Destiny: The Taken King

Today, we got a first look at the Court of Oryx, a new activity set aboard the Hive Dreadnaught in The Taken King. The arena-based combat space was shown off with a fireteam of Bungie players, along with the help of online personality and game streamer, Laced Up Lauren. The live steam showed off how these new public events are triggered by players, as well as how the different tiers of arena fights can be attained.

The stream starts with a brief look at the new Raze-Lighter, a solar exotic sword, the new weapon type that is premiering for the first time, and clarified that we will indeed be getting at least one exotic sword in the mix when The Taken King launches.

After exiting the inventory, the fireteam started off in the Dreadnaught, where they came across a Taken Blight. When attacking this swirling rift, the Taken swarm the area, and you’re suddenly engaged in a fight. By completing the Blight, the fireteam was able to get one of several unique rune items that can drop. In this case, the fireteam got the Agonarch Rune.

Before continuing on, the team next found a Wormspore, the new location-specific resource material in the game.

The fireteam next moved deeper into the Dreadnaught, and eventually, the team converged on the Court of Oryx. Within the Court, you see statues of enemies defeated over the course of The Taken King. By presenting a rune to one of the statues, it starts a challenge in the arena that lies ahead. 

Different runes and statues lead to different bosses. We first saw a fight against a Hive Knight named Vorlog, whose shield colors rotate. 

In practice, these arena fights are reminiscent of the fights in the Prison of Elders, although it seems apparent that there is much more variety in the types of battles you’ll engage in. With Vorlog dead, the players received a reward chest. The summoner receives a big reward after these fights, while the other participants also get lesser rewards, including potential additional runes. After completing a summoning, you have a debuff called Summoner’s Exhaustion for a few seconds, allowing other players to be the next summoner if they desire.

A second fight was against several powerful Hive Wizards who respawned if the team didn’t kill all of them in quick succession.The three players coordinated their attacks to bring down the three bosses.

For players, respawns in the Court of Oryx occur very quickly, allowing dead players to get back into the action quickly. We also noted that each fight is on a timer, and you need to complete killing the boss or bosses in the designated time frame or fail the event.

A third fight was against a Taken Knight and Hive Knight pair, and each only get weakened shields (and become vulnerable) if the team got them close to one another. 

By using lower-leveled runes and starting Tier 1 events, you charge higher level runes, opening up higher level fights. With this third fight complete, the team was able to confront a Tier 2 Court of Oryx fight. In Tier 2, you fight two boss groups at the same time. When the summoner died at one point during this battle, we saw that Bungie has included an event cancellation timer, which forces the summoning player to stay engaged in the fight, rather than staying dead or outside of the fight and letting other players do the fight for them.

Tier 2 Court of Oryx events also offer better rewards, including runes that lead to Tier 3 fights, which are described as fights on the same level as raid boss fights, though Bungie chose not to show off any of these higher level fights. At the end of the stream, Bungie also offered a quick addendum video in which they announced a launch date for the King's Fall raid.

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