Destiny Community Showcase: World’s First Deep Stone Crypt Fireteam

Interviewing Clawtivity, Schendzie, & Aoterra of Luminous!

Over the past week I was given the opportunity to interview these three individuals and in order to get the proper answers I reached out into the community for questions. Luminous, while primarily known as a speed running group, was the first fireteam to complete the Deep Stone Crypt raid, after a mere 5 hours, following its November 21st release. I reached out to all six Guardians on that fireteam and was able to conduct a thorough interview using the questions you, the readers, provided. So without further ado let’s get down to it and see what makes the gears turn in the minds of Aoterra, Clawtivity, and Schendzie.

I provided Aoterra, Clawtivity, and Schendzie with 23 questions provided by several people across the community. I had to filter through quite a bit of content, which included countless duplicate questions, several lackluster comedians, and a few questions that sadly did not make the cut (sorry if one of those was yours).

Background

Schendzie: Personally I prefer being a Warlock. Having a healing rift in combination with all the damage reducing perks (warmind’s protection and protective light) makes surviving a lot easier. Additionally you can have a Nova bomb to chunk a good amount of health from the boss, or if you wanna be the supportive player you can obviously always use a well of radiance. My preferred build is my “warmind cell” build. Just put on global reach + rage of the warmind + rage of the warmind and you’re basically unstoppable. Once you get your first warmind cell you start chaining them and adds aren’t a problem anymore. I like to pair this with charged with light and protective light for even more survivability. 

Aoterra: Definitely Warlock with Icarus dash. Speedrunning is my main attraction with this game, so most of my builds are going to revolve around that. I like to use whatever is the most optimal/fastest DPS and movement builds in the game. The utility of being on warlock is also pretty insane with rifts, grenades, nova bomb, well of radiance, etc. 

Claw: I started playing in the d1 beta, but I was really really not good at the game. I got a week one Vault of Glass clear, and looking back at it I really am pretty happy about that. But I didn’t start doing speedruns and other stuff until the summer of 2018, and I’ve been having fun with that stuff since then. I really only play warlock when I have a choice, originally because of sword skating and now because that is the class that I have good armor on. 

What got you into Destiny?

Schendzie: I started to play Destiny because all my IRL friends told me to do so. I gave it a shot and fell in love with it. My friends on the other hands didn’t enjoy for a long time so I’m the only person that still plays this game 😀

Aoterra: I started playing Destiny a few months after release as a christmas present to myself, I was about 12 years old, and loved the game environment and atmosphere but didn’t play that much or have many friends. Completing Crota’s End solo was probably my biggest achievement, but since I had it on xbox 360, I stopped playing once the game stopped being updated. A couple of years later, I got into watching Destiny Speedruns from Redeem, Route, etc. which got me really interested in playing, but since I didn’t have the money for a next gen console and another copy of the game I never got back into D1. When D2 was announced on PC, I had recently bought one, so I convinced my parents to preorder the game, and when it was released I grinded the shit out of it, attempting to speedrun with my IRL friends. When Curse of Osiris released I became one of the highest light levels in the world really quickly, and on Indica’s stream he was asking for any high light players to do the Prestige Nightfall with. One of my friends in the chat recommended me, and we did some runs together, it was really fun. When Whisper of the Worm released, Me, Indica and Sweatcicle did some speedruns of that, which was my first speedrun record. From there it snowballed into doing more speedruns, meeting more people and lead to the group of friends we got worlds first with.

Claw: I originally played d1 because my friend introduced me to the beta just to try it, and we ended up enjoying it. Fast forward a few years and we hear news of Destiny 2 coming to PC, so we were excited to at least try that. Going into D2, I had the mindset of playing to have fun with the expectation of never even loading into a raid. We didn’t have six people and I was okay with that to be honest. However, through the big LFG discord and just meeting people that I played with along the way I started to get into watching speedruns and challenges. Eventually I ended up hearing about “levi week”, and it really all took off from there.  

What are your opinions on Stasis and it’s customization options?

