The Season of the Haunted is upon us, and it brings with it a big update for Destiny 2. This season puts the focus on the Nightmares and brings back The Leviathon ship for you to board once more to stop an as-yet unrevealed plan by former Cabal emperor, Galuis. With these plot developments, the Solar 3.0 subclass upgrades are on their way, bringing the power of the sun along with them.
This patch sets these events in motion but makes a lot of major changes to gameplay. Almost every class/subclass has seen balancing tweaks, along with several weapons. New items are mixing up both PvE and PvP combat, and if you need to know where to start on that, we have a PvE weapons guide to get you started. Also, an old-favourite game mode is making a return and there’s been a complete rework of aerial gunplay.
New Season Pass
What would a new season be without a Season Pass to go with it? Rank 100 is a long way off, so you best get climbing the ladder if you want the best gear. The free Season Pass offers a few cool items like the Trespasser exotic sidearm, but as always, the real treasures are in the paid version. It costs 1000 silver (roughly $10) and will earn you the season’s best gear, such as a new Titan mark, Warlock bond, and Hunter cloak.
Airborne gunplay reworked
Fighting in the air is as much a viable strategy as any. Keeping on the move and away from the ground makes you a lot harder to hit, but guns were far less accurate than usual. To balance this, guns no longer have an accuracy penalty in the air, and a new stat called ‘airborne effectiveness’ has been introduced. This means that it should be easier to get hits in the air, but airborne headshots will only be viable when using weapons with high airborne effectiveness.
Weapon crafting changes
If you want to fine-tune your weapons to their full potential, then you’ll need to understand the crafting system, and you’re in luck because we have a weapon crafting guide for what’s locked behind Deepsight. Major changes have been made to this system, the biggest of which is doing away with all the different ‘element’ currencies. Rather than adjusting perks of specific, the Neutral Element has been renamed the Resonant Element and now covers everything.
Additionally, a new Masterwork visual has been added, which applied a gold border to a weapon that has been reshaped and has two enhanced trait perks. Progression of Deepsight mods has been sped up, and PvP kills will now generate more progression for your weapon level.
Healing Grenades
Grenades are great, and the wonders of technology can fill them with just about anything; explosions, fire, smoke, even electricity. Well now you can find grenades that unleash “a wave of benevolent solar light”, which sounds like something a cult would ask you to do, but in the world of Destiny, it’s entirely legitimate. This grenade tracks towards allies in its flight path and cures them when it goes off, as well as creating a blessing of Restoration on pickup.
Rift returns
Iron Banner mode has got a few changes and additions in this update, and the most important is the return of Rift as a seasonal mode. It’s a fan-favourite PvP mode where you must grab a Spark from the centre of the map and dunk it in the enemy’s rift for a point. If you’re not sure where to start, then be sure to check out our PvP weapons guide first. It’s a slightly chaotic fast-paced mode where one person makes a run for glory while everyone else is fighting to either kill or protect them. It even comes with a brand new map called Disjunction.
This is a big update, and it lays the groundwork for the coming season, so be sure to check out the full Destiny 2 patch notes on the official Bungie website.
Written by Ryan Woodrow on behalf of GLHF.
