If you missed out on Destiny ’s Treasure Cave, you missed out on one of the easiest ways to farm loot in the game. For the uneducated, here’s how it worked.
A cave in Destiny ’s Old Russia hub world had a bit of a programming quirk. Basically, it would look to see if players were coming toward the cave and, if so, would spawn enemies inside the cave to attack the players. It would then check to see how close players were to the cave and if they were closer than a certain distance it would stop spawning enemies. The thought of course is that the enemies would run out of the cave, players would run around outside the cave fighting them, pick up the items that were left over, and go on their way.
However, players always find a way to break the game, and this is no exception. You see, if you stand outside a certain distance, specifically at the “spawn” distance where the game checks to see if players are heading toward the spawn point, the cave would continuously spawn enemies. It would then check to see if these enemies were all dead and if so, spawn them again.
Normally, this isn’t a big deal. Enemies scatter as a result of their A.I. and usually you will have to chase them down in order to kill them all, meaning that even if enemies respawned instantly, there would still be quite a delay between waves.
However, the treasure cave spawned enemies toward the BACK of the cave, allowing them to run out and greet adventurers. This meant that you, and a couple of friends, could simply stand beyond the spawn distance and shoot into the cave, killing them before they came out. You could do this pretty much indefinitely, with a constant spawning wave of enemies coming at you. Since you get items if you are nearby anybody who is killing anything, you can just sorta lounge around as players take shifts killing these enemies. Common etiquette was that no one ran toward the cave for loot until a lot of loot is built up, as anyone running up to the cave will stop the spawn flow.
Unfortunately, the loot party is over, as just as players realize the best way to farm loot, Bungie shut it down. A hotfix was applied to the game that does away with this whole treasure cave business. Basically, all cave spawn points have been normalized to a spawn timer of 40 seconds, essentially preventing the endless waves of spawning enemies. Official update notes say, “The Hive of the holy “Treasure Cave” have realized the futility of their endless assault on Skywatch and have retired to lick their wounds and plan their next attack.”
“The social experience of a cave farming run is amazing: the herding to get a team of Guardians all behind the line and firing in the right direction, the rush to grab the loot, the scramble when the panic wave starts, the beckoning glow from inside the cave,” the developer said in a statement regarding the treasure cave. “The speed at which the community organized around this activity was inspiring and humbling to us.”
“But shooting at a black hole for hours on end isn’t our dream for how Destiny is played. Our hope is that social engagement in public spaces is only one part of the Destiny experience. Expect changes soon which decrease the efficiency of cave farming and correspondingly increase engram drops from completing activities.”
You can read the full patch notes for the update below.
Missions
- Reduced drop rate of engrams following a hard wipe [fixed in 1.0.1.4]
Queen’s Wrath Event
- Material rewards for dismantling Queen’s Wrath gear will no longer provide ascendant materials, but missions will continue to drop Legendary items
Destinations
- The Hive of the holy “Treasure Cave” have realized the futility of their endless assault on Skywatch and have retired to lick their wounds and plan their next attack.
- Respawn timers for monster caves in Skywatch have been normalized to 40 seconds (increased from 6)
- Respawn timers for monster caves in Forgotten Shore have been normalized to 40 seconds (increased from 10)
- Respawn timers for monster caves in Ember Caves have been normalized to 40 seconds (increased from 10)
- Respawn timers for monster caves in the Shattered Coast have been normalized to 40 seconds (increased from 10)
- Respawn timers for monster caves in the Barrens have been normalized to 40 seconds (increased from 20)