King’s Fall Hard Mode: The full guide to Destiny’s hardest raid

Although Destiny’s King’s Fall raid first released September 18, its hard mode counterpart only debuted October 23. Interestingly, Bungie designed the hard version first and then pared mechanics back to make the raid suitable for entry-level play on normal mode. In this sense, hard mode represents the complete version of the raid, piled high with even more interwoven mechanics. Hard mode King’s Fall was designed to upset the de facto rhythm of King’s Fall, to “give you one more plate to spin, and make you think on your feet,” as Lead Designer Gavin Irby put it. In this, it was largely a success. By introducing slight changes to tightly coordinated fights, hard mode creates a subtly different atmosphere. The core experience is fundamentally identical, meaning our original guide to the full raid is still quite valid and helpful, but there’s more to keep track of.

Prep

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The hard version of King’s Fall is listed at 310 Light, but by the end of the encounter you’ll face off against enemies with a recommend Light level of 320. You certainly don’t need to be 320 to perform well, but the barrier of entry is far steeper in hard mode. Aim to start at least 305, and pray to RNGesus that you pick up some good Harrowed equipment before you reach the end. Anyone under Light 311 will be at a significant disadvantage while fighting Oryx, so it really is the golden number. With that said, teams with a mean Light of 309 or higher should have no problems.

Aside from an increased Light requisite, suiting up remains unchanged. Sniper rifles are still king and machine guns still beat rockets. That said, primary weapons with healing abilities such as Red Death or anything with the Life Support perk should be much higher on your want list. It is hard mode after all, so once you die, you’re out for the fight. Healing perks help prevent that and keep you in fighting form.

The absence of respawns also shakes up class importance, albeit it in an unsurprising way. Sunsinger’s and their self-resurrection ability are particularly valuable in hard mode. Defender Titans are also great to have, as many strategies rely on, or are at least made considerably easier by, having a Ward of Dawn to duck into. Nevertheless, Light comes first, and any fireteam configuration can pull things off with a little tweaking.

Warpriest

For a full outline of Warpriest’s mechanics, head to our normal mode King’s Fall guide.

King’s Fall’s opening act of relic dunking remains totally unchanged, so no need to dwell on it. The initial jumping puzzles also follow the same pattern. The only change there is the lack of a halfway point on the ship portion, meaning you have to make the entire trek in one attempt. Much the same is true for Warpriest’s headlining totems: opening the door and managing totems is exactly the same. It’s only when you reach Warpriest himself that you’ll notice a few changes.

Warpriest picked up a new trick for hard mode. Each time he destroys a monolith—the stone tablets you use to hide from his Oculus AoE—he will gain a Taken ability. Oriented so that the entryway is directly behind you, the three monoliths grant him the following abilities from left to right: Centurion darts, Hobgoblin spears and Captain bombs. Of these three abilities, the Captain-inspired blinding blights are the most annoying, though the slow-moving but heavily damaging Centurion bombs can also be a problem when you’re grouped up. For the most part, the Hobgoblin ability is a nonissue, as Warpriest rarely uses it and it doesn’t deal much damage to begin with.

Outlasting waves of enemies and actually triggering monoliths remains unchanged. However, you will want to re-order your monolith order to avoid Warpriest’s most troublesome ability—the Captain bombs granted by the rightmost monolith. To do so, have your team and aura wielder head to the middle monolith on the first round. At this stage, you’ll want to have a Defender Titan place a Ward of Dawn near the back of the aura to create a hiding spot. Be sure not to place the shield too far forward, as it will interfere with your view of Warpriest. Blessing of Light is the ideal perk for this stage of the fight, as you’ll want the added defense far more than the damage output. In a pinch, Nightstalker Hunters can also put a Black Hole-powered Nightshot in the center of the arena to stun all nearby enemies. This makes the aura holder’s job much easier. Otherwise, Nightstalkers will want to keep Warpriest tethered (with Black Hole) to both increase the team’s damage output and help stagger the boss himself.

Because the right and central plates are so close, changing spots won’t significantly impact your time to damage Warpriest. The same is not true for moving from right to left, however, so if the right plate comes second, you’ll just to have fight through it. As Warpriest gains more and more abilities, taking appropriate cover becomes more and more important. In addition, when you’re actively damaging him, sniper rifles become essential to keeping him staggered. The minute he starts fighting back your group will take serious damage. And with so many enemies around you, any added damage can be a death sentence.

