Xur, Destiny’s travelling weekend Exotic trader, author of the galaxy’s foremost text on ancient Venusian cryptology, and enthusiastic garage virologist, is back. This week he’s in the Tower, over near the Speaker, just next to the balcony handrail. He keeps getting tempted to drop a Strange Coin over the edge just to see how long it will take to reach the City, but he once heard a story about a little boy who did that off the Eiffel Tower and accidentally sliced straight through a man, from skull to perineum. He’s not sure he could live with the guilt. What if it hit a dog?
Anyway, what’s he selling? Well this lot. This lot is what he’s selling.
• An Insurmountable Skullfort (Exotic Titan helmet) – 13 Strange Coins
• Shinobu’s Vow (Exotic Hunter gauntlets) – 13SC
• Nothing Manacles (Exotic Warlock gauntlets) – 13SC
• Suros Regime (Exotic Auto rifle) – 23SC
• Legacy Engram (heavy weapon engram) – 31 Strange Coins
• Dragon's Breath and Tigershark (Exotic weapon and ornament combo) - 30SC and 25 Silver Dust
•Zhalo Supercell and Shock Hazard (Exotic weapon and ornament combo) - 30SC and 25 Silver Dust
• Exotic Shard - 7SC
• Three of Coins – 7SC
• Glass Needle – 3SC
What’s good? Well forget the Titan helmet. Despite having one of the best names – and coolest visual designs – of any piece of Exotic armour in the game, it’s a bit crap. It gives you an extra melee charge. That’s it. Moving swiftly on, the Hunters’ Shinobu’s Vow gauntlets are much better, A great boost to your Blade Dancing shenanigans, they’ll give you an extra Skip Grenade, boost those ‘nades’ power, and add another tracker. That’s a great tactical boon, particularly in the Crucible, and particularly particularly if you have a Discipline-heavy build.
As for Warlocks, the Nothing Manacles are a really similar deal, distinguished only by not being as good. They add an extra Scatter Grenade, and give those grenades a tracking buff, but with Scatter Grenades having been nerfed in Year Two, the end result certainly isn’t as powerful now as it once was. You can still get decent results in the Crucible if you aim your grenades right at your opponents’ feet – though that does rather negate the tracking value – and if you spec out your Voidwalker with the Bloom perk (which adds an explosion to grenade kills) then you can do some serious damage in packed-out PvE areas. But overall, there are much better Voidwalker options. The Obsidian Mind, for instance. Always the Obsidian Mind.
Guns-wise, the Suros Regime is pretty great. When scoped, it will fire slower but do more damage (eventually spinning up for a faster firing rate anyway), and also does additional damage with the second half of each mag. And it has a change of refilling health on each kill. It’s been nerfed a bit since its early, game-breaking glory days, but it’s still a heck of a good auto.
And as for the more expensive weapons in the ornament combos? Dragon’s Breath is – fittingly – a monster, able to convert its rockets into napalm canisters if you hold and let go of the trigger before impact, effectively giving you a mortar with sustained area-of-effect damage. Definitely a very, very good solution to crowd control in hectic PvE areas, perfect for locking down choke-points and creating safe channels during multi-wave boss fights.
And the Zhalo Supercell is excellent. An arc-powered auto rifle, it also has a chance of activating chain-lightning on impact, spreading the damage far and wide. Add the facility for improved Super recharge and ammo replenishment on double-kills (which are more likely given that you have chain-lightning), and you have a gun of deliciously symbiotic perks.
As ever, Xur will be around until 10 am UK / 2 am PT on Sunday, at which point he’ll skip merrily away for another week. As is his eternal wont. Sorry, at this point you’re just going to have to deal with that.
Looking to pre-order Destiny 2? You can get all the details with just a click, Unlike Xur, for whom doing so would result in only the most potent existential carnage.
