Xur, Destiny’s travelling weekend Exotic trader, artisanal fudge sculptor (his Arc De Triomphe won awards, and in the case of one judge, invoked tears), and legally certified rake, is back. This week he’s in the Reef, with a generally solid selection of armour (you can smell the faint praise from here, right?) and a much better line-up of guns. How good are the guns? So good that you almost definitely already own them, but if you don’t, you absolutely should, immediately.
• The Glasshouse (Exotic Titan helmet) – 13 Strange Coins
• Sealed Ahamkara Grasps (Exotic Hunter gauntlets) – 13SC
• Impossible Machines (Exotic Warlock gauntlets) – 13SC
• Bad Juju (Exotic pulse rifle) – 23SC
• Legacy Engram (boots engram) – 31 Strange Coins
• MIDA Multi-Tool and Special Ops (Exotic weapon and ornament combo) - 30SC and 25 Silver Dust
• Zhalo Supercell and Not a Toy (Exotic weapon and ornament combo) - 30SC and 25 Silver Dust
• Exotic Shard - 7SC
• Three of Coins – 7SC
• Glass Needle – 3SC
What’s best? Well the Titans’ Glasshouse is pretty handy, making the Blessing of Light and Weapons of Light buffs from the Ward of Dawn last longer. A decent perk for tough team-play, but not exactly a must-have. The Sealed Ahamkara Grasps? Sorry, Hunters, but they’re a bit crap. They just give you an extra melee for every charge, and a chance of auto-reloading your weapon with every stab. If using the Gunslinger subclass, they could work as a safety net for the Knife Juggler perk, giving you an extra go at scoring a precision knife-kill in order to reset cooldown – or, in fact, providing more fuel to your super by way of Circle of Life – but otherwise they’re not too exciting.
The Warlocks’ Impossible Machines are better, giving the Landfall perk for free, thus allowing you to spike the ground with Lightning upon triggering Stormcaller, while also activating chain lightning or the evasive teleport of Electric Glide. Guns though, are really where it’s at this week.
Bad Juju is a beast of a pulse rifle, auto-reloading on every kill, adding charge to your super gauge, and stacking damage buffs so that each kill makes the next kill easier. It really likes killing things. You should let it. As for the MIDA Multi-Tool, what it lacks in stand-out perks, it makes up for in ‘Holy shit, this is good’. Carefully designed around a lot of resonating, sympathetic stats and abilities that make it one of the most ludicrously good, all-rounder Scout Rifles in the game, MIDA’s speed boost perk, hair trigger, and strong rate of fire and range make it a heck of a great, pro-active weapon. But it also has maximum reload speed. And a radar when aiming down the sights. And an additional, optional agility buff, and a secret case of the High Calibre Rounds perk, which increases enemy stagger when you hit them. It is a gun both refined and very aggressive, which frankly is a delightful combination.
As for Zhalo? It’s an arc-powered primary. That quality alone is exciting. But that quality is not alone. With it comes an array of delicious, resonating, tertiary perks. It can trigger chain lightning on hit, and if you score a double-kill (which is highly likely when you have chain lightning) you can say hello to a bonus chunk of super energy. It’s basically great.
As ever, Xur will be around until 10am UK / 2am PT on Sunday, at which point he’ll be away for another week, no doubt to frantically check his e-mail for that confirmation of the Destiny 2 gig from Bungie. It’s been a while now, guys. He’s still waiting.
