The Nether is the most poorly designed & most unfun activity I’ve ever done in Destiny. I soloed D1s Touch of Malice and No Time To Explain quests and those were infinitely more fun than this. I’ve done basically everything I can solo in D2 (and most raids/dungeons, all up to TFS) and they are ALL more fun than The Nether. I’ve partook in every single seasonal activity, ever since Season of the Undying, and not one was as utterly awful as The Nether. First things first: modifiers. Bungie loves their artificial difficulty, and disabling health/shield regen exists solely to screw with the player and nothing more. This activity would have no difficulty if it wasn’t for Bungie simply deciding that we can’t regen health for…reasons. Revive tokens are whatever, they’re fine, combined with no health regen is idiotic and shows that Bungie can’t be bothered to make an actually difficult mode and instead relies on cheap gimmicks to lengthen playtime. Edit: I’ll slap the boons in here since they are technically modifiers. The boons are extremely uninspired, boring and downright bland. “Sliding creates a fire wave.” Cool, so I’m supposed to slide into enemies in the mode where I’m meant to hide behind cover otherwise I die in 3 hits. Genius! They range from using exotic perks to just being minor numerical damage increases, and they honestly solidify my opinion that Bungie genuinely can’t make a rogue-like mode. They want to, they REALLY want to, but they’re so awful at it that it’s frustrating to even think about how hard they’re forcing it. Like, I could download a rogue-like mobile game and the buffs it would have would be more interesting. I have a few already, actually, and I can tell you that it’s much more fun sinking 20 minutes into them than it is to sink an hour into The Nether. Next, is playtime: running it solo took me over an hour and I got I think 1 usable weapon to show for it. I did most of the puzzles (more on that next) and sure, I got plenty of guns, but if they were simply craftable like nearly every other season since Witch Queen, then I wouldn’t need 3-4 linear fusion rifles from a single activity. I would *much* rather do a 15-20 minute activity and get 1-2 pieces of gear than do an activity that takes over an hour and get 5-6. Especially when those 5-6 are all borderline useless because they’re garbage rolls and they don’t have crafting so unless it’s a god roll there’s no reason to save it. Edit: people keep talking about “oh I got a lot of gear in one run.” Let me break this down very clearly: a single seasonal activity that takes 15-20 minutes would drop 1-2 pieces of gear. A single Nether run at ~45-hour gives you about 5-6. Per 15-20 minutes you get 1-2 pieces. That is the EXACT same rate. Just that for The Nether, you’re forced to play an hour long activity with no breaks, and we all know Destiny servers are held together with melted crayons and silly string. I’d rather do 3 20 minute activities than 1 run of The Nether. Now, for the puzzles. These are some of the most poorly designed puzzles I’ve ever seen. Not even specifically for the solutions, but the fact that the game doesn’t even TRY to tell you what you should be doing. Follow Toland, sure that’s simple enough. Stand on the glowing plates for a certain period of time with no way of telling that you’re progressing at all. Uhh…okay. Maybe I should at least know I’m doing the right thing? Destroy all the orange sacks that typically cover Hive tilesets in this random specific area for no reason whatsoever? Not even a HINT at what I’m supposed to be doing? I’m just expected to know that I have to shoot these orange sacks that are literally EVERYWHERE on Hive tilesets? Who set up these puzzles? They need to not be allowed on the puzzle design team again. And finally, the most important part, the fun factor: The Nether is an extremely unfun solo experience that is trying to be carried by its setting, that being on tbe Dreadnought. Had Bungie simply brought back the Dreadnought (like the derelict Leviathan) then this episode *could* have been good. But they decided to lock your exploration of the Dreadnought behind an activity that is proud of artificial difficulty and the most genuinely poorly designed puzzles I’ve ever personally seen in a game. Playing The Nether solo is a teeth grinding experience, maybe it’s better in a team but you either A) need to have a fireteam of 3 or B) have to deal with randoms who will most likely not care in the slightest about exploration or will care far too much about it. All in all, The Nether is the worst seasonal activity by a pretty significant margin, and the least fun I’ve had with a game in a while. Don’t take crafting away just to make the activity an hour long so we get 5-6 garbage rolls. Why introduce a mechanic only to tone it back for the sake of WORSE gameplay? They’re banking on aesthetic and setting to carry this Episode, and it truly shows. The gameplay is absolutely AWFUL, the only saving grace is the update had interesting changes, but after a single run of solo Nether, I don’t care to try much more. Here’s an edit, a day after my first solo run, and just after my first multiplayer run. My friend and I queued for matchmade, our rando left 5 minutes in. Subjugator boss knocked me off the map, friend revived me and the boss knocked me off the map again (mid animation) with my friend dying shortly after. 3 revives wasted because of awful boss stomp mechanic that people have complained about for ages. Spent ages trying to figure out what the game wanted us to do for a puzzle, gave up and decided to speedrun to get out of that garbage ASAP. Final boss was the Tormentor, we get down to our last revive, he somehow manages to hit me from more than 10 feet away with his slam and knock me off the map. I don’t know how my first multiplayer run was somehow worse than my first solo run, but it has solidified my opinion: The Nether is the worst activity Bungie has ever put into Destiny. I’ve experienced every single piece of content ever since D1 House of Wolves. The Nether is the lowest quality of content amongst everything I’ve played. I would rather play Legend Lost Sectors, Garden of Salvation at its buggiest, original Prison of Elders max difficulty solo, Kings Fall LFG with first timers. There is nothing in these games across the ~10 years I’ve played that I wouldn’t rather do than The Nether. Significant QoL is required to make this activity even remotely enjoyable. Until then, it is borderline unplayable in my opinion. Day 5 edit: after taking a 2 day break from the worst season ever released for Destiny 2, I did another run of the worst activity ever implemented in Destiny, after purchasing the upgrade that increase the HP from health orbs. I crutched Crimson until I obtained a boon for healing on class ability. More than half of the health orbs I picked up never healed me. And I kid you not: I was at half HP and got instakilled from a regular psion meleeing me. At 81 resilience. Then, I died in 3 shots from a different psion as I revived. Spectacular game design, Bungie! Remove players health regen, tell them you increased their HP, and then don’t actually increase their HP! Remove all modifiers from this mode and it MIGHT be enjoyable.