I'm really enjoying the Taken King so far and I love the changes you've made to virtually everything (the general hand cannon range nerf might be a bit too much though, the exotics were the problem not all of them).
However I've reached the step of the 'A Sword Reforged' quest where I have to get 10 rare materials from spinmetal and a lot of ability kills, and I have to say that not only is this exceedingly tedious but it's also far too long. I've been farming spinmetal for 2 hours now, getting about 2-3 per minute on average, and I still only have 4/10 rare materials. The ability kills could be done in 30 minutes fairly easily if I wanted to but these rare materials are a serious pain to get since there's nothing I can do but farm andd hope that RNGsus feels generous.
IMO this quest step needs to be changed, either by significantly increasing the drop rate, by significantly decreasing the number of materials required or by making them a guaranteed drop but increasing the number of materials needed. I understand that exotic quests should be difficult, but they should be skill-based and interesting not incredibly tedious and entirely down to chance.
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I'm at the same part as you, I believe that the kills required is around 200 and the rare materials only have 5-10% drop rate