This Week At Bungie - 3/03/2022

This week at Bungie, it's all about the Vow of the Disciple World First race.

What a wild week it's been. It feels like just yesterday we were announcing The Witch Queen, and now we find ourselves on the doorstep of a World First raid race. This is the weekend that many of you have been waiting for, strategically planning your Power gains and grabbing armfuls of snacks from grocery store shelves. In under two days, the race begins. Let's get you up to speed.

If you're new to Destiny or have yet to engage in a raid, this is the pinnacle of our endgame content. Players around the world are challenged to compete, decoding devious puzzles while engaging in heavy combat through multiple activity encounters. We're not just talking a few enemies here and there, but hordes of combatants clawing away at lives and time while players race to the finish line. We expect no different from Vow of the Disciple with multiple teams at the final boss trading attempts at reaching victory.

Now, let's talk rules. The World First race for Vow of the Disciple will take place in Contest Mode. This is a unique variant of the raid, only offered for the first 24 hours, capping every Guardian at a specific Power level to ensure an even playing field. We announced last week that 1530 Power is your target, as this will be the highest Power your Guardian will perform at against the enemies you face. Here's a quick bulleted list for all who are in the hunt for the World First win:

Vow of Disciple Race timeline

• Start: Saturday, March 5, 10 AM Pacific
• End: Sunday, March 6, 10 AM Pacific

Contest Mode:
Contest Mode will cap all players at 20 Power below each encounter of the raid for the full 24 hours of the race.

• Artifact power is enabled, but only provides benefit to players up to the cap of 1530 power for contest mode.
• You'll want to reach 1530 Power by Saturday to have a fighting chance in each encounter.
  
• Some gear items will be disabled in the raid for the duration of contest mode due to general issues that could provide gameplay benefits. While these items may be used in other activities, perks and functionality on the following items will be nullified within the Vow of the Disciple Raid, with additional negative impacts to power levels if equipped:
  • Weapons
    • IKELOS_SMG_V1.0.2 Legendary SMG
    • Imperial Needle Legendary Bow
    • Grand Overture Exotic Machine Gun
    • Wardcliff Coil Exotic Rocket Launcher
  • Armor & Mods
    • Wormgod Caress Titan Exotic Gauntlets
    • Peregrine Greaves Titan Exotic Legs
      
    • Suppressing Glaive Artifact Armor Mod
  • Note: Additional items may be disabled if issues are found prior to the start of the race. Stay tuned to @BungieHelp for the final list to be published on Saturday morning.

Completion

• The first team to complete all encounters, loot the final chest, and return to orbit will earn the title of World First.
  • Note: The six fireteam members present upon the completion of the final encounter will be declared the winners and be awarded raid World First title belts, any member of the fireteam who leaves during earlier encounter completions will not qualify.
• Winners will be announced via @DestinyTheGame after a validation process - more details on that below.

Note: Art to be updated after World First completion.

We'll be watching as players progress through each encounter, ensuring a fair race among all participants. Any players found to be breaking our Terms of Service or manipulating game content can be subject to suspensions or bans. Once we have record of a fireteam crossing the finish line, we'll spend some time validating a clean completion before announcing the World First fireteam via @DestinyTheGame on Twitter. Full rules and legal terms can be found here.

If you complete the Contest Mode version of Vow of the Disciple during the first 24 hours, you'll receive a unique emblem to celebrate your victory.

Contest Mode will be the ultimate challenge for many, but for others, it's more fun and interesting to watch some Destiny PvE legends take this on. We'll be alongside you in Twitch chats and more as players make their way through the activity. If you'd like an additional space to watch as the race goes on, check out bungie.net/raidrace once the raid goes live, or tune in to the Raid Day Tailgate hosted by Professor Broman and Reck1568!

As tradition, there will also be some wonderful Bungie Rewards unlocked for players to purchase if they take on the challenge.

Jacket Quest
If you're looking to show off your participation in the raid launch week and want something nice to wear on your evening walks, we also have a Vow of the Disciple raid jacket offer for you to earn.

