, through the Thrall maze in the first destiny'S Crota' s End Strike, following an elaborate mental map to see if I could survive the first phase. destiny I'm doing so much, but I'm doing it.

There will soon be a point when I'm high enough that the Dreaming City will not seem so threatening. There will also be a point when I know all about the Ascendant Challenges, and everything else in the City, like the back of my hand. My characters will be powerful enough to fight Knights straight-up, instead of running away. I'm sure it will be enjoyable in its way, but it will not have the same air of danger and experimentation. Now, at the beginning, is when players are underpowered and underprepared. destiny will not feel this daunting again for a long time.

destiny The world of dreams and the world of dreaming and the cataloging of secrets, steadily converting it into a known quantity. By October, we'll be able to see you there. For these first few weeks, however, mysteries and dangers beckon.