Xur, Destiny’s travelling weekend Exotic trader, part-time corporate art consultant (he’s secretly trolling them all with terrible sculpture), and the inner solar system’s foremost avant garde courgette chef, is back. This week he’s over in the Tower, near the Crucible quartermaster. He’s trying to enjoy the fresh, crisp spring morning like everyone else, but he can’t quite relax. He has a strange feeling that something bad is coming, but he can’t quite put his finger on it.
In recompense, he’s decided to throw out some special deals today to try to lighten his mood, but it’s not helping his anxiety a great deal in reality. He’s now in a bit of an existential conundrum over whether he’s being genuinely altruistic, or just cynically fueling the wheels of commerce in order to temporarily, superficially ease his own, deep-set sense of dread.
Anyway, what’s he selling? This lot is what he’s selling!
• Ruin Wings (Exotic Titan gauntlets) – 13 Strange Coins
• Fr0st-EE5 (Exotic Hunter boots) – 13SC
• Astrocyte Verse (Exotic Warlock helmet) – 13SC
• No Land Beyond (Exotic sniper rifle) – 23SC
• Legacy Engram (boots engram) – 31SC
• Monte Carlo and Royal Flush (Exotic weapon and ornament combo) - 30SC and 25 Silver Dust
• Zhalo Supercell and Shock Hazard (Exotic weapon and ornament combo) - 30SC and 25SD
• Exotic Shard - 7SC
• Three of Coins – 7SC
• Glass Needle – 3SC
What’s good then? Well the armour is a distinctly mixed bunch, with two duffers and one really good piece. The former category would be made up of the Titans’ Ruin Wings (which simply cause heavy ammo to drop more frequently and in greater volume) and the Warlocks’ Astrocyte Verse (which speeds up shield recovery to a barely noticeable degree when you use your Blink jump, and is doubly infuriating because it looks incredibly cool while actually being crap). The Hunters’ Fr0st-EE5 though? That’s where the business is at this week. They notably tighten your turning circle while sprinting (making responding to threats a hell of a lot easier on the move), and also incentivise quick movement by massively dropping your grenade and melee cooldown times while sprinting. Very much a Crucible Exotic, but a very tasty one, all perks considered.
As for guns, No Land Beyond is a highly divisive sniper. It has great range, good stopping power, and can be used in your Primary slot (thus causing some Crucible players to swear by it), but is also a bolt-action, single-shot reload with low ammo reserves (causing a lot of players to deem it a useless piece of crap). In truth, both camps are pretty much right, You can get good results out of NLB, but you’ll need to put a lot of work into building a play-style and pace around it.
But! Xur is selling two more Exotic guns today, both more expensive than usual, but both bundled with an ornament each. Monte Carlo is a damnably useful auto rifle, partly refilling your melee gauge with each kill, with a very high chance of completely resetting your cooldown at the same time. Couple it with something like the Warlock Sunsinger’s Flame shield, and you have the basis of a serious tank build. But whatever your melee power of choice, Monte Carlo is an utter game-changer.
And then we have the Zhalo Supercell, an arc-powered primary auto rifle capable of delivering chain-lightning on hit. Double-kills (which are likely with chain lightning) also have a chance of refilling a bigger-than-normal chunk of your super gauge and replenishing ammo. It is good.
As ever, Xur will be around until 10am UK / 2am PT on Sunday, at which point he’ll be away for another week. To do whatever. Christ knows. Best never to ask.