This special Bungie Rewards offer is only available to players who complete Vow of the Disciple raid by March 15, 2022 at 10 AM Pacific and place their order by March 31, 2022 at the Bungie Store.

Seasonal Pin
For Vow of the Disciple, we'll also be introducing a new pin reward for those who complete the raid before the Season concludes.

Additional details (and a cool preview image) will be provided later, so stay tuned to the Bungie Rewards page on the Bungie Store!

Seal Pin
For those who wish to display their mastery of the raid, players who complete the Vow of the Disciple raid Seal will also unlock a unique pin to display on their jackets, backpacks, corkboards, or whatever they see fit. This pin will be available for purchase through the Bungie Store to qualifying players through December 31, 2022.

Outside of the race, there will be some great loot to earn! Don't worry, there isn't a 24-hour timer on any of the weapons or armor pieces found throughout the raid. Just for completing a single time, there's a pretty sweet emblem for you to collect!

Take your time, hang out with friends, and enjoy the raid at your own pace. As always, we're excited to watch as you all dive in!

The Feedback Never Stops...

...And we wouldn't have it any other way. Since the release of The Witch Queen, the team has been collecting and consuming player feedback. Paired with some late nights playing the content alongside you all, the team has identified a few areas of improvement. Some things take a bit of time to address, as we want to make sure the fixes that we implement do not create more issues for us to solve. That said, the team has a plan of action for Wellspring weapon drop rates, Ascendant Alloy drop rates for weapon crafting, and some general notes on areas that we're looking at for future Gambit tuning. If you follow Game Director Joe Blackburn on Twitter, you'll likely know most of the following, but we always want to make sure information is available in multiple places.

The Wellspring Weapon Drop Rates

Once you've completed The Witch Queen's campaign and begun to engage in the endgame, a new activity appears in the Throne World called The Wellspring. This is a fun six-player matchmade activity, offering offensive and defensive variants of the activity on a daily rotation. In The Wellspring, players can earn four Throne World-themed weapons, each offering a variety of perks to mix and match for some fun combinations. Each of these weapons can be crafted, and some of these are required for progress on Evidence Board quests from the Enclave.

In a patch targeting next Thursday, we will be increasing the drop chances for both standard and Deepsight Resonance versions of these weapons.

Ascendant Alloys

As you get deeper into the crafting game of The Witch Queen, you'll begin to unlock Enhanced Traits for your weapons. These come at a bit of a cost, each requiring Ascendant Alloys. These currencies are meant to be of endgame rarity, coming from higher difficulty activities as you fine-tune your weapons through combat.

In addition to the changes mentioned above, we'll be increasing your chances of receiving Ascendant Alloy through Master Wellspring completions -- not just by the difficulty tier of the activity, but also based on your completion level. This will mean higher chances at earning Ascendant Alloys for Gold and Platinum completions, which can be earned by defeating Champions and completing the activity quickly. We will continue to monitor and adjust drop rates as the Season progresses.

Gambit Tuning

While we do not have any firm plans to share at this time, the team wanted to highlight a few areas that we're actively monitoring:

• Heavy Weapon Usage
  • With Heavy ammo being available from clearing fronts as you collect Motes, it's become far easier to have a tracking rocket or two in the tube, prepped and ready for an impending invader.
  • Gjallarhorn packs a particularly decent punch, especially with tracking Wolfpack Rounds after detonation.
• Invader Frequency
  • While tuning to general invader frequency has helped to reduce back-to-back invades from occurring as often, we're still seeing some general feedback that it can be difficult to handle invaders, especially during Primeval phases.
• Primeval Phase - Health
  • With the changes to Primeval healing, we are seeing some reports of lengthy boss phases thanks to some skilled invaders.

We appreciate all who have been giving feedback since launch and will report back in the next few weeks after we've had time to collect more feedback and additional data to inform our next steps.

