This week at Bungie, we're getting ready to dive into the deep with some new art while also peeping some fresh rewards on the horizon for those Guardians that have a soft spot for Trials of Osiris.
Before jumping into this week's TWAB, let's take a quick look back at last week:
For this week:
All set? Let's get started with Guardian Games 2023!
It's that time, Guardians! Time to show off that class pride and show other Guardians what you're made of. Or collect Medallions because ooh, shiny! We're not here to judge.
In case you missed it, we dropped all the info you could possibly want about this year's Guardian Games right here. If you're in a rush (we get it), here's what you may have missed.
The spirit of competition is alive and well with that familiar podium and daily crest seen at the Tower in all their glory... and Ms. Eva Levante. You simply can't forget about Space Grandma. You know the drill by now: deposit Medallions like your life depends on it for select activities and hope your fellow class dwellers are doing the same. Whichever class has the most Medallions at the end of this year's Guardian Games is the class that gets their tribute made in the Tower and the pride of knowing they're simply the best. At least for this year.
Who doesn't love a good teaser, amiright? Here's our first look at what Season of the Deep will have to offer starting on May 23, at 10 AM Pacific.
And a version without text because come on, this art is dang pretty:
We've got plenty to share over the coming weeks, and a lot to dive into today. Including...
Hey, Guardians. Combat Gameplay team here to spill the tea on the three new Strand Aspects that will become available when Season 21 launches. Our goal with these Aspects is to strengthen the existing Strand kits and expand the gameplay options of each class. You'll be able to acquire these Aspects as part of a new pursuit after visiting the Pouka Pond in Neomuna's Hall of Heroes. Let's get into it.
Hunter Aspect: Threaded Specter
Activate your class ability to leave behind a decoy woven from Strand matter that draws the attention of nearby combatants.
After taking significant damage or when combatants approach, the decoy detonates, dealing damage and releasing Threadlings that seek out and attack nearby foes.
Pesky Cabal gunfire have you pinned down? Need a quick distraction so you can revive a teammate? Have you ever thought about what a bunch of Threadlings in a trench coat looks like? The new Threaded Specter Aspect for the Hunter Threadrunner might just be what you're looking for.
When players activate their dodge, they leave behind a decoy woven from Strand matter that draws the attention of enemies on the battlefield. Enemies will shoot at the Threaded Specter until it's destroyed or expires, giving the Hunter and their fireteam enough time to get to safety. When destroyed, a Threaded Specter explodes into two Threadlings. Threaded Specter gives Hunter players access to Threadling generation and a new way to control the battlefield.
Titan Aspect: Flechette Storm
While sliding, activate your charged melee ability to leap into the air, knocking nearby targets away and dealing damage. While airborne, activate your charged melee again to launch a cluster of damaging, Unraveling projectiles. Repeatedly activating melee will chain additional throws.
Berserker Titans are known for their unbridled aggression. While sprinting headfirst into battle is often the best way to deploy Berserker abilities, we want to provide players with a tool that allows for more potency at range and gives Titans easier ways to unravel enemies. This is where Flechette Storm comes into play.
With Flechette Storm, Berserkers have access to a powerful new slide-melee attack that quickly launches them up into the air and blasts away any nearby enemies. While still airborne, press the melee button again to fire a cluster of tracking projectiles that deal heavy damage and unravel enemies.
Flechette Storm provides the Berserker with a ranged melee option while keeping with the spirit of their fast-paced gameplay.
Warlock Aspect: The Wanderer
Tangles you throw attach to enemies and detonate into a suspending burst. Threadling final blows create a Tangle.
Since the Warlock Broodweaver is a Strand minion master, it felt natural to explore additional ways the Broodweaver might weave life into the world around them. Enter The Wanderer—a sentient Tangle woven from Broodweaver brilliance.
