With that in mind, there are bound to be quite a few players looking up how to spank Crota like that bad little member of the Hive he is. It's for that reason that we decided to help you figure out how to do it... legitimately this time.
The first part of the raid is really just a pep rally for you and the rest of your fire team. Move forward until you find a round plate, then stand on said plate until a bridge forms in front of you. Because walking across bridges all proper like can be lame, why not bounce and glide over it before dropping into the gigantic hole on the other end?
Once you start moving around in the Abyss, a game modifier called Weight of Darkness will be applied to each member of your fire team. This will stack until it reaches a maximum of 10, restricting your ability to do things like jump and run. This is counteracted by having your crew briefly stand next to one of the lamps, lifting the Weight of Darkness in the process.
The kicker with these lamps, however, is that they can only hold so much Darkness, and once they are full they will explode. If your fire team is nearby, that's game over. For this reason, you want to have one person who is in charge of your raid party, and they'll be the ones who instruct the group to move to the next lamp. Each time you're between lamps you'll accumulate the Weight of Darkness, and each time you stop at a lamp it will begin to lift.
The goal here is to move from one lamp to another, constantly accumulating, then alleviating the Weight of Darkness, while simultaneously fighting off the hoards of Thrall who seem offended by your presence. Once you activate the final pillar you'll notice another circular plate on the ground, and having one player briefly stand on it will open a large door that leads to a blinding white light. It's at this time that your team needs to fight off three Knights and two Ogres while waiting for a bridge to form. When the bridge is in place you and your team need to run into the light (trust us).
The next portion of the raid is just plain complicated when you're trying to explain it, so bear with us as we try not to screw this up on you. With that in mind, we're going to call the side of the canyon that you start on Alpha, and the side that you're trying to get to Bravo. That should help you to understand what we're talking about in the latter portion of this section. Even if it doesn't help you, it will at least help us to keep it straight in our own minds.
Alpha has another one of those circular plates just before the canyon, and standing on it will form a bridge that helps you get to the other side. The catch here is that to the left and right of the plate are things called Annihilation Totems, and forming the bridge will cause them to explode after a few seconds, wiping out your entire team. To counter this, have one member of your team stand in the circle below the totem to the right, and another player in the circle beneath the totem on the left. That's one player forming the bridge, one standing in the circle under the right totem, and one in the circle below the left totem.
This leaves three members of your team free to move around on the Alpha side, and these will be the ones to kill a dude called the Swordbearer. This should be timed so that he dies almost exactly when the bridge is formed, at which point one of the three free moving players will pick up the sword, cross the bridge and kill an enemy called the Gatekeeper. It should be noted that only a player carrying the sword can cross the bridge, and the sword will disappear after one minute, spawning another Swordbearer on the Alpha side. You now have five players on the Alpha side and one player on the Bravo side.
The five remaining players on Alpha are going to repeat the process described above until you have three members of your team on Alpha, and three on Bravo. At that point the players on the Bravo side will be the ones who stand on the plate that forms the bridge, as well as in the circles beneath the Annihilation Totems. The three remaining players on Alpha will simply kill the Swordbearer (one at a time) and make their way to the Bravo side. Continue doing this until all six members are reunited at Bravo.
Having all living members of your fire team on the Bravo side will prompt two Ogres to spawn, as well as some supporting cast members from the Hive family. Kill the Ogres to progress the raid, quickly running through a gauntlet of Thralls and Cursed Thralls while simultaneously killing a couple of Shriekers. Speed is key here, as there is a door at the end of the corridor that is quickly closing, and inside is a chest with some loot for your crew. The Shriekers must be killed before you can reach this chest as they cause an invisible barrier to block your path.
You'll enter the area on the bottom level and see two staircases, one on the left and another on the right. Each one of these leads to a door, and those doors both lead to the same room that sits in the middle of the second level and holds Ir Yût.
Tip: Do not take damage from, or deal damage to any Hive enemies on the ground level. Doing so will trigger Ir Yût to begin a three minute countdown. If it ends and the Deathsinger is still alive, you fail.Assuming you have a full six person fire team, have three members go left and three go right. One member from each three person squad will go into the door at the top of each set of stairs, peeking in at the Deathsinger so that a Wizard will be triggered to come out and play. The other two members of each squad will take up a position on some platforms that are in the back corners of the room and provide a good vantage point to attack the Wizard when it pops out. The bait should join them as soon as possible.
The Wizards will start messing around at the top of each set of stairs, and your fire team should load up on Solar damage to take them down in an efficient manner. When both have fallen, each squad of three will leave their platform and go into the door on their side of the room, then immediately take out a Shrieker just before the room that Ir Yût is in. Killing the Shrieker must be done before the Deathsinger can be dealt with.
There will be a lot of enemies around here, but the main goal is to kill Ir Yût. You'll know you're running out of time for this if you see a 30 second timer counting down on your HUD. Deal with the enemies attacking you as best you can, but make murdering the Deathsinger your top priority. The saying smoke 'em if you got 'em comes to mind here, meaning fire everything you have, starting with your super ability and heavy weapons, then hopefully moving onto grenades and a powerful primary. When Ir Yût is finally down you're on to the last part of the raid (after you kill a bunch of Knights).
With the Deathsinger dead you'll want to have your fire team gather around the crystal in the middle of the room, thus causing Crota to spawn and two invisible walls to block the exits to the left and right. When Crota has arrived, the walls will drop and your team will be attacked by Acolytes and Knights. Fight them off from positions of cover, as a modifier called the Presence of Crota will prevent health regeneration. In plain English this means that you won't automatically heal up when you're wounded.
Tip: Beneath the platform that Crota is on will be something called the Chalice of Light, which can only be picked up by one player at a time. This item will allow you to regenerate health, but we'd advise just not taking damage in the first place. We know... easier said than done.If at any time during the fight with Crota one of your fire team members should die, this will cause him to summon his oversoul, the giant glowing object that's hanging in the sky. If this happens, the remaining members of your team have 10 seconds to direct fire upon it until it disappears. If this does not happen everyone will die and you'll have to start the checkpoint over again.
Crota has a shield that can be dropped by fire from normal weapons. In fact, we'd advise only using primary weapons as this will allow your team to predict exactly when the shield will drop, rather than have it disappear unexpectedly because someone used their super ability. When the shield drops, Crota can be damaged only by a sword that is carried by the Swordbearer on the bottom level. It's imperative that your firing squad times the drop of his shield with the arrival of the player who is carrying the sword (taken from the Swordbearer's corpse), as Crota will only remain vulnerable (on one knee) for about five seconds.
If you and your team managed to damage Crota with the sword obtained from the Swordbearer, another will spawn and you can continue to repeat that process until he's dead. If you mess it up, however, and Crota doesn't take any damage, a pair of Ogres will spawn and must be killed before the Swordbearer will reappear. If Crota is not killed within 10 minutes, he'll enrage, a state in which he can summon his oversoul at any time and Ogres spawn constantly. That's pretty much game over.
That's it, all the secrets and tricks to taking Crota, Son of Oryx down and making Eris happy. Should you have a better method, or think we could have elaborated on one part or another, don't hesitate to let us know in the comments.
