The story of the best glitch in Destiny 2 history (Funny Guns/Weapon Crafting Bug)
This past weekend will go down in history as the most wild, the most game-breaking, and arguably the most fun Destiny 2 has ever been, albeit PVP and endgame PVE content being totally broken. A crafting bug, otherwise known as funny guns, was discovered and then word spread like wildfire throughout the community. Today I’d like to recap the story of funny guns and tell the story of what will go down as the best glitch in the history of Destiny 2.
We’ve had some great glitches in Destiny 2 in the past. Laser Tag Weekend was one of these. Back in December 2017, Prometheus Lens (Exotic Trace Rifle) had a game-breaking bug making it very overpowered. At the same time Xur was selling the weapon, which meant everyone has access to it, then everyone took it into Trials of Osiris and proceeded to delete each other. Bungie then marked the occasion with an emblem in game. Another memorable glitch was the ability to take 12 guardians into a single raid. Back in February 2021 it was possible to load 7-12 guardians into a raid, or 4-9 guardians into a nightfall or dungeon. This lead to chaotic raid encounters with up to 12 players stomping through boss encounters. Players enjoyed this one so much, they were calling for Bungie to add this as a feature… which we may end up seeing after the raid in The Final Shape.
That brings us to this weekend just past, and the weapon crafting glitch. This allowed Guardians to craft legendary weapons with Exotic perks, plus add specific frames to weapons they shouldn’t be on. By starting the process of crafting on one specific weapon, you could quickly swap to another weapon and seemingly merge perks and traits of weapons together, creating monster weapons that could delete enemies in seconds.
Word started to spead of this issue on 15 September, which Cheeseforever (a well known Destiny 2 glitch hunter) making a series of videos. It started with exotic weapons, specifically Dead Messenger, with people taking the Exotic perk Trinary Vision and placing it on legendary weapons. Things then ramped up a notch when players figured out how to apply an aggressive shotgun frame to auto rifles, which essentially would dish out shotgun level of damage on an Auto Rifle rate of fire weapons. Imperial Decree and the Ammit-AR2 turned into a very popular combination, allowing a team of 3 Guardians to breeze through Grandmaster Nightfalls, which wasn’t a bad thing last week because it was double nightfall rewards with the returning Warden’s Law Handcannon.
Once word got out the Destiny 2 community got to work to find the most deadly, damage inducing combinations. Grandmaster Nightfalls were a breeze, the recently added Crota’s End Raid was being beaten in record time with Guardians absolutely melting Crota at the end of the raid in double quick time. Mnay Guardians took this opportunity to farm Essence of Oversoul, a valuable currency needed to acquire Necrochasm, the returning exotic auto rifle added as part of the returning Crota’s End Raid.
Trials of Osiris went live around a similar time the news started to spread like wildfire and many expected Bungie to cancel Trials. Many people had been looking forward to Trials last weekend because it had recently 2 weeks off, plus the Igenous Hammer was returning. However, Guardians soon realised, this was much more fun, and everyone waiting with baited breath to see what Bungie would do. Would they cancel Trials? Guardians were being one shot from across the map and PVP was turned into a killing field of dead Guardians. Would Bungie do the unthinkable and roll back the game? No, they did something very unexpected.
On the 15h September at 10pm GMT Bungie acknowledged the issue on Twitter by saying
This was slightly surprising because Trials had been cancelled for less in the past. What Bungie said next was even more surprising. Destiny 2 Teams said
The key statement here is ‘too wild’. I don’t know exactly how ‘wild’ things needed to get because PVP had turned into a wasteland of dead Guardians, Trials was effectively ruined for the majority for the weekend, and endgame PVE bosses were being destroyed by over powered Guardians with funny guns. With Bungie saying ‘have some fun’, they were effectively saying go out there, use these weapons and go crazy. It was like the parents leaving the teenagers the house for the weekend and saying have a massive party. We did party all right, all weekend.
Roughly 24 hours later on Saturday 16th September, Bungie Help was back and said
Bungie then confirmed there would be no rollback. This meant players could keep the loot they earned. For example, many Guardians had been farming Grandmaster Nightfalls for their god roll Warden’s Law, others has been farming Dungeons for artifice armor, plus more Guardians had been farming raid bosses for exotic loot. The fact the game wasn’t going to be rolled back meant we’d get to keep everything.
Bungie Help were back on Sunday 17th, clearing working through the weekend.
Then on Monday 18th it looked like Bungie had a breakthrough
Sadly, this signalled the end of the funny guns crafting glitch, and things would slowly go back to normal.
The audience were split. Most were having fun, although some said Destiny 2 was ruined by the glitched crafted weapons. Personally, I thought it was impressive that the weapon system held up as well as it did and the game didn’t simply explode with that many glitched weapons.
Destiny 2 saw an increase in player numbers over the weekend according to Steam Charts from an average of about 60k active players on Friday 15th, to 105k over the weekend, which is approx 75% increase in player count. The previous weekend saw peaks of 75k players, so the news of the glitch spread and seemed to bring players back who hadn’t played in some time.
What this means for the future is less clear. Bungie are still tidying up the final remants of the bug. Master mode for Crota has been postponed, amongst other things. But it appears as if Bungie are getting to grips with things, Raid and Dungeon bosses can rest a little easier knowing Guardians won’t have shotgun shells firing out of auto rifles at 450 rounds per min anymore.
We should all thank Bungie for working through the weekend on this effort to fix the crafting bug, they get a lot of stick for pretty much anything these days, but a crack team was sent in to investigate and fix this issue and while there are remnants of the issue remaining they were largely successful. Hats off to Bungie for saying “Have some fun too”… I think a lot of Guardians had a lot of fun this weekend, and hopefully Bungie will follow up with an emblem to remember the weekend of the weapon crafting glitch. The only thing left is to name it. We had Laser Tag Weekend for the Prometheus Lens bug, I’ve heard Laser Tag 2.0 touted, but it does feel quite right. Funny guns is what everyone on LFG was using.
Let me know what you think in the comments, plus share your stories of what you crafted and how you spent the funny guns weekend.