Story 03 - The Wakening




Recommended Level: 26




*Note: Yeah, I thought it was a stupid level name too (a little too close to "the wankening," fear it). They really should have called it "The Awakening."


Objective: Enter the Temple of Crota


Note: Save every bit of heavy ammo you can muster for the end of this mission, it will pay off. Trust me.


After landing on the moon, you'll have to make your way across the open world to Crota's Temple. Power-slide and boost your way there. A hive ship will be dropping (or may have already dropped) level 26 enemies at the entrance, so approach with caution. The group consists of a pair of wizards and a few acolytes. Quickly get rid of the acolytes and then snipe the wizards from your higher vantage point (or just rush in and shoot them if you prefer).



If you leave the second wizard alive, it will try to retreat inside the temple and reengage you in battle there. Finish it off and descend into the temple area. You'll encounter a few small groups as you go deeper into the ground. The first lot consists of a knight and three acolytes, the second has a yellow health bar hallowed melee knight, a regular knight and eight acolytes. After that, wind your way deeper into the depths of the temple. Video: part two starts here.


Objective: Find the wakening ritual


You'll arrive in a large room with a large glowing core in the middle. Seconds later, you'll be attacked from two directions by six acolytes and two knights. Once the second knight goes down, a swarm of nine thralls will rush at you from the neighboring room. Six more acolytes will follow them as well. Take your time, retreat to the entry area when you need to and you'll clear the room easily enough.


Leave the room and stalk along the walkway overlooking the abyss below. A little further on, you'll arrive at the World's Grave area. A shrieker will be sitting inactive in the center of the area (and will attack when you get closer). Clusters of cursed thralls will appear below and move towards you (remember, they can also run). Try picking off one in the center of the group when you can as this will cause a chain reaction, blowing up the entire cluster.



Take out the shrieker between cursed thrall waves and push onward. The cursed thrall plus shrieker combo will continue as you move onward, so be on your guard at all times. I'm unsure if the thralls are constantly spawned until you reach a certain point or they are a set number of spawns as you move forward. Be careful when you reach a long set of stairs leading down to a large hexagonal room as there will be two yellow health bar hallowed (cursed) thralls amongst the rest, which take more shots to bring down.


Cross the hexagonal room and the cursed thrall barrage should finally end when you enter a room devoid of light, followed by a darkness area. Keep pressing onwards and you should stumble across vestige circles with acolytes nearby. Jump over the circles and blast the acolytes in your way. A knight and more acolytes will be just ahead. As you move onwards, another rush of acolytes and a knight will greet you (hi guys! Bang, bang).


Once the coast is clear, walk up the ramp at the back of the room and into another large room that looks empty. (Two seconds later) oh look, another swarm of acolytes (eight or so) and a mass of thralls (eight). Mop up the swarm and enter the adjoining room. Another melee knight, ranged knight, and four acolytes will spawn and attack. Just onwards will be another thrall rush (four). Closely followed by a yellow health bar hallowed ogre. Yep, joy. Use the pillars in the room for cover from his eye blasts and swap to a sniper rifle or use your primary weapon to start damaging him.



Remember that with enough rapid sustained damage, he will stagger, allowing you to blast him with little threat to your health. Distance is definitely your friend here. Once he is out, move ahead a little bit to see the rooms ahead start getting weird. Yep, Crota's awakening is distorting the nearby space around it. You'll come over a rise to see a huge crystal in the center of a room (Crota's soul) with a group of four melee knights kneeling in front of it.


Objective: Destroy Crota's soul



Try and save up your ranged special if you have one from this point forward as it may save you during the final battle. Open fire on the knights below, dodging any newly spawned vestige circles. The wizards surrounding the crystal will do the whole scream and summon a bunch of thralls thing like usual. The one upside? They won't react until they take damage. So if you are accurate, you can deal with a single wizard at a time. Just be careful not to be blindsided by summoned thralls.


The four yellow health bar wakers will use the same tactics as the previous story encounters (scream summoning, vestige circle creation, shields, poison mist and barrage attacks), but by this point you should be pretty used to that. Make sure to avoid hitting the other wizards by accident as you work on taking them down one by one. When it is down to the final waker, multiple cursed thralls will spawn in the central area around the crystal. Backpedal and explode them before resuming the attack.



After the final waker falls, another bum rush of cursed thralls will spawn in the central area. Jump away and blow up the group quickly. As soon as they are gone, the soul crystal of Crota will engage you directly. Yup, the crystal will start floating and attacking you. Now is the time that saving all that heavy ammo and ranged specials pays off. Blast away at it with your heavy weapons, while bouncing around the room avoiding attacks. It will repeatedly generate new enemies in the room and shoot blasts of energy at you.



As long as you listened to my advice and brought the right equipment, you should have the soul down in around ten seconds flat. People who didn't, well, you'll have a dangerous and grueling fight ahead of you. Dodging constantly spawning enemies and blast attacks and the lovely circles of death. Yep, just bring the ammo. Makes life sooo much easier. Once the health bar empties, the crystal will shatter and the mission will be over.



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