Destiny 2 Contest Mode clears for the Destiny 2 Root of Nightmares raid totalled more than 45,500, according to data from Destiny Raid Report. This is a staggering number because it is greater than the number of raid clears during Contest Mode than other raid races combined in the FPS game.
For the Root of Nightmares, Bungie extended Contest Mode to 48 hours from its typical 24, giving Destiny 2 players an extra day to complete the raid and potentially opening access to players who would not have been available on a weekday to clear the raid within 24 hours of its original start time. However, this alone doesn’t account for the stark difference in the number of clears from previous raids in the FPS game.
Team Hard in the Paint Root completed the Root of Nightmares raid race and defeated Nezarec in about two hours and 26 minutes. This is a marked contrast from other World’s First raid clears, which typically have taken longer. For comparison, the team that first completed the Last Wish World’s First raid race took 18 hours to finish it.
But when it came to the Root of Nightmares, players quickly figured out the raid’s mechanics and could therefore rapidly complete it. This led some teams to reportedly clear it more than 20 times in that 48-hour period.
Many players are complaining that the raid is exceptionally easy, though it’s worth noting that only about 44% of fireteams who began it on Contest Mode could complete it within the 48-hour timeframe. However, this is still far more than previous raid races, such as Last Wish, which had fewer than .009% successful completions in the first 24 hours during Contest Mode. It appears the overall increased Contest Mode timeframe for completion alone couldn’t have accounted for the differences, as the Destiny 2 Raid Report Twitter account showed 89,984 account clears within the first 24 hours, compared with Last Wish’s 12.
Difficulty aside, two factors that could account for the increased completions are the fact that it is overall shorter than some previous raid and was developed in a way that allows teams to bypass the more complicated mechanics of the final encounter. Ultimately, it’s most likely a combination of all of these factors.
Interestingly, what’s being hailed as the easiest raid to date comes on the heels of discussions surrounding difficulty in Destiny 2 activities. Even seasoned players have complained that the recently-added Mars Battleground Nightfall is extremely difficult and revamped Lesector‘s are much more difficult than their predecessors. Bungie recently implemented Destiny 2 difficulty changes as of Lightfall to appease players who complained of too easy content.
Despite complaints regarding Lightfall campaign content, Destiny 2 season 20 has given way to a number of Lightfall exotic weapons, which have mitigated some complaints that players initially had regarding the multiplayer game‘s newest expansion.