*major edit* Okay, so having gotten to the Armsday bit and no longer being as frustrated with this quest as the day I got it, I can think a little more rationally about some things. For example, whoever made this quest probably DOESN'T hate the Destiny fan-base. Especially since some parts are actually pretty cool, in all honesty! However, there are a lot of dumb parts that I think should be amended in the future. I'll go over each step and what I think about them after a bit of hindsight: 50 Major Kills - not that big a deal, just load up Undying Mind once or twice and get it done. No biggie. 25 Guardian Kills - I actually liked this part because it forced me to learn how to use the sword properly in the Crucible. It's not a rushdown weapon, it's a zone defense tool. And maybe another type of tool too, but that was my own personal application of the sword, and it worked extremely well (I got 12 of the 25 kills in one game). I like this part. Plus it neither overstays its welcome nor does it not stay long enough. Pretty good balance, I think. I like it. Ecsthar, the Sword of Oryx - the only part I don't like is getting past the Warden Knights. It's not hard once you know what to do, the problem is that there's no clear in-game indicator of what to do. Killing all three Knights seems like the simple solution, but that's not all it is. But I'm not going to dwell on that because I know that technically isn't actually part of the quest. What IS part of the quest, however, is Ecsthar, and this fight is actually a lot of fun. He's only really a modified sword Knight, but the fact that you have to beat him via a sword-to-sword duel is just badass. I loved fighting this guy... even if he was a tad easy. Talk to Lord Shaxx - WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?!! UGH I HATE--nah, kidding, this is easy :P 500 Ability Kills - I think this should be shortened to 250. Not because it took too long for me or anything, since as a Gunslinger it was actually fairly simple and easy. However, as many people have brought up, Nightstalkers and especially Defenders potentially have to do this stuff too, and they have a FAR more brutal time with this segment. For THEIR sake I think it should be shortened. In most cases it's pretty easy though. 10 Legendary Materials - yeah, okay, I'm really pulling my punches here, this part sucks. I don't mind having to dedicate time to doing this quest, but it just takes too long. It took me about 3 hours of literally doing nothing but finding Helium Filaments on the Moon. No Strikes, no Crucible, none of the fun stuff. Three hours of boring stuff. One hour of boring stuff wouldn't be too bad. Three? Give or take? Come on, cut us some slack on this, please. If there's ONE part I would change about this quest, this is it right here. I think many can agree with me. Please consider adjusting this part, Bungie. Wait until Armsday - I don't really see the point of this.The Elder Cipher doing it like this made sense because Variks had to [i]de[/i]-cipher it, but here? Alloys? I mean, okay, I'll go with it, but I wish Bungie considered our opinions on this step of the Elder Cipher bounty before going through with this. Ah well, it is what it is. The Darkblade and Friend - haven't done this part yet. But I've heard it's very fun and fairly strategic. Can't wait to do it. I'm hoping this feels like the epic finale to the quest that these exotic swords deserve. Anyway, so that's my piece. Bungie employee(s) who made this quest, whoever you are, I'm actually fairly sorry, especially if you actually read this. I've had my own work brutally criticized before, and it's not a fun experience to sit down and actually read it. While I think this quest could have been better, I don't actually think the entire thing is garbage. I was just extremely frustrated with one part. Like I said, some parts are actually great. I can't wait to finish the quest this Wednesday and claim my reward. Original post begins here: Like, it's not even hard, it's just extremely grindy. I was around since the beta and I don't remember ANYTHING being quite as bad as this. Absolutely nothing. It's not even that it's hard. It's just extremely boring and frequently frustrating. So, the first step is to get 50 Major kills and 25 Guardian kills using the sword. 50 Majors isn't that bad. 25 Guardian kills isn't that bad either (I got that done in four games), but it's extremely dependent on luck. Will you get to the heavy ammo on time? Will an enemy player super the whole group waiting for it to drop? Will you have a good place to get some good kills in? Does the enemy team have a lot of rocketeers? Not to mention, on multiple occasions you'll get a surprise hilt smack in on someone, you'll lunge in for the second to finish them off, and another enemy player runs in and takes the hit for them. And considering it was Zone Control I see zero reason to stick your own neck out like that. But anyway, then we get to step two. The actual battle is pretty fun in my opinion, but getting there is a pain in my arse because first you have to get past the Warden Knights. The thing is, simply killing them does not open the door, and if you kill them, they don't respawn. So what is the method? Well, to be honest, I'm still not entirely sure. I looked it up all over the web and no one had a consistent answer. For those who are curious, just get them all to low health, whip out a large-mag machine gun (make sure it's fully loaded) and finish them all off with that without reloading. It's simple. Problem is, the game gives you no clues about any of this and experimenting takes way too long. Then we have to talk to Shaxx. This is arguably the worst step because his wimpy British accent (as in, his British accent sounds really wimpy) is really annoying... nah, but in all seriousness this isn't so bad. You just press X and A a few times. Whoo. The step after that, and it's the step I'm currently on, is collecting 10 Soliton Flares and getting 500 Solar ability kills (I'm doing Raze-Lighter). First of all, 500 ability kills? Really? Bonus points since because I'm a Hunter, I get no good moves for getting this done. Tripmine is alright, but you can only get about 1-2 kills reasonably per grenade. Incendiary seems to be the best there. As for Throwing Knife, I'm not sure if giving it the Incendiary effect allows it to count. Scorch and whatever Sunbreakers get is WAY better for this. Then Golden Gun... well, Radiance lets you spam considerably superior grenades and Hammer of Sol has a lot more ammo, whereas I'm stuck getting three kills per super. Hooray for balance. Anyone remember Thorn? I did that on my Hunter too. Wasn't fun at all. But that's not even the worst part. See, you get Soliton Flares by picking up Helium Filaments. You have to get 10 to advance. Easy, right? Here's the problem: they're extremely rare. Just for reference, I'm currently at 46 Helium Filaments and currently have TWO Soliton Flares. Now, granted, I have picked up a small number of chests (like, two or three), and a lot of coils gave me two, but the fact remains that this is taking way too long to be anything remotely reasonable. And you might be thinking "well, that's RNG for you". Why is this step RNG?! Just tell me to get 40 of these and make every coil drop one. Not that hard and it actually feels like I'm making progress, even if it is dull (and it already IS dull). Now, as I said, that's the step I'm currently at, but the next step is also hilariously bad, too. Anyone remember the best step ever for the Elder Ciphers? You know, the one where you wait and do nothing while the game decides whether or not it wants you to get the Lord of Wolves? Well, that step is back. You have to wait for Armsday to continue the quest. And then finally, we have a Xyor-like mission (as if this weren't already enough like Thorn) where we have to kill a named enemy and then kill Alak Hul 30 seconds or less after that. Fun thing is, this mission requires 300 Light. Aka, end-of-raid Light Level. Why is the requirement on that so high? Can I really not just do it at 260 or 280? Why 300? The game refuses to drop anything for me that gets me past 287 and I also have to get up to 300 after that? Really? This quest is horrible. Absolutely abominable. It's like they took all of the worst things of Year One Destiny and put them all into one large mission. Well, no. That's actually EXACTLY what they did. Grinding? Check. Luck-based grinding? Check. Tedious Crucible requirements? Check. Waiting for the game to do something? Check. It's got it all, baby! Problem is, the only thing good about it all is the reward. Why can't getting the reward also feel rewarding? This is ridiculous. To anyone that has actually finished this, how do you feel about the quest?