Bungie shipping new changes to Destiny 2 progression systems in Beyond Light

Another week, another ‘This Week at Bungie’ blog post. This week focused on the large number of progression changes that will come to Destiny 2 once Beyond Light is released on November 10.

A significant amount of these changes are aimed at easing the grind and giving players more avenues for reaching the Power caps while taking away certain avenues that Bungie doesn't believe is in the spirit of the game.

Power Caps

Here are the new Power Caps that will be present in Beyond Light:

• Soft Cap - 1200
• Hard Cap - 1250
• Pinnacle Cap - 1260

For new players these Cap names might be a bit confusing. To reach the soft cap you simply need to play the game and any rewards from activities, or random gear drops, will slowly boost you up. Once 1200 Power is reached you now need to complete activities and objectives that reward ‘Powerful Gear’.

This is more time consuming, but fairly straightforward, content that includes such objectives as completing the current Flashpoint’ or handing in 8 Gunsmith bounties.

Once 1250 is reached then the player must look for sources of ‘Pinnacle Gear’. Pinnacle Gear is reserved for harder or more time consuming content such as completing a certain amount of the core activities, completing a Raid or completing a Dungeon. Once 1260 is reached the only way to further increase Power is through the extra Power granted through leveling up the Seasonal Artifact.

On top of this, the whole playerbase will be given a boost to their Power once Beyond Light releases if they were lagging behind. When you first log in next Season all of your gear will be updated to 1050 Power, but don't worry as any gear above this number will remain as is.

This is one change that is beginning to take its toll on the playerbase. In the past year there has been much discussion about the constant Power cap raising each Season and how it is simply a tool by Bungie to keep the community logged in. Many are starting to feel fatigue by the constant running of older content in the early weeks of the Season to prepare for the harder content to come later in the Season.

Powerful Rewards

It will soon be much easier to earn Powerful rewards from various sources such as Strikes, Crucible and Seasonal content. “We’ve heard a lot of feedback from players for more opportunities to earn Powerful rewards from the activities you enjoy most. We have a change coming that will allow you to have a chance to earn Powerful rewards from strikes, Gambit, Crucible, and from Seasonal drops all the way up until the Hard Cap” says Bungie Community Manager Chris ‘Cozmo’ Shannon.

An interesting note here is nowhere in this subsection of the TWAB does Cozmo mention that this change is coming in Beyond Light. In all of the other sections Cozmo specifically mentions ‘In Beyond Light’ or ‘Starting in Season 12’ but not under these Powerful reward changes. It's possible this is just an oversight and this change is coming in Beyond Light but maybe this choice of language is deliberate and it didn't make the cut for Season 12.

This is a great change however and hopefully it does come in Season 12. This simply allows people to play the game the way they want to while not feeling like they are sacrificing ways to earn Power.

Tokens and Collections

In previous Seasons, handing in saved up tokens to the Tower vendors was a quick way to reach the soft cap or to reach the hard cap easier by rounding out any pieces of low level gear that were dragging down your Power average.

This ‘get rich quick scheme’ will be brought to an end next Season as Bungie has made some changes to how these vendor rewards will work in terms of their Power.

Any gear earned from a vendor through token hand ins will be maxed out at 20 Power below the player’s max Power. Shoutout to Sweatcicle, a Destiny streamer and member of the Last Wish World’s First team, who farmed tens of thousands of Vanguard tokens for this exact purpose.

Grabbing gear from Collections was used for a similar purpose to vendor purchases. Starting in Season 12 any gear taken from the Collections tab will be capped at 1050 Power.

This change makes sense but i feel like the 1050 Power cap for collections is a bit too low. When attempting to test out different Exotic builds in certain content you will need to ensure you have an ample supply of weapons and armor for Infusion otherwise this testing will not be able to be done properly.

As someone who just deleted all my excess Exotic weapons from my vault with the intention of pulling them from Collections when I needed them this change hurts just a little bit.

Materials

When Beyond Light releases on November 10th the destinations of Mercury, Titan, Io, Mars and the Leviathan will be placed into the Destiny Content Vault. This means that the planetary materials earned from this Destinations i.e. Phaseglass Needles, Alkane Dust, Simulation Seeds and Seraphite will no longer be available.

These materials can still be used as currency in Season 12 for purchasing items from Spider or Gunsmith. However, starting in Season 13 vendors will no longer accept them. If you still have a stockpile of these materials come the start of Season 13 you will be able to head to Spider to exchange them for a small amount of Glimmer.

Season Pass Bright Dust

The way players earn Bright Dust will soon be changing to a more streamlined fashion. The earning of Bright Dust will focus more heavily on the Season Pass rather than the weekly bounties from vendors.

• Season Pass Free Path - 7,500 Bright Dust
• Season Pass Paid Path - 3,000 Bright Dust
• Weekly Bounties will not offer 100 Bright Dust instead of the previous 200

This is a significant buff in Bright Dust amount to those players who mainly play on one character but a significant nerf to those who choose to run with 3 characters.

Spider Inventory

Starting in Season 12 The Spider will no longer be selling Legendary Shards but will be gaining a new item for purchase. For the totally reasonable price (not) of 400 Legendary Shards The Spider will grace you with an Enhancement Prism. Only 3 of these can be purchased a week although it seems like only the truly hardcore players will have enough Legendary Shards to easily part with 400 of them.

So that's the TWAB for this week. Most of these changes have been received positively from the community if the response on social media is anything to go by. The main point of contention is the change to Bright Dust.

Many members of the community are a bit miffed that they will simply be earning less Bright Dust throughout the Season. A possible reason for this change though is due to Bungie pulling items out of Eververse to give as rewards for activities. So less items in Eververse equals less Bright Dust.

Makes sense but it still stings a bit.