A Raid in MMO terms is a difficult dungeon or level that requires serious co-operation between a number of players to beat, with tough enemies, tougher bosses and the lure of unique loot.

When Destiny launched on the 9th of September it didn’t have Raids, but it does as of the 16th of September. There’s only one so far, called The Glass Vault, but it’s apparently incredibly tough: it took a fireteam of six level 26 players over ten hours and 1 600 total deaths to complete.

The players were all from a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One clan called PRIMEGUARD, and they have Tweeted their “world first” success along with a few choice videos showing off key parts of the Raid for interested parties.

Team 2 of PRIMEGUARD has beat the Vault of Glass! @DattosDestiny @Valkain_Prime @zspreu @Mr__Swede @FWCReddit KrazeyKracka!

— PRIMEGUARD (@PrimeGuardHQ) September 16, 2014

Players are apparently quite excited about this new feature, and only partly because the Raid adds content to a game that some feel is a little lacking in that department: they’re excited at the prospect of a long, difficult slog through an incredibly challenging level as it reminds many of the raids in games like World of Warcraft and Everquest, events that kept players of those massively-multiplayer games coming back for more.

Kotaku commenter Renz004 summed up what a lot of gamers are thinking – our own Charlie Fripp included – in the wake of this news:

“THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THIS GAME NEEDS!!!! Oh man if it’s anything like the old school frustration wipe fests from WoW it’s going to be glorious. And heck it wasn’t even on heroic mode this was just normal! Hell yeah!”

Co-operation required

The trick to Bungie’s take on Raids is not only tough enemies, but environmental puzzles as well that require players to work together to solve, with little to no direction offered by the game as to how to go about it.

Raids are playable on two difficulty levels – Normal and Hard – and Hard only unlocks once they’ve been completed on Normal. The idea is to let players solve the Raids’ puzzles the first time around and then up the challenge with even tougher enemies and bosses on Hard as players will know how to handle the puzzles the second time around.

Raids are reset every Tuesday, and only drop loot for players once a week so it’s not possible to farm for legendary armour and weapons by playing them over and over again in the space of mere days.

Since ten hours is a long time, the Destiny Wiki says Raids can be stopped at any time and resumed later, as long as the fireteam leader is the same and the weekly reset hasn’t happened.

Bungie has plans to add more Raids over time, but for now this ten-hour beast should be more than enough to keep players occupied and challenged, so if you’ve hit level 26 already feel free to sink your teeth into The Glass Vault.

You’ll need to organise your own fireteam, though, because Bungie has said Raids don’t support matchmaking because of the communication between players that’s needed to beat them.

Get to it, Guardians!

[Source – Twitter, Kotaku, Main Image – @PRIMEGUARDHQ]