Destiny December Updates

On November 29th, Bungie released the "State of Destiny 2" blog post outlining how they plan to respond to player feedback. There was so much information in it that reading it felt like I was gorging myself at the Thanksgiving dinner table all over again. Needless to say, it was a lot to digest. You can read the full post here. However, if you would rather just focus on the December updates coming with Curse of Osiris on the 5th and the patch updates coming on the 12th then read on. Most the information below is straight from the blog post - just in bite-sized portions and reorganized a bit based on date.

Here's what will be coming with the December 5th update with Curse of Osiris

Armor Ornaments will be added to some existing Armor sets for more visual customization without losing your Shaders or Mods

• These ornaments will be unlocked by completing objectives specific to each set, and are permanently unlocked account-wide, just like Exotic Weapon ornaments
• They will be applied to the base pieces that you may already have collected, and can now unlock on Vendors if not

In Season 2, the following sets have ornaments unlocked in their respective activities:

• Vanguard Faction Armor
• Crucible Faction Armor
• Trials of the Nine Armor
• Iron Banner Armor
• Dead Orbit Armor
• Future War Cult Armor
• New Monarchy Armor
• Eater of Worlds Raid Lair Armor

Banshee has some updates on the Weapon and Armor Mod front:

• For players wanting to clear some Mod inventory space, Rare quality Mods will dismantle into Gunsmith Materials and have a chance to produce Legendary quality Mod Components
• For players chasing specific Legendary Mods (including Legendary Kinetic Mods), Banshee will offer a selection of specific Legendary Mods for direct purchase, with a selection that will rotate daily and cost Legendary Shards and Mod Components
• For players chasing a world Legendary or looking for Masterworks, Master Rahool will sell some of his rumored hoard of Legendary Engrams for Legendary Shards

Changes affecting Reputation Tokens:

• Daily Challenges will have Reputation Token awards increased across the board

• Cayde’s Treasure Chests still offer variable rewards, but now guarantee (at minimum) a payout of destination appropriate Reputation Tokens

• Strikes will drop a larger number of Vanguard Reputation Tokens

• Common quality Destination Resource Tokens will have their drop rates increased to 100%, and values per Token increased as well (by 50% for common quality Tokens and 250% for rare quality Tokens) On the balance, Reputation required per Reward Engram will increase for Destination Factions (+37%) and Gunsmith (+50%)

• Leviathan Raid Tokens will be redeemed at Benedict immediately upon obtaining a Token, instead of requiring a full clear before unlocking

Here's what will be coming with the December 12th patch update

Masterworks

Legendary Weapons will drop as or be upgraded to become Masterworks versions. Masterworks will have a few advantages over the baseline Legendary weapon:

• Track and display the number of kills with that weapon (with choice between total count or Crucible-only count)
• Generate orbs for you and your allies on multi-kills
• Add weapon stat bonuses that are selected randomly from a small pool and are re-rollable

Masterworks drop from any source of Legendary weapons for characters above 250 Power

• Unwanted Masterworks can be dismantled into materials that can upgrade an existing Legendary Weapon into a Masterwork
• Raid and Trials of the Nine Weapons will have a very high chance to be Masterworks

We have future plans to extend Masterworks to other gear and expose your kill counts in more places (e.g. Crucible kill screen)

Faction Armor and Weapons will be unlocked for purchase for Legendary Shards and Faction Tokens on most Faction Vendors

• All five Armor Slots will always be present, and Weapons will rotate weekly on Factions that have them
• Slots will be unlocked by claiming Reward Engrams from the respective Faction
• You will get credit for engrams you may have already claimed since launch

Xur has some new offerings for players collecting Exotics:

• Every week, you’ll be able to acquire one of the new Fated Engrams using Legendary Shards that will decrypt as Exotics that aren’t already in your collection
• A simpler Three of Coins that boosts Exotic drop rates from any source for 4 hours
• No obscure stacking mechanics or need to re-apply before every boss
• These cost Legendary Shards and you can have as many as you like

Commander Zavala and Lord Shaxx will sell Gift consumables for Legendary Shards that can be used during a Strike or Crucible Match that will serve the following functions:

• Grant bonus rewards to everyone in that activity upon completion, friend or foe alike
• Award anything from Faction Tokens to a round of Exotics for everyone in the match

General

• Exploit safeguards on Chests and Resource Nodes are greatly relaxed and players should encounter them less frequently
• Even if they do, drop rates for Tokens is only reduced to 30% instead of 0%, and Glimmer will be unaffected We want to associate a visual indicator with this in a future update, but we weren’t able to pull that off in this update (but we hear you!)
• Vendors will now beckon you to hand in your Reputation Tokens only when you’re carrying enough to earn a Reward Engram

Bungie also stated they would soon be sharing the Season 2 content road map which includes the Dawning event in mid December. We'll also be on the lookout for future gameplay and sandbox tuning changes they say are on the way.

I personally feel this Bungie blog post was just what the Doctor ordered. The community needed to know they are being heard and more importantly, that Bungie is truly "listening". It's not a cure, but at least we are finally out of the waiting room and have a plan moving forward. As long as Bungie continues to listen, communicate, and incrementally improves over time the fan base will rally behind them!

Onwards!