This season, Bungie announced that the first raid of the original Destiny, Vault of Glass, would be remade and re-released for Destiny 2. And, as with other Destiny raids, players have attempted to bend this raid to their will through a series of speedruns and unofficial challenges. And now, after many, many attempts, one player has soloed the Vault of Glass' last boss.

The successful clear can be seen below.

What makes this solo clear so difficult is that this encounter, and in fact almost all Destiny raid encounters, are specifically designed to force multiple players to act simultaneously toward a single goal. in Atheon's case, half of the raid team is teleported to another room to clear an oracle (red orb) based on the instructions of their remaining teammates.

As a solo player, VoteforShifu must effectively be in two places at once. He must be in the main room to see the order in which the oracle is to be destroyed, and he must be in the side room to actually destroy it. Fortunately, thanks to certain weapons and a long-standing glitch, this is now possible.

By activating a finisher (an insta-kill animation that can be triggered on damaged enemies) a few minutes before teleporting, VoteforShifu will teleport back to the point where he was activated when the animation ends. This was previously used in an absurd solo clear of Queens Walk - the final section of the Last Wish raid.

The Vault of Glass finisher glitch does not force you to clear the remainder of the Encounter covered in red jam, but it is more complicated to successfully do so. This is because in order to return to the side room after VoteforShifu has glitched out, one must retrieve the relic that cleanses the debuff that gradually clouds one's vision and kill the gatekeeper to open the portal between the two rooms.

To do all of this, VoteforShifu fires a round of Witherhoard, an exotic grenade launcher that creates a bright pool of damage to enemies standing inside it. By hitting the exact spot where the gatekeeper spawns, it can be killed with pre-fired AoE damage while returning to the main room.

In addition, the relic could be teleported to a location that is out of immediate reach of the relic. Given how short the timeframe is for all of this to succeed, this attempt would effectively fail.

With the portal open, VoteforShifu can walk between rooms, confirm his orders, and one-shot the oracles with the exotic hand cannon of Eliana's Oath. He can still only enter the side room for a short time due to the Lost in Time mechanic, in which the team is wiped out if all players (in this case, one) are away from the main room for a long time.

Aside from the complexity of the glitch, you also have to deal with the usual raid nonsense: swarm adds, boss attacks, and the pressure of having to kill Ation within four damage phases to avoid another instant wipe mechanism. third There is an incredibly tense scene at the end of the damage phase, when he is so depleted that a single stray bullet from the harpy almost ends him, forcing him to scramble for cover.

Also surprising is the need to switch weapons and armor, and mods and status changes can be made to increase survivability in some situations and increase damage in others. For example, VoteforShifu can switch armor before the boss's damage phase to bring Titan's health to 100, improve his melee combat ability, and help him accumulate 3 stacks of the Roaring Fire buff to increase the damage of his fusion grenades. the depth of Destiny 2's builds The depth of Destiny 2's builds is reaffirmed, but rarely is such precise theory required for an official challenge.

By my count, using DestinyTracker to add up the deaths for each solo instance VoG session, it took over 1,600 attempts before it all came together. You can hear each and every one of those attempts in his voice after Ateon finally falls. This is a tremendous display of skill and patience, and shows the complexity found in Destiny 2's raids and how much effort some people are willing to put in to overcome them.