Destiny: hard mode King’s Fall raid guide – easiest and best strategies

One hour is really all this should take. This is how expert guardians are getting the job done.

Pro players running the King’s Fall Raid each week don’t like to hang around. Whether you’re raiding with your regular team, or looking to join randoms through matchmaking services such as the100.io, do yourself the favour of revising these tips and strategies that’ll put you on the same winning page.

Basics

Make sure you have at least one Titan and ideally two Hunters on your team. The Oryx strategy relies completely on the Titan’s Blessings of Light, while DPS on all bosses is greatly increased by using Weapons of Light and the Nightstalker’s tether. Don’t forget Touch of Malice.

King’s Fall (aka totems cp)

We’ve found that even the most experienced teams can still make a mess of this relay race. Save time by clearly communicating the countdown at 10, 5 and 0 on the timer when you have the Brand of the Weaver or Deathsingers Power. Make the switch immediately to ensure that timings for both teams remain in sync. Usually it should be the guardian left behind at the annihilator totem shooting out the Boomer Knight that spawns when Brand of the Weaver and Deathsingers Power reach zero. The guardians powering the glyph door in the central area with Deathsingers Power should be killing outright or severely weakening the adds that emerge right on cue from the portal, including Knights. The beauty of this mechanic is that guardians can clear up nearly all of the adds during the exchange.

Defeat the Warpriest (aka wp cp)

The number one rule here is that you’re shooting at the Warpriest from the right, then middle, and middle once more if necessary. Even if the Glyph Sequence lands on the centre or left plates for the first round, the guardian taking the aura hightails it to the right hand side for starters. Lately, in the interest of self preservation for clumsy players, the Titan’s Weapons of Light bubble has been placed just to the right of the right-side plate where the barrier and the pillar provide additional cover. This used to be placed behind the right-side plate but guardians were getting splashed when ducking in and out. There’s just one more thing that might help guardians taking care of the floor during the Hive rounds, and that’s to stand beneath the ‘stage’, facing each other so that you’re shooting adds that emerge from the doors behind your team mate. This keeps things nicely under control.

Golgoroth’s Maze

The shortcut to Golgoroth’s front door is well known – to hop onto the pillar at the top of the hill just before the maze and kill yourself, then manually respawn to avoid navigating the whole thing. Some guardians continue to moan that they don’t have any rockets or whatever. You don’t need to shoot at your feet with an RPG, just equip the Touch of Malice and shoot until the perk drains your life. By the way, it’s no longer funny – if it even ever was – to pretend or actually go ahead and revive the rest of the guys so that they need to do this all over again.

Golgoroth’s Celler (aka gol cp)

When running Challenge Mode at Golgoroth, the common problem was that gaze grabbers on the right-hand side had a tougher time of it than those taking it on the left. Axiom Darts are a bugger to deal with in the confined space of the corridor. The answer is to have everyone other than the first gaze-grabber simply running a lap counter-clockwise, all the way around the back of the cave, then back to front-centre. Here’s the full routine as a rough recap, including the Titan bubble that’s used to attract Golgoroth’s attention while buffing all guardians with Weapons of Light. Oh, please remember that you’re watching out for whoever has the Unstable Light, causing one guardian to explode, which wipes out the entire team nearby. Honestly, you don’t want to be that guy.

