This year's Destiny 2 summer Solstice event will start next week on Tuesday, July 19, and Bungie's overhauled the armor-focused festivities to prune some infamous "pesky objectives."
There's a new set of armor to collect, naturally, and Bungie's promising "a major revampt to the Solstice EAZ activity" with a new activity called Bonfire Bash, as well "a brand-new armor upgrading experience."
"We wanted to change the way you earn and upgrade armor with this update to Solstice," design lead CJ Payne explained in Bungie's latest blog post. "As part of that, we removed those pesky objectives from the armor and streamlined the upgrade process for all classes."
After years of functionally the same multi-step routine, the Solstice grind has been updated. It now starts with a new currency called Silver Leaves which will drop from "activities throughout the game" and can be converted to Silver Ash through the aforementioned Bonfire Bash. You can use this ash to reroll the stats on your Solstice armor, and you can also improve the minimum stat values by spending Kindling awarded by event challenges.
Kindling can up your armor's stat potential up to three times while Silver Ash lets you invest in specific stats. You can reroll armor as many times as you want until you get your desired stats, but – praise be – Bungie says you only need to kindle armor on a slot-by-slot basis.
"If you upgrade a helmet all the way to Tier 3, every Solstice helmet currently in your inventory and any future helmets you earn for that class can now access Tier 3 stat rerolls."
Fully upgraded and kindled armor will receive special glows, with other free and paid glows also available. These will roll out alongside a suite of other event cosmetics.
The 2022 Solstice will also launch the game's Event Card system, which is sort of a log to help organize objectives and rewards. The card will be free to all players, but can be upgraded with 1,000 Silver (about $10 worth) to unlock some instant bonuses and event tickets, which can also be earned passively by participating in the event and completing challenges.
Hopefully this armor is good enough to tide us over while Bungie prepares a fix for the best armor in Destiny 2, which has been bugged for months.