When Warlocks equipped with this Aspect pick up a Tangle, they weave the Tangle into The Wanderer. When thrown, The Wanderer travels through the air, seeking targets. Once it finds a target, it soars towards them, latches on, and explodes into a Suspending detonation that deals damage and suspends any nearby enemies. To round out the gameplay loop, The Wanderer also enables Threadling final blows from any source to generate a Tangle.
The Wanderer gives Broodweavers another way to upgrade their Tangles and grants access to the suspend effect without needing a Shackle Grenade.
We're pretty excited to get these new Strand Aspects in the game, and we hope you enjoy them when Season 21 launches. We'll be monitoring their performance across the game and will continue to balance them over time.
Earlier this week, you may have seen a new blog post from our friendly Combat Gameplay team. The team dove into ability tuning changes that Guardians can look forward to with Season 21, including changes to roaming Supers that we think are pretty spiffy. From Fragment budget to a breakdown of both Stasis and Strand changes on the horizon, here's a handy TL;DR for your viewing pleasure:
You can read the full blog post right here to learn more about what's around the riverbend (come on, at least one '90s animation fan had to sing that last part).
Let's talk about the in-game economy, shall we? We've got a few things to go over, including changes to our power band, crafting economy changes, Exotic armor focusing, and even more:
We touched on this in the past but it's worth repeating regarding Exotic armor focusing and decryption coming to Rahool at the start of Season 21:
Focusing Options
Standard Decryption
Exotic Focusing Tier 1
Exotic Focusing Tier 2
We have also taken a pass at the Exotic armor stat packages, so your Exotics should roll consistently higher stats, and with more frequent individual stat spikes starting in Season 21. You can expect the average stats to be in the mid-60s!
Lastly, since we are not raising the Pinnacle Cap in Season 21, the need for many Pinnacle Legendary rewards has dropped significantly. To help make playing in our evergreen ritual playlists more worthwhile, we are changing the rewards for the basic 'complete activities' challenges to a focusable Powerful Exotic engram. This gives most players 3 to 9 free, achievable, and deterministic weekly Exotic engrams, ready for focusing.
But yes, you will be losing some pinnacle drops, so reaching the Pinnacle Cap will be a bit slower for everyone. We are hoping the need for less pinnacle drops continues in future Seasons, but we will be looking at feedback and analytics, and are ready to adjust as necessary!
Other sources of focusable Exotic engrams:
You can expect additional focusable Exotic engram sources in future Seasons! Now, let's set our sights on Deepsight activation and other crafting changes on the way.
In Season 21, we will be adding the ability to electively activate Deepsight on weapon instances to obtain pattern progress. This capability will be accessible through a new mod slot in the weapon details screen for eligible weapons.
Crafting costs will also see a change in Season 21:
Coming in Season 21, we have a number of quality-of-life updates we are excited to share with you! First up, let's take a look at raid Triumphs.07-
.png)
Over the last year, the Raid and Dungeon team has added Triumphs to new raids and dungeons—Duality, Spire of the Watcher, and Root of Nightmares—which give a boosted chance to receive the Exotic weapon drop for that raid or dungeon once completed. In Season 21, we're adding boosted Triumphs to legacy content with randomly dropped Exotic weapons to bring them up to our standard for raids and dungeons. We added them to existing Triumphs and are retroactive, so if you already have done the requisite Triumphs, you immediately start getting a boost!