Prime Gaming Rewards: Hard Light

Ah, Hard Light. You were one of the first Exotics to drop for me in Destiny. Your rounds bounce through the corridors of my heart, bringing excitement with every shield popped and enemy defeated. Taking advantage of Volatile Rounds through the Seasonal Artifact mod, it's been pretty fun making enemies explode with sustained damage while in Void mode.

While my love letter is cheesy, this is a wonderful opportunity to introduce Hard Light to newer players in the community. For the next few weeks, this Exotic will be available through Prime Gaming rewards, accompanied by a fun Exotic ornament and some other nice cosmetics. If you haven't signed up, we offer a step-by-step process on our Prime Gaming support article. Once you've gotten things squared away and claimed your reward, you'll find the following at Amanda Holliday in the Tower:

Hard Light Exotic Bundle

• Hard Light, Exotic weapon
• Lethal System, Exotic weapon ornament
• Azure Azazyel, Exotic Sparrow
• Two unique, limited time cosmetics
• Risen Projection, Legendary Ghost hologram
• One of Us, Legendary emblem

Once you get your hands on this wonderful Exotic Auto Rifle, take it for a spin in some strikes or Battlegrounds activities. Bounce your shots and light up the room for unlimited fun.

Steam Deck and Destiny 2

Earlier this week, a Help Article went live which contained information about Destiny 2 on Steam Deck. We'd like to provide some additional information as to why running Destiny 2 on Steam OS and Linux is currently not supported.

Our goal is to maintain a secure environment for Destiny 2, as it features both PvE and PvP combat in an evolving, dynamic world. Maintaining the integrity of our security is a complex and long-term process. In some cases it means teaming with partners like BattlEye and following their recommendations, in others, it means choosing to not support platforms that could provide bad actors with ways of compromising our own Bungie developed anti-cheat security systems.

Steam Deck is not a supported platform and using the device will trigger our automated security systems to see usage as a potential threat to the community.

While we will investigate possibilities of support for new and future platforms, we do not have any additional information at this time.

Moths, Everywhere...

We're a little over a week into The Witch Queen, and the team has been tracking reports of issues throughout the game. We've got a recap of our most recent hotfix, and a slew of known issues to note.

This is their report.

Known Issues List | Help Forums | Bungie Help Twitter

HOTFIX 4.0.0.2

Today, Hotfix 4.0.0.2 was released to the world. Below are some issues that have been resolved with this release:

• Players were unable to complete Legendary Dares of Eternity if a Lightning Round was activated.
• UI elements and round timer were missing from some instances of Dares of Eternity.
• Players who joined in progress into the final step of the Of Queens and Worms quest were blocked from acquiring the Parasite Exotic Grenade Launcher.
• The Grave Robber perk on The Enigma glaive was disabled.
• Hunters couldn't cancel out of a Glaive melee combo by using their class ability.
• The Reduced Damage debuff from the Renewal Grasps Hunter Exotic arms only applied on enemies briefly during the initial impact of the Duskfield Grenade.
• The Overload Auto Rifle and SMG Artifact mods did not disrupt the health regeneration of Overload Champions after a stun.
• Synthcord couldn't be deposited into the Loom for Armor Synthesis.

ENHANCED 1-2 PUNCH TRAIT DISABLED

Due to an issue causing some Exotics to deal more damage than intended, we have disabled the Enhanced 1-2 Punch trait.

Weapons utilizing the Enhanced 1-2 Punch trait will function as the regular 1-2 Punch trait until it is re-enabled on March 10.

ENHANCED PULSE MONITOR TRAIT DISABLED

Due to an issue, we have disabled the Enhanced Pulse Monitor trait.

Weapons utilizing the Enhanced Pulse Monitor trait will function as the regular Pulse Monitor trait until it is re-enabled after a future hotfix.

WELLSPRING ARMOR REWARDS

Players who aren't getting rewards to drop from the Wellspring activity should be sure to claim any available armor rewards from Fynch, the Throne World vendor. Claiming this armor should allow rewards to drop correctly from the Wellspring activity.

