Raid

A Raid is a six-player cooperative mission. Raids are very difficult and complex, requiring communication and high-level abilities and gear.

Gameplay
Unlike story missions and strikes, raids give players only the bare minimum of guidance and objectives and instead challenge Guardians to figure everything out as they proceed. Because of the necessity of communication and coordination, raids do not support matchmaking.

Raids have two difficulties: Normal and Hard. Normal mode focuses on learning the raid's mechanics, communicating with the team, and strategizing. Hard mode increases the difficulty in several ways, including deadlier enemies, new behaviors for raid mechanics, and a harsher death penalty. Hard mode for a raid can be unlocked after it is first completed on Normal mode.

Raids can be exited and resumed later through a checkpoint system; upon re-entering a raid, the fireteam will appear at the encounter where the fireteam leader ended their last raid session. However, all progress will be lost after the Weekly Reset each Tuesday.

Loot
Each Raid has exclusive loot, consisting of one complete set of armor and a class item for each class and one legendary weapon of each type. Some items will only drop on Hard. Raids also have a high likelihood of dropping exotic weapons.

Once a Guardian receives loot for an encounter, that Guardian is locked out from receiving any further loot from that encounter until the Weekly Reset each Tuesday. Encounter loot drops have an independent weekly lockout for each difficulty, meaning that the Hard mode drop may be received in a week in which the Normal mode drop has already been received. If a raid is run on Hard in a given week before it is run on Normal, each loot drop will deliver both the Normal and Hard rewards together. Chests found within raids do not have separate lockouts and will only give rewards once per week.

Trivia

 * Destiny 's raids are designed by Luke Smith.