Schendzie: I like the customization aspect of the stasis subclasses, and I genuinely believe that Bungie will bring more options for customization in the future. I hope that we get that freedom of choice for other subclasses as well, because I have to admit that I’m not too interested in the stasis subclasses. There are some cool movement abilities alongside stasis, but that’s basically it. The hunter and the super creating aspect is good for special finishers, not other than that there is really nothing special about Stasis. I believe that we didn’t use Stasis at all during our Raid.

Aoterra: I think it’s cool, but would want it introduced to the other subclasses as well. Stasis isn’t that useful in high level PvE so far, apart from the movement abilities for Titan and Hunter which are getting patched. Ill say it every time it happens but it really sucks when these movement abilities get patched even if they are unintended. Things like Worldline made the game incredibly fun to play, and definitely gave speedruns their identity.

Claw: I haven’t even gotten any additional unlocks on any class, so I wouldn’t say I’m the most qualified in the world to answer that. But I will say that it does a good job of ruining PvP. 

Before we get into the other million raid questions; what was your team’s preparation for the raid (can be gear, mods, weapons, grind schedule, etc.)?

Schendzie: We had a build around charging with light and warmind cells. Not everyone had rage and wrath, therefore those players really started to try to charge their teammates with perks like “powerful friends”. As far as I know none of us is a fan of low light level Raids. I definitely don’t like them at all (Schendzie’s opinion) because you basically just redo an activity that you’re already familiar with. You know different hiding spots, and you don’t need to figure out mechanics. 

Aoterra: Most of us prepared a bunch of bounties which didn’t really matter for light level anyway. We were all around 1240/50 at raid time easily. A lot of us quit during Season of Worthy so we didn’t have many warmind cell mods, but everyone had stuff like protective light which helped immensely. I prepared a few builds, phoenix well, contraverse, nezeracs, etc. a day or two before day 1 and i know Flux left it more last minute, getting his build done about 12 hours before. Even with all this prep, we only used 1 or 2 builds and 1 or 2 sets of weapons the whole raid. We never played together before as a full team of 6, I have never done a GM nightfall or low light garden or anything like that for prep. This was also Flux’s first time meeting Schendzie ever.

Claw: Pretty much what Terra and Schendzie said. I also believe that redoing already released content but “underleveled” is potentially the biggest waste of time on planet Earth, but to each their own I guess. Similar to Terra, I have never even done a GM, mainly because I really do not enjoy playing underleveled at all. I enjoy playing the game when I am familiar with exactly what is going on and methods for add clear, boss damage, etc. are completely optimized. 

Have you or your team attempted other World’s First Raids?

Schendzie: I just joined the group. Sotosolice, Flux, Siegedancers, Claw and Aoterra were doing WF attempts together since Crown of Sorrow. They placed 6th in Crown and 20th in Garden. Luminous also placed 6th in Scourge, but not everyone from our current team was in that team.
Schendzie also had his experiences with Day 1 raids. He and Siegedancers placed 5th place in Last Wish. Schendzie also joined the Day 1 team from “Euros Clan” and placed 2nd in Scourge of the Past. One person left Luminous’ day 1 team, therefore someone had to take his spot. 2 months before the Raid Claw, Aoterra and Sotosolice asked me (Schendzie) to join the team and that’s how we got together.

Aoterra: Attempted every Day 1 raid since Eater of Worlds where I placed 23rd. Spire and Wish I finished week 1 (Wish wasn’t on my own account as I was grounded and couldn’t grind my own light level up), Scourge and Crown we finished 6th place and Garden we finished 20th. Crown and Garden was the same team as now with Indica instead of Schendzie and Scourge was a different Luminous roster.

Claw: Eater of Worlds was my first “attempt” at a day one. I say “attempt” because I did it with an LFG team that we got together a few minutes after the raid was released. We managed to get 16th somehow, but Eater definitely wasn’t the “standard” day one experience. I attempted Last Wish with SiegeDancers originally, but I ended up dipping for work the next day and wasn’t in the fireteam when they got their placement of 5th. I did day one Scourge of the Past with Siege and some other friends and we finished 32nd. Crown of Sorrow was the first day one I did with Luminous and we finished 6th. Garden of Salvation was once again with Luminous but we did not do as well as we had doped and ended up finishing 20th.

