Destiny’s ‘Vintage’ Guns Are Better Than The New Ones

You know the phrase “they don’t make ‘em like they used to?” It’s not just true of stereo equipment and American muscle cars, it’s also true of Destiny guns. If you need more powerful weapons, but you're not able to get, you can choose destiny power leveling.

In Destiny, there’s a shotgun you can earn called “Felwinter’s Lie.” (It’s a good name. Lots of Destiny guns have good names.) People like Felwinter’s, especially for PvP play, because it has better range than many other shotguns. The best versions of Felwinter’s can take out an opponent from halfway across a small room.

Felwinter’s Lie can only be earned during the on-again, off-again PvP event known as the Iron Banner. Some players won a Felwinter’s months ago; other players won one during last week’s most recent Banner. Thing is, depending on when you got it, your gun might be objectively better than the one I got last week.

The reason for that comes down to perks. In Destiny, all guns and armor come with various perks that you unlock as you use them. A piece of armor may let you throw grenades farther; a gun may let you increase its magazine size, or raise its stability at the cost of a range penalty. If you get a gun as a random drop, it’ll have a random combination of perks to go with it. Some perks are far better than others, and a killer combination of perks is called a “good roll.”

In the past, it was possible to get a Felwinter’s Lie with a perk called “Shot Package,” which reduces the spread of your shotgun blast if you aim the gun, and another called “Hammer Forged,” which increases the gun’s range at the cost of reload speed. With those two perks, Felwinter’s Lie becomes an extremely dangerous mid-range weapon. There’s a joke among players that the “lie” in the gun’s name is the fact that it’s classified as a shotgun, since in truth, it’s a sniper rifle. Har, har.

During the most recent Iron Banner, Hammer Forged was removed as a possible Felwinter’s perk. You could pay in-game money to “reroll” your gun to try for better perks—something that has long been possible with Iron Banner guns and was recently made possible with all new Destiny guns—but no matter how many times you rolled, you’d never get a combo Shot Package + Hammer Forged shotgun. The only players with that particular combination of perks won the gun during an older Iron Banner. A “vintage” Felwinter’s Lie is therefore demonstrably better than a new one.

Destiny’s House of Wolves expansion introduced the ability to upgrade any gun or armor with a material called Etheric Light, which lets players “ascend” older guns and armor to match the new level cap. It’s a fantastic addition to the game, and it gives players a new incentive to run old challenges like the Vault of Glass raid and to make use of the unique guns and armor those older challenges offer as rewards. Etheric Light has caused a leveling of the playing field—all guns and armor can theoretically provide the same damage and protection, meaning that players are given the ability to better customize their loadout, stats, and gear. Perks are now the primary thing separating one gun from another, and so perks have become much more important.