May 3, 2018 - dmg04

This week at Bungie, we’re counting down the minutes till Warmind.







In recent months, a series of updates for Destiny 2 has added some quality-of-life improvements to the game. On May 8, we’ll deliver even more. Tuesday can’t come soon enough.





Season 3 will make all players more powerful and give them new ways to earn some Glory (and Valor).





Expansion II will send you starside in search of new activities, new lore, new challenges, and new loot.





Cheers to Vicarious Visions for their passion and dedication to the craft of creating amazing experiences for players. They’ve been wonderful partners with us on this journey. With Destiny 2 PC and Warmind under our collective belts, we’re excited about the future of this collaboration. Before you see their contribution to the world of Destiny, Creative Director Brent Gibson has a message from his team:





Brent: The team at Vicarious Visions have been fans of Destiny long before we started working with Bungie on this amazing franchise. While working alongside our counterparts at Bungie, we've met the challenge of expanding the Destiny universe and we are beyond thrilled that the day is nearly here! We are honored to have added to this rich world with passionate fans numbering in the millions. This is the kind of thing that game developers dream about. We are fortunate enough to not only add to the gameplay experience, but the franchise as a whole by bringing the legendary Hunter, Ana Bray, to life! She has carried our banner through this entire journey and we can’t wait for you to meet her on this adventure. See you on Mars on May 8!





On Approach





We’ve had a lot of fun hosting “Warmind Week” on the blog. There’s a lot we want you to know before you plot a course for Mars. If you missed a beat, here’s a recap.





The Destiny 2 Narrative Preview set the stage with five pieces of weblore written by our team.













Mark Waid (Doctor Strange) and David A. Rodriguez (Destiny 2: Warmind), and inked by Kris Anka (Runaways). On Wednesday, we released the “Warmind” digital comic , written byand, and inked by













We’ve also released two new Developer Insights to give more details on what to expect when Warmind launches. Creative Director Brent Gibson from Vicarious Visions and Design Lead Evan Nikolich from Bungie shed light on the state of Mars, Rasputin, and the enemies you’ll be introduced to. Sandbox Design Lead Josh Hamrick and Senior Crucible Designer Kevin Yanes walk us through the Exotic Masterwork weapon process, with additional information about Crucible Ranks, which will be available to all players when Season 3 begins on May 8.





Season 3: Exotics and Crucible





Warmind





Design Lead Jacob Benton and Design Lead Ben Wommack on the development of Escalation Protocol. Stay tuned to We have one more Developer Insight planned for release on Friday, May 4, featuring commentary fromandon the development of Escalation Protocol. Stay tuned to Bungie.net/Warmind for more!





Patch Note Preview





In previous articles, we’ve been diving deep into the details of design goals for some of the larger changes coming in Season 3. There’s quite a bit more to Destiny Update 1.2.0, so here’s a quick overview of feature changes and bug fixes that will also be deployed next week:





As a short-term solution, Vault space has been increased from 200 to 300 items.





Multi-emote is here! You now can configure all four emote options with player-selected emotes.



The entire emote collection is now always available to you for convenient swapping.



Items in the emote collection have been removed from the Vault, as it's no longer needed.





Guided Games will now feature a Leviathan Guide emblem that tracks the number of raid encounters and raids a player has completed as a Guide.



This emblem rewards a unique aura for 14 days after a player completes a raid as a Guide.



Once a week while the aura is active, guiding a raid to completion grants one Bright Engram.





A new inventory category has been created that will contain pursuit tracking items, such as those for Exotic quests.



Items in the Pursuits category are specific to each character and not shared across the account.





In-game audio settings (sliders between 1 and 10) were added or revised:



SFX Volume



Dialogue/Cinematics Volume



Music Volume



Chat Volume





Weekly lockouts for raid and raid lair rewards are now class-based.



Players running multiple characters of the same class will receive rewards only the first time they run the raid or raid lair in a given week.





Fixed an issue with collections where event emblems would not show up unless players owned Curse of Osiris.







Fixed an issue where players would encounter a black screen upon loading into the Tower.







Fixed an issue where Cayde was offering only one treasure map for Mercury.







The full suite of patch notes will be published on May 8 shortly before Warmind becomes available. We’re currently targeting a 10 AM release, but stay tuned to @Bungie for announcements.





Details on Design





The Exotic Sandbox that you’re familiar with is about to change. We’ve had Senior Sandbox Designer Jon Weisnewski on the hot seat to talk us through the upcoming changes on stream and on the blog. You may have seen some demonstrations of new and improved Exotic weaponry this week. Some of the changes have some nuance to them, so here he is again with the exact details on how your arsenal is evolving:





Jon: Due to a lengthy update this week, I’m going to keep my section short. This’ll be the last Exotic tease from me. After this week, you’ll be playing with all of the new changes!

