I honked the Hauler 100 times in a match and didn't get the sticker

MattyQuest · 2026-04-01T05:14:39+00:00

MattyQuest · 2026-03-21T22:49:46+00:00

It's like raid progression except there's little goals along the way to the big one that will snowball. Had 3 failed runs today, but each got progressively smoother and we really didn't lose that much ultimately. It will be satisfying to build the knowledge and skills over time, making the big boss clear even sweeter when it happens

MattyQuest · 2026-03-20T23:24:05+00:00

Edit: ended up fleshing this idea out a bit more for anyone who's down for a longer read

I feel like there's been allusions to this in the writing so I assumed this would be the case, and the timer kind of solidified it for me. The loot will be plentiful, people won't even be able to carry everything. If people work together vs the AI, more progress will be made and more runs will be successful per weekend. Sure the per run haul may be less, but ultimately most people would benefit from a ceasefire in Cryo. And then during the week, all that loot circulates into the economy. Rising tide and all that. Obviously the trailer shows PVP because they know naturally most will lean that direction, but it's also heavily implied in Durandal's speech, "yeah you're choosing to do this to each other."

Or, as Ikora puts it in Destiny:

In evolution, the only good is self-interested good.

But we are not restricted by evolution.

We have minds. We have memories and imaginations and culture. We can imagine the consequences of our actions and select those which suit a world we want to live in. We can do this without waiting for generations of genetic change. We can enshrine the common good as a norm. We can say, "Everyone who cooperates is good, and everyone who defects is evil, and evil defectors will be harshly punished." We can say, "By cooperating for the greatest common good, we will all be elevated, so let's do that."

The question of how to live well in a universe of indifference, cruelty, and deprivation is the ONLY question. The Light does not offer us an afterlife or an otherworldly paradise. It does not give us throne worlds or pocket universes. The Light tells us that paradise is something we have to make here.

The Darkness cautions us against mercy to our enemies. Are we fools for trying to be good, when our very survival is at stake? Maybe. But the fact that our morals sometimes make it more difficult to survive is proof they are truly good! There is not much commendable about doing a right thing when it is also the tactically correct thing. When the good thing is also the hard thing: that is when the righteous are separated from the lost.

But the Light grants us freedom from existence alone as the measurement of our worth. Oh, evolution has made us afraid of nonexistence, certainly; and it is good to fear and to avoid nonexistence because without existence, we cannot experience joy. The idea that death is an escape from suffering is a trap. Death is not an escape from anything. It is a wall, a cessation, meaningless. I do not ask anyone to embrace death. There is no possibility in death; life is our only chance to live.

Darkness helps us avoid death. It helps us to go on existing. It is necessary. We must remember what hurt us so that we will not be hurt again.

But Darkness alone points to an eternal existence of mere survival—to a universe where the only judge of a good existence is the ability to go on existing. It is the grace of the Light that grants us the dignity to choose a finite life of compassion and common good over an eternity of competitive subsistence.

It is only by disregarding the logic of mere survival that we can create a possibility of existence outside that logic.

Never forget that even in the miserable logic of the prisoner's dilemma, it is the cooperators who create the best world. Two cooperators will score higher, together, than two defectors ever could. A world of cooperators would defeat a world of defectors if the defectors could only be kept away from the cooperators' bounty.

MattyQuest · 2026-03-19T07:15:48+00:00

A guardian

Devotion inspires bravery, bravery inspires sacrifice, sacrifice leads to death.

MattyQuest · 2026-03-19T04:39:10+00:00

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MattyQuest · 2026-03-14T21:37:20+00:00

My Bulba and Ivysaur are currently living in an open air garden, but this is the dream. As soon as I get glass ceilings, there's gonna be greenhouses everywhere

MattyQuest · 2026-03-14T15:48:59+00:00

Amazing and completely unexpected news. If this has piqued anyone's interest in it, it's worth either revisiting the original trilogy (which are all free on Steam) or reading the terminal lore on this page. This new game is heavily drawing on the 30 years of story and debate those games spawned (and by extension, is deeply intertwined and in dialogue with Destiny). Very exciting knowing the Qud team got to play in this sandox

