Destiny: What are hard modes in Raids?

So you’ve run every available raid in Destiny and are too uninterested in running Grandmaster content, as you want a hard mode with some substance to it. Well, have you ever considered doing a hard mode raid?

What’s that? There’s only one raid currently that has an alternate difficulty available at the moment?

And it only makes enemies harder and sprinkles more champions throughout the raid? Well shit. That’s a shame. I remember a time when Destiny raids had more done to their raids that had alternate difficulties. It was a very long time ago and you could be forgiven for never being in the know of the original Destiny‘s hard modes.

All you whippersnappers that entered the Destiny universe via Destiny 2 are probably not too familiar with hard modes in older content and Destiny 1. Gather round youngbloods, and listen to this old Destiny veteran tell you about how cool a hard mode was back in the day.

Harder light

The original Vault of Glass had its hard mode released sometime after the raid released on September 16, 2014; for an initial hard mode (known as Heroic mode), the raid didn’t change a ton of things. Aside from enemies being deadlier, there were some adjustments to encounters, as well as the biggest change being the removal of revives.

So if you made a bad move and ended up downed, your friends were gonna have to pick up your slack and could mean the difference between success and failure. I remember many hard mode runs being completely ruined by a snowball effect that is caused by just one person dying in a fight.

But as more raids were introduced, the hard modes for each raid began to change up the definition of what “hard” means. Vault of Glass did this as well, but the hard modes for later raids became a bit more demanding, as the mechanics became more complex in normal mode and only are given an extra layer of complexity because of hard mode.

To give an example, in King’s Fall, the final fight against Oryx was an exercise in almost perfect communication as well as perfect combat awareness. You needed to stand on plates while also managing Ogres that would drop light orbs that would damage Oryx. If you didn’t kill your Ogre quick enough, you’d risk getting melted by it and the other enemies in the room.

In hard (it’s actually referred to as “heroic” in-game) mode, you also had to contend with a knight that would “eat” any light orbs that were dropped on the floor. If you didn’t kill it quick enough and it ate any light orbs, you’d have to do a longer rotation to get more orbs and also just risk not doing much damage to Oryx at all. Suffice it to say, it was pretty easy to drop any of these spinning plates with just one mistake, and that in turn would drop everyone elses’.

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Prestigious Patina

Every Heroic mode since King’s Fall tried its best to keep experienced players on their toes; while the modes were difficult at first, you could make Heroic runs your go-to once you learned them well enough. When we finally entered the era of Destiny 2, there was plenty of excitement for what raids would look like as we moved forward in the franchise’s lifecycle.

Destiny 2‘s first raid, Leviathan, got its “Prestige” mode that made every encounter just a bit harder, a little more demanding of the players, and a lot more chaotic if things went south. Much like the Heroic modes in the past, Bungie seemed to continue the trend of adding an extra layer of challenge later on to their endgame content. However, this expected addition wouldn’t last for too long.

Only after two more expansions did Bungie eventually stop creating “Prestige” difficulties for its later raids. The first full-sized raid after Leviathan was Last Wish, and Bungie claimed at the time that a Prestige mode wasn’t in the works due to how difficult the raid was already.

It was since that day that we never received another alternate difficulty until July 6th, 2021, when Vault of Glass received Master mode as an alternate difficulty. Think about how many years of content passed us by without a single difficulty added to the several raids that have come and gone. It’s insane to think that the only endgame content in the game has gotten very little attention in that regard.

Destiny and a new Hard mode were pretty synonomous at this point, so going years without a new one felt strange and alienating for me personally.

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Well, should I do Master mode?

Let me tell you something dear reader, I’m probably not gonna do VoG’s Master mode anytime soon, seeing as how even surviving encounters will involve a fair amount of grinding. The raid’s difficulty doesn’t seem to come down to anything like more layers to the mechanics as it just involves enemies feeling much more frightening because of the damage they can deal.

Personally speaking, I don’t find that sort of thing to be much fun, as the “Heroic” and “Prestige” modes of the past have been at the very least interesting with their tweaks to the mechanics. Master mode seems like something that will require some strategy, no doubt, but its a goal that is just a little too far out of reach for me personally. I might try it someday, but as of right now, I can probably wait to get a Timelost Fatebringer (or just a Fatebringer in general).

If you want any sort of indication of how difficult this might be, I’d recommend Nightfalls as a good litmus test of whether or not you’ll like this particular kind of difficulty. I’d say the harder modes are worth trying out because they do demand more strategy and thoughtful build creation for some particularly nasty encounters (looking at you Savathun’s Song from the Thorn quest).

Destiny has been known to have certain content have a hard mode that really smashes the nuts of the playerbase for a good while, if not indefinitely. If you ask me, its worth it to at least get your ass whooped once or twice to appreciate how fun the easier modes are and how capable this game is of really bringing the pain when it wants to.

By the way, if you want someone more qualified than me to talk about difficulty in end-game content, I’d recommend Datto’s recent video on Master mode. It’s a pretty informed opinion on Master mode (and it gets a little ranty too).

Until then, take care Guardians. Make sure you have plenty of barrels for the salt you have ready.