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:

• Glaive mods are not dropping from Legendary engrams.
• Multiple Seasonal armor sets are no longer available to equip via Armor Synthesis.
• The No Time to Explain time portal will continue to shoot at defeated enemies.
• Titles Gilded in previous Seasons are displaying Gild count instead of the earned Title.
• The Osteo Striga catalyst shape cost is required for subsequent reshapings of the weapon.
• This can be bypassed by re-applying the catalyst during the reshape process.
• The Paragon shader appears twice on the Appearance screen.
• The Nemean Strides Hunter ornament appears twice on the Appearance screen.
• Players may receive a "joining allies" prompt in certain areas of the Thaviks boss encounter of the Exodus Crash strike.
• Gambit engram focusing cost is higher than intended.
• Dreaming Tokens from the Wish Ender quest remain in player inventories after the removal of the quest.
• The Father's Sins Sniper Rifle does not automatically enable its kill tracker after crafting the weapon.
• Aeon Safe Exotic Titan gauntlets are missing a gold stripe.
• The Logic Exotic ornament for The Lament is backwards when equipped.
• The Champion mod UI indicators on player weapons will disappear after leaving a rift utilizing the Secant Filaments Exotic Warlock legs perk.
• The Reshaping the Enigma questline can become stuck on the final step for some players.
• Ascendant Alloy purchase limit on Master Rahool did not refresh at the weekly reset.

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.

Our Ghost Said "You're About to Find Out"

Movies. We love 'em. Whether they are epic takedowns in PvP or beautifully crafted cinematic experiences of pure delight, the Destiny 2 community knows how to deliver the goods. With The Witch Queen launch week in the rearview mirror and the road ahead looking ever so bright (b-because the Light, get it?), we've got a nifty little hodgepodge of videos for this week's MotW tribute.

Because life can be hard sometimes and not everything needs to be taken too seriously, our first video is a hilarious comparison between our Ghost in the Forsaken DLC and our Ghost now with The Witch Queen. Bonus points for the blushing, because that's just adorable.

The second pick is one we originally planned to show off last week, but better late than never! My Name Is Byf perfectly captured the Destiny experience with a project of pure dedication: Dynasty. Enjoy!

Movie of the Week: A Tale of Two Ghosts

Movie of the Week: Dynasty

A Warlock and the Queen Request your Presence

Sam: In case you were wondering, we truly love being tagged in your AotW and MotW submissions. The talent and creativity behind each piece is truly so magical and we love how much you love this game. (The variety of mediums used is one of my personal favorite parts!) So, keep those submissions coming and here is this week's Art of the Week!

Art of the Week: Become the mind between the stars

Become the mind between the stars#Destiny2Art #AOTW @Bungie @A_dmg04 @Cozmo23 @DestinyGameUK pic.twitter.com/1faKe9YiNU

— Gammatrap (@BrandonMcCamey) February 27, 2022

Art of the Week: The Witch Queen

6 months or so into my tattoo apprenticeship, so thought I'd draw up a destiny inspired flash piece since the new expansion came out.#AOTW #Destiny2Art pic.twitter.com/AdX1ytyScH

— josh (@UltraMengX) February 25, 2022

So Much To Do, So Little Time...

Thanks for joining us for another TWAB! While I'm looking forward to the raid race on Saturday, I'm also looking forward to my sleep schedule getting back on track. This last week has been full of later nights than I'm used to, thanks in part to the Legendary campaign and some sweet narrative content to chew on.

If you haven't already, I highly recommend digging into the Season of the Risen questline for this week. It's wonderful to dive even deeper into the backstories of characters we know and love... even if they can be somewhat dark.

Before we go, I also want to give a shout out to all who have been donating to our Game2Give charity initiative. Yesterday, many of you joined our stream and kept those donations rolling, smashing our goals within one hour of runtime! As promised, we have unveiled the "Where TWAB?" shirt, currently available for pre-order over on the Bungie Store. 10% of Profits from sales of the Where TWAB? T-shirt will go to Bungie Foundation!

Much love, and thank you all again for being Guardians of the World.

Cheers,
-dmg04