Risk Runner: We gave Arc Conductor increased resistance to incoming Arc damage (50%) and enabled it in the Crucible. Arc Conductor will now activate when the weapon is stowed, but damage resistance will only work when the weapon is in your hands. This was already a strong gun for PvE. We’re hoping these changes give it a place in some interesting Crucible load outs, strategies, and counters.



Sweet Business: If you run this gun, you probably just want to shoot forever. We gave it a capped ammo inventory of 999. It’s not forever, but it’s a lot.



D.A.R.C.I.: This Sniper Rifle now grants 4x damage once locked on a target (exact scaling depends on activity, difficulty, light level delta, etc). It shouldn’t take a master strategist to figure out how this will benefit you in PvE. Any Crucible combat snipers will also want to give this gun a try; it’s got a: 7 round magazine, reduced zoom for closer engagements, and an aim assist stat retuned to be more generous when you haven’t locked a target yet for better results while drag sniping.



Lastly, I want to quickly acknowledge the whole team, which has been working really hard to get Exotic weapons in Update 1.2.0 ready for you over the past few months. I’ve been the one doing the talking, but it has been far from a solo effort. In particular, there’s a group of testers who has come to the table daily to both ensure these changes are bug-free, and also provide us with bone-breaking player feedback. The team has done a tremendous job at helping dial in a sweet spot for many of the guns. A billion thanks to them!





Mixing Things Up a Little

Destiny Updates 1.1.2, 1.1.3, and 1.1.4 have brought quality-of-life changes to Destiny 2. Update 1.2.0 is almost here to bring more community-requested features to the table. Senior Investment Designer Daniel Auchenpaugh has details on the upcoming Heroic strike modifiers and the new Legendary Nightfall Challenge Card.





Dan: In Season 3, we’ve increased the baseline difficulty of Heroic strikes to make combatants more aggressive and make the experience feel more, well, Heroic. Additionally, at any given time the Heroic strike playlist will have three modifiers on it: one Burn (rotates weekly), one Advantage (rotates daily), and one Disadvantage (rotates daily).

Here’s a quick rundown of what you can expect in those categories:



Burns



Arc Singe: +25% Arc damage increase (outgoing and incoming)





Solar Singe: +25% Solar damage increase (outgoing and incoming)





Void Singe: +25% Void damage increase (outgoing and incoming)



Advantages



Brawler: Double melee recharge rate and damage





Grenadier: Double grenade ability recharge rate and damage





Heavyweight: Triple Power ammo drop rate, double Power weapon damage



Disadvantages



Glass: Players Health and Shields are halved, but recharge rates are doubled.





Blackout: Radar is disabled, and enemies do 20x increased melee damage





Iron: Enemies no longer stagger, and health pools are increased by 50%





Grounded: Players take 5x damage while airborne



Legendary Nightfall Challenge Card Players will now be able to take their Rare Challenge Card to Xûr and upgrade it to Legendary Challenge Card. Doing so adds more customization options to the card; Legendary cards allow you to select one Burn, One Advantage/Disadvantage, and two additional Disadvantages. With the exception of Glass, all other Advantages and Disadvantages listed above from Heroic Strikes can be applied to the new Challenge Card. Additionally, there are a few Disadvantages unique to the Legendary Challenge Card you can select:



Unique Challenge Card Disadvantages



Extinguish: Return the fireteam to orbit on a wipe





Famine: Ammo drops reduced by 50%





Match Game: Players must match their damage type to the enemy shield type





Attrition: Health regen is slowed greatly, and enemies drop health orbs





Momentum: Health regenerates only when the player is moving



Nightfall Par Scores Update In Destiny Update 1.1.3, we introduced Nightfall emblem variants. As the new Legendary Nightfall Challenge Card will give players more ways to increase their scores, we’re increasing the par scores required to earn specific rewards. Emblem variants, auras, and token reward bonus par scores have been updated to the following:



30k



60k



110k



200k



As a reminder, when you reach new record par scores for a specific Nightfall, you increase your chances to earn the associated Nightfall Unique Reward! We’ll be watching community scores closely once Update 1.2.0 is released, and we’ll let you know if any adjustments need to be made.





