So, I [i]may[/i] have rambled a bit. Anyway, this will take a while The responses in the post about the "alpha, beta, and day one player" got me thinking. What do I still remember about playing in the first year of destiny? My List: Farming routes Mothyards on Earth Anchor of Light on the Moon Ishtar Cliffs on Venus Scablands on Mars Why did we need routes? You needed 64 planet materials(I'm almost positive it was 64) and 18 ascendant energies(earned from VoG) to fully upgrade one weapon. I can't remember if they changed that with Crota or not. Raids Incoming overused phrase: VoG was so fun. BUT, I didn't get a full set of VoG gear until HoW dropped. Or a fatebringer, or a mythoclast. But I had my vision of confluence, so that's fine. I still don't have a timepiece though. Crota was neat. A lot better drop rates at least. Skolas and PoE though. Giant pain in the ass. Beat it once, that was enough Raid cheeses though. Using constant AoE grenades like solar, vortex, or pulse to push the Templar off the map. The same could be done for Atheon but it was a lot harder and the fixed that him quicker I believe Skipping half of the lamps part of Crota by being shot out of a cannon, or even closer to being shot out of a cannon by jumping across the bridge part. They fixed that pretty quick but we could still sword fly over there. But Crota internet disconnection anyone? This one makes me laugh. The lengths we went to to be idiot proof Nightfalls First, the messages you got in the tower if you had the glow. "Nightfall?" Over and over. Anyway, Sunsingers came in clutch [i]so many times[/i] in year one. Last one standing at the boss fight without one? "Don't die don't die don't die... Crap!" Back to orbit you go. Oh and that sunsinger super glitch though. We made sure to have someone on their warlock each run. And I mean each run. Every character ran it every week, even though you got 13 strange coins and your buddy gets his 4th Gjallarhorn. But you keep hoping that you'll get yours one day... Strikes They used to be named after animals/mythical creatures for one lol. Someone down below reminded me of this one. It went: eagle, viper, wolf, tiger, roc, and dragon. And the cheeses! Rockets McDickface(I think this one is still there), archon priest, phogoth, nexus mind. All had cheeses Marks There were vanguard and crucible marks Exotic Bounties Exotic bounties popped up randomly after spam completing a lot at once. I think there were 6? Not sure. You had to do 5 strikes in a row without dying as part of the bad juju quest. You had to open up patrol chests at random on mars for super good advice. Thorn... ha. Haha. Crucible I sucked so bad in PvP when I first tried it out, so I never got any marks which were the ONLY way to purchase faction gear. For whatever reason. But I was still able to turn in planet mats to get crucible marks. Until they changed it before I could buy any new monarchy gear! Gah. And if you think special use age is bad now, think again. Out of 10 players, 1 would use a fusion rifle, 1 would use a sniper, and the other 8 would be using a shotgun. I loved it though. Very hectic. High impact pulses were where it was at though. There weren't really many reliable close range primaries. Except for universal remote which was at its most annoying at that time. Autos were dooky from about November 2014 to August 2015 Engrams! Oh these are my favorite. Complete toss up when the game first came out. Let's say I got 100 legendary engrams. 78 would be blue, 20 would be legendary, and 2 would be exotic. I say 2 because that's how I got my no backup plans and thunderlord. And you couldn't buy them from the cryptarch if you had extra marks either. And buying exotic engrams from Xur though. Ones that were relevant, not "legacy" engrams. Exotics Speaking of exotics, they were all basically the same. The stats types and perks. The stat values however, did vary. I remember someone bragging about their heart of the praxic fire robes because they were better than someone else's. Bounties First, you could only hold 5 at a time, and they needed to be turned in to the postmaster which was a pain. And bounties used to be worth a lot more, but it also used to take more rep to rank up vanguard/crucible. And the heroic mission boss bounties. Anyone else have about 6 or 7 missions on a checkpoint at the corresponding boss? Start the mission at that point, kill the boss, go to orbit. Wait til it comes up again Exotics part 2 So many changes. Thorn used to be total crap, bad juju would fog your screen if you used it and didn't always have the super charge part of its perk, I didn't have it at its peak but apparently pocket infinity was super annoying, TLW used to be crap, suros was a murder machine at one point(and one point only), as was mythoclast. You may as well have had a machine gun equiped. Super good advice was great for the oracles on VoG. I held down the trigger when the end of strike countdown started and didn't run out before it got to zero. They changed that too. Gjallarhorn! If you didn't have it, you were not welcome on anyone's team, unless they were your friends. Especially Crota or skolas. Man recruitment was a salt fest Heavy ammo The glitch, for one. I think I used it once or twice. When it was popular ruin wings were out so I never worried about it. But also, does anyone remember losing a portion on death? I think it was around 10% to 15%. Something about how the game recognized your armor bonus but not field scout Perks That comment about field scout made me remember something: perks used to be way better. Field scout was the best. Increased mag size and amount in reserves? What's not to like. Double down was cool too. And almost every other perk was lessened in some small way. Speed reload used to actually do something. And shot package anyone? Or final round on an Efridets. Lol. But whatevs, I do like the trade off perks that we have now Weapons Hand cannons were in a great spot back then. Range was better, ammo in reserves was better, and a decent amount of people had an upgraded fatebringer (which was amazing). Did I forget to mention autos were garbage? But shotguns used to wreck PvEs shit. Found verdict was awesome. High impact with full auto back in the day may have done as much damage as several sword swipes if not more. I just remembered fusions used to have [i][b]way[/b][/i] more range capabilities. I had one with range finder and send it on top of an already solid range stat. It was ridiculous Last but not least: HAVING TO SWITCH CHARACTERS TO ACCESS YOUR OTHER ITEMS ON THOSE CHARACTERS. I am eternally grateful for the item switching function in the app Anyway, if I forgot anything feel free to mention it. Looking back at it now though, that's a lot