Season of the Chosen is here, and the new Battlegrounds playlist activity is pretty strong. These short missions have clearly evolved from Beyond Light's Empire Hunts, and while they're a similar experience, I've found they're paced a lot better with just three short encounters and especially chaotic actions. I think I'm going to enjoy grinding these Battlegrounds out for hammer charges throughout Season 13, but there's one thing I've already have enough of — getting crushed over and over by the god damn Cabal drop pods.
An ill-timed drop pod assassination is a rite of passage for Destiny players. I'd be lying if I said I didn't laugh just about every time someone on my fireteam gets one hit KO'ed by an errant pod. It's so sudden and unpredictable that, once you're over the shock, you really can't help but smile at the absurdity of being crushed like the Wicked Witch of the East.
Normally, there aren't really any consequences to getting molly-whopped by a drop pod. If one lands on you during a Cabal Excavation public event, you'll just respawn nearby a few seconds later, no harm done. Battlegrounds raise the stakes ever so slightly, but it's enough to turn my ambivalence about it into a seething rage. A certain non-compulsory, completely optional triumph requires you to complete Battlegrounds activities without dying. I like completing triumphs. I think I'll skip this one.
I'm a big fan of triumphs. Particularly towards the end of the season when I've done everything else, I really enjoy checking triumphs off the list and challenging myself to do things just for the sake of accomplishment. At a certain point, it becomes very difficult to raise your power level, that's typically when I start focusing on raising my triumph score instead. I already have over 10,000 triumph points in Beyond Light, including more than one flawless triumph. I don't think Proven, the triumph for going flawless in Battlegrounds, is even necessarily harder than other flawless triumphs I've earned. I'm just not going to do it because, frankly, it feels pretty unfair.
One of the signatures of the new Battlegrounds activities is just how chaotic and fast-paced they are. To really sell the idea that each encounter takes place in a hotly contested battleground, the game throws an absurd number of enemies at you. In the first couple encounters, especially in Behemoth, it isn't that hard to avoid the drop pods. The Cabal seem to only spawn in a couple of areas, so if you focus on staying centered or near the destructible generators (which are a hazard by themselves), it really isn't that hard to avoid getting crushed. By the time you're facing off against the boss, however, you don't have the luxury of staying put. You have to keep moving around the battlefield because the Cabal can easily surround you if you aren't careful. This makes it really easy to get struck by a fast-moving drop pod, even if you're actively trying to avoid them.
Did I mention you have to go flawless seven times to earn the Proven triumph? No thank you. It's possible I'll earn Proven by accident after I've done the same Battlegrounds missions a few hundred times, but I don't think I'll be actively pursuing this achievement. I'd much rather laugh at myself when I get pancaked like a Looney Tune instead of rage about it because it has just robbed me of a triumph.
I'm lying of course. I'm going to spend multiple agonizing days going after the triumph for no reason other than to make myself miserable. I'm a Destiny 2 player, what else would you expect?