This Week At The API Went Out For Smokes

-This Week At Truth, the API said it'd be back soon. It just went to get milk and cigarettes so it shouldn't take long.......right? Despite being brought back to the archaic times where we needed to use the vault to swap items, we still were able to dive into the Lightfall-prelude season this week: Season of the Seraph. Trying to fix Rasputin with the assistance of the Bray family and Osiris, we have many secrets to unlock and more story beats to unfold. This week, we dive into the weekly updates, stare out the window for the API's car to pull back in the driveway, and talk more about what Witty and Shua are doing with Game2Give.

-Bungie has been working to fix whatever issues were related to the server instability and the API having to go down for a few days now. There is a planned downtime today anyway before reset. A reddit comment from dmg mentioned it would be back up "later this week", but a Bungie Help tweet last night followed that up by saying "Tomorrow's update should resolve these issues - we'll then turn the API back on". As always keep an eye on #destiny-chat for the bot to post tweets. Also be aware that while the API is down we cannot manage any clan-related functions on the app or website, so joins/requests cannot be dealt with until the API is back up and running. 

-The Dawning is back this week! The winter-weather event is an annual staple to Destiny, and this year completing the new Dawning-associated seal (Star Baker, yummy) will grant you a new title and one more check towards the Reveler seal. There's also a new event weapon: the Lightweight Stasis Pulse Rifle Stay Frosty  Get ready to bake some cookies and throw some snowballs! The Nightfall this week is The Scarlet Keep, Mayhem is the Crucible rotator, and banned game mode has bonus ranks for Gambit this week. Your Pinnacle rotators are Garden of Salvation and Pit of Heresy. Don't forget Moments of Triumph is ongoing as well - have some fun while working towards the MMXXII seal. 

-Hopefully you've had a chance to dive into Spire of the Watcher, the new Dungeon, and some Heist Battlegrounds. The start of a new season is always tricky to navigate with spoilers based on when people are able to access content. With the dungeon now being out for 4 days, we are lifting the spoiler ban on Spire of the Watcher for general channels. Anything related to the seasonal story and quests still needs to be in #season_of_ra_ra_rasputin. All leaks and datamined information, as always, goes in #leaks_datamines_spoilers. 

-Game2Give, the Bungie Foundation's annual charity event started last week and as of writing this has raised over $540,000 towards its goal of $2.5 Million! Thank you to all those who have contributed so far to the effort which helps various efforts, but the biggest being Little Lights, a program that helps kids in long-term hospital stays get access to iPads and tablets so they can game, communicate with family and friends, stay up on their schoolwork, and get a sense of normalcy during a particularly scary time of their lives. One week in and Witty and Shua have combined to fundraise almost $1,000 so far! Here's a blurb from each of them on what this past week has been like and what to expect this week: 

Witty: Pentad has been banned for over 24 hours this week already with more to come. At $500 raised, we've already hit two milestones: a filmed Wendy's mile (which will be posted to Discord and socials) and a giveaway for guest-writing This Week At Truth at a later date. To be entered in any giveaway all you have to do is donate $5 or more to my campaign. The second giveaway unlocks at $1,000 for a copy of Lightfall to one lucky donor. And if you just want to cause pain, a $50 donation makes me roll the Hot Sauce Dice Game, and $100 you pick the god roll I delete. This week, I'll be streaming on Tues and Thurs nights at 6PM ET, and on Friday we'll be doing Raids with the Wheel of Misfortune spinning at each encounter starting at 7PM ET. You can donate to Witty's campaign and goals here! 

Shua: You can find me live on my Twitch channel for Game2Give all this week starting around 730PM PT, Saturday 10AM PT and wrapping up the week with my featured Bungie Foundation stream at 8AM PT on Sunday 12/18. So far I've had to eat a beanboozled combo of dirty dishwater, dead fish and barf, as well as getting screwed by the Double Wheel of Doom spin combining sweet corn soda with Worcestershire sauce. Add in a spoonful of extra hot horseradish and the donations have brought some pain, but all for a good cause. You too can donate to bring some pain and do some good at the same time, plus donations can enter you in a gift card giveaway, and maybe even shave my beard! You can donate to Shua's campaign and goals here! 

-that's what's on tap for this week. Be sure to sacrifice your favorite god roll to the API so it can come back faster. 

--Witty