This Week in Destiny – 04/04/2024

This week in Destiny, we’re gearing up for Destiny 2: Into the Light. We’re less than a week away from our next major content update, and we’re pretty excited about it.

List of topics for the week:

• Recap of Developer Livestream #3
• The Final Shape Developer Gameplay Preview on April 9
• PvP Strike Team update
• Weapons balance update
• Reduced costs of Strand Fragments
• New Light Tutorial Skip and New Light Kit
• New Light experience wallpapers
• Updating the default chat experience
• Iron Banner returns
• Onslaught Legend challenge details
• Player Support Report
• Art and Movie of the Week

Destiny 2: Into the Light Developer Livestream #3 Recap

Earlier this week we shared some additional details about Destiny 2: Into the Light with our third livestream. This included details about two reprised Exotic missions, a look at the new Crucible PvP maps coming in May, the announcement of the Pantheon PvE challenge, updates to the New Light experience, character re-customization, and more!

Here is a quick summary of everything we shared.

Reprised Exotic Missions

We announced the reprised versions of two classic Exotic Missions: The Whisper and Zero Hour. These reprised versions will retain some familiar elements of the classic missions, but you’ll also find updated puzzles, encounters, rewards, and Triumphs, as well as new secrets to discover on Legend difficulty. The Whisper will be available on April 9 with the launch of Destiny 2: Into the Light and Zero Hour will be available in May.

The Whisper

Eris Morn wants to pick your brain. Nothing creepy, she just thought she could use your memories to shape an updated version of a weapon that would be very useful against the Witness. Yes, it's Whisper of the Worm, the Exotic Sniper Rifle that lives in your Power weapon slot. Just be careful when jumping around in the dark because sometimes we don't remember things like they used to be. And you don't want to... drown... in... the Deep.

Zero Hour

Ada-1 has a mission for you. You need to go back to the old Tower, take down some Fallen pirates that want to get a hold on a very powerful weapon of our past, and maybe, just maybe, face a scary robot called TR3-VR that feels very lonely and wants to give Guardians a hug. The updated and craftable Outbreak Perfected Exotic Pulse Rifle is waiting for those who manage to avoid him and finish on time.

Additional Crafting Options

After obtaining the Exotic weapon from each of these reprised missions, new quests will become available. This will allow you to unlock additional crafting options, including upgrading each weapon's unique intrinsic behaviors. A new quest will become available each week for three weeks.

Reprised Ships

In addition to the new Exotic weapons you’ll earn, you can also earn reprised versions of the classic ships. The Whisper will offer a new ship with an updated look, Karve of the Worm, inspired by A Thousand Wings, while Zero Hour will offer, Vimana Junker, also with an updated look built on the frame of Scrap CF-717-91 and inspired by Outbreak Perfected.

New PvP Maps

As we mentioned in our February 22 TWID, we’re excited to release three new Crucible maps on May 7. While these maps will also be available in 6v6 playlists like Control, they have been specifically built with a focus on 3v3 game modes in mind, including Dominion, Survival, and our newest mode, Collision. With the new maps, you’ll get to enjoy the backdrop of new locations you haven’t yet explored in PvP , including Europa, Neomuna, and the terraformed Pyramid ship.

New maps:

• Eventide Labs (Europa)
• Cirrus Plaza (Neomuna)
• Dissonance (terraformed Pyramid ship)

We'll have a deeper dive on these maps as we get closer to the release date.

Character Re-Customization

In our January 18 TWID, we revealed our plans to add character re-customization to Destiny 2 before the launch of The Final Shape. During this week’s livestream, we announced that character re-customization will be coming with Destiny 2: Into the Light on April 9! With this update, you’ll be able to modify the appearance of your Guardians anytime, without cost or limits to the number of changes.

To do so, simply launch Destiny 2, and you'll notice a new option when you hover over a character at the character selection screen. While you can change the body type, face, hair/head, and markings, keep in mind it won’t be possible to change from one origin to another (i.e., Human, Exo, or Awoken).

Additional Name Change Available April 9

Destiny 2: Into the Light will also bring the option for an additional one-time name change to all players at no cost. On April 9, after the update has gone live, you can log into bungie.net and change your Bungie ID using these step-by-step directions If you didn’t take advantage of our previous name change opportunity, now you’ll have two. Choose wisely!

Pantheon

We shared a few words about Pantheon, the new raid boss gauntlet starting on April 30. In Pantheon, you’ll have the opportunity to face raid bosses in a weekly challenge with escalating difficulties and rewards. This is a chance to rally your clan or use Fireteam Finder to take on this challenge. We’ll have more details as we get closer to the release.