• 1. Two teams of three, positioned left and right. Odd numbers left, even numbers right. Clear the adds, and run for ammo if you need it. Try to save time by not running for ammo where possible.
• 2. Gaze grabber #1 hops into position on top of the ‘crates’ front-left corner of the cellar and tells the Titan with a Weapons of Light bubble when he’s ready to shoot down the front-left orb.
• 3. Your Titan drops into the pit and places a Weapons of Light bubble below the platform, front left, in the sloping area outside of the door where adds spawn. Remaining guardians can weaken, but not break, the orb before quickly joining the Titan in the bubble, equipping high-impact sniper rifles.
• 4. Gaze grabber #1 shoots down the orb, takes one shot at Golgoroth’s exposed back, and Golgoroth ‘focuses his rage’ on him/her. Grabber #1 gives a clear audible countdown from 10 seconds, and on seven gaze grabber #2 hops out of the pit to position themselves on the ledge to the right in clear view of the ogre’s back, from where they take a shot with the countdown at three and take the gaze.
• 5. Gaze grabber #2 runs a lap anti-clockwise around the back of the room. Everyone else hops out of the pit when the countdown has reached one, waiting at front centre for their turn to take the gaze. This is easily done at the point that the previous runner is travelling across the back of the room, so that Golgoroth turns his back.
• 6. Everyone else on the team can continue with DPS on Golgoroth, using tethers if available to increase the hurt. This is a crucial part to remember as it saves time and very often ensures that Golgororoth is defeated in just two rounds, depending on collective light levels. Throw grenades, use your heavy machine guns, fire rockets, whatever you’ve got. Just don’t hit his back by accident!
• 7. Rinse and repeat, but the final gaze grabber can help out by telling everyone to get into cover when their countdown reaches around four or three. Some guardians need a second to realise.

With this strategy, nobody needs to die at all. There’s simply no risk whatsoever. To help everyone get organised before it all kicks off, sometimes it’s a good idea to have each guardian hop into the pit in number order so that everyone is absolutely clear. Sometimes asking ‘does everyone know their number’ to which you’ll hear ‘mmm’ ‘yep’ ‘…’ and ‘haha, your helmet looks truly awesome’ may not be all that reassuring and, guess what, wipe.

Traverse the Edge (aka transept)

When facing out from the room with the secret chest, directly across, above and to the right of the first bridge activation plate, you’ll see a landing spot beside a tall pillar. Warlocks and Titans can easily jump and glide to reach this spot, from where the majority of the jump puzzle can be ignored completely. A Hunter equipped with Bones of Eao (exotic boots) can also make a four-hop mid-air flight to make it safely across. If you’re not up to this, or can’t be bothered at all, just offer to leave the fireteam for a couple of minutes and rejoin the group when they reach the next checkpoint. Alternatively, show off by wall climbing with your sword to reach the last platform. Well done you.

Defeat the Daughters of Oryx (aka sisters cp)

Traditionally, the routine here was to always kill the left-side daughter first, Ir Anûk, and then finish the job by throwing everything at Ir Halak. Now, with everyone at Light 320 and climbing way above, there’s enough DPS to take down the more powerful Ir Halak first, and with surprising side effects. The first way this helps is that Ir Anûk is weaker, so you are well on the home straight if her sister is dead. The second benefit is that there is no vision distortion before the protective aura disappears, making it easier to see all the adds that everyone must shoot before the next round begins. Best of all, if you melt Ir Halak with 10 seconds remaining there are no snipers to kill on the second round. Ask the team if they’re comfortable with this before insisting on it, because failure wastes time.

Defeat Oryx (aka oryx cp)

Always kill Oryx using the Challenge Mode strategy, meaning 16 bombs at once. That’s number one. Number two, have at least one Nightstalker tether the first wave of adds to create orbs in the centre of the room to boost the Titan super recharge, and indeed everyone else especially any Warlocks.

Also, here’s couple of things you still may not know: first, kind of obvious we guess, use a Sunsinger Warlock to bait the Shade of Oryx during the shade phase. They’ll take the hit, doesn’t matter if they die because they can self resurrect. Warlocks: remember to have this selected.

Second, easily the coolest trick in the entire Raid, is to only kill the adds that are shooting – such as Acolyte’s Eyes and Taken Centurions – while under the protection of the Aura of Immortality (stolen by the runner from the Vessel) after staggering Oryx. Basically, stop shooting the Taken Thrall and let them crowd inside the Aura to join the mandatory dance party. Only a limited number of adds spawn. If you keep killing them, more appear at the corners of the room, and as you know these make their way into the Darkness sphere to cause trouble.

Just as Oryx ‘regains the favor of the darkness’ (a message appears on screen) have a Nightstalker tether the adds inside the Aura, then kill them to create a truck load of orbs. The runner shouldn’t move until after they’re all good and dead to ensure that no damage to the team is taken. By doing this, there is almost no chance of adds making their way into the sphere as they are easily contained by guardians on the outside, gunning them down as they appear. The Shade is so easy to survive.