How does it feel to hold a World’s First title?

Schendzie: From my own experience I can tell that I felt happy on the one hand, but on the other hand I was a little bit anxious that non Streamers got it before us. Therefore I wasn’t able to enjoy our victory when people only assumed that we got first. Aoterra’s opinion on the other hand is a prime example of how excited a player can be. (Just watch the video on Youtube. He’s the guy with the voice crack :D)

Aoterra: I still can’t believe it. Got very anxious afterwards because of waiting for the bungie announcement and trolls on twitter but we were pretty confident we had gotten first.

Claw: I had previously believed that I would never get a world’s first, and I was completely accepting of that. I’ve said to some people “I’d prefer to be good the other 364 days of the year instead of on day one.”. While that is mostly a joke, there is some truth to it. I don’t think I really have the skillset that is needed to get a world’s first, and I still believe that. My teammates kind of led the charge with me frequently reminding them “If you need me to do a mechanic tell me what to do and I’ll do it”. Regardless of what I thought/still think, we somehow managed to do it. Generally, it is a great feeling for anyone that manages to achieve world’s first, but the fact that I previously believed I would never be on a world’s first team makes it that much better. 

How confident were you going into DSC about World’s First?

Schendzie: I remember that Sotosolice was more anxious than ever going into this Raid. Destiny 2 has a lot of hackers at the moment, therefore we weren’t really expecting a fair race. Turned out that Bungie did it right, and the Raid Race didn’t suffer from hackers at all.

Aoterra: We didn’t really expect much, definitely not a confident first especially with all the hackers around, but seeing a nice big ban wave right before the raid launch was pretty funny.

Claw: I was extremely confident that we were going to place decently(out of the teams without cheaters) because I knew we had a good group of players. I think for any team it is not realistic to expect world’s first, so a decent placement is what I was hoping for. 

What’s your opinion on the Crow?

Schendzie: Crow is cool as a returning character and I like some of the hints towards the taken and the dreaming city throughout the Wrathborn hunts. Ultimately we have to see what Bungie will do with his character. If he’s just a vendor for the seasonal activity then Bungie definitely wasted a lot of potential. 

Aoterra: Not that interested in the story stuff but seeing him return as a guardian is pretty interesting.

Claw: I know next to nothing about the lore of this game, and I had to just now look up who “The Crow” was. I think the lore of Destiny is really a good aspect of the game and can be super cool for those interested, I just am not one of those people

Your group is most commonly referred to as speedrunners, what’s the biggest challenge in speed running?

Schendzie: Can’t really answer that Question. I’m not doing speeds with them because I never really were too keen about doing them. My guess would be that either Last Wish or Leviathan is the hardest Speedrun. You should 100% read through the answers from my teammate.

Aoterra: Getting past RNG can be hard, and specifically for Destiny since you have to get 6 people online at the same time, scheduling and finding a team of 6 good players can be incredibly difficult.

Claw: Pretty much what Terra said. RNG is really frustrating and scheduling around time zones and different obligations for everyone is tough. However, I think the biggest challenge of speedrunning Destiny is Bungie being Bungie. Choosing to run a live game is objectively not a good choice for speedrunners, but I enjoy running Destiny and updates with nerfs are something that we just have to deal with unfortunately. 

What was the biggest challenge presented to you during contest mode?

Schendzie: The hardest thing in a day 1 Raid is finding the mechanics. The PvE meta is pretty strong in terms of mods at the moment. Once a team has figured out the mechanics of a Raid, they should be able to execute it within the next couple of tries. 

Aoterra: Finding mechanics, the adds were pretty easy and with our builds we almost never died to adds, only mechanics.

Claw: What they said

Was the pressure on hearing/seeing updates from other streams such as Gladd or Datto?

