Category: Bungie News

This week at Bungie, the Black Armory opened its doors.  

A new mysterious section of the tower revealed itself and a new vendor by the name of Ada-1 sent you out to reclaim the Lost Forges. Your reward: The ability to craft the most powerful weapons of the golden age. 

For some of you the enemies guarding the Lost Forges are immune to your weapons. We promised more details for players who are still working their way up to 600 and beyond. Here is what we have planned to help you move more quickly up to 600.

This change is planned to land in the 2.1.2 update on December 11. We are also considering additional changes to assist with the Power climb in a future update. We will continue to monitor your feedback on Season of the Forge as it continues.  

Scourge of the Past

Tomorrow, the Scourge of the Past raid opens up to all of Guardians who have the Annual Pass and are brave enough to venture into the Last City to confront a new threat to its safety. 

Design Lead Brian Frank is here to brief you one last time before the race for World First begins tomorrow.

Brian: The team could not be more excited for the Scourge of the Past Raid to unlock tomorrow and accept challengers to be the first to fight their way through the Last City and recover a forgotten secret of the Black Armory. As always, we will be cheering you on from the theater. Dust off your sparrow collections. You’re going to want the right perk, and the right look, for crossing the finish line.

Make sure you grab the final chest to complete the activity before returning to orbit. Good luck Guardians!

The first fireteam to defeat the raid will be crowned as World First and awarded with a raid belt. As always, they will be awarded to six teammates. Please note that, if you swap players out during the mission, the spoils will only go to the final six.

Anyone who beats all of the encounters of Scourge of the Past in the first 24 hours will be awarded the “Scourge of Nothing” emblem. If you don’t think you can take down the final boss that fast, you will still have some extra time to qualify for the exclusive raid jacket through Bungie Rewards. You have until 9AM Pacific on 12/12 to beat the raid and claim your code to purchase the jacket on the Bungie Store. Here is a look at all of these rewards.

I am the Crucible

Today, we’d like to address the feedback we’ve received about the Crucible. The top issue reported by the community is associated with Matchmaking in the Competitive playlist. Many of you are expressing feedback around matching solos against fireteams, matching high Glory teams against lower Glory teams, and have many other suggestions regarding how progressing through the ranks should be changed. The appropriate teams are investigating possible changes to be included in a future update. We will have details for you as soon as we can.

We do have some information on changes to address another top trending issue in the Crucible: Power ammo spawns. There have been numerous requests to lower the amount of Power ammo spawning in Competitive games. Based on this feedback, we will be lowering the amount of Power ammo available during matches by increasing the time between Power ammo spawns. Here are the details:

Competitive:

Rotators:

Rumble:

It Gets Everywhere

Power ammo and Matchmaking are not the only top-trending pieces of community feedback that we have been tracking. Many of you have Sandbox-related questions that apply to PVP and PVE. There are vocal camps on both sides for a lot of these issues and our Sandbox team is considering a combination of player feedback and data on the effectiveness of certain gear and abilities. Design Lead John Sandwich with notes on their process.

Joe: Hello again, my friends! Hamrick here to answer some hot community questions we have seen and give you a quick glimpse into what Sandbox is working on for the rest of the year and on into 2019.  

While we have those hot questions coming right up, I just wanted to take a second to call out something you may have noticed. Instead of building up to one or two massive patches a year, we have transitioned to shipping smaller batches of changes much more frequently. We hope that this new approach will allow us to remain more agile than we have been in the past and allow us to shake up the meta a bit on more frequent intervals. We hope that a year from now we can all look back on this new way of working and agree that it was very successful. Alright, enough of my rambling, onward, to the questions!

Can you buff snipers? We would really like flinch to be reduced and to have more lower zoom scopes.

Snipers are definitely one of the archetypes we are actively looking at and making changes to.  For example, later in January, Rapid-fire snipers will be moving to a two-shot body kill. Additionally, we are considering allowing more snipers to be able to one-shot supers on headshots in a future patch.

Lower zoom scopes do exist in the game, but have not been particularly prevalent with post-Forsaken weapons and have been largely limited to a few weapons (ie., The Supremacy), but we’ll be increasing the number of them in the game as we move forward.

