Raid

"Some evils you cannot fight alone. Join with other brave Guardians to quest deep into the heart of Darkness and confront threats beyond imagination. Steel yourself. You will be tested to the very edge of your strength."

- Grimoire Description.

Raid is a game mode of Destiny. Raids are 6-player cooperative events that are of high challenge, and require communication between players to succeed. They involve specific quests for groups of fireteams. No waypoints or explicit objectives are provided.

Overview
Raids differ from Strikes in a few ways:


 * 6 player fireteams, as opposed to 3.
 * No matchmaking. A player must form a fireteam beforehand.
 * Raid enemies will have abilities not found elsewhere in the game (i.e. unique enemies, debuffs, etc).
 * Strikes last roughly half an hour, whereas raids take several hours.
 * Raids have no objective markers. A player must find out where to go and what to do themselves.
 * Raids can be dropped and picked up at a later time in the week. Players don't have to finish them in one sitting, but they do have to finish it before their checkpoint expires.
 * Players will not have the gear necessary to complete a Raid. Gear acquisition within the Raid itself is necessary. This typically comes in the form of acquiring Relics with unique abilities.

Difficulty
Two difficulty levels exist for raids&mdash;normal, and hard. The normal mode must be completed before the hard one can be attempted. The normal mode is designed to teach players raid mechanics, and how to operate as a team. The hard mode provides tougher enemies and a harsher death penalty.


 * Normal Mode: Players need to wait 30 seconds before a teammate can revive them.
 * Hard Mode: Players cannot be revived at all (with the exception of self-reviving Sunsingers) but will automatically respawn if the fireteam progresses to the next checkpoint. Also, more difficult obstacles are included.

Fireteams and Checkpoints
Players need to assemble their fireteam before entering the raid. The Fireteam leader is the one that the raid checkpoints is tied to, so whoever was the fireteam leader in the last session needs to initiate a new session in order to resume.

There is a checkpoint for every boss killed, allowing players to return to the raid on other days, within a week (see lockout below). Players should agree upon how much progress they will make in each session if they don't plan on completing the raid in one session.

Lockout
Unlike all other activities, the Raid game mode employs a weekly lockout for earning loot. This means two things:


 * 1) Players have until the next Tuesday to complete the raid, otherwise their progress will be wiped and they have to start over.
 * 2) Players cannot earn new loot from the raid more than once a week per character. Separate characters on the same account can each play the raid and still get loot; this means an individual player can earn loot from a raid for a maximum of three times (for three characters) per weekly lockout.

Rewards
Completing a raid rewards players with items not normally found elsewhere in the game. For example, Ascendant upgrade materials are common in chests, used to upgrade Legendary equipment. Some chests also have a chance to have an exotic weapon. Each boss fight also rewards a raid-specific legendary weapon or piece of armor. Completing the raid on hard mode will yield the best rewards, typically an exotic weapon not found elsewhere, such as the Vex Mythoclast from the Vault of Glass. Aesthetic items such as shaders, emblems, ships and personal vehicles are also given.