We're excited to see players reaching new top scores through a variety of modifiers on the Legendary Nightfall Challenge Card. Here are the top scoring fireteams from last week’s Nightfall, “A Garden World”:









Prismatic Matrix





Prismatic Matrix will debut in Season 3. This feature has been developed with three key goals in mind: In the January Development Update , we spoke of shifting the balance of vanity content in favor of activity rewards, rather than purely through Eververse. We first addressed this balance by adding vanity rewards to Crucible, Nightfall, strike, and raid activities. To further improve the overall Eververse experience, a new feature we’re calling thewill debut in Season 3. This feature has been developed with three key goals in mind:





Give players more control over how they earn Eververse items



Offer a more predictable path each week that guarantees access to specific items



Drop fewer duplicate items







At release, the Prismatic Matrix will feature 10 Eververse items from Season 3 each week it is active. Each item within the Prismatic Matrix is on a knockout list, which means every player is guaranteed to receive all featured items for a given week by the tenth activation. Earning items via Bright Engrams, Bright Dust, or previous Matrix activations will also knock rewards off the list. In turn, each activation guarantees players an item that they have never previously acquired.









With your first well-rested level-up each week, you’ll earn a Prismatic Facet, allowing one free use of the Prismatic Matrix. Prismatic Facets stack up to 3, so make sure to have proper inventory space before earning a rank-up on a given week. Players can also purchase more activations for 200 Silver each.





Outside of the Prismatic Matrix, players may continue to earn Bright Engrams each time they level up, and they can still purchase these engrams if they want a chance to get everything from the Season 3 catalog. Additionally, we’re increasing the number of items available from Tess each week with Bright Dust, from 14 to 18 items.





We want to continue experimenting and evolving Eververse to improve player experience, and give more paths to earn Eververse rewards. Please give us your feedback once Season 3 begins, as we’re dedicated to improving these systems moving forward.





Run of Show

With each update, Destiny Player Support is on standby to ensure the package has been delivered to your platform without issue. The following information will guide you to your first steps in Hellas Basin:





Destiny 2 Server Maintenance Services will be brought offline for maintenance on Tuesday, May 8, 2018. During this time, Destiny 2: Warmind, Update 1.2.0, and Hotfix 1.2.0.1 will become available to players. Please see below for the timeline of the maintenance window.



6 AM PDT (1300 UTC)



Destiny 2 server maintenance is scheduled to begin





Players may no longer sign in to Destiny 2



7 AM PDT (1400 UTC)



Players still in Destiny 2 activities will be returned to the title screen





Destiny 2: Warmind and Update 1.2.0 will be available to download and install



11 AM PDT– (1800 UTC)



Destiny 2 server maintenance is scheduled to conclude





Destiny 2 Hotfix 1.2.0.1 will be available to download and install



Storage Requirements Destiny 2, including all updates, has the following storage requirements for each platform:

Platform Destiny File Size Storage Space Needed for Download PlayStation 4 53 GB 71 GB Xbox One 50 GB 50 GB PC 48 GB 68 GB

Destiny Update 1.2.0 Known Issues Prior to the release of Update 1.2.0, the following issues have been identified and are currently under investigation:



Anti-Extinction Greaves: The female Titan’s Dead Orbit leg armor piece, Anti-Extinction Greaves, may display a small visual issue.



Exotic Masterworks: Once upgraded to a Masterwork, an Exotic weapon or armor piece will not display as a Masterwork when viewed from an Exotic engram preview.



Strike Playlist: Players are not able to matchmake into strikes from an expansion they do not own. Players will receive a prompt to purchase the needed expansion if they attempt to join a fireteam of players who own an expansion that they do not own themselves.



Warmind:



Some quest items in the Warmind campaign may not show up in the loot stream of all fireteam members. However, the quest item should still be added to the inventories of all fireteam members.





If players have a full engram inventory, they may not be able to accept some vendor quest items until they make space in their inventory.



Exotic Armor Tooltips: We are aware of an issue in which the perk text on Warmind Exotic armor tooltips appears in a different color than on similar gear pieces. This does NOT mean that players need to unlock these perks to be able to access them.





If you encounter any issues when playing Season 3 or Warmind content, please post a report to the #Help forum.





Moving Pictures













The title of “Movie of the Week” is frequently earned by those who showcase skill in the Crucible, or moments of success against overwhelming odds in endgame activities. This week, we’re looking at the word “creation” in a more literal sense…





Movie of the Week: Ana Bray SpeedArt





Honorable Mention: Herald





Cheers to this week’s winners! If you’d like a chance to earn the Lens of Fate emblem, make sure to submit your video to the Creations page on Bungie.net and include #MOTW in your title.





I think we’re at five more sleeps until Warmind? Depends on your caffeine intake.





Tuesday, Warmind goes live at 11 AM. Friday, May 11, the Spire of Stars raid lair goes live at 10 AM. Who among you will take the challenge head on? We’ll be watching and calling a World’s First. Good luck!





As a reminder, Season 2 ends with the launch of Warmind. This is your final weekend to earn Season 2 rewards from activities and Bright Engrams. Make sure to check with the Vanguard, Crucible, Iron Banner, and Trials of the Nine for your last chance to earn Season 2 ornaments before they’re gone.





It’s almost time to head to Mars. See you next week.





Cheers,

Dmg04