The Gunsmith changed the paradigm. Earning rep with the Gunsmith allows you to earn Exotics - that's absolutely new, and no other vendor has matched that. (I suppose you could say that the PoE Elder Ciphers are technically 'Exotics you can earn through ranking up with Variks'... but there's so much more involved in getting those that Variks is almost an afterthought.)

There is no indication, anywhere, that the paradigm shifted.

Every faction offers an exotic, which can be obtained by reaching a high rank and completing the quest given to you. Granted it is a useless class item, but it is an exotic.

Yeah, that was pointed out to me later in the thread. Since I'm no higher than 8 in ANY faction, that's not something I'm gonna find out for myself for quite some time.

So, if you didn't know you needed to get all the fragments, the game doesn't tell you that. You have a questline that gives you no new step and just "ends" with no reward. You'd never continue it if you didn't decide to collect all the fragments or hadn't heard about it.

When you look at the map of the Dreadnought, it says you have X/50 fragments collected, just like the golden chests. Collecting is part of the discovery of the quest.

The Gunsmith changed the paradigm. Earning rep with the Gunsmith allows you to earn Exotics - that's absolutely new, and no other vendor has matched that. (I suppose you could say that the PoE Elder Ciphers are technically 'Exotics you can earn through ranking up with Variks'... but there's so much more involved in getting those that Variks is almost an afterthought.)

There is no indication, anywhere, that the paradigm shifted.

Every faction offers an exotic, which can be obtained by reaching a high rank and completing the quest given to you. Granted it is a useless class item, but it is an exotic.

You ONLY rank up the factions you're allied with. In Year 1, for me, that was ONLY Vanguard - because I didn't see anything useful come out of DO, or NM, or FWC. (If you didn't wear their marks, you didn't get rep for them.) Every level, I got motes and some crappy armor - not enough motes to care about, armor that became parts as fast as I could hold the button.

You... really?! You didn't look at the vendor armors or weapons from the various factions and see even 1 that you wanted enough to rank up to rank 3 with that faction? Really? Some of the vendor weapons were really, really good (Vanquisher VIII comes to mind). But even if you really did only vanguard and crucible rep, you're still getting the reward packages. There's still tangible evidence that ranking up your rep with a faction gets you something.

Did you ignore Eris rep? Or Queen's guard rep? Variks rep? All of these things lay out that at least up to rank 3 there are rewards to buy. Every faction but the gunsmith shows that, so inferring that maybe you get something at rank 3 of the gunsmith is a pretty easy step to take.

It's as though you're reading half of my posts, and ignoring the other half.

I NOTICED that you get stuff. I DECIDED, after a lot of experience (I'm over rank 40 in Vanguard now) that what they give you is crap - I sharded almost ALL of it.

The Gunsmith changed the paradigm. Earning rep with the Gunsmith allows you to earn Exotics - that's absolutely new, and no other vendor has matched that. (I suppose you could say that the PoE Elder Ciphers are technically 'Exotics you can earn through ranking up with Variks'... but there's so much more involved in getting those that Variks is almost an afterthought.)

There is no indication, anywhere, that the paradigm shifted. Why would I continue to work for things that bore me, if nobody says "well, the paradigm shifted, and now you can earn things that don't bore you - but only with this one new guy you didn't rank up with before"?

I NEVER got a godly roll on a gun - I don't think I even realized you could get non-standard rolls on rank-up packages.

You should have realized on your first gun that the roll wasn't standardized, and certainly by gun five. I'm genuinely surprised you never noticed.

::shrug::

Until TTK dropped, and I got to test out 'Old Guard', I NEVER (not once) saw a shader that made me say more than 'meh'. Ships? They're almost all the same. I use Green ships on my characters now, because they're the cleanest.

But you saw shaders. You saw ships. You knew there were rewards from those factions beyond simply what was shown on their vendor list.

But... once again, and more clearly... THOSE THINGS DON'T REALLY MATTER TO ME. (They clearly matter to you, and to others. But I couldn't care less what ship I'm flying in, and my idea of the perfect color scheme is no color at all.)

I'm no longer speaking for Mono - this is MY experience. I play way more than he does - I have over a thousand hours of playtime in on this game. And when TTK dropped, and I saw you could get Gunsmith rep by trying out guns there, I did that. And it sucked. So I didn't do it again. For WEEKS.

Again, I'm just really surprised that you didn't even hit rank 2 to get the very first weapon quest. One set of 5 guns is 1250 rep, plus 1000 rep from the four Dvalin drops... You'd only need 3 more test guns to hit rank 2.