Golgoroth

For a full outline of Golgoroth’s mechanics, head to our normal mode King’s Fall guide.

Golgoroth’s Cellar is laid out identically to normal mode, meaning the hidden chest therein is just as easily obtained. Golgoroth himself hasn’t changed aside from an extra poison orb thrown at gazers, though you will have more to contend with while fighting him. In addition to greatly increased spawns Cursed Thrall down in the pit, any players standing in the pit are eligible to receive a “perk” called Volatile Light. After roughly six seconds, Volatile Light holders produce a sizable explosion. The detonation doesn’t damage the holder but it will instantly kill any other players in the vicinity. In other words, if you have Volatile Light, you need to run away from the rest of your team.

Image via GameRant

Here we begin to see what Bungie meant by throwing off our rhythm. Shortly after one Volatile Light detonates, another player will receive the perk. As a result, damaging Golgoroth becomes a game of musical perks as players continually rotate out to avoid killing their teammates. Crucially, you can fight normally while you have Volatile Light, so there’s no excuse for standing idle. After putting some distance between them and their teammates, Volatile Light holders should focus on the enemies swarming the area, in addition to the ever-important orbs hanging overhead.

While unnecessary, there is also an alternate approach to Golgoroth not outlined in our original raid guide. On normal mode this method is needless, but the added threat of permadeath and strengthened enemies makes it worth considering on hard mode. Instead of rotating through all six orbs using two gazers, it is safer to have a single gazer take Golgoroth’s gaze while the other five players focus him down via a single frontal orb. This shrinks your window to damage Golgoroth considerably but reduces the chance of death by an equal amount. Using all six orbs is far and away the faster approach, but the one-orb method may be best for low-Light teams.

Oryx

For a full outline of the mechanics of Oryx and the Daughters, head to our normal mode King’s Fall guide.

Funnily enough, the fight with Oryx’s two Daughters is functionally unchanged. Other than the slight tweak of the second sister’s AoE counter beginning immediately after the first relic dissipates—effectively cutting four seconds of prep time out of subsequent rounds—things are identical. Just be a little quicker on returning to your totems and you’ll be fine. Oryx, on the other hand, has upped his game in hard mode.

The standout additions to Oryx’s encounter are the Light-Eater Knights which spawn in shortly after the Light-Eater Ogres are killed. These Knights will head toward and, if left unchecked, quickly consume the orbs dropped by the Ogres, destroying your only way of damaging Oryx. The obvious solution is the best one: kill the knights before they get to the orb. They’re much easier to down than the Ogres, and if you can kill them regularly you’ll hardly notice a difference in the overall fight. Oryx’s attacks, including his summoned Shade, are otherwise identical.

Things only get problematic when your Light level isn’t up to par. Remember the golden number? 311? If you aren’t there, you’re going to have a tough time outlasting the plentiful enemies in Oryx’s arena. Greatly increased Taken Acolyte spawns will rip through sub-310 players, which, due to hard mode permadeath, can make progress difficult. Fortunately there is a rather unorthodox alternate strategy for this fight: don’t kill the Ogres, at least not immediately.

The ploy here is to have one player run the relic, two players lower Ogres to a sliver of health from atop the central totems (where the Daughters stood), and three players man the necessary totems. You don’t have to worry about the fourth totem in the rotation, as the runner will never need the platforms it summons. So instead of holding it, you have that player aid in lowering Ogres. Stranger still, the players on the totems will never attack their Ogres so as to prevent drawing their aggression. Instead, totem holders sit tight while the runner retrieves the aura, and let the two central players, at least one of which will ideally be a Defender Titan, handle all four Ogres. Once the aura has been retrieved, the entire team will group up on the central totem opposite Oryx’s current position.

Once inside the aura, you’ll stagger Oryx as usual. Once you do, all players will finish off the previously weakened Ogres, then four players will move to detonate the orbs they drop. While these four are moving to the orbs, the aura holder and remaining player should move to the floor of the arena so that orb-goers can safely return to the aura before the bombs detonate. The two remaining players should also kill as many enemies as possible to make the room safer.

This method completely avoids the Light-Eater Knights and waves of Acolytes spawned by each Ogre’s death, simplifying the fight considerably. However, much like the one-orb approach to Golgoroth, for high-Light teams it is a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist. In other words, if you’re entire team is above Light 311, you won’t need to bother with this relatively fastidious method. Just approach the fight normally while also accounting for the newcomer Knights.