Destiny 2

Last night was my second night of playing through the new seasonal content in Destiny 2, and immediately it feels like there are a lot of comparisons between this and the Season of Opulence. In that season it introduced the concept of the Chalice, which is a quest item that you effectively unlock various functions of over the course of the season. Additionally there is a runes mini-game that allows you to forge specific weapons in a new game mode called The Menagerie. This mode sent you into the Leviathan where you participated in a randomized sequence of encounters, the number of which you have to do depends on just how successful you are at each of them. The runes slotted into the Chalice dictated what sort of rewards you were able to get in this game mode.

For those who are playing this season, that is going to seem really familiar because the Obelisks that we unlock around the locations are more or less serving the same role as the Chalice, giving us something to keep unlocking as the season goes forward. The improvement this time around is that they jettisoned the runes mini-game and instead simply allow us to choose a specific weapon upon each completion of the Sundial event. Which weapons you get to choose from are determined by which Obelisk you have linked the Sundial event to. I’ve been running with the Tangled Shore event linked in an attempt to get really good Auto Rifle rolls. In theory at some point I will swap over to Mars where I can get a Grenade Launcher or a Linear Fusion Rifle. Next week we apparently get a new set of destinations and with it brand new weapons to try for.

In my journey to get a god roll on the Steelfeather Repeater, I think I may have just gotten one. This weapon is amazing, and is rapidly becoming my favorite Auto Rifle. The roll that I managed to pull is Multi-Kill Clip, Feeding Frenzy, Ricochet Rounds and Hammer-Forged Rifling. Feeding Frenzy and Multi-Kill Clip work so well together on this weapon with Multi-Kill Clip giving you a buff for killing multiple targets with this weapon before reloading and Feeding Frenzy making that reload after a kill way faster. The cadence that you can fall into this weapon feels so good and the sound and speed… just makes you feel like you are wrecking everything in sight.

Another interesting weapon that I picked up last night is this curated masterwork roll of Last Man Standing. I took down an invading Guardian in Gambit Prime and saw this drop into my inventory. I like the gun an awful lot, but the biggest problem that I have with it… is the magazine size. I still use my Ikelos shotgun almost entirely because of the fact that it has 8 rounds in the magazine. Were this a different element… then it might have gotten some play. The biggest thing this weapon has going for it is auto loading holster, allowing me to swap over to a primary and have this reloaded when I need it again.

The absolute BEST part of this season however are the changes made to Escalation Protocol. You can now get relevant armor each time you take down the wave 7 boss without having to go through the key upgrade minigame. As a result folks are playing this game mode again and this morning when I dropped onto Mars to check that Obelisk I happened to random into a successful Wave 7 kill. That is something that used to happen back when Escalation Protocol was active content, but has not happened for a very long time. Now however… I am super pumped to have this back in the rotation of things that I can do. I hope to finally get the weapons I am missing as a result.

All in all I am pretty excited for this season and the way they are tweaking things to revitalize older content. Destiny really is in and excellent state, and I think Bungie as a whole has a pretty firm grasp on how to make this game successful.

Yesterday was the opening of a brand new season in Destiny 2 and with it comes a new batch of events to participate in and quests to complete. Thankfully it seems that if you failed to complete any of the “Ritual” weapons from last season they are still in your quest log and seemingly something you can continue to chew on. I am SUPER thankful about this because I have done a relatively poor job at keeping up with these, and as a result I have a massive backlog of things to work on over time. Gone is the Vex Incursion and here to replace it is the Sundial, which involves us attempting to fight back waves of Cabal culminating in a battle with a super powered Psion.

Similar to last season, if you have the seasons pass you get a full set of the armor and an exotic scout rifle called the Symmetry. Taking this to Banshee unlocks the catalyst quest, and for someone who generally does not like scout rifles at all this is a pretty solid weapon. It is fairly fast firing for a Scout Rifle and packs a surprising punch, but I have not really spent much time doing content with it. I have to admit I was a little uncertain of what this season would feel like since the last season dropped at the same time as a whole bunch of expansion content. However as a result it feels like Bungie made this event way more intricate to make up for the fact that we are not also spending a lot of time doing Shadowkeep content at the same time.

Attached to the Sundial is powering up pylons that appear on different destinations. The first of these is on the Tangled Shore and involves doing content there to gain energy, when you then bank into the pylon. Once the pylon has been unlocked you can spend a currency called Fractaline that you get from doing bounties and completing main quest steps in order to further power up the pylon. Each rank seems to unlock new weapons that you can attempt to “forge” of sorts by completing a bounty effectively phasing them into reality. I completed several of these last night trying to get better rolls of the new Auto Rifle called Steelfeather Repeater which is a fast rate of fire weapon that just sounds and feels awesome to use.

Another weapon that I got from the first pylon was Breachlight, which is a truly badass looking sidearm. Normally speaking I don’t really like sidearms, but this is of the pulse variety firing I believe 3 rounds per burst. I can’t say that my particular roll was amazing, but it is not horrible. The main reason why I am getting used to this is that one of the new ritual weapons this season is also a sidearm and requires you to get a bunch of kills in strikes using that weapon class. I like that they are mixing things up each season and trying to get us playing with different weapon types.

Once again there are two weapons unlocked by leveling your way through the seasons journey. For Undying it was an Auto Rifle and a Heavy Machinegun… both weapons that are thoroughly in my wheelhouse. This time around the first one unlocked is a thoroughly mediocre rocket launcher. Ultimately for me there are three perks I care about on Rocket Launchers… Tracking, Cluster Bombs and Proximity Detonation. This has none of those and as a result is not likely ever going to replace my baby Gjallarhorn which has Tracking and Clusterbombs on it.

Another weapon that is absolutely not generally in my wheelhouse is the sniper rifle. I never use them. Like in Destiny 1 I used to use them during burn phases, but it always feels like there is never enough ammunition available to make them worthwhile. The Trophy Hunter unlocks later in the seasons journey and is extremely high impact and long range… which could be useful for using it to break void shields thanks to the Genesis perk giving you back ammunition. It also has Dragonfly which might be useful if you slot in a Dragonfly mod… which reminds me that I really need to spend more time forging weapons so that I can buy more Black Armory mods. I am not exactly excited to have this weapon but that is only because I am not a sniper person.

The weapon I am the most excited about… I think is going to be tied to the Recovering the Past quest line. I loved Saint-14s shotgun from the Curse of Osiris expansion, and I am hoping that we get an exotic version of this through the questline, or at least a better modern legendary version. I feel like I barely had time to scratch the surface of the new content and there are already enough switches to flip to keep me happy for a bit. I am only rank 2 for the season, so over the next few weeks I will be working on grinding out Rank 100 again to unlock everything. I really like the direction they are going with this game and since I am effectively done with Season 19 in Diablo 3, I am ready to go here again.