Yep. They probably planned it that way. "Hey, if we make the second rank gettable just from doing the first week's stuff, things won't last long enough." I did a week's worth of stuff, saw no benefit, went out and did stuff that was fun, instead.

I only went back because someone said "hey, you're never going to be able to get these guns without ranking up with the Gunsmith."

It never occurred to me that the Gunsmith, unlike every other NPC vendor in the game, had actual EXOTICS I could get, by doing these boring tests. Nothing I'd done to that point suggested that might be a mechanic. Not sure why you think that's obvious - it wasn't, at all, to me.

Each faction rep has a quest for an exotic piece of faction armor which becomes available at rank 25, so it's not just the Gunsmith.

See? There's something I had no idea about UNTIL JUST NOW. Nobody ever told me that - including the faction rep guys I talk to regularly these days (I rank up now because DO's weapons are suddently fun for me, something that wasn't true in year 1.)

I'm 20 levels away from that, though, so who knows if I'll ever see it?

I'm just really surprised that after all that time in-game you seem to have missed one of the best paths to item upgrades available to you, and to have done so willfully. I really feel like the signposts are in the game to point you towards repping up as a means of garnering rewards.

And that just shows how easy it is to misunderstand how others see the game you're playing.

Each faction rep has a quest for an exotic piece of faction armor which becomes available at rank 25, so it's not just the Gunsmith.

Which is another thing that kinda sucks. Like, I get that people that have played from the beginning don't have to worry about hitting rank 25 with a faction. My highest rank is Dead Orbit at rank 9, Vanguard is at Rank 8. It's going to take me ages to get to 25 with anything. So whatever, I guess it'll be a nice surprise when I get there, if I even get it while it's still relevant.

You ONLY rank up the factions you're allied with. In Year 1, for me, that was ONLY Vanguard - because I didn't see anything useful come out of DO, or NM, or FWC. (If you didn't wear their marks, you didn't get rep for them.) Every level, I got motes and some crappy armor - not enough motes to care about, armor that became parts as fast as I could hold the button.

You... really?! You didn't look at the vendor armors or weapons from the various factions and see even 1 that you wanted enough to rank up to rank 3 with that faction? Really? Some of the vendor weapons were really, really good (Vanquisher VIII comes to mind). But even if you really did only vanguard and crucible rep, you're still getting the reward packages. There's still tangible evidence that ranking up your rep with a faction gets you something.

Did you ignore Eris rep? Or Queen's guard rep? Variks rep? All of these things lay out that at least up to rank 3 there are rewards to buy. Every faction but the gunsmith shows that, so inferring that maybe you get something at rank 3 of the gunsmith is a pretty easy step to take.

I NEVER got a godly roll on a gun - I don't think I even realized you could get non-standard rolls on rank-up packages.

You should have realized on your first gun that the roll wasn't standardized, and certainly by gun five. I'm genuinely surprised you never noticed.

Until TTK dropped, and I got to test out 'Old Guard', I NEVER (not once) saw a shader that made me say more than 'meh'. Ships? They're almost all the same. I use Green ships on my characters now, because they're the cleanest.

But you saw shaders. You saw ships. You knew there were rewards from those factions beyond simply what was shown on their vendor list.

I'm no longer speaking for Mono - this is MY experience. I play way more than he does - I have over a thousand hours of playtime in on this game. And when TTK dropped, and I saw you could get Gunsmith rep by trying out guns there, I did that. And it sucked. So I didn't do it again. For WEEKS.

Again, I'm just really surprised that you didn't even hit rank 2 to get the very first weapon quest. One set of 5 guns is 1250 rep, plus 1000 rep from the four Dvalin drops... You'd only need 3 more test guns to hit rank 2.

I only went back because someone said "hey, you're never going to be able to get these guns without ranking up with the Gunsmith."

It never occurred to me that the Gunsmith, unlike every other NPC vendor in the game, had actual EXOTICS I could get, by doing these boring tests. Nothing I'd done to that point suggested that might be a mechanic. Not sure why you think that's obvious - it wasn't, at all, to me.

Each faction rep has a quest for an exotic piece of faction armor which becomes available at rank 25, so it's not just the Gunsmith.

I'm just really surprised that after all that time in-game you seem to have missed one of the best paths to item upgrades available to you, and to have done so willfully. I really feel like the signposts are in the game to point you towards repping up as a means of garnering rewards.

Wow, you read a lot into his posts that I'm not seeing.