Last Wish: One Thousand Voices
| TRIUMPH | RATE BOOST |
| Petra's Run | +3 |
| The New Meta | +2 |
| Thunderstruck | +1 |
| Sunburn | +1 |
| Night Owl | +1 |
| Habitual Wisher | +1 |
| Challenges: Coliseum Champion Summoning Ritual Strength of Memory Keep Out Forever Fight | +1 per (5 total) |
Deepstone Crypt: Eyes of Tomorrow
| TRIUMPH | RATE BOOST |
| Survival of the Fittest | +3 |
| Freezing Point | +1 |
| Control Group | +2 |
| Challenges: Red Rover Copies of Copies Of All Trades The Core Four | +1 (4 total) |
| Complications: Resource Contention 5 Seconds to Paradise Short Circuit Ready, Set, Go! | +1 per (4 total) |
Vow of the Disciple: Collective Obligation
| TRIUMPHS | RATE BOOST |
| Risen from the Deep | +3 |
| Master Difficulty "Vow of the Disciple" | +2 |
| Together in the Deep | +1 |
| Challenges: Swift Destruction Base Information Defenses Down Looping Catalyst | +1 (4 total) |
| Complications: On My Go Handle With Care Glyph to Glyph Symmetrical Energy | +1 per (4 total) |
Vault of Glass: Vex Mythoclast
| TRIUMPHS | RATE BOOST |
| Flawless Vault of Glass | +3 |
| Master Glasser | +1 |
| Challenges: Wait For It... The Only Oracle For You Out of Its Way Rabid Relic Eyes on Antheon | +1 per (5 total) |
| Complications: Dragon's Den Take Cover Tempered Teleport Strangers in Time Ensemble's Refrain | +1 per (5 total) |
Kingsfall: Touch of Malice
| TRIUMPHS | RATE |
| Crux of the King | +3 |
| One True King | +1 |
| Challenges: The Grass is Always Greener Devious Thievery Gaze Amaze Under Construction Hands Off | +1 per (5 total) |
| Complications: Overzealous Brand Busters Taking Turns The Floor is Lava Overwhelming Power | +1 per (5 total) |
As part of our ongoing efforts to simplify the economy of Destiny 2, it's time to say goodbye to the Finest Matterweave and Rainmaker consumable items. Starting in Season 21, these items will no longer drop from any source in the game. In any instance where players would have received a Finest Matterweave, they will receive 1 Enhancement Core instead. And whenever players would have gotten a drop of a Rainmaker, they will instead earn 3,000 Glimmer.
Furthermore, all existing instances of these items in players' inventories can be consumed to directly grant their associated materials.
We haven't made wide-ranging updates to Vanguard bounties in a while, so we took a pass to make them friendlier!
Daily Bounties
Existing daily bounties requiring you to get a specific type of kill—grenade, headshot, or any of the Special or Heavy weapons—now require twice as many kills to complete but can be done anywhere in the game, with increased progress in Vanguard Ops or Nightfalls. If you only plan on doing these in Vanguard activities, you should see no change in behavior.
We also added a number of new bounties:
Regarding repeatable bounties: all enemy-type kill bounties (Hive, Vex, Taken, Cabal, Fallen, Scorn) have significantly increased requirements, but can be advanced by killing any combatant in a Vanguard activity, with significantly increased progress for killing the correct type of combatant.
We also added one new repeatable bounty—one for getting fireteam kills in a Vanguard activity.
Archie is returning in Season 21! Now that we've found him a permanent home in the Tower, we are re-introducing the Good Boy Protocol stat tracker and moving it to the Account/Career category. Your previous progress from Season 19 will also carry over!
As our teams continue to invest in crafting compelling Seasonal experiences for the year of Lightfall, there's a heads-up we wanted to give regarding a small increase in the standalone Season Pass price, beginning with Season of the Deep. Here's what you can expect:
This will be the new pricing for Season Passes in Lightfall's year for those looking to maximize their rewards with each new Season, and we'll be evaluating new approaches to post-launch content in the year of The Final Shape.
Pricing will remain unchanged for the Lightfall standard edition (which includes access to the current live Season at the time of purchase) and Lightfall + Annual Pass edition (which includes access to Seasons 20-23).
Season 21 will be here before you know it, and luckily for Trials fans this means new rewards to earn are just around the corner. Next Season, Guardians will have a chance to unlock new Exotic cosmetic rewards when opening the Lighthouse rewards chest.
Hero's Wake Exotic Ghost Shell
Valiant Memory Exotic Ship
Survivor's Journey Exotic Sparrow
But that's not all. We also have a new shader on the horizon called Glorious Patina that players will unlock the first time they open the Lighthouse rewards chest in Season 21.