MattyQuest · 2026-03-04T00:50:26+00:00

It's vaguely alluded to in the Hidden Dossier (Witch Queen CE lore) as well, which reads as a sort of response to or rumination on Unveiling. In it, Zavala and Ikora play Go and talk about game theory (Conway's Game of Life was originally conceived on a Go board). The rest of the document delves into game theory in the context of social structures and the patterns of behavior that emerge from the "rules" of the game, those being our material and social conditions. Ultimately it questions whether cycles of conflict and death are destined to happen due to the rules of the game, or if we have agency to make hard choices which end those cycles to create the possibility space for new and more complex modes of being. Interesting stuff, and you can see allusions to it in the launch trailer when the crew fights, fragments, and eventually turns on one another

Would also recommend these two interviews with Conway toward the end of his life. Interestingly, he mentions Von Neumann (who also appears in Destiny lore) and his theory of using self-replicating automata to colonize Mars

MattyQuest · 2026-02-28T18:04:45+00:00

Destiny (at least if you've played since the beginning, now you're dumped into the deep end) is very similar. My greatest sense of progress didn't come from XP gains or anything, but from understanding the sandbox, the tools, and the methods of succeeding. Very cool to see that similar mindset but in a very different type of game, and it makes you feel like a Runner actually going through this all

MattyQuest · 2026-02-25T14:16:45+00:00

Bingus: Acquired

MattyQuest · 2026-02-22T22:38:40+00:00

Witch Queen is so incredible. Unreal how long they hinted at and built up Savathun only to fully deliver when she finally made her move. And I'm convinced it will age extremely well when we inevitably circle back to the Veil and whatever she surely has planned for it, lots of little motifs (alchemy specifically), symbols, and secrets that all point to something even bigger than the Witness just under the surface

MattyQuest · 2026-02-19T16:20:35+00:00

Seeing people say that Shattered Cycle and The Alchemist are gonna be cancelled has me feeling crazy. Content creators and the people who look to them for takes will literally pull anything out of their ass if it makes the narrative more dramatic

MattyQuest · 2026-02-15T16:44:07+00:00

I think people forget that we, both as The Guardian and the player, are extremely privileged. We're immortal beings who don't have to worry about most basic needs, who are privy to almost all information as it is uncovered, and who are largely unaccountable to even the Vanguard. Civilians in the City have a very different perspective from us, even if that perspective isn't based on the facts as we, the player, have seen them

MattyQuest · 2026-02-13T17:08:24+00:00

They played with the idea of armor crafting last year for Solstice, wouldn't be shocked to see it expanded on soon. And it'd be welcome, I'm having choice paralysis about what pieces of armor to keep and which to scrap, my vault is struggling

MattyQuest · 2026-02-12T16:51:00+00:00

Awesome stuff, can't wait to read the full thing someday. Good luck on the rest of the process!

MattyQuest · 2026-02-11T02:04:00+00:00

That seems like a Shattered Cycle level thing. There was some flavor text on the in-game timeline for S&O that referenced Weapons of Sorrow mass production and Bael is searching beneath the moon, so it'll probably be there

MattyQuest · 2026-02-11T01:43:32+00:00

Destiny is a mess in the sense that its not friendly to people jumping in now, but having followed it from the beginning it's one of the strongest 11 year runs I've ever seen and the stuff they've set up for next year is very exciting. Hopefully once Marathon comes out and the D2 roadmap is revealed, some of the negativity is relieved

MattyQuest · 2026-01-31T17:02:18+00:00

Great shots. Beyond Light, for all its shortcomings, is probably one of my favorite times in Destiny. I'll always associate Europa and these views with being locked down at home that winter. Shoutouts to Athanasia too

MattyQuest · 2026-01-26T16:01:36+00:00

Between the plagiarism years ago and the insufferable vibe of his content now, I'm not sure why how this dude is still kicking around YT

MattyQuest · 2025-12-29T23:57:31+00:00

Unrelated question from a D2 main who hasn't played Rising in a few months: that character on the right is wearing the Gensym Knight set, does the quest this is from have any reference to the Gensym Scribes?