New Light Tutorial Experience

We also shared details on some updates we’re bringing to the New Light experience and the way players can choose to interact with it. If you missed our livestream, we have a full breakdown below, after the weapons balance update.

The Final Shape Developer Gameplay Preview

Join us on April 9 at 9:30 AM PT when we’ll share all-new details and gameplay from The Final Shape during our Developer Gameplay Preview.

We’re thrilled to show you what we’ve been working on! In addition to seeing new gameplay, you’ll get some developer insight and a behind-the-scenes look at what you can expect as we journey into the Traveler. Make sure to tune in and join us. You won’t want to miss it!

When:

• April 9 at 9:30 AM PT

Where to watch:

• Twitch
• YouTube
• TikTok

We also have several available channels that will be localized versions in the following languages:

• French
• German
• Italian
• Spanish
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Simplified Chinese
• Japanese
• Korean

The Final Shape Developer Gameplay Preview will also bring with it a new Twitch Drop. If you watch for at least 15 minutes, you can earn the new Tigris Fati emblem.

Tigris Fati

And if you were shy of getting the Those Who Held Dear and Echo Diamond emblems from our Destiny 2: Into the Light Developer Livestreams, you can earn progress towards those emblems during our Gameplay Preview, too. Those Who Held Dear requires 1 hour of watch time, while Echo Diamond is granted after 3 hours of total watch time.

Those Who Held Dear

Echo Diamond

PvP Strike Team Update

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another PvP Strike Team update. This is going to be a smaller one, simply because most of our work for this release has been centered around wrapping up the PvP Map Pack, which will be released in May. However, in addition to the weapon balance changes we mentioned a couple weeks ago we have some additional impactful changes we'd like to discuss. So, let's get to it.

Competitive

For Update 7.3.6, we’re making some changes to the game modes available in the Competitive playlist. We’re removing Survival and Countdown Rush and replacing them with 3v3 Clash and Collision (and for Collision we have changed some zone placements on maps like Dead Cliffs and Vostok, based on feedback from Labs). For Clash, we will also be swapping the ammo meter system for the ammo crate system. Collision was tested in Labs with the ammo crate system and was designed with it in mind, but internally we have also been testing Clash with crates for some time.

The benefit of the crates system, in the Clash game mode specifically, is that it continues to promote map movement and helps to disincentivize passive teamplay which can occur when there are no on-map objectives to otherwise encourage flow in and out of engagement zones. This change will result in a small net increase in Special ammo availability in Competitive compared to the ammo meter system, while still being an overall reduction from the pre-Update 7.3.5 respawn values.

Trials

We have heard the feedback that the Special ammo economy in Trials, while improved, doesn't feel quite right just yet. So, for the first two weeks of Update 7.3.6, we will be experimenting with it to gather additional data.

The first week of Trials, we will be running what we refer to as the "unrestricted" Special ammo crate system, where all four ammo crates spawn every round (one by each team's initial spawn and two in neutral locations), and players who have Special ammo will drop it on death when they are killed. We will use this to draw a baseline for an upper limit of Special ammo in the Trials environment.

The second week, we will be moving to a "restricted" version of ammo crates, where only two crates spawn each round (the ones by each team's initial spawn). While players will still lose Special ammo on death, they will not drop Special ammo bricks. This variant will end up with Special ammo availability being between the current ammo meter system values and the previous respawn values.

During these first two weeks, we will gather a substantial amount of data and feedback on how both amounts feel and play, to inform future tuning of the Special ammo systems for Trials. The plan is to return to the current version of the ammo meter system in the third week of Trials, until we can further tune the values.

Notswap Improvements

In Competitive in Update 7.3.6 and in Trials for the first two weeks while we run the ammo crate experiments, we will be rolling out an improved version of the Notswap modifier, which will now remove ability energy if you change the ammo type of a weapon in your Kinetic or Energy slot mid-life. We are implementing this change because being able to quickly and freely swap between weapons mid-engagement nullifies the downside of using a weapon with limited ammo and pushes the risk-vs.-reward proposal out of balance for making those choices.

To clarify, this means you can swap between weapons with the same ammo type without a penalty. For example, if you have Conditional Finality in your Kinetic slot, you can swap it to an Eye of Sol (or any other Special ammo weapon in that slot) without losing energy. However, if you swap to an Immortal (or any other Primary ammo weapon in that slot), Notswap will trigger and drain your ability energy similarly to if you had swapped a part of your subclass or an Exotic armor piece. This should prevent occurrences of players running Special weapons and swapping to Primary weapons immediately after using their ammo, which will make the game state easier to understand.