Instead of seeing it as that laziness-inspired last line of your post, how about "wow, there are so many different things to do that are undocumented - wouldn't it be nice if something told me which quests end at Exotics and which ones end at 220 Ghosts without my having to spend a week on the internet, researching?"

I mean, you could spend that week playing the game, doing those quests, and finding out for yourself. It's like he wants to know the answers before he even asks the questions.

I had no clue at all that ranking up with the Gunsmith was worth doing until someone told me it was. I'd been trained, over the course of a year, by Bungie themselves, that ranking up a vendor got me stuff I didn't really want (vendor-rolled weapons in year 1 were generally crap compared to what I was getting in the field; I can't remember a SINGLE GUN I used for any length of time that I got from a vendor). Now, TTK comes along, and completely changes that paradigm... but doesn't really tell me about it. (Doing quests for the Vanguard still gets me low-light-leveled stuff - I shard 95% of it.) How hard would it be for them to add, say, a line to one of the bot janitors to the effect of "hey, have you visited the gunsmith recently? He's got some good stuff these days!"

How exactly do you go about not ranking up your factions? You can't.

You ONLY rank up the factions you're allied with. In Year 1, for me, that was ONLY Vanguard - because I didn't see anything useful come out of DO, or NM, or FWC. (If you didn't wear their marks, you didn't get rep for them.) Every level, I got motes and some crappy armor - not enough motes to care about, armor that became parts as fast as I could hold the button.

I NEVER got a godly roll on a gun - I don't think I even realized you could get non-standard rolls on rank-up packages. Until TTK dropped, and I got to test out 'Old Guard', I NEVER (not once) saw a shader that made me say more than 'meh'. Ships? They're almost all the same. I use Green ships on my characters now, because they're the cleanest.

I'm no longer speaking for Mono - this is MY experience. I play way more than he does - I have over a thousand hours of playtime in on this game. And when TTK dropped, and I saw you could get Gunsmith rep by trying out guns there, I did that. And it sucked. So I didn't do it again. For WEEKS.

I only went back because someone said "hey, you're never going to be able to get these guns without ranking up with the Gunsmith."

It never occurred to me that the Gunsmith, unlike every other NPC vendor in the game, had actual EXOTICS I could get, by doing these boring tests. Nothing I'd done to that point suggested that might be a mechanic. Not sure why you think that's obvious - it wasn't, at all, to me.

Wow, you read a lot into his posts that I'm not seeing.

Instead of seeing it as that laziness-inspired last line of your post, how about "wow, there are so many different things to do that are undocumented - wouldn't it be nice if something told me which quests end at Exotics and which ones end at 220 Ghosts without my having to spend a week on the internet, researching?"

I mean, you could spend that week playing the game, doing those quests, and finding out for yourself. It's like he wants to know the answers before he even asks the questions.

I had no clue at all that ranking up with the Gunsmith was worth doing until someone told me it was. I'd been trained, over the course of a year, by Bungie themselves, that ranking up a vendor got me stuff I didn't really want (vendor-rolled weapons in year 1 were generally crap compared to what I was getting in the field; I can't remember a SINGLE GUN I used for any length of time that I got from a vendor). Now, TTK comes along, and completely changes that paradigm... but doesn't really tell me about it. (Doing quests for the Vanguard still gets me low-light-leveled stuff - I shard 95% of it.) How hard would it be for them to add, say, a line to one of the bot janitors to the effect of "hey, have you visited the gunsmith recently? He's got some good stuff these days!"

How exactly do you go about not ranking up your factions? You can't. Everything you do in this game increases your rep for one faction or another. For me the faction packages were always bonuses: free legendary with a chance for a godly roll! Maybe a shader! Possible spaceship! (full disclosure: I haven't gotten a spaceship yet). I actually got an emblem from the Gunsmith yesterday (rank 6 package, I got a green emblem. I think it's one eva lavonte sells normally though). At the very least you would know that you need to be rank 3 with the factions to buy their gear, or to buy the spaceship from the Queen's guard, and that gunsmith rank 1 lets you buy an armsday gun, so why do the bare minimum? Why not see what rank 2 gets you? It's fun to rep up anyway.

And that line of text you're asking for pretty much is in the game. If you go to your quests tab and mouse over a reputation, it says straight up to increase reputation to receive rewards.

my point is that there are already incentives in the game to do pretty much all of the stuff you need to do to get the quests for the majority of the guns he wants, with only those 3 "mystery" guns which actually are obscure enough that most people would have to look up how to get them (I know I did), only one of which is a really good gun. So they don't expressly say "this is how you get exotic X." So what? If you never did research, you'd never know exotic X existed in the first place, or at least wouldn't know that it was a quest reward and not a random drop from Nightfalls. Play the game and have fun. The loot will come.