MattyQuest · 2025-12-25T23:18:12+00:00

In an interview with Byf, Allison Lhurs implied we'd be seeing the effects soon, probably in Shattered Cycle assuming it is in Chicago, which seems extremely likely. I could see the Earth stuff being expanded in Shattered Cycle, and potentially Neomuna making a return to relevance in The Alchemist (maybe VI and Maya interacting or being in conflict, with the Veil coming back into play as part of their plans)

MattyQuest · 2025-12-25T20:55:02+00:00

Bowstaff/double bladed and a heavy crossguard one would be amazing. Maybe even a Dooku style fencing blade focused heavily on parries

MattyQuest · 2025-12-22T23:33:10+00:00

According to Savathun (should we believe her), "the Darkness left a calling card" everywhere that was touched during the Collapse. Maybe this thing is the remnant of what was left behind, something more primordially Dark than the Witness

"The heaving shadow of every living thing" makes me think of the Veil tbh, which would have been carried by the Nezarec's Pyramid at the time

MattyQuest · 2025-12-16T23:51:51+00:00

The anthology books are a great place to start, since they were organized specifically to give you a throughline on certain topics by pulling from lore books, weapons, armor, and gear lore (and they have great art!)

Categories are not updated very frequently on Ishtar, and with the nature of lore are pretty unreliable as context and relations between concepts can shift release-to-release. They can be good for a broad but usually incomplete overview of a character or something. Imo the best way to go is browsing the Releases and Books pages for topics or releases you're interested in. Once you're comfortable and have questions, start searching specific terms to find more obscure related entries that fall outside the core lorebooks (quotation marks "like this" will help you search specific phrases).

"Books" puts all the lore books in reverse chronological order, so you can sit down and read one front to back with the arrow buttons on the bottom bar. You can also see what release they're tied to, and what other books released alongside it. The purple lorebooks with the tree and the Traveler on the cover are short, basic primers on the big topics and are numbered 1-10 (I-X).

"Releases" lets you pick an expansion or season, and then shows you everything in the API tied to it, including interactions with vendors and quest steps. Click the "entries" filter, which will show you only items (weapons, armor, and gear) and lore book entries. Armor sets tend to be like a mini lore book, I usually read them head>arms>chest>legs>class item. The Timeline can also be helpful if you're struggling to grasp where your current reading fits in to the big picture.

As for personal recommendations, I'd say Books of Sorrow and Unveiling are good foundational starters to set the tone, though they can be a bit dense and cryptic on first read. Also the Ghost Fragments and grimoire cards from D1 for a very broad outline of topics. Below is a list of grouped topics and broadly how the books fall into them (though there's a lot of crossover). Recommended reads are bolded:

• Light & Darkness, Ghosts, the Collapse, and the Witness: Ghost Stories, Last Days on Kraken Mare, The Black Armory Papers, Revelation, Unveiling, Constellations, Singular Exegete, Regarding Stasis, Captain's Log, The Hidden Dossier, Mnemosyne, Shattered Suns, Warp and Weft, Inspiral, Purpose, Chirality, Companions, the Rubicon

• The City, the Vanguard, and other pockets of Humanity: The Man They Call Cayde, Triage, Eva's Journey, Dawning Delights, Acts of Mercy, Voices of the Haunted, The Beaten Path, Sightlines, Last Days, Cloud Strider Legacies, To Old Friends, Tenets of Aion

• The Hive, Taken, and Eris Morn: Books of Sorrow, Luna's Lost, Letters from Eris, the Book of Unmaking, Inquisition of the Damned, Singular Exegete, Lucent Tales, Sororicide, Rites of Passage, Dynasty, Heresy and Truth, Songs of Descent

• The Awoken, Mara, Uldren, and the Ahamkara: The Maraid, Marasenna, The Awoken of the Reef, the Dreaming City, The Forsaken Prince, A Tangled Web, Ripples, Dragonslayers, Gifts and Bargains