Terms of Service Update

We have also updated our Terms of Service with a focus on matchmaking manipulation. Moving forward, intentionally manipulating matchmaking to gain an unfair advantage, whether using smurf accounts or external third-party tools, will be a bannable offense. This includes attempts to bypass any of our matchmaking systems, including Outlier Protection, Ranked, and Fireteam-Based matchmaking. A smurf account is defined as an account that has been intentionally deranked or sabotaged over a sustained period to present itself as a very low-level player for the sole purpose of manipulating matchmaking (which our detections differentiate from actual players). Players who utilize these accounts moving forward will be subject to bans and restrictions, depending on the severity of the abuse.

This will have no effect on players who play in legitimate fireteams of mixed skill, for example those who are helping other players to get to the Lighthouse or earn Adepts in Trials of Osiris or Guardians who are playing with clanmates or friends who have different skills than their own. In addition, all initial warnings or bans will be manually reviewed by the team.

Corrections from 7.3.5 Patch Notes

Two changes that were meant to ship with Update 7.3.6 were erroneously included in the 7.3.5 patch notes:

• We have clamped the Competitive reward point values to make them less variable and more predictable. The Competitive Point Reward system scales the points you gain or lose, based on how good the enemy team was compared to your own and how far under your expected rank you currently are. However, with values between 5 and 275 possible, the reward amounts often felt random. We have reduced the possible variance to 50 and 200, which should make fewer games’ reward values feel questionable and will reduce the magnitude of the swings you could get between games.
• The post-game Trials weapon rewards will now only grant the weekly weapon. For example, if the weekly Adept weapon is The Summoner, all post-game drops will also be The Summoner, to make it easier for people to target farm the roll of the weapon they are interested in.

Destiny 2: Into the Light Weapon Balance Update

G’day folks, it’s the weapons team here with the balance changes for this release. It’s a small one, with most changes relating to weapons shipping with Destiny 2: Into the Light weapon archetypes.

Weapon Archetypes

These changes are all to base weapon damage except where otherwise noted, and they apply to both PvP and PvE.

Breech-Loaded Grenade Launchers see a fair amount of usage in PvE, but it’s mostly wave frames for add clear, or blinding grenades for crowd control. We’re cranking up their impact damage for single-target utility (and so The Mountaintop feels as juiced as it deserves). At the same time, the current radius on disorienting grenades is larger than reasonable for the amount of ammo these have, so we’re reining that in a little.

• Increased impact damage by 40%.
  • This works out at roughly a 15% damage buff, though total damage varies depending on blast radius stat.
• Reduced disorienting grenade radii (both damage and disorienting) by 15%.

Lightweight Bows were hurt a little too much by the PvP Bow nerf, leaving them just barely viable. This change helps them deal a bit more chunk damage and clean up wounded targets more easily, without exceeding Precisions for damage dealt.

• Increased lightweight Bow base damage by 6%. (Le Monarque and Wish-Ender are not affected in this change.)

Precision (450 RPM) Auto Rifles were a little too forgiving in a weapons sandbox where most weapons had become less forgiving, and their effectiveness reflects this. We’ve brought them down a little.

• Reduced base damage by 5%.

Precision (180 RPM) and Adaptive (140 RPM) Hand Cannons needed a small tweak to how forgiving they are, particularly with the Explosive Payload perk on Adaptives. The same is true of some Pulse Rifles, and Rapid-Fire Scout Rifles.

• Hand Cannon
  • Precision Hand Cannons can 2-crit, 2-body low-resilience Guardians again and more easily get 3 critical hits with damage boosts.
    • Increased base damage by 6%.
  • Adaptive Hand Cannons have an increased range cushion for the 3-tap, and we’ve offset their damage reduction from Explosive Payload to allow them to 3-tap Guardians of any resilience within optimal range.
    • Increased body shot damage by 1%.
    • Increased critical hit damage by 4%.
• Pulse Rifle
  • Rapid-Fire – Have increased forgiveness and allow 8 critical hits to kill low resilience Guardians.
    • Increased body shot damage by 3.5%.
    • Increased critical hit damage by 1%.
  • Lightweight
    • Increased body shot damage by 6%.
    • Increased critical hit damage by 3%.
  • Adaptive
    • Increased body shot damage by 5%.
    • Increased critical hit damage by 2%.
• Scout Rifle
  • Rapid-Fire
    • Increased base damage by 2%.
• Shotgun
  • Precision
    • Corrected a rounding issue that was causing Precision Shotguns to require one extra pellet to kill max-resilience Guardians.