Sorry, I honestly wasn't sure if you were trolling me or not. I'm still not sure.

It really sounds like you want all the shinies but don't want to actually play the game, which is how most of the shinies are unlocked. You say you're out of quests, but there is so much more to do in the game that you're ignoring. The Gunsmith, for example, has 5 guns each week which you can field test for rep. Why aren't you doing that? Is it literally because there's not a quest telling you that you have to?

I'll back up. Here's my real problem with what you're saying: You want the guns *now* but without doing research about how to get them. You are ignoring the fact that, in most of these situations, you would eventually have gotten the guns by accident, just through casual play or in the pursuit of other objectives. As you, yourself, said - you're being lazy.

Look at Boolean Gemini. You need rank 3 with the Queen to get it. Even if you don't know that and the game never tells you that, the game makes it really clear that you also need to be rank 3 to get that sweet spaceship that Petra Venj is selling. There's an incentive to reach rank 3. There are bounties for Petra that you can do to get that rank. Clear path with carrot at the end. And oh wow you get an exotic too?! Bonus.

No research is needed. At all. I don't feel that you have any right to complain that you deserve the rewards without playing the game first, nor is it fair to complain that you needed to do research to get the gun when, in fact, all you needed to do was play the game for the rewards it did show you.

Your stance seems to be "I haven't played the game much at all but I should have all the guns" and that feels really hypocritical to me.

Wow, you read a lot into his posts that I'm not seeing.

Instead of seeing it as that laziness-inspired last line of your post, how about "wow, there are so many different things to do that are undocumented - wouldn't it be nice if something told me which quests end at Exotics and which ones end at 220 Ghosts without my having to spend a week on the internet, researching?"

I had no clue at all that ranking up with the Gunsmith was worth doing until someone told me it was. I'd been trained, over the course of a year, by Bungie themselves, that ranking up a vendor got me stuff I didn't really want (vendor-rolled weapons in year 1 were generally crap compared to what I was getting in the field; I can't remember a SINGLE GUN I used for any length of time that I got from a vendor). Now, TTK comes along, and completely changes that paradigm... but doesn't really tell me about it. (Doing quests for the Vanguard still gets me low-light-leveled stuff - I shard 95% of it.) How hard would it be for them to add, say, a line to one of the bot janitors to the effect of "hey, have you visited the gunsmith recently? He's got some good stuff these days!"

It really sounds like you want all the shinies but don't want to actually play the game, which is how most of the shinies are unlocked. You say you're out of quests, but there is so much more to do in the game that you're ignoring. The Gunsmith, for example, has 5 guns each week which you can field test for rep. Why aren't you doing that? Is it literally because there's not a quest telling you that you have to?

I'll back up. Here's my real problem with what you're saying: You want the guns *now* but without doing research about how to get them. You are ignoring the fact that, in most of these situations, you would eventually have gotten the guns by accident, just through casual play or in the pursuit of other objectives. As you, yourself, said - you're being lazy.

Look at Boolean Gemini. You need rank 3 with the Queen to get it. Even if you don't know that and the game never tells you that, the game makes it really clear that you also need to be rank 3 to get that sweet spaceship that Petra Venj is selling. There's an incentive to reach rank 3. There are bounties for Petra that you can do to get that rank. Clear path with carrot at the end. And oh wow you get an exotic too?! Bonus.

No research is needed. At all. I don't feel that you have any right to complain that you deserve the rewards without playing the game first, nor is it fair to complain that you needed to do research to get the gun when, in fact, all you needed to do was play the game for the rewards it did show you.

Your stance seems to be "I haven't played the game much at all but I should have all the guns" and that feels really hypocritical to me.

Not every one of these quests is available to you right at the very start of TTK, but some are, with others becoming available as you complete certain missions or content. So for most of these guns, there is no research that you need to do. Just complete quests as they are made available to you and you'll get almost all of the new toys.

Yeah I see your point. This one has the added hidden requirement of getting rep up with a particular faction, one that I never really had a reason to get up. Without going online here (or doing more than a cursory search of the steps online) I never would have realized why I didn't get the gun when I completed the quests that were available.

Rank 5, Rank 5, Rank 4.

Remember this is QUEEN'S WRATH, NOT House of Judgement.

Hmm, I can't view your quests, but I believe you. What rank are you with Queen's Wrath? I don't know for sure that's required but it may be.