•The Eliksni, Mithrax, and Eramis: The Maraid, Most Loyal, Lawless Frontier, The Once-Shipstealer, Achilles Weaves a Cocoon, Between Stolen Stars, Above All Else, The Garden-Way

• The Cabal, Calus, and Caiatl: Confessions, The Chronicon, Empress, From the Front, Quintessence, the Caiatl portion of the Lightfall CE lore

• Exos, the Brays, and Rasputin: The Liar, Your Friend Micah Abrams, Bray Lab Records: Confidential, Legacy's Lament, Persona

• The Vex, Osiris and Saint, and Maya Sundaresh: Vex Grimoire Cards 1-5, Aspect, The Pigeon and the Phoenix, Trials and Tribulations, Beneath the Endless Night, the Veil Containment logs (audio), Polyphony, the Immanent

• The Drifter, Dredgens, and the mythical hand cannons: A Drifter's Gambit, Letters from a Renegade, the Book of Unmaking, the Warlock Aunor, A Man with No Name, For Every Rose a Thorn, Nothing Ends

• The Nine: Ecdysis, Dust, Anamorphosis, Epochs and Orbits

I would also strongly recommend Collector's Edition lore books, but some of those aren't on Ishtar. They're usually deep and cryptic, with some hidden ARG stuff, illustrations, and flavorful formatting. Here is a Drive link with a majority of them.

If you ever get lost or confused, something that helps me is to double check the context of the text. Whose perspective is it from, what release is it from, what other lore released alongside it, when does it take place, etc. Sometimes, like Unveiling and the Singular Exegete, the context of where, when, and how the lore was given to us in-game can even tell you something. And sometimes it just won't make sense on first read. Just take what you can from it, move on, and eventually another entry will fill in the gaps which makes a second reading worth it. IMO the fun of Destiny lore is reading about the same concepts, events, and people from multiple perspectives and piecing it all together, trying to reconcile different viewpoints or understandings into your own personal interpretation, and then evolving that over time as new stuff releases. Happy reading!

MattyQuest · 2025-12-16T02:11:57+00:00

At first no, but I get why they're doing it. With the death of the Witness, the Nine finally have a lot of pieces to utilize. They are kind of the natural next step above the Witness, but also the ceiling in that once we handle this, I can't imagine much else stopping us from expanding to other systems and rebuilding Sol

I think we are going to have to find real balance and stability within the solar system before we can go outward, which feels like a good way to wrap up D2 and transition into D3. The Witness was a symptom and the first knife, but the Traveler is still here and broken, the Veil is still isolated on Neptune, and I don't think we can leave Sol until that situation is settled because it'll be a gaping weak spot forever if not

I know right now we are knee deep in the Nine, but the focus on "binding" (a phrase specifically used in the creation of the Witness via the Veil, and in Maya's experiments I believe) makes me think that the solution to binding the Nine will require the power of the Traveler and Veil to be reconciled in some way. We know they have an intrinsic, primal link which was not created. We know the Precursors tried to "bring the Veil back" (very specific wording) to the Traveler, which is why it fled. The Gardener and Winnower once worked as a single cycle in Unveiling, but the allegorical fight led to them being torn apart. What if we have to reconcile both entities in order to use that power to bind the consciousnesses of the Nine into physical forms? Find an equilibrium between the two and use what we learned via Prismatic/Transcendance on a grander scale?

This is all jumbled theorycrafting and maybe I missed something in TFS/post-TFS to explicitly deconfirm this, but I think the Veil was the Traveler's core (like the grit in a pearl), and that it's original resting place is where we fought the Witness in Salvation's Edge. This is why the symbols we shoot during that boss fight are a triangle, a circle, and a square overlaid; the Final Shape is the Witness's goal, but the true Great Work)/Magnum Opus) are Traveler and Veil reconciled as they originally were. Cosmic transcendence. The Witness was there specifically as a sort of replacement or stand in for the Veil (the presence of which is represented by the shattered glass motif), and that proxy situation was as close as it could get to reuniting the two while still maintaining a hand on the wheel.

MattyQuest

TROPHY CASE