Destiny: The Taken King - how to beat Darkblade in this week's Sunless Cell Nightfall Strike
This week's Destiny: The Taken King Nightfall is Sunless Cell and you will go up against Darkblade. Here's how to succeed in this week's Strike.
Quick recap just to remind you: this time out, the Nightfall will require players to be Level 40, and they must own The Taken King to participate. Players must be resurrected by teammates within an allotted 30 second timeframe. Also, wiping in a Darkness Zones no longer kicks the player into orbit. They will instead respawn at the last checkpoint.
The recommended Light for this Strike is 280, making many players under level, and thus making it more difficult. It's still "doable" just be patient and take your time. It helps that is no Burn this time out but all enemies have shields, many of which are Void Shields so you'll want to make sure you have Void weapons on hand.
Modifiers this time around are small arms with primary weapon damage favored. You also have Juggler, there's Grounded, and there's also the Iron Clad modifier.
Sunless Cell takes place on the Deadnaught and players will need to have all of their elemental bases covered.
Here's the walkthrough:
- You start off on the Dreadnaught, and will run through corridors and end up underground in the first room. Fight from the doorway and you should find it to be less difficult. Clear the main courtyard, make your way right or left to the second courtyard. The first wave of enemies aren't too hard to take down, but the second set uses Void shields. Use your elemental weapon to destroy their shields, switch to your primary weapon, and start slaughtering them.
- The next room is the Asylum. In this room, you will need to go to the left and right to deactivate the totems in order to move on to the next stage of the fight. In order to do this, stand at the balcony overlooking the room and clear out all the enemies in front of you. Use your elevated position to your advantage and try to take the Wizards out from a distance. Once the totems are deactivated, more enemies will appear in the central corridor, and especially in the central chamber. Again, take your time and try to take the enemies out with ranged weapons. Try not to fight enemies up close unless you are a high enough level.
- Once the main waves of enemies are dealt with, the back doors will open and more enemies will flood in. However, you don't need to fight them. If you have a Nightstalker on your team with the ability to use Vanishing Smoke, turn the team invisible and run through the room, skipping all enemies.
- Once running past these enemies in the corridors, another door will need to opened into the next room. Things get more hectic from here. Those used to running a different variant of this room would be wise not to use the same tactics as before. Stand at the back of the doorway after someone runs in to activate the room. The door will not close upon backing out, so stand back there and throw every ranged attack you have at enemies in the room. You still won't be completely safe: Taken Captains will use fire attacks which can come out the doorway, but at least there won't be any enemies spawning behind you.
- After defeating this set of enemies, the last room is in front of you is called the Hanging Crypts. It's the last room before you get to Darkblade. There are quite a lot of pillars in this room for enemies to hide behind as well as a lot of Shriekers. At the top of the stairs, start picking these guys off one by one starting with the one on the left. Once defeated, take out the next one. Hit it, back out of the room, let it throw its attack at you from your safe spot, and then go back in and hit him. Continue doing this until the Shrieker is dead. At this point, go further into the room and on the stairs there will be walls you can use for cover. You will no longer need to hit and run at this point. Once all Shriekers are defeated, the back door opens and more enemies come through.
- Finally, once all enemies are defeated you will go through a door to fight Darkblade. The boss fights in the dark, and carries a massive axe which will kill you in one hit. Since he can appear out of the dark, try to kite him when possible in order keep from being one-hitted. Keep the team spread out at all times because he can spawn on top of all of you at once, and wack everyone at the same time. Then, it's a wipe. Pay attention to your radar as it will show where Darkblade is about to spawn in. At this point jump out of the way because it is better than running. Jumping will cause you to take less damage should he slam his axe upon spawning.
- Thrall and Curse will arrive to aid Darkblade, so when this happens, shift your focus on the adds instead of the main boss. Stay out of his way while you do this, and upon the adds being defeated, start back in on Darkblade. Once he has been hit enough, his helmet will fall off and this makes him faster so be careful with your jumps - especially floating jumps - because he can still get you. Hold on to your heavy ammo until this point, and it's best to save your Juggler until this point as well.
When Darkblade is defeated, you will be granted Legendary Marks, and various loot. Arekkz was handed a Celestial Nighthawk, for example.
Hopefully this will help you come out of the Strike victorious.
Destiny: The Taken King was released earlier this week.