We don’t currently have plans to alter sniper flinch any more at this time, but we will continue to keep an eye on your feedback.

Nova Warp??????????????????????????????

Yup, the Nova Warp super is too dominant right now and we are planning to tweak it. It’s currently slated to land with a patch coming in late January.

Spectral Blades hit detection feels much more consistent. Can sentinel and other melees get the same treatment?

We definitely want all melee supers to feel as good and reliable as possible. This is something we are still looking into.

A lot of the pre-forsaken subclasses feel underpowered now. Can they get buffed?

Yes! We have some planned buffs coming to older subclass paths in the patch currently slated for late January, but we are already looking ahead to what we’d like to do in patches further down the line. We will be regularly looking into tuning subclass content to ensure that there’s a healthy balance of viable choices in all activities.  We use a combination of data and community feedback to track the right things to fix, so please continue to surface which choices feel the least viable to help guide us.

Any changes to the top exotics being used in the Crucible like One Eyed Mask, Shards of Galanor, etc.?

These exotics get talked about quite a bit and while I don’t have any immediate incoming changes to share, I expect that they will be getting looked at in the future.

Telesto is currently besto. Can you tone it down or move it to the Power slot?

Late in January you will find that Telesto’s bolts-to-kill will now match its charge rate, where it was previously doing more damage than other fusion rifles of its type. That said, due to it being affected less by damage falloff due to its explosive nature, it will still be more consistent than fusion rifles of the same charge rate. Worth noting, PvE damage will be increased to keep parity there.  Once we see how these changes land, we can decide if and what to do next.  The goal still being to buff where we can, but when we have to nerf, you’re going to find us trying to inch down instead of going nuclear… at least as much as we can.

Scouts Rifles still feel weak in both PVP and PVE. Can they come up?

This is another archetype we are looking at and I would currently expect to see changes show up in future patches.

Could SMGs get a non-precision damage buff?

We just recently buffed the range on SMG’s to make them more competitive. We’ll be monitoring the data and feedback for a bit to help us decided where to take them next.  If we find that they still aren’t good enough, we will be happy to buff them further.

Can Fusion Rifles get buffed? Maybe longer range or higher damage to combat shotguns?

This is another archetype we are looking at and I would currently expect to see changes show up in future patches. We did bring up the damage of Rapid Fire Fusion Rifles in 2.1.0 last week. 

Any plans to adjust Wavesplitter?

It’s not at the top of our list but we do intend to take a look at it. First we want to look at the global ammo economy for trace rifles in PvP, and then we can take a look at Wavesplitter’s effectiveness.

Titan skating is rampant on PC. Do you plan to remove it?

We’d like to fix this, however, we’re being careful about how we do so because it’s so closely tied to the core feel of the Lift ability. In other words, we don’t want a Titan skating fix to change the way the Lift ability feels for all players.  We’d love to have a simple fix to this issue we could roll out immediately, but this one is going to take us a while to land on something solid.

To recap, we want to roll out smaller batches of patches more frequently.  We want to bring things up whenever possible, but when we do need to bring something down, we are going to try and inch it down and into the correct location.  And finally, there is a patch coming, currently slated for late January, where we expect you to see some changes coming to things like Rapid-fire snipers, Telesto, Nova Warp and pre-Forsaken subclasses…  And we have much more planned for the months ahead.

Love you, always,

Hamrick

That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles

Eva’s Little Helpers

Player support is tracking known issues and keeping you up to date when we deploy updates to address them.

This is their report.

Destiny 2 Update 2.1.1.1

This week we deployed Destiny 2 Update 2.1.1.1 to players. This update resolved issues causing crashes at the Morgeth encounter of the Last Wish raid, and reintroduced The Inverted Spire strike activity after it was disabled in Update 2.1.0 due to rather large bug.

For the full Update 2.1.1.1 patch notes, please click here.

Destiny 2 Update 2.1.2

Next Tuesday, December 11, Destiny 2 Update 2.1.2 is scheduled to go live.

