Work smart, not hard. An adage that rings true throughout the world. A single player, acting alone and without outside assistance, has managed to defeat Atheon from the Vault of Glass on their own. The raid is one of the games best examples of how to make teamwork essential, but that’s no longer the case.
This was accomplished by way of a simple trick that takes advantage of the games Radiance ability and how the battle works. The player, who goes by the name of “whoismendle” on PSN, Reddit and Bungie’s forums, spawned into Atheon’s chamber playing as a warlock equipped with Radiance.
From there, he opened up on Atheon with a rocket launcher, but this is where the plan gets clever. This fight takes a team of players to pass through time streams, in which they must defeat the enemies and collect a relic. Players that didn’t pass through the stream must defend themselves from multiple opponents while setting up an exit portal for the other portion of the team.
This means that if “whoismendle” crosses the time stream, then there’s no coming back because nobody is there to open the exit portal. But when Atheon tries to open the stream, “whoismendle” launches himself down a pit and uses Radiance to respawn back on top with Atheon now locked in space, assuming that the player is now in the time stream.
From there on, “whoismendle” is free to whittle away at the now frozen Atheon with barrage upon barrage of grenades before repeating the process over and over until victory is achieved. A genius strategy that takes advantage of both the games mechanics and how it all works.
