It's not every day that I feel compelled to ask a hardcore Destiny 2 raider about their mom, but I simply had to after venerable challenge runner TheSnazzzyRock recently made history with the first solo flawless clear of the Deep Stone Crypt raid and, while understandably attacking his mic in celebration afterward, immediately declared that, "I need to call my mom right now."
His mom, you'll surely be delighted to learn, "was so happy to hear that I completed this," Snazzzy tells me.
You may know Snazzzy as the first Destiny 2 player to solo raid bosses like Root of Nightmares' Nezarec or encounters like the Vault of Glass Gatekeepers, once thought to be undoable alone. The unshakable Guardian has been low-manning and outright soloing six-player encounters for ages, and this Deep Stone Crypt solo flawless could be his crowning achievement.
"So many things in [DSC final boss fight] Taniks to deal with," he tells 12DOVE. "Hands down the hardest solo encounter in this game, with solo flawless DSC being the hardest Destiny solo challenge to EVER be done in all of Destiny history including Destiny 1."
Snazzzy said in his YouTube description that this grind took roughly 400 hours altogether – 290 hours for initial clears on all the encounters, and then another 110 hours going for the solo flawless. What makes DSC especially difficult? Apart from the obvious limitations of doing six-player encounters and bosses by yourself, Snazzzy says Taniks was a tremendous hurdle for a few reasons, and like many solo clears, this "god run" was possible partly due to luck.
Taniks is the final encounter of DSC, which sucks extra hard because if you're going to lose a flawless run, you'd rather do it early rather than right at the gates of glory. "Taniks has so many annoying things that can go wrong and mess you up," Snazzzy says. "[Eager Edge sword] tracking can be really frustrating at the wrong times. The dunk canceling was hard for me to pull off as well (I actually mess up MULTIPLE times in my completion, even had to RNG a dunk spot by just dunking it since I had no time left to waste)."
"The biggest 'oh shit' moment in this completion was when I had realized Taniks was moving to the orange side of the arena on the very last phase of the encounter," Snazzzy recalls. "Taniks going orange is the easiest spot to block him with [Verglas Curve] and also is the easiest dunk spot you can get. When I noticed Taniks was moving orange, I went from, 'Oh this is an INSANE run but will probably end soon' to, 'Wait a second this is actually a real moment where this could go down.'"
What keeps Snazzzy going after all this time? "Definitely my grind-set to be the best at what I do," he says. "I genuinely have a love for it so I really enjoy doing the 'impossible' as well as my Twitch chat being super kind and supportive of me even when I fail, [then of course] my mom keeps me going. And while I do these challenges I think about how proud my dad would be if he could see this stuff! I know he's looking down proud!"
"My mom is super supportive of me and my goals and listens to everything I explain to her and actually takes it in," he adds. "The morning of the completion I was actually talking with her about how hard it was and how I'm not gonna give up but it's really hard to deal with the runs and she told me to keep on going. She loves when I achieve my goals and supports them fully!!!"
Snazzzy's latest triumph earned him a "holy shit" from Destiny 2 community DMG over on Reddit, in a thread filled with players who are as gobsmacked as I was earlier today. I asked Snazzzy if he'd seen the reaction.
"I actually did see DMG's response on Reddit," he says. "That actually was so cool to see that DMG came across the completion. I love seeing the reaction to Bungie folks checking out my stuff. It truly is amazing and I'm glad to show them what I can do in the game they work on!"
