Destiny: How to Easily Complete Crota's End Hard Mode Raid

Bungie activated the hard mode raid for Crota’s End and it seems lots of groups are having trouble beating the damn thing. However, a few groups have beaten it and in a record 27 minutes time.

Having done the HM raid numerous times, we have some excellent tips that will make sure that you complete the raid without breaking your controller.

First things first, the group needs to have at least two titans and two Gjallarhorns. Once you have that you are ready to do this and also make sure you have at least 5 level 32 players in your group otherwise the Knights will massacre you.

All the enemies in the raid are level 33 which means they are one level above you. Now that isn’t really a big deal but the only thing you have to worry about are the Knights because they take a ton of bullets to go down.

a) Lamp section:

This is a pretty straightforward section and can be soloed if you can jump from the second lamp area to significantly shorten the distance to the bridge. If you are doing it legit then make sure to bubble up after lamp 5 and so on. The only difficulty here are the Ogres which can take a lot of damage to go down but it is doable. There’s not many new mechanics here and if you’ve done the normal mode without any issues you won’t have problem with the hard mode as well.

b) Bridge section:

Nothing has changed compared to the normal mode but you have to deal with level 33 enemies. You need at least three people to go to the other side. Once the enemies despawn in the starting side (might require three people to wipe), the Wizards and Ogres will spawn. Use bubbles and rockets to take care of Ogres fast.

c) Ir Yut the Deathsinger:

Again, the encounter is similar to the normal mode. Make sure you kill the Deathsinger with the Gjallarhorn rockets ASAP. Your best bet would be to hide in the tower and snipe the wizards while a Gjallarhorn bearing player goes inside and takes out the shrieker. Once the shriekers are down, pick a side and everyone needs to do full dps on the boss. You also need to kill tons of enemies to actually start the Crota fight.

d) Crota boss battle:

This is where things become really difficult. There are a bunch of new mechanics added to this fight. There’s a gatekeeper that spawns below the Crystal and if you kill him another will spawn immediately so you can’t really go there.

There is no chalice so you can’t gain your health back unless 1) you down Crota 2) you use weapons like Suros or Red Death.

The boomers are level 33 and a huge pain to deal with. There are a few strategies to take care of them but everyone on your team needs to be on top of their game to pull it off.

For the boomers, two people need to be on sniping duty or a titan accompanies the swordbearer and puts a bubble near Crota to keep the swordbearer safe. The latter is the preferred option.

Now make sure you down Crota thrice on the first sword run which should take out more than 50% of his health and for this you need to fire rockets a few seconds after he gets up. The timing has to be impeccable or you won’t be able to do it. If you can get him down thrice two times, you can kill him before the Ogres spawn which would save you a massive headache.

If you are looking to do two sword runs each time then you have to deal with the Ogres. The best strategy here would be to kill them using rockets as soon as they spawn below the towers or you can use a blinding bubble on the Gatekeeper and finish off the Ogres from the middle section.

Once the Ogres are down and Crota’s down to 20% health, he will immediately enrage which means Oversouls will spawn constantly. This is where you need to kill Crota and you have maybe one or two Oversouls before you get overwhelmed. Basically the whole point here is to do something about the boomers as they will make the battle really difficult for you.

The swordbearer when he spawns needs to be taken out quickly as well because he can annoy you by hiding behind rocks or going to the extreme left or right side. If you kill him quickly you have a chance to down Crota thrice with each sword run.

And that’s it. Way too much work for rewards that you can get in the first two checkpoints itself unless you want the Necrochasm exotic which can only be obtained by getting Crux of Crota after beating him on the hard mode.