This shader, and any shaders released in the future for Trials of Osiris, will be permanently unlocked once acquired. Transmog to your heart's content, this beauty can be applied to any piece of equipment. Just as a head's up: Glorious Patina will only be available to players who go Flawless during Season 21. Future Seasons will see the return of older Trials shaders (that were previously exclusive to Adept weapons) as rewards for completing the first Seasonal Flawless Ticket, and they will now be fully accessible and usable as on all your transmog-hungry gear.
| SHADER NAME | SEASON AVAILABLE AS FLAWLESS REWARD |
| Glorious Patina | Season 21 |
| Bloodline Feud | Season 22 |
| Vizier Regalia | Season 23 |
For Season 21, here is what's being added to Trials loot pool:
The Messenger High-Impact Kinetic Pulse Rifle
Unexpected Resurgence Adaptive Arc Glaive
The Adept version of Unexpected Resurgence will be first available on the weekend of June 9, while the Adept version of The Messenger will be available on the weekend of June 16.
The following weapons will be removed from the standard loot pool in Season 21, but the non-Adept versions will be available via legacy focusing with Saint-14:
In Week 8, we ran a Trials Labs to test a new style of matchmaking for Trials of Osiris. Overall, the new system worked mostly as intended, but we did discover an issue with the Lobby Balancer which was causing high-skill solo players to often feel like matches were stacked against them. For some background, since we moved to using ticket-based matchmaking years ago, we have not been tracking skill in Trials and have not been utilizing any sort of skill-based lobby balancing either.
The new matchmaking system allows us to match based on card-state and track skill, which we were planning to use for analytics purposes. Preemptively, we believed we had disabled the skill-based lobby balancing, as the intent of the new system was to maintain the randomized nature of the lobbies present in previous iterations of Trials. Unfortunately, this turned out to not be the case, and the previously latent lobby balancer came back online as soon as player's skill values started to solidify over the weekend.
We were able to identify this issue through player reports in a timely manner and we have implemented a fix for Season 21, which will overwrite everyone in the Challenger pool's skill with the same value, effectively randomizing the lobby balancing for all players pursuing Flawless. This fix will not be present in the Week 11 Labs during Season 20, but we will continue to monitor player feedback on the new system to make sure everything else is working as intended.
A second issue that came to our attention with the Week 8 Labs was that we did not communicate properly that, starting Sunday at reset, players who had already been Flawless could still farm Adept rewards on any 7-win card (even Flawed cards), like they could when the Flawless pool was active. For the Week 11 labs, we will be activating this feature starting as soon as Trials goes live on Friday. What this means is that, once you go Flawless, you can continue to play on that same 7-win card for the rest of the weekend (even if it is Flawed) and any win has a chance to grant you the Adept weapon for the week.
Because we have removed ticket-based matchmaking, if you want to help a friend get to the Lighthouse after you have already been, you do not need to reset your card, as the number of wins on it no longer influences the difficulty of the matches you will face. We believe this will make getting Flawless feel significantly more rewarding and should help to alleviate the friction between farming Adepts and helping other players to go Flawless.
Overall, the two soft pools system worked well, blending as needed to ensure connection quality stayed high and matchmaking times were fast, and the farming and stomp protection features both also functioned as designed in the Practice pool. For the Labs, we set the farming protection values aggressively, both to make sure they worked and to make sure that if anyone was attempting to farm, we would be able to catch them quickly before they could potentially cause issues. As stated, the intent of the system is to prevent nefarious people from attempting to abuse the Practice pool, not to prevent normal players from engaging with it if they choose to do so.
We believe we have captured the data we need to make accurate assessments, so we will be tuning the values for Season 21 to make it far less likely that any standard players get caught up by farming protection (we estimate less than 1% of the Trials population will even be eligible to trigger it moving forward, compared to approximately 5% during the first Labs weekend). This should allow the performance-based matchmaking used in the Practice pool to provide a high-quality experience for all players who choose to participate.
