There’s a very low bar for Xur’s weekend inventories. It’s one of those cases where scoring two out of five puts us soundly in the black and even a single decent item will hush most of the indignant groaning. So rare weekends like this, the weekend of Halloween, where Xur brings a whopping three worthwhile exotics are especially satisfying. Even this weekend’s legacy engram, for the vast collection of year one special weapons, is top-shelf. Let’s have a look at the rest.
The Taikonaut: I know you’ve seen this helmet around. It’s one of the most distinctive pieces of armor in the game, even rivaling the Warlock’s Ram in contests of spit-taking. Fortunately, the Taikonaut is space-age in both form and function. In other words, it’s actually useful. Its unique skill, “Air Traffic Control”, provides a Ruin Wings-esque effect and increases heavy ammo drops, which is a godsend for PvE activities like Nightfalls and raids. Better still, it puts tracking, an incredibly useful and arguably necessary perk, on all your rocket launchers. Beyond ensuring that your blasts hit their mark, this frees up a perk in your launcher’s actual tree, letting you add in things like cluster bombs.
Graviton Forfeit: They can’t all be winners though. The Hunter’s Graviton Forfeit is every bit as stylish as the Taikonaut, but in practice it falls short. The design pitch presumably went something like this: “What if players want to use the Nightstalker’s expanded radar and Shadestep at the same time?” And apparently nobody cared to point out that there are virtually no situations where you need to do that. Those two abilities have radically different applications so stacking them is rarely useful, let alone important enough to dedicate an exotic slot to. Now, if the Graviton gave every Hunter subclass Shadestep, well, we’d actually probably have a problem. But it would make the helmet better, no questions there.
Alchemist’s Raiment: You’d think something as all-encompassing as alchemy would have innumerable applications. Strangely, the Warlock’s Alchemist’s Raiment only has one: getting glimmer. But it’s cornered the market on glimmer gains, which actually makes it pretty good. You’re probably not going to want to wear it into Trials of Osiris this weekend or even the King’s Fall raid, but if you’re just grinding out some three of coins or bounties, there’s nothing better. Still, the Raiment does feature exceptionally rare perks that increase ammo drops for either special or heavy weapon ammo (that’s spammo and hammo, by the way), so it’s not a bad choice for King’s Fall, which is so reliant on sniper rifles. All in all, a pretty and thematic addition to the Warlock closet.
Zhalo Supercell: Every time Xur sells a rare or highly sought after weapon, two camps spring up. All the self-described snowflakes take up arms in protest of Xur diluting the rarity of the weapon and, by extension, their ability to brag about their Destiny account. Meanwhile, all the sensible people are overjoyed at how many players (read: future teammates) will be better equipped. And man, the second camp is happy this weekend.
First and foremost, the Zhalo Supercell is the only known year two primary weapon with an elemental property—in this case, arc. Contrary to popular (and my own) suspicion, the primary weapons from Hard Mode King’s Fall do not include elements, which makes the Supercell that much better. But even in a vacuum the auto rifle is exceptional.
With the right skills, the Supercell has incredibly high stability, and in all cases it is inexplicably accurate on hip-fire. Its unique arc rounds deal considerable AoE damage to packs of enemies, making it a shield eater, group shredder and overall great choice for all PvE activities. It's also packing a Bad Juju-inspired ability that returns ammo to the magazine (that's out of thin air, not from your reserves) after multikills, which are quite easy to pull off with its chain lightning. Its low-impact, high-rate-of-fire design makes it a poor choice for the Crucible, mind you, but its PvE potential is too great to be ignored. It also looks like something from BioShock, or maybe Wolfenstein, which is nice.
If nothing else, buy a Supercell this weekend.
