Today, I spent 12 hours running the raid from 3 am until 3pm. While there are more things to learns about the raid - various chest locations, tactics, and glitches, there are a lot of things I learned today that will prove invaluable to anyone trying it for their first time. In this forum post, I'm going to cover everything I know about the raid, and I'll divide it by the 4 sections. My descriptions will include goals, chest locations, and tactics that my raid group developed while grinding through the raid. Make no mistake, Vault of Glass is a walk in the park compared to crota's end, and just knowing how this new raid works won't be enough to beat it. So let me make a quick note about suggested levels: naturally, level 30s and above are ideal at this point, however you won't be able to beat the final boss without at least one level 31. The first raid group to beat Crota's end (took six hours) did so with 3 or 4 level 29s, though, so as long as you have 1 31, you'll be able to beat it. So here it goes. [b]Part 1: trudging through the darkness[/b] When you descend into the hellmouth, you'll appear on a lit platform surrounded in darkness. Everyone's health will be low, so give everybody a minute to group up - there's no time limit at the beginning here, so nobody needs to go rushing off into the darkness and get themselves killed. A little bit of searching will reveal a stone path leading into the darkness, and that's where your group will want to go. The moment you leave the light of the start two things will happen - 1: Thralls will start to spawn en masse, 2: Weight of darkness debuff begins to stack. The thralls are no real threat, even in a group. They're weak at the beginning here, so one person can take on up to 4 before being overrun. As you move through the darkness, Weight of darkness will begin to build at a steady pace until it reaches x10. For each stack of WOD, your character will be slowed, and his jump reduced. Immediately after x5, your character loses the ability to sprint. This slowing effect is how the thralls are made a threat. It's suggested that in this area, you use blade dancer, striker, or either of the warlock subclasses. With blade dancer, you can overcome WOD, and plow through groups of enemies. This is great if you're either behind, or you need to rush back to get a fallen guardian. Striker is desirable over defender because the constant movement forward makes the bubbles useless. With striker you can kill groups of enemies with both your melee (discharge equipped), and super, saving your team when you get overwhelmed. Shoulder charge is also useful for obvious reasons. Finally, both warlock subs have their benefits - nova bomb works just like fist of havok to clear away enemies, but sunsinger's unique revive is helpful anytime, anywhere. These setups should allow your team to work well together to pass this part. The group, slowly building WOD stacks, needs to move as a close group towards a column that glows slightly blue in the distance on the path. When they get close enough to trigger it, the column will light up brighter and brighter. Anybody in range of the light will begin to reduce WOD stacks, and build up speed, but the light will eventually begin to turn yellow, and then explode, killing adjacent guardians, and flinging nearby guardians into the darkness. Naturally this means everybody wants to arrive at the light at the same time. If you're far ahead of your group, then wait for them to arrive before moving in to trigger the light. You'll be just fine standing still and taking down thralls. From the lantern, a scan of your surroundings will reveal another one some distance off. Simply run towards that one, burn off your WOD, and head to the next one. A coordinated group should be able to sprint through the entire area before coming to the end. As you progress, watch for explosive thralls, and more importantly, large holes in the ground. You can't jump over them, so you'll need to be vigilant about scanning for them. When you reach the end, you'll find a bridge platform like the one you used to descend into the hellmouth. As your party stands on it, and a bridge materializes behind you, waves of enemies including melee nights and ogres will try to push you off the plate. When the bridge does finish, everybody needs to turn around and book it across. Some thralls will climb onto the bridge, but they're easily avoided or dispatched. Watch out for the ogre sitting on the other side of the bridge, but don't bother killing him. Just keep running through the tunnel until at least one of you makes it into the light. Any dead guardians will be immediately revived when you reach your destination. [u]chests located so far[/u] Unlike the vault, this area appears to have randomly spawning chests hidden behind doors at the fringes of the map. The first one can be found if you take your first left after starting before you reach the first lantern. Taking a right from the door will reveal more doors, and you can find more located in various locations throughout the area. One particular door sits on top of a platform that needs to be reached by jumping. The only way to achieve this is by shedding enough WOD to be able to make it to the platform and still maintain your ability to jump. I cannot tell you if this door has better loot than the other doors - I just don't know. I found a level 32 thunderlord in the first door, so just be vigilant. To be continued - bullshit character limit.