This Week At Bungie - 10/8/2020

This week at Bungie, we've got a sweet tooth... for loot!

Boo!

Did I scare you? Probably not. But hey, it's Festival of the Lost! Things are feeling a bit spookier than usual. I can't take a turn in the Tower without running into a Guardian dressed for the occasion. Eva Levante has returned, masks and all! If you missed the rundown on our spooky seasonal event last week, be sure to read last week's blog article.

Tuesday kicked off the Festival of the Lost, but we've also unveiled a few treats that will be coming your way in November. Beyond Light is opening the doors to Europa and renewing your quest for sweet, precious loot! In case you missed it, check out our Weapons and Gear page on Bungie.net, and the trailer below.

Wait a second, we're giving Warlocks what? Gauntlets that spread poison through hordes of enemies?! I want some! The ability to shift using Mask of Bakris looks pretty sweet for Hunters. In just a little over a month you may find your new favorite Exotic in the wild!

Today, we've got a lot to cover including changes coming to armor mods, the kickoff of our Festival of the Lost Art and Fashion shows, and more! Let's get started where it all began, in the Cosmodrome.

Burn Bright, New Light

Over the last year, there's been a lot of great feedback about the new player experience in Destiny 2. Currently, players are given a single mission to become acquainted with some basic gameplay, and then let loose in the Tower without much direction on where to go or what to do next. This led to some confusion, as many players didn't exactly know where to start. Who's that robot that's meticulously cleaning an Auto Rifle? What do I do with these engrams? And what's a Zavala? The team has been working to restructure the onramp for Destiny 2, and today we'll be giving a small glimpse into the New Light experience.

Starting November 10, players will start in the same way that most all of us have. A Ghost will be on the hunt for their Guardian, they'll stumble upon you, and they'll revive you for the first time. What's different now is that you won't immediately find a ship. Rather, you'll stumble into another Guardian in the wild.

Shaw Han is his name, and he's on a mission with his fireteam to investigate what the Hive are up to in the Cosmodrome. He'll show you the ropes, and help you find your way among the gameplay and systems of Destiny 2.

As a new player, you'll spend your first few missions getting acquainted with the state of the world in Destiny 2. You'll have opportunity to take a few weapons out for a spin, find engrams to try different armor and see our progression systems, and have some time to learn how to navigate the user interface to understand quests, bounties, collections, and more. All of this will happen before you set foot in the Tower, and our hope is that this refreshed New Light experience will give a much warmer welcome to Guardians as they play Destiny 2 for the first time.

With the Cosmodrome coming out of the Destiny Content Vault (DCV), this gave us the perfect opportunity to overhaul our new player experience. For veteran players out there, this will be a stroll through memory lane. While the Plaguelands are strictly quarantined per Vanguard orders, you'll still be able to explore much of what you remember from your first days as a Guardian. Running through the Mothyards to collect Spinmetal, heading down the stairs of the Steppes to face off against powerful Hive Knights, and more. There will be occasional moments of discovery, like stumbling upon a Lost Sector that you haven't seen before. If you're an existing player and would like to go through the New Light quest, it will also be available to you on November 10.

We're excited to see how new players react to our revamped New Light experience, and for many of you to get your boots back on the ground in the Cosmodrome.

Eyes up, Guardian.

Mod Modifications

We're a little over a month out from Beyond Light. Thirty-three days, to be precise. We have quite a bit to cover between now and then, from sandbox updates to how your various economies are being updated. Sandbox is always a hot topic of discussion, and today we'll be diving a bit deeper into the ways you customize your gameplay experience through armor mods.

Armor mods are used to elevate your reload speeds, ability regen, and more to higher levels. In November, some of the mods you commonly use are being tuned. Some mods will be buffed, while others will be removed all together. Here, we're going to dive into a patch note preview of sorts, with snippets of developer commentary from the development team throughout.

Energy Type Requirements

• All of the weapon-oriented armor mods (i.e. Hand Cannon Loader, Fusion Rifle Ammo Finder, etc.) have been changed to be Any Energy Type.
  • As a result of the above change, all Arc Charged with Light mods now activate their second perk if you have any other Arc mod equipped on the same armor piece, OR if you have any other Arc Charged with Light mod socketed in any other armor piece you are wearing.

Developer Commentary: Removing the energy type requirements from weapon-focused mods has been a consistent piece of community feedback since Armor 2.0 launched. However, doing so meant that every mod socket would be displaying three times as many mods at a time, which would become cumbersome.

Enhanced Mod Rebalancing

• All mods that have an Enhanced version of that mod (i.e. Enhanced Hand Cannon Loader) have had the base mods' efficacy increased to match that of the Enhanced version of the mod.
  • As a result, those Enhanced mods have been deprecated, and the base mods' energy costs have been adjusted upward slightly (but are still lower than the equivalent Enhanced mods).
• Some mods have moved to different slots to create more competition for mod sockets across armor pieces (for example, the Fast Ready mods have moved to the Arms socket).