While the timeline for this deployment has yet to be finalized, players should follow us at @BungieHelp on Twitter or monitor our support feed on help.bungie.net for the latest information as soon as it is available.

Upcoming Challenges

On Tuesday, the Black Armory officially opened its doors and the Volundr Forge was discovered in the EDZ. Tomorrow, the Gofannon Forge will become available, and the race for world’s first will kick off in the Scourge of the Past raid.

For those among you who accept the challenge of becoming the world’s first Fireteam to conquer the Scourge of the Past, set your alarms and prep your fireteams. Scourge of the Past will unlock in the EDZ map tomorrow (12/7) at 9 AM PST. Players waiting in Orbit who do not see this activity become available in their Director may need to log out and back in after 9 AM.

As always, players who encounter issues in newly-launched activities should report them to our #Help forums. Providing imagery or video footage which outlines a reported issue will assist the Destiny Player Support team in escalating investigations with the dev team.

Holiday Cheer

Next Tuesday the Dawning returns in Destiny 2. All players are invited to experience the Dawning who have completed the Red War campaign and unlocked access to the Tower.

The Dawning will conclude at the weekly reset on January 1, 2019. For the full support copy, players should visit: Destiny 2: The Dawning Guide

Destiny 2: Forsaken and Season of the Forge Known Issues

In addition to the items listed above, Destiny Player Support is tracking the latest issues reported by players on the #Help forum. Provided below is a brief overview of the latest known issues in Destiny 2: Forsaken and Season of the Forge.

• Blind Well Matchmaking: We are investigating reports regarding players entering empty instances of the Blind Well in the Dreaming City. While we are working on a fix, affected players should try entering the Blind Well slowly, hugging the right side staircase and hallway walls.
• Mars Flashpoint: We are investigating reports describing sometimes not receiving powerful gear from the Mars Flashpoint.
• Harbinger’s Echo: We are investigating ongoing reports regarding the Harbinger’s Echo exotic sparrow not being awarded as expected to players who have earned it after the deployment of Update 2.1.1.1.

Hello There

You all continue to create great content every week. Movie of the Week is our chance to show off a few of our favorites. Here is what caught our eye this week. 

Movie of the Week: Paint it Black (Armory)

Honorable Mention: Royalty

Honorable Mention: Thundercrushed

The creators of both of these videos will be rewarded with the Lens of Fate emblem. If you are one of the winners, make sure you have the player names of who worked on the video in its description. 

Thanks for continuing to provide valuable feedback as we transition from a box product to a world that evolves and changes over time. We will continue to consider avenues to help you keep up with the evolutions. But also continue rolling out difficult activities to challenge the mettle of the bravest among you. 

We’re all excited about raid day tomorrow. Be careful as you adventure into the Last City. May the best fireteam win.

<3 Cozmo

“Come in, come in! Even you Guardians can catch a chill. Things have certainly changed since I last called this place home. But the Dawning is always here for us: just as we should always be here for each other.”

—Eva Levante

When the Dawning last came to the City, a new Golden Age had just begun. Humanity had faced their greatest threat and emerged victorious, if not unscathed. Our Light had returned, brighter than ever. We were dazzled by the infinite possibilities in the world, and every day brought something new.

The return of something familiar can be like a welcome visit from an old friend. This year’s Dawning is no exception. Our dear Eva Levante—who was instrumental in bringing the traditions of the Dawning to the Tower—returns with it.

Eva’s fond memories of the heroes who share her home—and the friends she’s made in her many years there—spurred her to write down some of her favorite recipes, and recall stories of Dawnings past. This year, she’ll share them with some of her favorite Guardians, and help bring the spirit of togetherness back to the Tower.

Baking the Goods

Eva has returned to the Tower and brought her baking supplies with her. All players of Destiny 2 are invited to join the celebration. She will provide the oven and some ingredients to get you started, but you will need to go out into world to gather more ingredients by defeating enemies and completing various activities in Destiny 2.

Once you have your ingredients, you can start combining them to create some tasty treats like Gjallardoodles or Chocolate Ship Cookies. We’ll give you a few recipes to get you started, but it’s up to you to try different combinations and discover which ones turn into the most delicious cookies. Be careful: mismatched ingredients result in burnt edges.

