It turns out that Destiny’s raid challenges are time-gated

Just like the new Exotic weapon quests

While Destiny is still missing a lot of features, and the loot system is never quite right, Bungie has a ton of variables to account for since it’s so massive. Most notably, a millions-strong community that will datamine the living shit out of the game, and even go so far as to mathematically map out every single facet of the experience and post their findings on reddit. The community is dedicated, to say the least.

Likely as a result of these actions, Bungie has taken to time-gating a lot of high-end content as of this expansion. Most notably many Exotics have been gated behind daily missions, which only pop up once (for a full day) every one or two weeks or so. So far it hasn’t been a massive hassle, even if it’s a lazier way of introducing lengthy questlines.

It seems as if Bungie is using this strategy for the raids, too. Some time ago Destiny producer Luke Smith spoke to “challenge modes” for the raid, gifting players with special loot if they met certain requirements on specific fights (presumably Warpriest, Golgoroth, Daughters, and Oryx). Players have been rapidly searching for any hint as to these challenges, along with the last three Calcified Fragments, to no avail.

As it turns out, they’re time-gated, as confirmed by Smith today. The challenges are “not active yet,” and more info will come in “several weeks.” The remaining three fragments are a part of that event. If I had to guess, the 320 Artifact is gated behind those last fragments. As of right now it is physically impossible to max out your character until someone locates that Artifact.

I’m happy enough sitting at 315 as of today on my Warlock.

Luke Smith [Twitter]