Developer Commentary: We consistently see feedback that players often don't start feeling the impact of mods until they have an Enhanced mod, or two non-Enhanced mods, socketed. So, to resolve both issues, we decided to raise the floor on the effectiveness of all mods to the point where players were more likely to feel their impact,and to deprecate the two tiers of mods. This should also make having two different mods in the same category (say, Hand Cannon Loader and Shotgun Loader) socketed at the same time more appealing than it was previously, where players often needed to double-stack the same mod to feel like they are getting any benefit.

In essence, we are making Enhanced mods cheaper and more accessible, and deprecating the lesser mods.

Raid Mods

• Starting in Season 12, the Last Wish, Garden of Salvation, and the upcoming Beyond Light raid armors will now drop with a fifth, dedicated armor mod socket that is exclusively for the mods related to that raid.
  • Last Wish and Garden of Salvation armor acquired prior to Season 12 will not have this dedicated armor socket, but will still be able to use the mods related to that raid in the new Legacy armor mod socket.
• Anti-Taken mods from Last Wish will only function in the Last Wish raid.
• Anti-Hive mods from the Leviathan Raid will be deprecated.
• Anti-Fallen raid mods from Scourge of the Past will be deprecated.

Developer Commentary: The decision to give the raid armors a fifth mod socket, dedicated solely to its raid mods, should not only make the raid armors a more valuable reward, but also should compensate for the restriction on the usage of these raid mods with the ability to use that armor to craft your build both in and out of the raid.

Regarding the deprecation of the anti-Hive and anti-Fallen mods, and the restriction of the anti-Taken mods to Last Wish, this is something that we've had our eye on for a while. We consistently get feedback that faction-specific mods are highly unbalanced outside of the content they were intended to work in (in this case, the raids, which are being moved into the DCV). Because these are useful with any instance of a combatant race, activity designers and sandbox designers were constantly having to be aware of how these mods would impact the play of those activities. They have proven to be problematic in Gambit (creating a clear divide between the Haves and the Have-Nots) and have significantly reduced the challenge of dungeons.

With the raids that provided the source for these mods going into the DCV provides, we have the opportunity to gracefully remove these mods and their long-reaching consequences. Last Wish, which was designed and balanced with its anti-Taken mods in mind, will remain a part of the game and continue to reward players with its mods. However, to prevent those far-reaching consequences mentioned above, we are aligning those mods with the other raid mods and making them function only in the raid that they drop from. We've had a positive response to the more mechanic-focused mods from Garden of Salvation, and future raids will have mods more like those.

Combat Mods

• All armor released in Beyond Light and Season 12, all Last Wish and Garden of Salvation armor acquired starting in Season 12, and all Armor 2.0 Exotic armor pieces (including those already possessed by players) will have a Combat style mod socket. In Season 12, this socket will accept all Charged with Light and Warmind Cell mods.
• All Armor 2.0 armor acquired during Seasons 8-11 have had their Seasonal mod sockets replaced with a single, unified Legacy mod socket that can socket all Charged with Light mods, all Warmind Cell mods, all Nightmare Hunt mods, all Garden of Salvation mods, and all Last Wish mods.

And with that, we've come to an end for our armor mod patch note preview. In the coming weeks, we'll shift focus to your arsenal. We have a handful of weapon archetypes that are being tuned, with some hefty changes that may surprise you! Stay tuned.

Festival of the Lost - Art and Fashion Shows!

This community is home to wide ranging talent. We've seen full on Cabal cosplays at PAX, works of art created on oil and canvas, and some amazing screenshots taken throughout our solar system. With Festival of the Lost in full swing, we'd like to highlight your skills, and pass out some emblems in the process.

#FOTLArtShow
Now, we aren't going to be too strict on a prompt here, but we'd love to see your takes on spooky themes in the worlds of Destiny. Carve a pumpkin, build out a cosplay, or draw some Festival of the Lost themed art (digital or physical mediums are both awesome!), and tweet your submission using the hashtag #FOTLArtShow. We'll retweet our favorites from @Bungie throughout Festival of the Lost and send you an "Aspect of Luminance" emblem you can show off to your friends!

#FOTLFashionShow
It wouldn't be Festival of the Lost without a costume contest of sorts, now would it? Eva Levante has been dishing out some fun masks for you to wear in the wild, and we'd love to see how you're dressing your Guardians for the occasion.

Take a screenshot of your Guardian wearing a Festival of the Lost mask in any activity or at any destination. Be sure to dress your Guardian with armor and shaders to compliment your headwear. Tweet your submission with the hashtag #FOTLFashionShow, and we'll retweet winners from @Bungie through the end of the event. If your shot is selected, we'll grant you the "Levante's Prize" emblem.

