Destiny 2 News Roundup – Season of the Risen Roadmap, Crafting Changes Coming Soon

Bungie was back this week with their This Week At Bungie Update, giving us more info about the significant dates coming in Season of the Risen, plus an update on Crafting, and some important changes coming later this season, and big changes coming next season. Today I’m going to run through all the news, so let’s get to it.

This week at Bungie, there’s quite a bit to do in Destiny 2.

Hello, and welcome once again to our weekly installment of Bungie news. I’m going to be up front with you, I’ve been spending quite a lot of this week diving deeper and deeper into The Witch Queen and Season of the Risen. Between the Vow of Disciple raid, PsiOps Battlegrounds, weekly repeatable story missions, Throne World secrets, Master Vox Obscura, Wellspring, Iron Banner, Altars of Reflection, and our rituals… it’s difficult to think of how to even kick this TWAB off. Let’s stick to what rolled out on Tuesday at the weekly reset and go from there, shall we?

Over the last few weeks, the Vanguard has entertained a shaky alliance with Caiatl and the Cabal. A trusted Psion has been exploring the minds of Hive Lieutenants in the Tower, searching for clues on what the Lucent Brood are planning. The final PsiOps Battleground has been revealed on the Moon, and Saladin is calling for Guardians to stop whatever the Hive have started within the walls of the Scarlet Keep. If you haven’t logged in this week, now’s your time.

Iron Banner has also returned, bringing Power-enabled 6v6 combat to the Crucible. As we noted last week, there’s some new loot to earn. This time around, there are even some new origin perks on each weapon, giving Guardians a brief moment of stealth during the hunt after defeating an enemy. I’m still hunting for my perfect Hand Cannon roll, but my Compulsive Reloader / Kill Clip combo will do just fine until I’m able to secure Rapid Hit. Pro-tip, Kill Clip bumps this Hand Cannon archetype up to a “three-tap,” AKA defeat Guardians in three precision shots rather than four. It can kick off some lovely streaks if you time things right, and know when to push.

While some Guardians are just now hopping into The Witch Queen for the first time, a few of you are beginning to look at the next few weeks of the Season with excitement. This week, we’ll be looking through the calendar, and we have some news from the team on crafting currencies, with some additional notes on feedback that they’re monitoring.

Season of the Risen Roadmap

We’re just a few days away from our one-month anniversary of The Witch Queen. Some of you have blasted your way through the Legendary campaign, while others are still dabbling in side quests and secrets throughout the Throne World patrol area. We’ve still got a few months of Season of the Risen left, so there’s no rush in completing content. Finish things at your own pace and enjoy the ride! If you’re wondering what’s coming over the next few weeks, we’d like to plant a few dates on your calendar for things to look forward to.

We have some Iron Banner dates to share, raid challenges to complete, and Guardian Games coming towards the end of the Season. As a quick note, dates are subject to change. We’re also planning a few Gambit Labs weeks to sprinkle in, but want to let the dust settle from balance changes introduced at launch and a few tuning changes/bug fixes that are coming online.

March 15 (This Week!): Iron Banner and a New PsiOps Battlegrounds Location
March 22: Legend PsiOps Battlegrounds, Vow of the Disciple Challenges
April 1: Trials Labs – Zone Capture
April 5: Grandmaster Nightfalls
April 8: Trials Labs – Freelance
April 12: Iron Banner
April 19: Vow of the Disciple Master Difficulty
April 22: Trials Labs – Zone Capture
May 3 – May 24: Guardian Games
May 6: Trials Labs – Freelance, Community voted map
May 10: Iron Banner
May 20: Trials Labs – Freelance and Zone Capture

Stay tuned to our “Next Week in Destiny” within the game and keep an eye on @DestinytheGame for future announcements. Who knows, maybe we’ll have a few Bungie Bounties and community playdates to look forward to in April and May. See you soon!

Crafting update

Over the last few weeks, Guardians have been crafting some spicy weapon rolls at the Enclave on Mars. Patterns have been discovered, traits have been enhanced, and Exotic Glaives have been shaped! As with all things Destiny, the team has been keeping an eye on player conversation around crafting, planning next steps, and looking towards the future. We’ve got a hotfix coming next Tuesday with a few minor changes, and some commentary on feedback items that the team will be looking to address in future patches and tuning passes.

Development Team: Since the launch of The Witch Queen, we’ve been watching some feedback on crafting currencies required for specific traits. One piece of feedback in particular deals with crafting element caps, as some players have been maxing out their elements frequently. Starting next Tuesday with Hotfix 4.0.0.4, we’ll be increasing element caps from 250 to 1000, and for Neutral Element, the cap will move from 8500 to 10000.

Next Season, we are removing Ruinous, Adroit, Mutable, Drowned, and Energetic elements. Only Neutral Elements will remain.

Our initial goals for these currencies were to sustain the interest in non-crafted weapon drops, and to retain the chase of weapons with well-rolled perks in a post-crafting Destiny 2. The desire was that the player would continually chase for combinations such as Subsistence plus Rampage to fuel their crafting progression through Deepsight weapon completion.

While not the only reasons we’re removing the specific currencies, there were two design changes pre-launch which made elements ineffectual:

We initially had a currency per trait perk (e.g., to craft with Rampage, you needed a weapon with Rampage), however due to technical and usability issues (too many currencies to track, for example), we opted to heavily simplify the element currencies to the handful we shipped at launch. This unfortunately resulted in a decreased interest in chasing a specific trait perk element.

Ascendant Alloys, the Exotic-quality crafting material that can be found through high-end content or purchased from Rahool for a high price, made the remaining condensed elements obsolete. The Ascendant Alloy currency was added after we had already condensed the elements, and we were unable to resolve the experiential issues between these two currencies prior to launch.

Specific elements such as Ruinous and Adroit became redundant and, in some cases, in conflict with Ascendant Alloys and Neutral Elements, so we’re removing them altogether.

Since launch, we’ve also been watching the player conversation and keeping tabs on backend data. While we don’t have specifics to share on future changes, we did want to note a few areas that we’re looking at:

Looking to add more player control over Deepsight weapon unlocking of weapon Patterns.
Continuing to monitor Deepsight weapon stockpiling, acquisition rates and progression, as well as Resonant Alloy acquisition rates and behavior.
We’re also discussing feedback around reshaping costs for those who wish to experiment more frequently with their trait selections

Many thanks to all who’ve been sounding off with feedback. Even after these changes go live, we’ll continue to monitor the conversation. Pairing feedback with data will help inform our next steps as we continue to iterate on crafting.

Let me know in the comments what you think of the latest Destiny 2 news.

That’s it for this roundup of the latest Destiny 2 news. For more Destiny 2 content like this check out This Week In Video Games on YouTube and subscribe today.