Exotics

• Whisper of the Worm is coming back and will be craftable, so we wanted to ensure it’s a meta pick for damage. Its DPS is already respectable, so we’ve increased its reserve ammunition, substantially increasing its sustained damage potential.
  • Increased total ammunition from 18 to 24 (before reserves mods).
• One Thousand Voices already delivers massive damage per shot, but you’d run out of ammo so fast it was hard to justify bringing it compared to other high damage options. We’ve increased the reserves to help with this.
  • Increased total ammunition from 7 to 11 (before reserves mods).
• Quicksilver Storm has been one of the top PvE Primary weapons since it shipped in Season of Plunder, and the time has come to dial it back a little. With these changes, it’s slower to build up grenades, and the grenades deal reduced damage. But given that previously one magazine would give you three grenades, and each grenade hit like a heavy grenade launcher, it’s still a very strong option.
  • Increased shots to trigger rockets by 50%.
  • Reduced grenade area-of-effect damage vs. combatants by 37.5%.
• The Last Word
  • Increased base damage by 6%.
• Forerunner inadvertently received the Primary ammo Sidearm critical damage bonus. We've fixed that issue and increased its base damage to compensate.
  • Increased base damage by 6%.

Perks

• Recluse is back, along with Master of Arms. In its previous state, it was just a little too strong and would eclipse other damage perks, so we’ve brought it down a little. In this form, it’s balanced against perks with a similar use case.
  • Reduced the damage bonus from 20% to 15%.
• The first version of Magnificent Howl on Luna’s Howl was super strong. Shortly after it shipped, it ended up getting redesigned, so it’d stop breaking PvP. Now that Luna’s Howl is returning, we wanted to bring back the potential to two-tap Guardians in PvP, but with a little more effort. Here’s the new perk description:
  • The number of Precision final blows before reloading affects the total rounds granted with increased range and damage. Precision final blows while Magnificent Howl is active extend the effect for additional rounds.
• For Micro-Missile to make sense on the random-rolled version of The Mountaintop, we decided to convert it into an intrinsic, which we could then re-use to make more micro-missile frame Grenade Launchers in the future. We also really didn’t want to return to a Mountaintop PvP meta, so this version can no longer one-hit kill in PvP, but the improved impact damage increases its viability in PvE. Giving it a more unique role, it can now be used as a rocket-like jumping tool. We expect some epic Movie of the Week contenders with this one.
  • Redesigned this perk to be a weapon intrinsic and rebuilt it to do less direct damage vs. players, while giving it dramatically more self-physics impulse.
  • Retuned its PvE damage to be competitive with other Breech-Loaded Grenade Launchers.
  • Granted it a slightly increased reload speed.
• Permeability
  • Fixed an issue where this perk was causing the The Slammer Sword to get stuck on the Strand damage type.

Crucible-Only Changes

• Flinch can have a randomizing effect on duels, so to increase the reward for skilled gunplay we’ve reduced flinch on Primary weapons across the board.
  • Reduced flinch taken by all Primary weapons by 15%.
• Sunshot became very unforgiving with the new sandbox changes and needed a buff.
  • Increased Precision damage by 11% to address this.
• Wish-Ender's exit damage was dealing too much damage, so we’ve adjusted the weapon’s base damage to compensate.
  • Reduced base damage by 5%.
• Corrected some weapons getting incorrect ammo amounts from the meter rewards and crates.

Reduced Strand Fragments Cost

Starting with Destiny 2: Into the Light on April 9, we’re reducing the cost of Strand Fragments from 200 Strand Meditations to 100. We hope this change allows players to catch up on any missing fragments for their Strand builds as you all prepare for The Final Shape.

New Light Tutorial Skip and New Light Kit

We’re calling Guardians of all experience levels to join, rejoin, and bring friends to battle against the Witness. While the New Light campaign serves players new to games like Destiny 2, it might not fit those players already experienced with first-person shooters.

Ride to the Tower with an Arcadia-class Ticket

Starting in Destiny2: Into the Light, after completing the second New Light mission, Shaw Han will ask you to sync with his ship in the Cosmodrome, providing a new option to leave the New Light tutorial early and head straight to the Tower. The option to skip the tutorial will remain for the rest of your time in the Cosmodrome and no matter when you leave, you will still receive critical rewards like your ship and your Sparrow, so don’t worry about missing out if you decide to skip. The ship will remain in the Cosmodrome for the duration of A Guardian Rises, so players who choose not to skip immediately can do so at any time afterwards.

