With Beyond Light delayed until November, we got another year of the Haunted Infinite Forest, which is basically a cut and paste event from the last few years. Good or bad? Probably average. But what I didn’t expect was for this to become even more grindy, thanks to having to farm Cipher Decoders in order to open 45 chests in at least 9 complete runs of the Haunted Forest.
It came as no surprise to anyone that the one thing that needed to be on point was the drop rate of the cipher decoders. They can drop from any activity, but the rate was extremely low. After many complaints, and some hot fixes, they ended up dropping more frequently. Still, it was mind numbingly boring farming them, as the most efficient way to farm them was to complete patrols on the Moon. Or speedrun the same nightmare hunt (Skolas). Over and over again. You have to get 45 ciphers to get the final triumph which rewards a strange collectible called an ascendant lens. But you can only hold 25 ciphers at one time.
The ongoing rumor is that this collectible could be tied to a future exotic to be released next season. It definitely sounds possible. The cipher grind was boring and repetitive. I did one batch of 25. Then ran the Forest. Then farmed some more ciphers.
The way that the ciphers work is that they can potentially drop Horror Story (FotL 2018) and Braytech Werewolf (FotL 2019). Once you’ve gotten a random roll, you can pull out the curated version from collections (masterworked, zen moment/rampage zen moment/multi kill clip). The rolls are good, but honestly, the random rolls are tedious to obtain. I’m not seriously farming them. They’re 450 rpm ARs and might eventually get buffed, but I’m content with the rolls I have. This year, if you clear 7 branches, you can earn a pinnacle drop, which is a lot easier than last year’s 11 or so.
In between that, I finished my MMXX seal, farmed Tarrabah (11 runs) and Anarchy (6 runs since June) successfully. I missed the eye of Savathun on rainbow road in the Prophecy dungeon, so I had to run the whole thing again with a friend. I main hunter, but I ran warlock and he did the opposite. He mains warlock but ran hunter. We also did 3 Pitt of Heresy runs, and 3 Prophecy runs. But we do that every week.
That final eye was the last one I needed to get the Forerunner seal. I tried to do some Wayfarer grinding, but it got tedious tbh. I’ve got until the end of the season to finish a few quests, including Lumina.
The cosmetics to earn are a mummy themed ghost, sparrow and ship. They’re OK, I guess. I haven’t taken off Thousand Wings since I masterworked Whisper. The ornaments on sale are OK. I only liked the hunter one, but I got last year’s Titan ornament. It looks cool, but the helmet takes shaders weirdly.
All in all, it’s been a good season, but slightly too long. Many people have gotten burned out from playing and are taking breaks. I’m glad I got to do all of the raids that are available. I haven’t done prestige EoW and SoS for the Telesto and Sleeper catalysts.
Until the end of the season, I got a few things to do. I’ll mainly try to do the Prophecy dungeon solo flawlessly, since it’s going away for at least a season at the end of S11. There’s still the in game event, which will probably happen in the last week of the season.
memoirs on a rainy day 
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