These will serve as your last chances to get the Aspect of Luminance and Levante's Prize emblems from Year 3. We may use these emblems as rewards again in the future, but they'll be on hiatus for a while.

Without further ado, get to it! Time's ticking. Extra points to any submissions that visibly creep us out.

Creepy Crawlies

While it may be the time of year where people actively decorate their homes in spider webs, we'll never be too keen on bugs. Destiny Player Support is on the case, ensuring you don't get tangled on your way to this year's Festival of the Lost.

This is their report.

SEASON OF ARRIVALS TITLE

Due to the Cradle encounter's weekly rotation, it is possible for players to miss an encounter before the end of Season of Arrivals if they are not already completed; this would also prevent players from earning the Season of Arrivals title. Players who are looking to complete the Season of Arrivals title should ensure they have enough time to complete all associated Triumphs before the end of the season. Players who earn the Season of Arrivals title should claim and equip it to ensure that it isn't removed at the end of the Season.

BEYOND LIGHT AND THE END OF SEASON OF ARRIVALS

To prepare for the release of Beyond Light and Season of [REDACTED] on November 10, 2020, Destiny 2 will need to be taken offline for maintenance. In order to prepare for Update 3.0.0, Destiny 2 will be taken offline for maintenance at 7 PM PST (Pacific Standard Time) on November 9, 2020, and will remain offline until November 10, 2020, at 9 AM PST. During this offline period, the game will not be available, and Season of Arrivals items will be made unavailable. Players are strongly urged to finish any Season of Arrivals content or Triumphs before 7 PM on November 9th.

CLOSING OUT SEASON OF ARRIVALS

When Season of Arrivals ends at 7 PM PST on November 9, 2020, there will be a number of items, activities, and Triumphs that will no longer be available to players. Some of these items include:

• The Prophecy Dungeon (which will return in a later Season)
• The Ruinous Effigy quest
• Traveler's Chosen quest
• The Seed of Silver Wings Seasonal Artifact and the player power increase from said artifact
• Unopened Umbral Engrams

A full list of items being removed at the Season's end can be found here.

PC MIGRATION

Since moving to Steam, Destiny 2 players have been able to migrate their characters, licenses, and progress from Battle.net to Steam via a one-time transfer. This transfer process will no longer be available beginning December 1, 2020. Any Destiny 2 PC players who have not migrated their licenses and content from Battle.net to Steam will no longer be available to do so starting on December 1. Players in this state are encouraged to start our PC Migration process so they will not lose access to their Destiny 2 licenses and content.

Please note that if a player has progress on Steam and chooses to undergo PC Migration, any existing content on Steam will be overwritten by migrated Battle.net content. This means that all character and progress data on Steam will be deleted and replaced by the character and progress data from Battle.net. This cannot be undone.

KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

• We are aware of an issue where the "Candy Collected" emblem tracker isn't tracking 2020 Candy.
• We are investigating an issue where Eris Morn's dialogue and subtitles are not appearing for Korean players in the final Interference mission.
• We are investigating an issue where Cipher Decoders are not dropping often for players.
• We are aware of an issue where the Masquerader's Helmet has inconsistent Power levels when acquired from Eva.
• We are aware of an issue where gear can sometimes drop at 750 Power from the Haunted Forest chests.

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

Please note that Season Pass rewards from Season of the Worthy will be unavailable to claim when Season of Arrivals ends. Past Season Pass rewards can be claimed here.

Jumpscares

I don't know about you, but I just can't handle jump scares. When I sit back to watch a two-hour horror film full of terrifying screams and scary themes, I just want to relax. This week, you won't find any jump scares in our MOTW picks. Rather, you'll find some killer community content.

More Than Just A Dream!

FotL Trailer - Guitar Cover

Definitely a Titan Main

We've only got a few more TWAB's to earn the Shadowkeep MOTW emblem. Put together your best clips, throw some spicy music on it, and get it on the Community Creations page! Just make sure to include a link to your Bungie.net profile so we know where to send the emblem.

There's nothing like the buzz before the launch of a new expansion in Destiny 2. If we were in the office, we'd be feeling electricity in the air at Bungie. Things are getting tied up. We're taking a magnifying glass to the content, finishing up our final test passes to prepare the next year of Destiny 2 for launch. Even in a world where we're working remotely, the excitement is felt in each meeting as we dot the I's and cross the t's. Soon, it will all be in your hands, and we'll be right there with you as you embark on your first journeys of Europa.

We hope you enjoyed a peek at upcoming Exotics earlier this week. We have a lot more for you to see, and a lot more for you to experience, all coming soon. We know many of you are trying to plan some time off for the raid race, and we're looking to have some details on that next week. Stay tuned.

Cheers,
-dmg04