Bungie promised that they were going to put Black Spindle-like secrets back into Destiny after they seemingly disappeared for D2, and it seems they were being quite literal about it.
Earlier today, players discovered something new that was apparently added in the July update on Tuesday. It’s a secret quest sparked by a public event, something that escalates into one of the craziest, hardest encounters the series has ever seen.
The end result? A new exotic sniper called Whisper of the Worm, a follow-up to Black Spindle, which was itself an exotic version of the Black Hammer. It has the same signature perk as Black Hammer, White Nail, which will reload the magazine of the sniper after three precision hits.
But this thing is going to be incredibly tough for most players to get. The quest, The Whisper, is a timed mission where players have 20 minutes to get through it to claim the sniper. So, how do you do it? It’s quite a process, but here you go:
Step 1:
The event is triggered only during the Taken Blight event. You don’t have to beat the event, but once it starts, you have to go to a little cave in the cliff wall (see the cursor on the map above) where you’ll find a Taken version of Urzok, the bullet sponge Hive Knight from Destiny 1. Kill him, and he will open up a portal on the map which you’ll be able to see pretty easily when you exit the cave.
Step 2:
There are two main jumping puzzles after this point. The first is a spread-out maze like something you’d see in a raid (this entire mission is practically a raid lair itself). You have to balance on ledges with blocks that will push you off if you’re not careful. You can die and you don’t auto-lose or anything, but you will burn valuable time you’re going to need later. You will almost certainly get lost your first time or two.
Step 3:
The second part of the puzzle will take you to a seemingly empty room, but you will have to jump up a series of tiny ledges all around the edges of the room to make your way to a secret area. I’m going to have to link to a video guide once those go up because this is literally impossible to fully describe (Update: here's one), but try it a few times and eventually you’ll get the path down.
Step 4:
Here’s where things get super serious. After a ridiculous amount of jumping, you will enter a combat encounter that will tear even 385-390 players apart (you absolutely need a full fireteam for this entire mission, by the way).
There are three rooms I believe where you have to kill enemies and blights (like the old Spindle quest) and you will kill wall blights to open up the next two rooms. The final room will spawn a collection of three bosses that you’re going to have to kill while dodging an entire room full of shielded elite mobs. It’s incredibly difficult, and I was watching 390 players like Teawrex getting two shot by things constantly.
So, how do you it? World’s first (I think?) gelatosquid beat the room where others failed by using two Arcstriders and a Melting Point Titan. The Arcstriders cleared the mobs and staggered the boss while the Melting Point Titan well, used Melting Point. And then, the Black Spindle….errr the Whisper of the Worm was theirs. For weapons, I'd recommend the EP Shotty (duh) and possibly Riskrunner/Graviton for shield zapping/mob-clearing.
Now, this isn’t even over yet. After beating this, it unlocks a heroic version of The Whisper quest which is recommended 400 light. Players can’t even get to 400 light until Solstice of Heroes starts handing out 400 light armor, and only a few people in the world have even beaten the normal version of the quest at this point. The assumption is that this quest will reward the exotic catalyst for the Whisper of the Worm, though what it does and how you unlock it remains at a mystery at this point.
This is….quite simply, awesome. There’s roughly a zero percent chance I’m going to end up getting this thing myself seeing how brutally hard this mission is, but whatever, I’m just pumped that something like this is back in the game again. This is easily the most exciting I’ve seen the Destiny community in months.
So, that’s a very rough guide as to how you can attempt this for yourself. Stay tuned for more info about the catalyst and anything else that might be discovered.
Update: I just watched xGladd beat the Heroic version, which seemed to actually be easier once you knew what you were doing and could use the Whisper to burn the end bosses. And it did indeed unlock the catalyst for the gun.
The catalyst gives the gun the ability to gain increased range and precision damage when aiming down the scope for a bit. You unlock it by getting "Blighted Essence" in the Heroic Whisper mission, but it remains to be seen what exactly that means. More to come.
Update 2: The unlock the catalyst you just need to re-run the Heroic mission a few times and kill blights/bosses. It will probably only get easier each time as you get strategies down, but by the end you'll probably never want to see this mission again.
Update 3: Oh dear lord. Apparently once you get the Whisper, Bungie will sell you a bundle with an ornament and transmat effect in the Eververse store. Whyyyyy Bungie, you were doing so welllll
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