Destiny’s newest raid has been completed on hard mode

A group of intrepid Destiny players just completed the game’s latest challenge: the Wrath of the Machine raid on Heroic difficulty, developer Bungie announced today.

The honor of the world’s first hard-mode Aksis kill goes to the PlayStation 4 clan known as Die Busfahrer, which is German for “the bus drivers.” The fireteam consisted of Volt230, TehCupido, skillprofi-1, E_N_D_23, PreeeY and ProX_Exotic.

Bungie released Update 2.4.1 for Destiny at about 10 a.m. PT today and set the raid’s Heroic difficulty live four hours later, at 2 p.m. The studio tweeted about the clan’s verified raid completion just one hour later — shortly after 3 p.m.

It makes sense that beating Wrath of the Machine on hard mode would take less time than it took to complete the raid for the first time. By now, players have had nearly a month to familiarize themselves with the enemies, mechanics and platforming in Wrath of the Machine.

Indeed, the first group to defeat Aksis needed more than two hours to pull it off. In fact, that fireteam — Clan Redeem — was the No. 3 finisher for the hard-mode raid, Bungie said a few minutes ago. (The second-place group, The Legend Himself, finished less than two minutes behind Die Busfahrer and just over two minutes ahead of Redeem.)

For more on how to get your Light level high enough to tackle Wrath of the Machine, check out our comprehensive guide. You can also read our review of Destiny: Rise of Iron.