Destiny‘s Vault of Glass is easily the harder of the game’s current Raids. Requiring multiple players at most instances, the Raid encourages teamwork in a way Crota’s End doesn’t quite. That being said, in what seems to be a world-first, a Destiny player has managed to defeat Vault of Glass boss Atheon solo.
The boss fight against Atheon requires team work because multiple players are sent through a ‘time stream’, and must defeat a number of enemies and pick up a Relic within. Players that didn’t get sent through must open up an exit portal for them and defend against multiple enemies themselves. Once the players who were teleported escape the portal, they can buff the team for a brief period and attack Atheon under the protection of a shield. Once the shield disappears, rinse and repeat.
This is genius design on Bungie’s part because it requires constant communication on both ends, as well as two separate teams within the one Raid group moving simultaneously towards two different, yet intertwined, goals. Although the boss fight has been completed with two players before, one player took it further and completed it by themselves.
Known as ‘whoismendle’ on the Bungie forums, PSN, and Reddit, the player spawned into Atheon’s chamber as a Warlock equipped with Radiance. Attacking Atheon with a Rocket Launcher at first seemed like a dead-end tactic, but the real genius comes into play when Atheon tries to open the time stream and teleport the player through one of the portals (from which there would be no escape, seeing as he wouldn’t be able to open the exit portal from the inside).
The player throws himself down the pit just as Atheon opens the time stream, which starts the respawn timer. Just before it ends, he uses Radiance, which respawns him back up top with Atheon, who is now frozen in place, thinking that the player teleported into the time stream. He is then free to throw all the grenades he wants at Atheon’s stupid face.
Considering I’ve only ever beaten Atheon with 5 people as a minimum – and even then, only just – the video is nothing short of impressive and astounding. Using Radiance as a form of despawning enemies and glitching through sections of Raids and missions is nothing new, but using it to skip Atheon’s time stream completely is something I haven’t seen before.
Kudos to you, whoismendle.