Schendzie: A friend of mine sent me a message while we were in the Raid. He told me that a german team already reached the boss before us (about 15 minutes before us). It was worrying for surem but ultimately we catched up fairly quick and we were focused on our run. Ultimately you shouldn’t be too worried about hearing anyone else reaching the boss before you. You should solely focus on your run and try to do YOUR best. 

Aoterra: We had friends feeding us info about mechanics, and we were one of the first past the first encounter, and were behind a few teams at boss which was nerve racking, although i seem to remember we were pretty calm going into boss.

Claw: My friend was watching my stream and keeping us updated on the progress of our team compared to others. I remember only being a few minutes behind when traveling to boss, so even though we were behind I think we all knew we were at least on pace to place well, even if we thought world’s first was out of reach. Regardless of how other teams were doing, I think we all had a common goal of doing our best, so even hearing that other teams were a little bit ahead of us wasn’t demoralizing. 

What was the most challenging part of the Deep Stone Crypt?

Schendzie: During the first day of the Raid it was Atraks-1. I believe that most groups will agree on that! Swording wasn’t really an option which caused very bad dps phases. We failed the final stand once and we got it on our second try. 

Aoterra: Atraks-1, figuring out the damage mechanic and getting to final stand.

Claw: What they said. On top of that, just final stand mechanics in general. For DSC we wiped at each of the encounters that had a final stand(Atraks and final boss), and just in general there is normally a change of pace compared to the actual encounter and on day one when you aren’t expecting it, it can be tough.

What did the team think of the difficulty of the raid overall?

Schendzie: The raid experience on the first day was really cool. Overall the raid isn’t too hard after “contest” is gone. Bosses can easily be one phased now and the Raid doesn’t seem to be too challenging anymore.

Aoterra: loved the raid with contest, but the adds were REALLY easy.

Claw: It was definitely one of the “easier” day ones, but I really liked that about it. As I said before, I don’t really enjoy playing underleveled and this level of difficulty on day one was just right for me. I am aware that is a very unpopular opinion when compared to other players that have done well on past day ones, but whatever.

Anything they thought was too easy, too hard on day 1?

Schendzie: Atraks-1 was tough because we used Xenophage for consistent damage. We don’t have heavy finishers anymore, so in some tries we simply ran out of ammo. The ammo situation was pretty bad, therefore it made a fight as long as this one pretty tough. 

Aoterra: loved the raid with contest, but the adds were REALLY easy. Don’t think anything was too hard at all.

Claw: I enjoyed the difficulty of it. A lot of people liked that it was a bit easier than other raid releases, and A lot of people disliked that. Personally, I don’t think anything was too easy or too hard.

How would you rank DSC as a raid?

Schendzie: I definitely see this raid in the top 5. Time will tell if the replayability is there. Nonetheless I’d still rate Last Wish and Wrath of the Machine higher than DSC, and I assume that my teammates would rank Leviathan in their top 5.

Aoterra: Top 5 with Wish, Levi and Spire for me.

Claw: As a day one experience, DSC has been my favorite. As for speedruns and replayability going forward, only time will tell.

Who was the MVP of your fireteam?

Schendzie: We all played well on that day. Everyone had his own role to play, therefore you can’t really judge if someone did do better than others. I had my contribution by not hesitating to bring out the Divinity, and my teammates obviously DESTROYED that boss. Sotosolice was especially good at finding out the mechanics, and all of my teammates executed the strategy flawlessly. After all I’m more than happy that I got to do the Raid with them. 

Aoterra: All of us. Everyone figured out something or had some strat that completed the encounter.

Claw: Pretty much what they said. Every single person had positive ideas to contribute and executed their jobs wonderfully. 

After your completion of the raid, other players stepped out saying they had beaten it before you, but hadn’t streamed it. Was this discouraging to your team?

Schendzie: We knew that it was a hoax. We haven’t received any kinds of evidence from those people.

