• Bungie has dusted off Crota’s End from the original Destiny for Destiny 2.
• The Raid’s Contest Mode promises to be a tougher nail for players to approach according to game director Joe Blackburn.
• Those who take on the challenge are guaranteed some great loot and potentially a chance at Necrochasm which makes its return as well.

Continuing the trend of dusting off old Raids from Destiny and bringing them to Destiny 2, Bungie brings Crota’s End out of the vault today.

First introduced to Destiny as part of The Dark Below expansion in 2014, the Raid sees players dispatching Crota, Son of Oryx from the depths of the Moon. While the Raid eventually became a bit of a joke owing to the ease with which players could complete it and a bug that let you disconnect from the internet to cheese the final boss, that will change this time around. At least not for this weekend.

That’s not speculation as last week Destiny 2 Game Director Joe Blackburn explicitly said that the team would be using the reprised Raid to determine just how tough a World’s First attempt at a Raid should be.

“A thing that we didn’t talk about is we’re using Contest Mode of Crota’s End to do some experiments with [the thinking of] ‘Hey how hard should a Raid’s World First be?'” Blackburn says in the clip embedded below.

Contest Mode is Bungie’s way of making participation in the World First race a pinnacle activity in the game. In Contest Mode, players are below the Power level of enemies which means they hit harder. In a mode with limited revivals, this makes raiding on launch day a very challenging activity.

However, the recent Root of Nightmares Raid was widely regarded as being too easy, even with Contest Mode enabled. Over 197 000 players completed the activity in the first 24 hours. Whether Crota’s End can upend this trend remains to be seen.

Taking up the challenge of doing Crota’s End with Contest Mode active (which is from the launch this evening at 19:00 SAST until Sunday 19:00 SAST) will net players some sweet loot though.

As per This Week At Bungie In Destiny, players who acquire the Bottomless Pit Quest from the raid vendor (we suspect this is Hawthorne at the Bazaar in the Tower) will have this quest completed upon finishing Crota’s End on Contest Mode. Upon completion, players will receive rewards which include Husk of the Pit, Eidolon Ally (fully Masterworked), and Necrochasm.

It’s not entirely clear if Necrochasm is a guaranteed drop like Divinity or Legend of Acrius before it. That sure would be a nice change of pace given the constant chase to acquire raid Exotics.

As with Root of Nightmares, the Crota’s End World First Raid Race will be a Twitch Rival’s event, and watching a streamer taking part will net viewers the Every End Emblem, provided they watch for at least two hours. You can find a streamer who is participating in the race here.

If you want to watch one stream then head to Twitch Rivals at 18:30 SAST and you can watch Professor Broman, Reck1568, and Adam Savage cover the action.