The rewards aren't great, but it is insanely fun to work with a fireteam and random strangers to carry out these little mini-strikes one after another. Each of these instances can include up to nine Guardians and, like the campaign, are short and sweet. In the back of the Plaguelands there is a tiny thunderdome known as the Archon's Forge, and placing an offering in the nearby terminal will begin a public event not unlike the Court of Oryx from 'The Taken King'. Killing a Brood Mother has a chance at dropping a SIVA offering. This is the usual 'Destiny' stuff with hordes of enemies falling from the sky, but it's never not fun to meet up with random guardians on the field and destroy Fallen with reckless abandon, showering the area with engrams, orbs, and explosive supers.Ĭuriously, Hive creatures also appear in the Plaguelands and the most powerful of these are reskinned wizards called Brood Mothers. Enemies are tough, numerous, and there is a new patrol mission that creates miniaturized public events on the map. 'Rise of Iron' offers a new location called the 'Plaguelands' that is probably the best patrol content 'Destiny' has to offer, eclipsing even the labryinthine Dreadnaught. The real meat of the content is not in the short storyline, nor in the post-finale missions that lose appeal quickly. The final mission, sporting a massive axe I could use to make heavy attacks against SIVA-controlled Iron Lord armor, was probably too easy, and made me wonder how a lone Guardian could crush a force that annihilated hundreds of Iron Lords.

The rewards include some easy light upgrades so by the end of missions I was smashing through the Splicers without much trouble. The missions were interesting and until the last two were just the right amount of challenge, as playing solo I felt pressured without dying nonstop. The storyline manages to surpass the usually dry 'Destiny' campaign content, at least in narrative if not in length. Saladin is among the last of the Iron Lords, the precursors to Guardians who were almost wiped out fighting the SIVA threat a century ago. The Splicers are a tribe of Fallen who have found an ancient nanotechnology, SIVA, and are rearranging their DNA with it. Here he appears sans helmet to guide players (his 'Young Wolves' as he calls us, somewhat creepily) through the attacks by the Devil Splicers.

Lord Saladin, the mysterious vendor who appears every so often for the Iron Banner pvp event, is at the center of 'Rise of Iron's questline.

Rise of iron release date