After three months of grinding for maximum power levels in Destiny 2: Forsaken, my Raid team finally took the time and effort to sit through and play the entire raid from start to finish for the first time. We had tried and completed the first one or two encounters of the Raid prior to this one but time was almost always a constraint. Another critical component of the delay, was that most of us had been playing other games for the last month so progress towards higher power levels were behind.
However, the latest Iron Banner event provided most of the team members and excellent opportunity to achieve the maximum power level of 600. We then spoke during the week to set a time and date we would all be on for a couple of hours just to focus on the Raid. We also distributed links that ended up being homework for all of us to learn the mechanics of the Raid before starting it. During our previous tries of the first encounters, we realized that going blind would only limit our ability to get enough progress before time constraints would kick in.
In all, it took us six hours and forty minutes to complete the Raid from start to finish! Ironically, the parts that thought would be easiest were the hardest as most of our time was spent on the second encounter, Shuro Chi. The fighting aspect was never the problem, instead it was the puzzles in the rooms that would make us fail. When we realized we were rushing, we were able to take a more calm approach to complete the encounter. On the other end, the Vault which is where we have heard many Raid teams fail, we were able to complete on the second try.
That then led us to the “Final” encounter on Riven. We choose the do the shortcut in damaging him in one phase with rocket launchers which we completed in about a dozen tries. However, most of us did not realize how difficult the part after the Riven was. We actually failed to ascend after his defeat about three times before finally opening the real last encounter to escape the Raid. Given the fatigue of five hours of play, we failed countless times to escape until we finally completed it after about an hour and a half at it. Nobody got any of the special drops from the Raid but it did not matter as the achievement of completing the Raid was enough!
Thanks!