Anyway, enough about that. The real question is, "What is changing in Season 21 for Trials?" Glad you asked.
We want to make the Trials introductory quest more of an actual introduction to Trials and less of a "do a time-consuming thing before you can play Trials."
In Season 20, new players are currently asked to get 50 Crucible kills, raise their Power level, and reset their Valor rank once. The last step is asking a lot and serves more as a barrier to entry for the mode than we'd like, in addition to not really preparing a player for the type of experience that Trials offers. New players are also not given any real reward for completing the quest outside of Trials access, which can feel bad given the time commitment required to complete it.
As such, we have made the following changes to the introductory quest for Trials:
As mentioned earlier in the Season, we are also updating a couple of our Trials Passage offerings to provide a better experience in the new system.
In Season 21, we will be moving to Dominion as the core game mode for Trials. This is not a change we are making lightly, but after several Seasons of testing it in Trials Labs and analyzing both the positives and negatives, we believe this shift is in the best interest of Trials as a whole, for several reasons.
We understand that switching to Dominion may make carrying other players to the Lighthouse a more difficult challenge due to the increased premium placed on solid teamwork, but it is important to note that those experiences must be weighed against the bulk of all player experiences in the playlist when we make decisions on what changes to implement.
We wanted to make some changes to gilding Flawless to better align it with the difficulty of gilding the Glorious title, and to focus more on rewarding players for their dedication and individual and team skill in the game mode.
The gilded Flawless requirements in Season 20 were as follows:
In Season 21, the requirements will change to the below:
We believe these changes better reflect the spirit of the game mode and show a level of core competency that is worthy of gilding the Flawless title.
For this new iteration of Trials, we wanted to provide a special, deterministic reward to allow players to prove their skill above and beyond simply going Flawless. This emblem will be rewarded to players when they open the Flawless chest at the Lighthouse if they did not trail during any of their wins on their Flawless run (meaning you must get a Flight of the Pigeon medal for every win). Highly skilled players may be able to achieve this feat on their first Lighthouse run, but for others, it may be a significantly more challenging achievement, and we hope the emblem will be something players are proud to show off that they have earned.
Map voting results here. Too soon to call now, but Rusted is in the lead.
Guardians voted and the results are in. Go out there and make 'ol Saint-14 proud with Rusted Lands. For those personally invested in the results of this (which... we get it), here's how Convergence and Disjunction fared in the voting polls:
Now time for some freebies. It's that time again, time for players with Prime Gaming to snag some free gear with a new Destiny 2 bundle that's up for grabs. Here's what you can get for May's drop:
For any Guardians that may want a refresher on what Prime Gaming even is, it is a program with Amazon Prime that offers players a select few Exotics and Legendary goodies to unlock. It's super easy to use too. Just sign up for your Prime Gaming account and link it to your Bungie.net account. (If you have Amazon Prime, congrats! You also have Prime Gaming.) Once signed in, you can select the spiffy cosmetics link to claim them, and then they'll be waiting for you in the Tower with Rahool the next time you log in.
You know the drill, let's just drop some freebie wallpaper for you to enjoy. Your computer can't compute if it ain't cute.
Desktop and Mobile Guardian Games Wallpapers
This year's official DPS endorsement goes to the Warlocks.
The games are live and so is our updated Known Issues list. Our wonderous Player Support team is back with more updates on the state of the game and what's coming down the immediate pipeline.
Known Issues List | Help Forum | Bungie Help TwitterGUARDIAN GAMES
Guardian Games has returned and will run from May 2 until May 23 at the weekly reset. Check out our Guardian Games help article for more information on the event and how to compete for your team!HOTFIX 7.0.5.2
Hotfix 7.0.5.2 was released earlier this week on Tuesday, May 2. Players can view the full list of fixes and updates that are now live in the 7.0.5.2 Patch Notes.UPGRADED EVENT CARD
Players who purchase the upgraded Event Card should ensure that they have opened the Guardian Games Event Pack bundle, located in their Wrapped Items or Consumables Inventory, in order to claim the instant-unlock items. Players who do not claim the bundle from the Event Card prior to the end of Guardian Games will not receive their items.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.
