A seemingly harmless exploit in Destiny has players cashing in on stuff—and having a heck of a good time doing it.
As a prelude to today’s House of Wolves of expansion that largely revolves around a new area called the Reef, Bungie on Friday began a Queen’s Wrath event in which players hunted down Fallen leaders on Earth, the Moon, and Venus.
When each target was killed, everyone who participated in the fight received an Ether Key, which then opened a special chest that contained House of Wolves items among other things.
Destiny players figured out how to game the system and tap each chest twice, by flitting between different zones to reset the chest. Usually this involved riding a Sparrow, Destiny’s primary player vehicle, on speed races to zone borders.
The method worked like a charm.
Technically this was an exploit, unless Bungie intended things to work this way, which is very doubtful. If this Queen’s Wrath event continues, Bungie will likely patch the exploit. A group of players on the Destiny subreddit, however, are making a case for why this exploit turned into some of the best social content in the game
Pursuit of this exploit made the world feel populated and alive. Running into other Guardians in the Tower—Destiny’s primary social space (up until the new expansion, which adds the Reef as a new social space)—isn’t the same as actively cooperating with others toward a common goal, like during the public events that occur while players are on patrol.
Public events are tough to predict as a source of dependable, community-minded content. The best solution to the problem Destiny players have managed to concoct is destinypublicevents.com, which is still only a series of best guesses.
The Queens Wrath bounties paired with the “double-dip” chest exploit gave Destiny players a constant source of companionship and cooperation with total strangers, and the positive community feedback along these lines might give Bungie some useful ideas on how to further grow the game.
Screengrab via destinygame/YouTube