Tools for the Job: New Light Kits

To help bridge the power gap between new Guardians and our more seasoned defenders, players will now be able to head to the Tower and choose a kit handpicked from Ikora and the Vanguard. New Light Kits are bundles that contain a curated set of gear and subclass abilities. These kits are themed around specific subclass fantasies to help provide players with a shortcut to buildcrafting and give them a taste of that sweet, sweet space magic. There are nine kits in all, one for each Light subclass. Players can claim one per class. Enjoy!

Each New Light Kit contains:

• 2 Legendary weapons
• 1 Exotic weapon
• 4 Rare armor pieces and a Legendary class item
• Subclass abilities such as Aspects and Fragments

In addition, New Light Kits will also grant players a short quest that, when completed, will grant them a piece of Exotic armor. New Light Kits will be available to all players, so whether you’re a New Light looking to gear up, a returning player looking to step into the modern sandbox, or a veteran looking to jumpstart a new character, Ikora will help you prepare for the fight ahead against the Witness.

New Light Experience Wallpapers

To celebrate the upcoming updates to the New Light experience, we’ve got some seriously sweet wallpapers for you to enjoy.

16:9

Hunter

Titan

Warlock

Mobile

Hunter

Titan

Warlock

Updating the Default Chat Experience

 With Destiny 2: Into the Light, we are making some changes to the default chat experience to allow players to connect with other players more easily by creating a more social experience. On April 9, we’ll be updating text chat to auto-join chat channels by default. When you log in, you’ll immediately see other players chatting in-game and can jump right into the conversation. Players will also default to auto-join voice chat when in a fireteam or fireteam lobby. Voice chat for local and team channels will still be off by default.

As part of this update, we’ll also be updating our text chat language filtering rules. We'll continue to monitor and audit their performance. For more information on our language filters, visit our Text-based Language Filtering FAQ.

Some players may see chat off by default after the update. This is intentional for our younger players. For more information, please visit our Date of Birth Requirements for Destiny 2 and Bungie Services. If you’d like to see what options you have for your account or change available settings, you can visit Settings and go under the Social tab to view or change your text and voice chat status.

Iron Banner Returns

It’s your first opportunity to earn the new Tusk of the Boar Grenade Launcher and the reprised Multimach CCX Submachine Gun. So even if you’ve already nabbed the Tributary emblem or Iron Lord title, you have two very good reasons to jump back in!

Onslaught: Legend Challenge

With the release of Destiny 2: Into the Light on April 9 comes the new PvE wave-based defensive activity, Onslaught. To celebrate the release, we’re looking to reward Guardians who are among the first to conquer the mode on its highest difficulty.

Details

Starting on April 9, when Update 7.3.6 goes live, the first three fireteams to complete all 50 waves on Legend difficulty will receive a Lord Shaxx 7-inch mini replica helmet per fireteam member (3 per team total).

We will announce the winners in next week’s TWID and will reach out to the winners shortly after on Bungie.net. This challenge is available to players in the U.S and Canada. You can get the full details on our rules and eligibility page.

Show us what you’re made of, Guardians!

Player Support Report

‘bout to howl at Luna!

Known Issues List | Help Forums | Bungie Help Twitter

DESTINY 2 AND ACCESS TO FEATURES

Last month, we implemented birth date requirements into Destiny 2. As detailed in our Date of Birth Requirements article, some players may be unable to access certain features and functionality based on age or region, such as purchasing Silver or text chatting.

Players who need to correct their information can submit a help ticket for our team to review.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Gilding the Guardian Games title, Champ, does not alter the Gilded counter.
• The Season of the Wish versions of the Dreaming City weapons are not dropping the Burnished and Blueshift Dreams shaders.
• The Last Rite Scout Rifle uses the same visual appearance as The Prophet Scout Rifle.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, review our Known Issues article. If you observe other issues, please report them to our #Help forum.

Smolvathûn

Savathûn, the Witch Queen, can be scary and intimidating. But smol Savathûn is just cute and adorable. We bet the smol Lucent Moths give hugs.

Art of the Week: Mingway via Twitter/X

Ascend the Mountaintop

RoCat Jumping. Let that concept sink in.

Movie of the Week:

_______________________

That’s everything for this week! We can’t wait to see everyone dive into next week’s update. Onslaught, the BRAVE arsenal weapons, reprised Exotic missions, character re-customization, and the list goes on. Remember to pace yourself, take breaks as needed, and make sure to follow our Destiny2Team accounts, as we’ll be monitoring the update and responding to questions and feedback. It should be a fun week!

We’ll be back next week with another TWID. In the meantime, be excellent to each other, and thanks for hanging out with us.

Destiny 2 Community Team