Soloists, we are.
And then, suddenly, a flurry of NOT being a soloist.
Conflicted Grouping-up(s). Owing partly to "Spring" break for the kiddos (c'mon, I mean, it's Easter break, right? No judgments, but call it what it is), I had some time alone in March and April and spent some portion of it doing the Destiny things. *I did a lot of shooting, if I'm being totally honest.* My most consistent inviter on Destiny, this past year+, has always been Cat, and that continued during this Destiny-intensive time of mine, so we played together here and there. He mentioned having proposed to his clan leader that we three run a Trials card together at some point. In response, I was non-committal in word and ambivalent in emotion. The running inside/not-really-inside joke between me and said clan leader basically amounts to: "Sassi is good at Destiny. Subtimus, not so much. Ha!" Were I to attempt true end-game content like Trials, I'd be forced to confront the "not so much" part of that duality.
Later in my Destiny-intensive time alone, I wound up doing a quick nightfall run with Cat and Sassi (feeling pretty slick about 0 deaths, 6 revives) and then roped them into doing some salvage in order to pump up my lagging salvage grimoire. But the salvage portion was pretty painful, actually, since my usual inconsistency (some games I'll play alright, some not) showed up for the party. But even where I was doing alright (never well/good, mind you, and let alone where I was outright sucking), it was well below what Sassi is accustomed to. Vis-a-vis Cat, I felt like "Donnie Brasco" leaving Lefty to hold the bag with his gang. Cat didn't say "But I vouched for you!" He didn't need to. I hope his clan didn't wack him.
I left the fireteam after that salvage disaster and continued crucible bounties (which are working brilliantly since the patch, by the way, both for the weapon diversity in crucible and for the breadth of the bounty loot table) until I got a Crota invite from Jim. It was to be my first raid, and it was terrifying. I'd watched raid playthroughs, including Crota, and I'd even attempted a solo Crota run during Taken King. But this was like transferring mid-year to a new school in a different country and trying to muddle through with the language after glancing over a "My First Hundred Words in [x]" book. (I have done exactly that, though, and it wasn't sooooo bad.) I got the Crota challenge emblems and a void and a solar primary out of it, but I in no way earned those things. It was, however, good for at least one laugh:
Also, after over a year of chatting online with him here and there, I finally got to run some games with (as far as I know) this blog's sole reader. That was a lot of fun, with some nice conversation and general catching up, and I look forward to doing it again, though time zone differences tend to indicate, in magic 8-ball speak, "outlook not so good."
Again with the Solo Stuff(s). But now, back to a purer form of running solo, as the family vacation/travel stuff is pretty much over with and we're back to normalcy - meaning, about 45 minutes of Destiny every couple days.
This morning I spent my minutes soloing the nightfall, and I recommend this as a great week for doing so. Most weeks I'll check the modifiers on reset day and watch Esoterickk's solo run. But I've only managed the solo once before. This week's daybreak / solar combo, though, equals:
You'll notice I use my unearned solar primary from the Crota raid. But soloists without a solar primary shouldn't worry. Any solid PvE primary will do, since the M.O. here is basically "chuck infinite solar nades" (as you shall see if you click through for the clip linked in the picture).
