On the heels of a big Season 21 Super patch, Destiny 2's gone and torn the veil off the Season of the Deep and yet more massive changes attached to it.
Bungie dropped an absolute unit of a blog post this afternoon, and the headliner is the first official art for the Season of the Deep (above). I like the look of that armor, and it seems we're taking the whole "Deep" thing very literally judging from the underwater motif. The season reveal art seems to feature Sloane, the vendor from the now-vaulted planet Titan, and with what looks like some sort of spectral Taken effect around her body. This could suggest we'll see another legacy destination un-vaulted next season.
Before all the new content, we need to note a rare price hike for Destiny 2. Starting in Season 21, standalone season passes will cost 1,200 Silver, Destiny 2's premium currency, instead of 1,000. This is roughly a $2 price increase, but this won't affect the passes included with Lightfall's standard edition, which lets you access Season 20, or the annual pass edition, which comes with everything through Season 23. But if you are buying these individually, be prepared to pay a little extra.
- Destiny 2's new Episode suggested the upcoming Apollo expansion will launch on July 15, but that date has mysteriously been scrubbed from the game
- "Oryx is back": Destiny 2's final Episode takes the MMO to the site of the iconic Taken King expansion for a Coil-inspired roguelite mode, and also Star Wars armor
"This will be the new pricing for Season Passes in Lightfall’s year for those looking to maximize their rewards with each new Season, and we’ll be evaluating new approaches to post-launch content in the year of The Final Shape," Bungie says.
The Season of the Deep will also feature Destiny 2's first post-Lightfall Strand Aspects. We'd heard about these before, but now we actually know what they do. All three sound pretty promising, though I am biased toward Warlock, and it'll be nice to actually have a choice in what Aspects to run on Strand.
- Hunters - Threaded Specter: dodging creates a Strand decoy that draws enemy fire until its health or duration runs out, then it explodes into two Threadlings.
- Titans - Flechette Storm: using your charged melee while sliding will launch you into the air, damaging and knocking back nearby enemies and setting you up to rain down unraveling projectiles with your remaining melee charges.
- Warlocks - The Wanderer: your Strand Tangles attach to enemies and cause suspending explosions, and final blows with Threadlings will create tangles.
As a reminder, the Season of the Deep will introduce the Exotic focusing system that players have wanted for years, and Bungie says it's also buffing Exotic stat rolls to ensure that most of them roll in the mid-60s. Here are a few more rapid-fire quality of life additions:
- Deepsight Harmonizers - a new crafting currency that lets you get a weapon pattern from any gun, though you can only use one per gun. You can also only get six of these per season – three from the free season pass, and three from the paid pass.
- Cheaper crafting costs - Legendary Shards have been removed from all crafting components.
- Raid Exotic drop rates - all old raids will receive drop rate-boosting triumphs for their respective Exotics, and these will complete retroactively.
- More pointless consumables deleted - the redundant Finest Matterweave and Rainmaker items are finally being removed, and you'll just get Enhancement Core or Glimmer drops in their place.
- More and easier bounties - daily bounties will feature new objectives and repeatable bounties will be completable across more activities, with certain activities providing bonus progress.
Earlier this season, Bungie nerfed basically all of Destiny 2 to make it less bullet spongy.
