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Published on August 10th, 2018 | by Admin

This week at Bungie, we demonstrated the evolution of combat in the second year of Destiny 2

This week at Bungie, we demonstrated the evolution of combat in the second year of Destiny 2.

During an action-packed livestream, the team showed off the changes that all players can expect, including the new weapon slot system, random rolls, more meaningful weapon mods, and a decreased time to kill in the Crucible (crispy three taps and spicy Devils!). All Destiny 2 players can experience a preview of the sandbox updates on August 29 in ANZ.

One topic that the team have seen a lot of questions about is how they’ll migrate from old weapon mods to new weapon mods. Starting on August 29, your current mods will be deprecated, and your inventory will tell you that you can safely discard them for materials and parts. On September 5 in ANZ, the Gunsmith’s inventory will be dedicated to new Forsaken mods.

Between now and the preload on August 29, use your Year 1 mods to lock in the elemental damage type you want for your Year 1 weapons. They will retain that damage type after the mod deprecation. On August 29, the old mod slot will go away, and you will no longer be able to insert any mods into Year 1 gear or change the elemental damage type. Some weapons will be moving to the Kinetic Slot and will not retain elemental damage regardless of what mod you had applied. The IKELOS Sniper Rifle and Shotgun will be locked to Solar. Here are the Legendary weapons that will be moving to Kinetic:

  • Baligant
  • Shepherd’s Watch
  • Hawthorne’s Field-Forged Shotgun
  • Alone as a God
  • Perfect Paradox
  • The Frigid Jackal
  • Silicon Neuroma

There is plenty that’s about to change. Right now is a good time for us to set your expectations about a lot of it. This is a big one. Let’s dig in.

Wide Awake and Dreaming

Far away from the Crucible, you’ll find the first dedicated endgame destination the team have created, home to the largest endgame experience ever. Watch the Dreaming City Trailer here.

You’ll discover the Dreaming City in Destiny 2: Forsaken.

How to Become Legend in Year 2

Weapon tuning and systems aren’t the only things that are changing in Forsaken. When your next journey begins, you’ll also discover new ways to earn rewards and become more powerful. The Investment Team can give you a sense for what’s coming. 

Investment Team: Here are our high-level goals for progression and economy in Season 4:

  • We want to bring back the days when you are impressed when you see someone at max Power in the Tower
  • The experience of levelling and then powering up should be meaningful
  • Players should have a sense of discovery when earning rewards from different activities
  • When players accomplish something difficult, the rewards should be special or unique
  • Not all of the sources of Power in a week should be apparent on the Director

Acquisition of Power 

In Year 1, an activity such as the raid would have an absolute range of Power that it could generate. Rewards would grant only a small difference in Power level, even if you were overcoming the challenge while under-levelled. In Forsaken, the team are scaling the Power production of all content by the difficulty of that content. If you manage to beat the raid while 40 Power under the recommended level, you should expect to receive more potent rewards.

When players earn powerful rewards, these items should never scale down to where they do not give an increase in Power. Even if your Power is 100 over an activity’s recommended level, it should still grant a reward at least one Power level above your current average. This means that players should still benefit when grouping with teammates who haven’t accomplished as much as they have.

The team have also created multiple new sources of Power for powerful rewards that refresh on a different cadence than the weekly reset. The goal is to provide more to do for the players who want to play a variety of activities. That said, not every reward you find in the wild will be a powerful upgrade. The team don’t want to spoil the entire journey to max Power, so they’ll be leaving it in the hands of the players to discover the best ways to reach endgame and beyond when Forsaken is released.

As a final note on Power, the team have heard a lot of feedback concerning Exotics. To make these rewards feel more useful, whenever you receive an Exotic reward in Forsaken, it will always be at or above your Guardian’s Power.

Milestones

The Milestone tray has been revamped in Forsaken, and will now specifically show the most important, nonrepeatable quests for every player of Destiny 2. The campaign quests are a good example of this. Meanwhile, our world quests for destinations will now live in the Pursuits section of your character inventory. Many Milestones from Year 1 have been converted to activity challenges. These will continue to grant powerful rewards, but they will no longer be displayed in the Milestone tray. When you access the Director, you’ll see activity challenges in the tooltip of the associated activity.  

