The hard version of the Crota’s End raid in Destiny has been bested by a solo guardian in under 30 minutes, just under a month after its release. Player sc Slayerage took on the challenge with his level 32 Sunsinger Warlock, armed with top-tier gear. The fight with Crota itself starts around the 16:30 mark.
The video is far from his first attempt, according to the accompanying post on YouTube. Like countless speedrunners and competitive video gamers before him, sc Slayerage logged hours and hours of practice before mastering all of the subtleties necessary to pull off the feat.
“There was much less ‘luck’ in this run than it may seem,” he wrote. “First of all, this took dozens of hours to perfect and accomplish. Secondly, most of the seemingly random aspects of the Crota fight can be influenced in some way by careful gameplay. There isn’t a single thing I do in the Crota fight that isn’t deliberate in some way, and oftentimes the right move had to be made within a matter of seconds. I believe that with perfect gameplay this could be recreated at least once an hour – the fight is relatively consistent, just extremely hard.”
Among the tricks he used was a glitch with the Ice Breaker sniper rifle that allows for unlimited heavy ammo. He also notes that the account used to beat the raid is not actually his own, because he does not generally enjoy playing as the Warlock class, and thus did not have one at high enough level. He speculates that a Titan with the exotic Armamentium armor, a maxed discipline stat, and magnetic grenades might also be able to take down Crota alone, but this particular Warlock configuration is the only way he knows how for sure.
