The Black Spindle: a tale of guns and gumption

One of the often mentioned goals of Destiny before it launched was a desire to make the top-tier weapons and armor found in the game special, but more-so than just being incredibly powerful. Bungie wanted players to have a memorable experience, trial, or ordeal associated with getting an exotic piece of gear, something players would be able to share a story about getting. For the most part however, this hasn’t really happened for the pseudo-MMO shooter, at least in regards to Year 1’s structure. Seeing a gold-backed icon on a player’s character sheet, and 99% of the time, the story was: “I gave Xur some coins on Friday.”


There have been some exceptions to this rule. Some raid exotics require doing super-tough content. Kirk Hamilton learned how to stop being bad at PVP and love the Thorn. But for the most part, long quest lines and coordinated raid groups are far less common than just waiting for the sci-fi version of RE4’s merchant to sell you some space-dragon wares. I’m happy to say however that it looks like Taken King is even addressing this criticism, or at least trying to in a funny sort of fashion. Wednesday saw the introduction of the Black Spindle, a familiar-looking sniper rifle to veteran guardians, introduced without much fanfare, fairly under the radar if we’re being honest.

"I cannot permit you to exist"

So a little bit of history behind this nifty gun: One of the most desirable raid legendary weapons from The Dark Below, Destiny’s first expansion, is the fabled Black Hammer. This solar sniper seems a bit peculiar at first glance, with just a three-round magazine, very slow rate of fire, and a higher than normal impact rating. The White Nail perk managed to tie the whole package together: as long as players could make three precision shots in quick succession, the rifle’s magazine would gain back the three spent rounds, without pulling from the gun’s ammo reserves. Play the part of the perfect sniper, and you could keep firing forever.

Where's that pesky ethernet cable...

I managed to be one of those lucky scumbags that managed to get the weapon to drop for me my very first Crota kill. For Year 1, this gun was essentially tied with Ice Breaker for being one of the most popular PVE guns in the game, capable of ignoring paltry concerns like ammo and allowing players to take up camping spots in strikes and raids, dealing out death wherever needed. For the most part, I was a bigger fan of the less skill intensive peppermint laser cannon, but breaking out the hammer for bosses with large crit points was probably the best sustained damage in the game. Streaks of yellow critical numbers were a joy to see if you could place the shots each time. In reality, the Hammer itself should have probably been an exotic.

Fast forward to Year 2 of Destiny with the Taken King expansion. Only a handful of Exotic weapons have made the transition to year two, all other purple legendaries have been left to languish in player’s vault spaces (or brought out for PVP if you’re feeling nostalgic). For the most part, I agree with Bungie’s move of making players find new ordinance. The loop of finding a new digital firearm to shoot digital aliens is a pretty decent way to make the game feel fresh again. There are still times however that I’ll wax nostalgic about Fatebringer, Vision of Confluence, or even the Black Hammer.

Really, I miss the elemental primary nature most, but firefly was pretty darn cool too

5am on the East coast ends up being when Destiny cycles it’s daily events and opens up new story or PVP challenges for daily currency. Wednesday is now also “Arms day” for Destiny players, the Gunsmith providing delivery packages of randomly rolled weapons. Waiting for some of these delivers to happen and looking for advice for next week purchase, I’d turned to the Destiny Subreddit. The community has been pretty active in the wake of this expansion, posting secrets and farming strategies as they’ve been found. One post this morning started telling a story of an altered daily mission rewarding a new weapon not found yet in the game.

At first, details were sketchy. Database sites weren’t listing the supposed hidden exotic, going so far as to show a blank slot on the player’s inventory, apparently bugged out. Then came the cell phone picture, which you could probably go either way in terms of being real or fake. It was only after some trouble uploading to youtube that players were finally able to see video proof of the altered mission, the drop at the end, and what was required for the mission to trigger.

Time to "take" back the Ketch

Typically just boosted in difficulty, heroic story missions serve as a reliable way for players to get Legendary marks, a currency for Destiny’s best gear. The Daily story today, Lost to Light, ended up having a branching path at the end that was only discovered by chance for a Reddit poster. Essentially combining a speed-run with a timed fire-fight, players would have to quickly run through the first part of the mission, fulfilling objectives as normal, but without dying along the way and using checkpoints. Doing this would allow the fireteam to access a ship from the House of Wolves expansion, but packed to the brim with Taken, this expansions newest enemy faction. From there, it would be up to the fireteam to clear out the ship in under 10 minutes, or face having to start the mission all over again.

The prize at the end, if the task was to be believed was an updated version of the Black Hammer, called the Black Spindle. For the most part, this gun’s functionality remained intact, only with with a slight nerf of now actually pulling ammo from reserve. Still, the gun’s statistics were brought up to Year 2, and this would be a way for veterans and new players alike to get their hands on a classic weapon again, requiring of course they could fulfil the objective.

