How to unlock new 'No Time To Explain’ Exotic pulse rifle: perks, review

The ‘No Time To Explain’ Exotic Pulse Rifle was the weapon given to us by the Exo Stranger at the end of Destiny 1 and this weapon has finally made its way into the sequel, with a few handy upgrades to boot.

How to Get

If you were like me and loaded up Beyond Light, ready to get your hands on this returning Exotic, and quickly realised the weapon was nowhere to be found then fear not, No Time to Explain is quite easy to earn but just takes a bit of work.

Simply progress through the main Beyond Light story missions and once the dust has settled, return to the Exo Stranger to receive your shiny new toy.

No Time To Explain also has an Exotic catalyst with the quest to receive it being given by the player at the same time as the weapon itself. This quest is titled ‘Soon’ and is fairly straightforward. The first part requires the player to obtain 5 Schematic Code Fragments which can be dropped by defeated enemies in the Bray Exoscience area.

The next step is to kill 60 Vex in either the Nexus, Well of Infinitude or the Glassway with No Time To Explain. These above areas can be found to the east of Asterion Abyss.

After this is completed, return to the Exo Stranger to be rewarded with the catalyst but unfortunately you are not done yet. The catalyst itself needs to be completed before it can be slotted into No Time To Explain and to do that you simply need to kill a fair amount of enemies with the weapon.

More powerful enemies reward more progress. Either keep the weapon equipped while doing other quests on Europa to passively progress or grind out a Lost Sector a few times, making sure to get the final blow on the boss with No Time To Explain.

Once the catalyst is completed, and slotted in, No Time To Explain will be able to generate Orbs of Power on multikills and the Time Slip portal will fire significantly faster.

Perks

• No Time To Explain functions in a similar way to its Destiny 1 form but with a few extra bonuses that tie into the new Stasis subclasses
• Rewind Again - Precision shots and shots against combatants slowed or frozen by Stasis will return to the magazine.
• Time Slip - At 10 stacks of Rewind Again, a small portal will open, shooting bullets from an alternate timeline version of this weapon. Precision hits extend the portal’s duration.

So, now for some interesting things I noticed about these perks while testing the weapon. The stacks of Rewind Again do not expire and will persist through weapon swapping. Once 10 stacks are reached, and Time Slip activates, the portal will stay active for 15 seconds but precision hits can extend this duration.

If you are against a boss with an easy to hit critical spot then Time Slip can remain active indefinitely.

Review

PvE - No Time To Explain is an exceptional primary weapon for PvE. The Rewind Again perk allows a constant stream of fire if you are able to land precision hits while the Time Slip portal does enough damage to easily take care of low health enemies, like Dregs and Thrall, by itself.

Due to the Time Slip perk, No Time To Explain actually has possibly the highest boss DPS in the game compared to other primary weapons as there's never a need to reload and you also have the portal dishing out a small amount of extra damage. This means that No Time To Explain could be quite useful when taken into a raid as if you get yourself stuck in a  DPS phase without any Special or Heavy ammo then you are still able to deal a substantial amount of damage.

Once you have acquired the catalyst the portal’s fire rate increases from once every second or so to almost double that, increasing damage substantially. On top of this you are able to combine the Warlock Arc Soul in order to make yourself a one man Fireteam.

In essence, No Time To Explain is a very versatile primary weapon for PvE as it can easily take out minor enemies with the help of the Time Slip portal and can also hold its own in the boss DPS department.

PvP - No Time To Explain is a part of the High Impact Pulse Rifle archetype and so it is by default one of the best performing weapons in the current meta. High Impact Pulse Rifles are able to kill in 6 shots, 5 precision and 1 body, for an optimal time to kill value of 0.67 seconds which is substantially lower than most other primary weapon types.

If Time Slip is active this turns No Time To Explain into an even more dangerous weapon. The portal fires slow enough that it's likely that in an optimal gunfight it will only fire once, maybe twice if you have the catalyst, but this is more than enough. The portal fires a burst of 3 shots that each deal 11 damage to enemy Guardians. This might not seem like much but if all 3 shots hit, for a combined 33, this means that in the 2 round, optimal kill time burst, now only 4 shots need to be precision hits and 2 can be body hits.

Another big draw for using No Time To Explain over other High Impact Pulses is that it has substantially higher stats across the board than the other most popular Pulse, Cold Denial. More Range, Stability, Handling, Reload Speed, Aim Assistance and even Recoil Direction is never a bad thing.

Essentially, the higher base stats in comparison to the competition and the Time Slip portal helping with easier kills, No Time To Explain is an extremely consistent Pulse Rifle in PvP.