Destiny launched on Tuesday and is already on track to become another million dollar franchise. As with all online games there is a bit of teething that has to be done but otherwise things are mostly looking positive for the game. So to round out the end of this first week I thought I would pass out a few of my stories of my time with the game and also a few links to help get you started if you’re still on the bench.

Tuesday morning I was the lucky recipient of having two wisdom teeth removed (Huzzah!) so I wasn’t really able to (or in the mood) to post up the day one patch notes. Not much in there that would affect a new player but the cool thing is they increased the damage output and stability of both the pulse rifle and the hand cannon while taking the nerf bat to the assault rifle. Keep that in mind when choosing which weapons you want to be taking in with you to the crucible. A shotgun and hand cannon combo can be very lethal.

I finally had my Limited edition delivered at about 1pm (thanks Mr Postman) and I opened it with glee. Everything in there was great. While waiting for the game to install on my PS4 I entered all the codes for DLC and collectors content and everything went smooth except the 1 month PS Plus code (I should look at that again). Once that final bit of installation and patching was complete I started making my human hunter. Alas I was unable to give him the rightful glorious beard he so deserves but he will live without it, I’m sure. And then I watched as my Ghost resurrected me for the first time outside the cosmodrome.

Progress through the story missions at this point for me was fairly easy and it wasn’t until I was about to start a Level 5 story mission on level 3 that I realised I was progressing too fast. I hit the patrol and started a few missions and collected some bounties to help me grind that little bit of experience a tad faster. I would hedge my bets that anyone else who played the beta would have had the same issue as the first few levels are identical, but Bungie has changed the levelling scale significantly to force you to try these other tasks and take you off the beaten path. No matter your thought, bounties are a must from level 4 onwards. It makes levelling ten times easier. Also if you played the beta you’ll notice that the first strike is now level 8 instead of 6. Be careful going in there at level 6 as everything will be much harder to kill, and you will suffer frequent deaths to match. Kotaku posted up a great little get started guide, which I highly recommend. And yes the hair is something to care about… (You can have an Awoken look like David Bowie!).

After a few Rounds in the crucible and making a start on the moon missions, I was ready for my first strike. Most things played identical to the beta. The Tank boss has a little less health so it’s a bit quicker bringing down those legs, and Sepkis still seems pretty much the same, although I never found him too hard in the beta. I made my progress through the moon missions the following day after getting my feet drenched (in mostly my own blood) in the crucible, and eventually made my way to Venus. But not before trying the moon strike. And let me tell you, it is hard. The mission itself is not so bad, but that final boss fight is a doozy. After doing some reading on the Bungie forums, I found that I’m not the only one experiencing this. I’m expecting to see it re-tuned in a future patch. Venus however is beautiful. After a couple of evenings I finished most of the planet and was already level 16 by this stage (about 4 levels ahead of the campaign), and had decided to go back and begin levelling my second sub class. In doing so I managed to get to level 20 before even finishing the planet. In essence, levelling is easy. So now I have just started Mars and I’m still hunting that elusive first piece of post level cap gear but am enjoying the heck out of this game.

Now Deej has posted up the current event schedule. We already knew the first raid, The Vault of Glass, would be going live today and now we know the rest of the planned events to follow. Hopefully we will see more public events popping up more regularly as currently I have only see the one in my entire time adventuring. Also Bungie’s weekly update went live again this weekend where it mostly discussed the launch and the people at the back end still working tirelessly to get everyone online. Hopefully no more centipede soon enough.

I hope your all enjoying the game as much as me. What’s been your favourite part? Mines been hunting the golden chests, so back to Venus I go to keep up the hunt.

Bungie have sneakily deployed a Google Maps street view style web page interface in the lead up to next week’s release of Destiny. They even built it using Google’s own street view tech. I have had some troubles loading it up properly on my laptop using Firefox (it keeps displaying my location in Brisbane city for me for some reason and I doubt BirsVegas made it into the game) but it is working fine on my phone.

(Editor’s note: I tried on Safari, Chrome and Firefox for Mac and none worked….)

So far it only shows Mars, Venus and that Moon where the Wizard came from but seems to contain some useful information. I have only really had a chance to look around Mars so far but already I have picked up a few tips for facing the Cabal once I get there.

Oh and when you open it up, make sure your sound is on. The music is great.