- The node for normal Supremacy matchmaking is missing its description.
- Some Guardian Games quests are only progressing with Bronze medals, or medals from the recreational Vanguard Guardian Games playlist.
- Wish-Ender does not penetrate extended Phalanx or Hydra shields.
- In the Lake of Shadows Nightfall, wiping in the final boss room will cause some enemies and Champions in a previous room to respawn, blocking Platinum rewards.
- The Vexcalibur catalyst Triumph is not completing.
- Some gilded titles are no longer gilded, and some associated Triumphs have been marked as incomplete.
- The Strand Hunter's Aspect Ensnaring Slam does not trigger some Class Ability mods.
- Masterworking then enhancing a weapon will make it appear that a player will get +20 to the base stat, when in reality players can only get +10 to the base stat.
- Using 3 copies of the same Resist armor mod provides no benefit over using 2 copies of the same mod.
- Some players report that radiant no longer stuns Barrier Champions.
- Firesprites may no longer be generated from Grenade kills.
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.
Ivan: It's always amazing to see our community's dedication and creativity. Even though I never played Minecraft, this video looks like a lot of effort was put into it. Congratulations with an amazing #Destiny2MOTW.
Movie of the Week: We Defeated RHULK In Minecraft! #destiny2motw
Timon: There are always two in a raid team who are joking around! Warlocks doing Warlock stuff.
Movie of the Week: Warlocks in Sync
When you're perfectly in sync #PS5Share, #Destiny2 #Destiny2MOTW #Destiny2AOTW
— Tyler randall (@Tylerrandall05x) April 7, 2023
marcuspow#5101
Chunky;)#2018 pic.twitter.com/QMIn4mV4qv
B-b-bonus Movie of the Week: Aurora Sacrifice
Hippy: Do it for the pouka. Enough said.
Art of the Week: Pouka Supremacy
I believe in Pouka supremacy 🤲🐟🐟
— Thav_art (COMMS CLOSED (@Thavane8) April 25, 2023
(Yes it's been a while. Hello, i live)#destinyart #destinythegame #destiny2AOTW #AOTW pic.twitter.com/QsZiq1vzgO
Sam: We love all classes around here, even if we only use one of our characters. But also, you gotta give credit where credit is due, and this Hunter dreamyyy.
Art of the Week: Epic Hunter
First of the two giveaway pieces! This one was for @chibijaxie. Had a lot of fun working on this one. Now onto the next!#Destiny2AOTW #Destiny2Art #b3d pic.twitter.com/KrvSJy6Bg8
— Monoceros3D (@Monoceros3D) April 26, 2023
Another week, another TWAB. But alas, our time has ended. At least for this week. We'll have more to share on Season of the Deep leading up to its launch on May 23. We'll also be diving into more weapon and armor changes, showing off some new Exotics for next Season, and asking you to save the date for a new dungeon to throw yourselves into with abandon.
Oh! And don't forget to toss a follow over at the official community manager accounts on Twitter and Reddit! Feedback, bugs, anything at all. Just to reiterate why we're moving over to this account from the initial announcement, this is to make sure our CM team does not miss any pings on socials while also helping the team to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Until then, thanks for hanging out for our latest TWAB. As usual: make sure you're drinking that water, prioritizing that self-care, and always leading with your kindest foot forward. Until next time, friends.
"I should go,"
<3 Hippy
We are NOT Bungie, Inc.! Bungie Inc. are bungie.net!
Destiny © Bungie Inc., 2010-2024
Intellectual © destiny.bungie.org, 2012-2024
BUNGIE™, DESTINY™, MARATHON® and the Bungie, Destiny and Marathon logos
are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Bungie, Inc., used with permission.