Aoterra: Obviously was fake but couldn’t help being a bit nervous. There wasnt any solid evidence from anyone else so I was pretty confident.

Claw: Those people claiming they did it first really didn’t negatively affect us, but they definitely kept our emotions in check, which may not have been a bad thing looking back at it.

Who was the first person you told after you got Worlds First, if any?

Schendzie: All of my online friends play Destiny 2, therefore didn’t have to tell anyone what we just achieved. Other than that I told some of my IRL friends what happened, but they weren’t really able to understand the scale of what we achieved.

Aoterra: my IRL friends group chat, since everyone else i knew would have been watching or knew already

Claw: Same thing that they said. Everyone that understands what “World’s First” means already knew, so I told some IRL friends but obviously they didn’t fully understand what I was talking about.

Any advice for a fireteam getting frustrated from being stuck on an encounter?

Schendzie: Take a short break, theorize the encounter. If something is not working, it’s either the loadout or the mentality of the team. 

Aoterra: What schendzie said.

Claw: Talk through it. Everyone on the team explain what they saw and try to make sense of what was going on. If you have to just guess at what you should do in attempts to learn more about the encounter then do that. 

Do you have a message for players who have called your fireteam cheaters?

Schendzie: People called my teammates cheaters because they were going out of map in their speedruns. I genuinely don’t understand why they call them cheaters. What is the correlation between Leviathan & Last Wish speedruns and a Day 1 DSC Raid ? Speedrunning is about studying the Raid to an extent where you basically know everything about every encounter. The DSC just opened so we didn’t know what to do at all. ( Just like every other person in the world.)

Aoterra: lol stay mad

Claw: What Schendzie said. On top of that, a large portion of the people saying we cheated were probably only saying that because they heard it from someone else and did not genuinely believe that. 

What was your opinion on sun setting?

Schendzie: I’m sad that some weapons are gone, but ultimately I don’t care too much about sun setting. Bungie proved that they are able to give us top tier PvE weapons with every expansion. People were mad that we can’t use the Recluse anymore, but IMO the seraph weapons and warmind cell combinations are 100 times better than Recluse ever was.

Aoterra: Good idea bad execution, although a lot better with seraph weapons and such returning to the loot pool.

Claw: Sunsetting will only ever be as good as Bungie allows it to be. If we really can get quality weapons every year, then sunsetting will definitely not be a bad thing.

What has been your favorite Destiny experience so far?

Schendzie: World’s first DSC 

Aoterra: World’s first DSC

Claw: If I had to pick one specific instance, then I kind of have to pick getting World’s First. In general, speedrunning Last Wish.

Do you or any of your fireteam have anything big planned for the near future?

Schendzie: I wanna focus on my education. I don’t know about the rest, but I assume that Luminous is going to attempt to get another WF title.

Aoterra: Me, Soto and Claw will def be doing speeds and I think the whole team will be going for the next WF

Claw: Just kinda living life. Idfk.

Working with these three guardians was amazing. The trio were super kind and eager to communicate to the community. I hope this answers any questions you had regarding Luminous and their World’s First title. If you aren’t already following them, links to their twitter accounts will be below.

Wanted to wait for the confirmation to tweet some sappy shit like this

My teammates did pretty much all the work with the buffs and mechanics while I just did my own thing. They did such a fucking good job and I Couldn't have asked for better teammates and friends to play with<3

— Claw (@Clawtivityy) November 23, 2020

? https://t.co/ImPKR3INkc

— Schendzie (@Schendzie_) November 22, 2020

Why did my body decide that world's first would be the time that I would completely lose my voice and my desktop audio would be quieter than a mouse man

— Aoterra ?? (@A0TERRA) November 22, 2020

Afterword: This article would not be possible without the numerous people in the community who sent in questions, or helped me filter the real from fake questions. So I’d like to give a few special shoutouts to the House of Salvation discord and their admin Zraksis, my Destiny clan Teal Team Six, & to those in the Destiny News Hub discord who sent me in questions. Thank you all very much. 

Image Source: No Better Lane