Activities  

The base strike playlist for Destiny 2: Forsaken players has been updated to feature difficulty selection and modifiers. Below are top line changes you can expect with Destiny Update 2.0:

  • Heroic strikes are being retired on August 28 with Destiny Update 2.0
  • The Nightfall activity is being revisited for Season 4
  • Meditations are being retired and replaced with a Heroic story playlist
  • Ikora Rey’s Vanguard Research reputation tokens will no longer be used as a currency
  • Heroic adventures are being added to all destinations
  • Activity modifiers will be shared across Heroic adventures, Heroic story missions, and strikes

For the full rundown, head over here.

Economy Updates

For the last few weeks, the team have seen a lot of players asking about items and currencies available in Year 1 and whether they’ll continue to be available in Year 2 or not. To read the full rundown of changes coming in Destiny Update 2.0, head over here.

It’s Lit Fam  

Lord Saladin makes his final appearance in Season 3 next week. This will be your last chance to earn your Season 3 rewards.

Begins: Tuesday, August 15 in ANZ

Ends: Tuesday, August 22 in ANZ

The game, as always, is Control!

There are a few changes to the Iron Banner Control you know and love. Iron Temple fire pits have replaced the usual Control flags. There is also a new Power Play rule where capturing all three zones will lock them down for 20 seconds. At the end of the Power Play, all the zones are reset to neutral and must be recaptured.

Power Enabled

Starting in Season 4, Iron Banner will be updated to enable Power level advantages, like in the days of old. All players of Destiny 2, regardless of expansion ownership, can participate in Iron Banner events. Year 2 rewards, featuring random rolls and compatibility with Year 2 modifications, will also be available to all players. Players who acquire new Power during their adventures in Forsaken will have an advantage, but the team don’t want to exclude anyone who wants to compete in Iron Banner and reap the rewards. Iron Banner rewards will be capped for legacy players at their maximum Power available.

Trials of the Nine will be unavailable for the duration of Season 4. The design team is putting it back on the workbench to make it a fitting challenge for the hardcore warrior. When the weekly activity returns, it will feature updated rewards, Power advantages, and other gameplay changes. The final weekend of Season 3 Trials of the Nine will take place on the weekend of August 25 in ANZ.

The team will share more about their goals and progress during Season 4.

Faction Farewell 

In Season 3, the team introduced some changes, notably the Renown mechanic, to Faction Rallies. The community responded with a lot of great feedback about how they could continue to improve the experience. The feedback ranged in topic from experience to rewards. For more, head over here.

Eververse 

As a new season begins with the launch of Forsaken, Eververse also gets a refresh. For the full rundown, head over here.  

More Labs 

Our last experiment in Crucible Labs went well. It’s time to put on your safety goggles and get back in there. Senior Designer Andrew Weldon has the details about what mode will be played in the next Crucible Labs. For more, head over here. 

Valour for All

If you’ve been working on your Solstice armour, you may notice a few objectives tied to the Crucible. Once you reach Legendary-tiered armour, your final Crucible objective is to have your Valour rank reset at some point since Crucible Ranks were implemented.

Leading up to the beginning of Year 2, you’ll see multiple opportunities to earn Valour points at an accelerated rate including a special triple Valour Iron Banner weekend. Mark your calendars appropriately:

Double Valour Week

Start: 3 AM AEST on August 11, 2018

End: 3 AM AEST on August 18, 2018 

Triple Valour Weekend

Start: 3 AM AEST on August 18, 2018

End: 3 AM AEST on August 22, 2018 

Final Double Valour Weekend

Start: 3 AM AEST on August 25, 2018

End: 3 AM AEST on August 29, 2018

Happy hunting, and we hope to see you out there!

Movie of the Week 

Please silence your cell phones and take note of the emergency exits—the movies are about to begin. Every week, the team pick a few of our favourite videos from the Creations page to show off here on the blog for all to see. The winners receive a special Emblem as a reward. If you would like a shot at Movie of the Week, just send your submission into our Creations page.

Here are this week’s winners:

Before it’s time to go, here are last week’s top Nightfall Scores:

It’s been another exciting week. Solstice of Heroes is still in full swing. Iron Banner is starting back up again next week. Fewer than three weeks until the start of Year 2 on August 29 in ANZ, where you will all get your hands on the Sandbox changes to combat the team showed off on stream.

This TWAB contained a lot of info. We’re sure you still have more questions. The team will answer some of them in the next few weeks. Others will remain a mystery until you start playing Forsaken on September 5 in ANZ and finally visit the Dreaming City for yourself.

For more information, head on over to Bungie.net.


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