You might be asking: “What do I do with all these cookies?” Friends you’ve made throughout the solar system are eager to receive your baked good as gifts. They will show their thanks by rewarding you in their own ways. There will also be bounties to complete along with your cookbook. Here’s a preview of the rewards you’ll have a chance to earn:

That’s not all you will earn while you celebrate the Dawning. As you gather ingredients and bake items, you will also progress towards unlocking this festive new Sparrow. 

Your new ride will come equipped with some very special perks.

Glimmer Boost

While boosting, the Sparrow spawns a glimmer present every few seconds, until boost runs out. Glimmer presents burst open after a moment so that players can acquire the glimmer.

Only active during the dawning.

Glimmer Trick

When the player lands a trick with the Sparrow, 3 to 5 glimmer presents are spawned.

Only active during the Dawning.

Instant Summon

Reduces Sparrow summon time significantly.

Dedicated bakers will also have triumphs to pursue. Those who unlock all the Triumphs during the Dawning will be flying in style.

Double Drops

A new event means new wares from Eververse. During the Dawning, we’re continuing the tradition of double Engram drops. All players who are at max level (depending on what content they own) will receive both a Bright Engram and a Dawning Engram on every level-up. There will also be a “knock-out” list on the Dawning Engram, preventing you from receiving duplicate items until you’ve earned all of the new items.

Introducing multiplayer emotes!

Also, get ready to throw down.

One Exotic emote will be exclusive to a bundle, available for direct purchase with Silver.

Do you have a stockpile of Bright Dust piling up? Tess will also offer ingredient packs in exchange for Bright Dust. If you don’t have a lot of Bright Dust and are worried about other players getting to bake all their goods without having to play, don’t worry—that won’t be the case. Eva’s Holiday Oven requires Essence of Dawning, which can only be acquired by playing activities in game. So even if you want to stock up on some ingredients with your extra Bright Dust, you still need to go out in the world to earn the fuel to fire up your oven.

Thank you for another wonderful year. We hope you’ll join us in the Tower for this special celebration.

The Dawning begins on Tuesday, December 11.

The Dawning ends on Tuesday, January 1.

Effective immediately, we’ve made some changes to the Power requirements for the Lost Forges of the Black Armory.

Over the past day, we’ve been taking in your feedback. It’s become clear that we made the initial Power requirements for the Lost Forges too high, keeping those sweet new rewards out of reach. Some players at 600 Power have been unable to dive in and beat the final boss without grinding for new Power first.

We have just delivered a server-side update to reduce the Power requirements for all the encounters in the Lost Forges by five. We fully acknowledge that this is a small move, but it is the one that we can make today. This is not the full extent of the changes to the player experience that we are investigating, but it should give Guardians at 600 Power a better chance at completing the activity.

This response doesn’t answer all of your questions. There are still many of you asking how you can catch up and acquire the Power you need to join the quests to recover these Lost Forges. The answers to those questions are coming. We have some existing plans and some new ideas in the pipeline. That conversation will continue tomorrow in “This Week At Bungie.”

Thanks for playing. Thanks for your feedback. Keep reporting on your experiences out there in the wild.

Sandbox

General

• Chaos Reach
• Tuned Chaos Reach’s deactivation cost so that it consistently retains Super energy from deactivating early.
• Previously, Chaos Reach allowed Players to save Super energy when deactivating the Super early by charging a flat Super energy cost upon deactivation (~65%). This meant that in order to save Super energy, you’d have to deactivate within the first second or so of the Super’s duration.
• With this change, Chaos Reach’s deactivation will now always save you some Super energy. Deactivating the Super is no longer a flat energy cost but, rather, now works on a curve. The intention is to reward players for skillfully timing their deactivation.
• Fixed an issue where the overshield granted upon respawning in Crucible would not negate damage right away
• Increased damage required to destroy Nightstalker Tethers prior to their activation
• Fixed an issue where the Biotic Enhancements buff would apply too much of a damage multiplier when standing in a Well of Radiance