Turns out being awake in the early hours of the morning, even if it happens to be your day off, doesn’t mean you’ll be able to pull together friends for an obscure mission. Fortunately, the Destiny community has managed to band together around the shortcomings of the game's lack of activity matchmaking by creating Looking For Group sites in order to form groups quickly. I hadn’t managed to use DestinyLFG.net since before the launch of Taken King, but with this mysterious event looming, and no telling if this would be availiable again later, I was quick to muster up a fireteam.

It’s worth saying that this extra branch of the story mission is no slouch when it comes to difficulty. The Taken faction in game pulls a lot of interesting tricks with shields, visual impairment, infinitely spawning enemies, and environmental hazards that make them time consuming to begin with. Couple this with the timer, and a larger than normal amount of reserve troops, and you’ve got a recipe requiring a lot of experimentation, with the possibility of devolving the task into a war of attrition. I’d be willing to say this is up there with some of the hard-mode raid difficulty, and even more demanding on each person when the group is three.

What it feels like when your team is firing on all cylinders

My first random fireteam that was pulled together made some valiant attempts. Running and surviving the first part wasn’t too crazy, but once that timer started, the pressure was on to make smart weapon choices, coordinated super usage, exploit elemental weakness and pop plenty of ammunition synthesis. Oh and trying to stay alive. Fall in a fight and you’re out for a good 10 to 20 seconds. Dead DPS does no DPS.

Despite a few attempts on the boss and his endless wave of minions, frustration eventually set in, and a Titan, a Warlock and a Hunter ended up parting ways and looking for alternative solutions, or just giving up entirely. I turned back to the LFG site, picking up the first players I could see, while coordinating in the back of my head what needed to happen for future attempts. For me, this was my old raid-leading instincts from World of Warcraft kicking in, wondering how more damage and survivability could be squeezed out. Eventually I settled on trying to maximize the Hammer of Sol, a super ability in the Titan’s new Sunbreaker subclass. Essentially, fill up the yellow bar, and you could become the fiery cousin of Thor, throwing out thermite hammers to your heart’s content.

Makes your Guardian super-charged

Gathering up two more players, as well as maxing out a new exotic pulse rifle returning from Year 1, Bad Juju, the plan would be to string together as many minion kills as possible, maximize hammers to allow teammates to also chain together supers, and clear out the area to allow some fire-support on the boss. This strategy in mind, and two new mic’d players in tow, We chatted over strats and set out on the challenge again. Communication was going to be key this time around to pull of the strategy, so I was thankful that there were headsets all around. Each attempt, callouts would happen for particular enemies team members would focus on, certain weapons being more suited for particular targets. Each attempt felt more like clockwork, progress being managed by how much time was being saved in each particular room.

Our third attempt was notable with good early clearance, but with a bit of a bungle involving the room right before the boss. While there was some quick quips about “wiping it up and trying again,” old raid habits kicked in and dictated that we get in as much practice as possible to better our chances for the next run. The boss fight this time around however, ended up playing out a little different than before:



See that timer? Talk about a photo finish. Internally I was screaming at myself when we had managed to down the boss, but I was too busy being dead on the floor to wipe up the rest of the enemies. This ended up being a blessing in disguise, as the rest the team was too far into the room to clean up the last of the Taken Psions. Picking yourself off the ground at the very last second to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, absolutely exhilarating.

What followed was akin to any good MMO party event: Lots of cheers over chat channels, exasperation that you got a special drop (in my case, the goofy-looking ship along with the weapon itself), and just waves of relief that the deed was done. A quick trip back the tower also showed that there was a ton of loot being delivered after the fact. Finally, the group rounded off by exchanging friend requests for the possibility of future activities.

Lock S-foils to attack position

There’s a ton of stuff I like about this event. First and foremost, it managed to be a microcosm of the larger Destiny raiding experience: a very clear task put in front of you with significant challenge with measurable progress. It wasn’t necessary to say each attempt that we were making progress, you can innately feel it. Still, vocalizing it and keeping spirits high was an important element to the eventual boss kill. Mechanic density was overall very simple, but very effective. A clear and present timer for each attempt works well to also measure progress to boot.

The next great hunt

The sort of metagame around discovering the alternate mission is also noteworthy. Bungie said nothing about this event in advance, or the fact that this sort of alternate mission type existed up to it’s discovery. Leaving it to the Destiny dedicated to discover really helps to build a better community around the game. Many players are now speculating what other alternate heroic missions might exist, and what kind of prizes might await. Current thoughts are turning to the Vault of Glass as a step to bringing the stranger’s pulse rifle up to exotic status, but we’ll have to wait for that story to hit the daily rotation.

For me though, it feels like it was serendipitous that I came across the posting when I did, and the challenge felt very much in line with the reward. I’ve already had a few chances to tell the story behind the gun, so bravo to Bungie on a job well done with the gun.