The latest This Week at Bungie is mainly a recap of the big Destiny 2 announcements that dropped earlier this week, including a teaser for Saint-14’s return and a livestreamed look at some of the other changes coming in Season of Dawn. But it expands on all of that a bit with some bullet-point specifics on more granular changes, including small increases to Power and Pinnacle reward caps and a long-awaited buff to Thundercrash, the Striker Code of the Missile Super ability, that’s been given a boost to base damage, in-flight damage, and the amount of time you can stay in the air after it’s activated.
The new TWAB also reveals changes coming to the Eververse Store that will see a significantly increased amount of inventory made available for Bright Dust along with the premium Silver currency. Roughly 50 percent of Eververse items will have been purchasable with Bright Dust at some point during the Season of Undying by the time it wraps up next week, but Bungie aims to get that up to around 80 percent for Season of Dawn. The Eververse Store will also prevent the purchase of items already in your collection in the new season, in order to ensure that people aren’t blowing Silver or Bright Dust on stuff they already have.
Tweaks will also be made to the Bright Dust economy in the new seasson. “In Season of the Undying, we changed Bright Dust from a pay-and/or-play-to-earn currency to a play-to-earn reward. We want all players to be able to acquire a selection of their favorite Eververse content every season just by playing the game, and we’ve been keeping an eye on the Bright Dust economy in Season of the Undying with this in mind,” Bungie explained.
“In Season of Dawn, all Dawning Weekly and Repeatable bounties will award Bright Dust in quantities equal to the amount awarded from strike, Crucible, and Gambit bounties (200 per weekly and 10 per repeatable). Crimson Days will do the same for Weekly bounties only, as this event does not include Repeatable bounties.”
Destiny 2: Season of Dawn goes live on December 10. And as promised, bullet points:
Rewards
- Increased the drop rate of the “Scourge of the Past” raid Exotic weapon Anarchy from 5% to 10%
- The Exotic Engram and the Fated Engram have been collapsed into a single new Exotic Engram item
- When opened, it awards a new Exotic if any remain to be collected; otherwise, it contains a random piece of Exotic armor
- Note: Contents are still class-specific
Powerful and Pinnacle Reward Caps
- Powerful Cap: 960, up from 950
- Pinnacle Cap: 970, up from 960
Escalation Protocol
- Escalation Protocol wave 7 chest no longer requires a key to open
- Chest can be opened upon every successful completion of wave 7
- Each time opening the chest awards one piece of EP armor for your character class until you have the full set
- After full set is acquired, subsequent opening of the chest awards a random piece of armor
- Charged Decryption Keys and Key Fragments are being removed from the game; these items will be removed from player inventories
- Armory keys to spawn Valkyrie Javelins are unchanged and will remain
- EP weapon drops were not touched and are still cumulative-stream boss drops
Weapon Mods
- The cost of slotting a weapon mod has been reduced from 5,000 Glimmer to 500 Glimmer
- Fixed an issue where Ada-1 could grant duplicate weapon mods
Bounties
- Repeatable bounties have been added to the Gunsmith
- Merged strike/Crucible/Gambit objectives on the Gunsmith weekly bounty “Field Calibration” into a single objective that shares progress from all sources
- Removed Valor/Infamy and Vanguard tokens from “Field Calibration” as there is no longer a requirement for any of these linked activities
- Added new mode-specific daily Crucible bounties (one per day, selected from full-time playlists and active rotators)
- Reduced the completion requirements of several daily and repeatable Crucible bounties
- Removed grenade and melee bounties from the Crucible bounty repeatable pool
Striker Code of the Missile (Middle Path)
- Thundercrash:
- Increased base damage from 2,700 to 3,200
- Increased in-flight damage from 100 to 200
- Slightly increased the amount of time you have in the air after activation
Nightstalker Way of the Pathfinder (Bottom Path)
- Vanish in Smoke:
- Added a short period (0.8 seconds) after the invisibility is applied where firing weapons or performing other actions will not break invisibility
- This should help prevent allies from accidentally breaking invisibility the moment it’s granted to them if unexpected
Voidwalker Attunement of Fission (Middle Path)
- Handheld Supernova:
- Adjusted grenade charge time so it lines up with the animations and FX; this should make it feel more consistent to activate
Crucible Maps
- Added Rusted Lands to appropriate playlists
- Added The Dead Cliffs, Legion’s Gulch, Retribution, and Solitude to appropriate playlists
- Removed Emperor’s Respite, Equinox, Firebase Echo, and Vostok from all Crucible playlists
- These maps are still available for play in private matches