Armor/Weapons

• Fixed an issue where Scavenger perks could be used to generate heavy ammo off of team mates who fell to self-inflicted misadventure 
• Fixed an issue where high impact scout rifles were not firing at 150 RPM
• Fixed an issue where the impact stat bar for Fusion Rifles was not updating when upgrading a charge time masterwork for the weapon
• Gwisin Vest
• Fixed an issue where kills were not required to extend Super uptime
• Fixed an issue where Super was not extended after 10 or more kills
• Chromatic Fire
• Fixed an issue where explosions were doing less damage than intended
• Reduced the amount of ammo gained from the Machine Gun Scavenger perk to bring it in line with other Power weapon scavenger perks
• Fixed an issue that caused the Black Armory weapons to sometimes roll two of the same perk 
• Duplicate perks have been replaced in each weapon’s talent grid

  

Crucible

General

• Fixed an issue that caused The Mountaintop to drop above appropriate power levels for players who do not own Forsaken, making it unequipped unless pulled from collections
• Fixed an issue that caused Valor Ranks to display different values from what their rank actually was
• This is strictly a visual fix, ranks have worked properly since Season of the Forge began

Gambit

General

• Fixed an issue where the wrong team would sometimes be credited for killing the Ascendant Servitor Primeval
• Reduced the amount of ammo that Linear Fusion Rifles receive from the Power Ammo crate in Gambit to from 5 to 3 rounds
• Sleeper Simulant still only receives 2 rounds
• Players who die with fewer than 2 rounds of special ammo will now always respawn with 2 rounds, to help alleviate special ammo starvation
• Fixed an issue where players would be held in a loading screen if another player was inspecting items in inventory

Vanguard

General

• Fixed an issue where Protheon, the Modular Mind grew three times larger than intended in Update 2.1.0
• This strike has been reintroduced to Matchmaking, and can be launched once again from the Director

Raids

Leviathan & Raid Lairs

• Removed “Normal Mode Completion” requirement for launching Prestige Modes for Leviathan, Eater of Worlds, and Spire of Stars

Last Wish

• Fixed an issue where Destiny 2 would crash during the Morgeth fight

Clans

General

• Fixed an issue where the “Hawthorne’s Heroes” Clan Perk was not providing the proper rewards

Items & Economy

Collections

• The “Hecuba-S” exotic Sparrow no longer requires Annual Pass ownership to reacquire from Collections
• The “Mimesis Drive” Sparrow now properly requires Annual Pass ownership to reacquire from Collections
• Shader reacquisition time reduced from 3 seconds to 1 second

General

• Prime Engrams will now appear more frequently for players under 550 power, and provide larger power benefits when decrypted
• Fixed an issue where the “Harbinger’s Echo” sparrow was locked out for players who destroyed dragon eggs across multiple characters.
• We are currently developing a fix for an upcoming patch to address players who have already destroyed all eggs prior to this update. Update 2.1.3 is tentatively planned for December 18. 2018

Seed of Light added to the drop table of the Blind Well Heroic

• The “Lest Ye Be Judged” Trophy/Achievement can be completed by visiting Xur
• Fixed an issue where the “Riddle Me This” Triumph was not unlocking properly
• Fixed an issue where Amanda Holliday had an improper notification waypoint
• Fixed an issue where Festival of the Lost armor could not be masterworked
• Fixed an issue where items could not be masterworked if players did not have Enhancement Cores in inventory, even if the masterwork cost did not require cores
• Fixed an issue where Amanda Holliday’s inventory did not refresh at the proper times

---

UI

General

• When selecting an activity that supports checkpoints on the Director, players can now delete their current checkpoint before launching the activity
• This includes Last Wish, Scourge of the Past, Leviathan, Eater of Worlds, and Spire of Stars
• Fixed an issue where the Vanguard node on the top-level Director was not displaying active challenges

Disruption/Insults/Disrespect

Disruption/Insults/Disrespect

Harassment/Personal Attacks/Privacy Violation

Gory Violence/Explicit Sexuality

Illegal Activity

Hacking/Cheating

Spoilers/Stolen Content

Soliciting/Phishing/Impersonation