Destiny 2 Season of Opulence started with a bang by adding two new six-player activities on day one: the more relaxed Menagerie which you can grind to earn specific gear, and the new raid, the Crown of Sorrow. The race to clear Crown of Sorrow was intense, and as Destiny Raid Report shows, lasted nearly five hours. Bungie confirmed the world first winners in a tweet last night, congratulating Akada, BigBadDave7, Carolina, Esoterickk, Punz, and WNxDelirium of the clan Be Bold.
Congrats to our Crown of Sorrow World First Raid Winners... Clan Be Bold!💠 Akada💠 BigBadDave7💠 Carolina💠 Esoterickk💠 Punz💠 WNxDelirium pic.twitter.com/Rkxn7TNYssJune 5, 2019
It took Be Bold four hours and 40 minutes to clear Crown of Sorrow. Looking back on Carolina's archived Twitch stream of the record-setting run (which you can watch here - the big finish is around 6:41:00), the final boss alone took roughly three hours to clear. For reference, the entirety of Black Armory's Scourge of the Past raid took players under two hours. Forsaken's Last Wish raid took nearly 19 hours but is considerably longer than Crown of Sorrow, so I think the best comparison is the original Leviathan raid, which took players just over five hours to work out.
This was an especially important world first race for Destiny 2 because Crown of Sorrow was the first raid to follow Bungie's new challenge rules. Ordinarily, players would have to spend a few days grinding their butts off to prepare for the new raid. But Crown of Sorrow was released just six hours after the Season of Opulence began, and player Power levels were forcibly capped below the recommended level for every encounter in the Crown of Sorrow (the final fight is 735 Power). In other words, no matter what Power level players were able to reach, the game treated them as being under-leveled, meaning all the fights were exceptionally difficult.
This helped level the playing field for players who couldn't grind all day but wanted to join the world first race, and it put greater emphasis on learning and executing raid strategies rather than grinding Power beforehand. It seems to have worked out pretty well overall; Crown of Sorrow teams were neck-and-neck for most of the race (the second-place team finished just six minutes after Be Bold's squad), which made strategic breakthroughs all the more exciting.
More Destiny 2 news is on the horizon. The game's reportedly coming to Google Stadia and adding cross-save support.