2, so that could certainly be it. Thanks for letting me know, I might put some time into leveling that up, it looks like an interesting gun.

My Titan is rank 1, but I can still pick up the quest with her.

You have to be rank 3 to receive the gun, but the quest shows up even if you are not rank 3. According to reports on the Interwebs even if you completed Petra and Varik's quests already and weren't rank 3 when you hit rank 3 you'll get the gun.

(The quests for Monochron's information were the Taken War quests from Petra, Lost and Found and the Wolves of Mars questlines).

I don't think any of my characters are up to rank 3 with Petra, and I got the Gemini as soon as I finished the quest.

Hmm, I can't view your quests, but I believe you. What rank are you with Queen's Wrath? I don't know for sure that's required but it may be.

2, so that could certainly be it. Thanks for letting me know, I might put some time into leveling that up, it looks like an interesting gun.

My Titan is rank 1, but I can still pick up the quest with her.

Okay so that's not it. Well if nothing else, this is doing a great job of proving my point haha.

What quest is it that you pick up? (At this point I am perfectly willing to actually look this stuff up, it is just that my work internet filter is stupidly restrictive and almost all gaming site are blocked...)

I'm not sure about that :)

What people are pointing out here is that the Gemini, like most new TTK exotic weapons, is handed to you upon completing a quest line. Not every one of these quests is available to you right at the very start of TTK, but some are, with others becoming available as you complete certain missions or content. So for most of these guns, there is no research that you need to do. Just complete quests as they are made available to you and you'll get almost all of the new toys.

Did I miss any? I'd say only ToM, Black Spindle, and NTtE actually required research at all.

I'm trying to think of where any research was needed for Touch of Malice, actually. I can't think of a single part of the quest line that wasn't spelled out for us. The only thing that I can see needing research is the location of all of the fragments, but if you're the type who enjoys exploring, they're all there to be found with relatively little effort.

I could be completely missing something, though. It's been a few weeks since I went through it and I've missed a lot of sleep since then :p

-Disciple

So, if you didn't know you needed to get all the fragments, the game doesn't tell you that. You have a questline that gives you no new step and just "ends" with no reward. You'd never continue it if you didn't decide to collect all the fragments or hadn't heard about it.

I have been using all my Hadium flakes on other things and not saving them. So if I build up enough of them a new Quest will just appear at Eris? That's really simple.

It's not the Hadium Flakes that trigger the quest, it's the Calcified Fragments. You'll still want to hang onto those flakes, though.

-Disciple

My Titan is rank 1, but I can still pick up the quest with her.

You have to be rank 3 to receive the gun, but the quest shows up even if you are not rank 3. According to reports on the Interwebs even if you completed Petra and Varik's quests already and weren't rank 3 when you hit rank 3 you'll get the gun.

(The quests for Monochron's information were the Taken War quests from Petra, Lost and Found and the Wolves of Mars questlines).

Oh okay, yeah I definitely did those quests (killed some wolves on Mars, fought that tank), they were a ton of fun. Thanks for clearing up the fog man, us lowly rank 2's working in the salt mines appreciate it :D

Hmm, I can't view your quests, but I believe you. What rank are you with Queen's Wrath? I don't know for sure that's required but it may be.

2, so that could certainly be it. Thanks for letting me know, I might put some time into leveling that up, it looks like an interesting gun.

My Titan is rank 1, but I can still pick up the quest with her.

You have to be rank 3 to receive the gun, but the quest shows up even if you are not rank 3. According to reports on the Interwebs even if you completed Petra and Varik's quests already and weren't rank 3 when you hit rank 3 you'll get the gun.

(The quests for Monochron's information were the Taken War quests from Petra, Lost and Found and the Wolves of Mars questlines).

Did I miss any? I'd say only ToM, Black Spindle, and NTtE actually required research at all.

I'm trying to think of where any research was needed for Touch of Malice, actually. I can't think of a single part of the quest line that wasn't spelled out for us. The only thing that I can see needing research is the location of all of the fragments, but if you're the type who enjoys exploring, they're all there to be found with relatively little effort.

I could be completely missing something, though. It's been a few weeks since I went through it and I've missed a lot of sleep since then :p

-Disciple

So, if you didn't know you needed to get all the fragments, the game doesn't tell you that. You have a questline that gives you no new step and just "ends" with no reward. You'd never continue it if you didn't decide to collect all the fragments or hadn't heard about it.

I have been using all my Hadium flakes on other things and not saving them. So if I build up enough of them a new Quest will just appear at Eris? That's really simple.