Destiny 2 Race for Crota’s End World First: Did Elysium get their 4th belt?
Twitter: DestinyTheGameElysium won the race for the world first Destiny 2 Crota’s End completion, making it the fourth world first belt that the team has won.
Destiny 2 features new raids and “reprised raids” that Bungie brought back from the first game, Destiny 1. Kings Fall and Vault of Glass were the only reprised raids in the game – until September 1, when Bungie reintroduced Crota’s End.
Crota’s End was notorious in Destiny 1 as the easiest raid in the game, with some calling it a “strike”, and others being able to solo the entire raid.
But on September 1 Bungie released a revamped Crota’s End that teams battled over many hours for the title of first completion.
Elysium made good Crota’s End start and didn’t let up
To achieve the World First completion for reprised raids, teams must complete first the contest mode of the raid, and then complete the raid again in challenge mode.
In Destiny 2 Crota’s End, like every other raid, contest mode capped Guardian’s power level to force them to focus on the mechanics.
Completing the raid a second time in challenge mode not only requires mastery of the mechanics but makes teams complete each encounter in a specific way, abiding by the “challenge” rules.
As the clock ticked over to 10:01 AM PT teams readied up and loaded into Crota’s End and the race began.
Twitter: DestinyTheGame
Immediately teams noticed something different to the raid. From the onset, Guardians are given a Chalice of Light buff that must be passed around. Hold on too long and players would perish.
Teams were neck and neck at this point, with Elysium and fan-favorite raid team ATP both waiting eagerly as they built the bridge to descend into the next encounter.
Saltagreppo and the Elysium squad managed to get through the lamps encounter relatively easily, working their way past the infamous bridge/sword encounter and up to the penultimate Deathsinger battle.
At this point they had built a slight lead – but it was only slight, and the Deathsinger encounter was proving initially troublesome.
But as expected of a 3x Champions team “Elysium” they soon made it past Ir Yut and onto the final boss – Crota himself.
Swords for the Sword-Wielding Boss
Crota blew all the previous encounters out of the water. The boss combined all the previous mechanics of the raid together with a humongous health pool that had teams questioning their strategies.
But Elysium wasn’t going to let the massive health pool phase them. Switching up their DPS tactic, Elysium adopted a Tractor Canon and five Lament DPS approach.
A few more attempts later, they were the first team to complete Destiny Crota’s End in contest mode.
Other teams continued to struggle on Crota, and by the time other teams had defeated the contest mode Crota fight, Elysium and Saltagreppo had already made it to Challenge mode Crota.
And they needed every second of the lead they earned themselves.
Destiny 2 Crota’s End: A photo finish
Elysium were smiling and laughing as they reached the final hurdle between them and Crota’s End. But Crota had other ideas than going down easily.
The challenge ruleset wiped Satlagreppo’s team before they even got to the Crota damage phase. Then it wiped them again. And again. And again.
Minutes then hours passed and suddenly the Elysium team wasn’t smiling anymore. They were now in second place, behind another team.
However, they weren’t going to go down without a fight. A heroic performance later, speedrunning to get Crota’s shield down, blasting away at the sword-wielding behemoth, and they’d done it.
And not a second too soon, beating the team that was ahead of them by 1 minute and 5 seconds.
Fans issued huge congratulations to Elysium and Saltagreppo for the world first, adding a fourth belt to their collection. The team also earned themselves the Necrochasm, which Dexerto has a guide for if you’re interested in getting the Destiny 2 Hive Exotic gun.