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Destiny 2’supcoming expansion, The Edge of Fate, is making some sweeping changes to the game’s core systems. Armor is getting a major overhaul, gear now drops with a tiered quality system, and elective difficulty modifiers have been added across most PvE content. The core combat of Destiny will remain the same, but virtually everything else is changing to some degree.
To help you prepare for the upcoming expansion, we’ve created this guide to review the keynote changes that will be launching with July’s DLC. We give a quick breakdown of each major change and explain how some of these new systems will work, ranging from gear tiers to the new Portal interface.
The Portal
One of the first major changes you’ll notice upon logging in is the new Portal interface.In Edge of Fate, a new menu called Portal will act as a content browser for all of Destiny 2’s PvE and PvP content.All relevant content in the current Destiny 2 season will be presented front and center on this page. Unlike the Director, you don’t need to know the activity’s location to find it. If you want to play Operation: Seraph’s Shield, for example, you’d look at the Exotic mission playlist in Portal.
Most activities in Destiny 2 will be consolidated into four matchmade playlists.
Crucible Ops
All PvP content wrapped into one playlist. Matchmaking prefers connection quality.
Raids, dungeons, and other activities that don’t normally feature matchmaking will still be available when The Edge of Fate releases—their presence will either be in a different playlist in Portal or left to the Director map.Bungie is not removing the Director map from the game,but it will not be updated with Edge of Fate’s new content, like the Kepler destination. It’s unclear if this will change in the future.
The Portal seems like a massive change on paper, but this is more or less a matchmaking menu. Its layout should bemucheasier for new and lapsed Destiny players to understand, and it allows Bungie to add matchmaking to some of the game’s medium-tier PvE content like Exotic missions. If the Director map ever confused you about what to do next, this new Portal UI should make things much clearer.
Armor 3.0
Armor drops have become fairly stale in modern Destiny, featuring the same stat pools and potential combinations since Shadowkeep’s launch nearly five years ago. Bungie is aiming to spice up the armor game with Armor 3.0, a holistic rework of how armor functions in buildcrafting. We have a thorough breakdown of the upcoming changes in ourArmor 3.0 guide, but if you’re pressed for time, here are the cliff notes:
All armor, even items you currently own, will be impacted by these changes. Set bonuses and new stat totals willnotbe retroactive, but these additions will make the ceiling for build power slightly higher than it was previously. Additionally, all class items will now roll with stats, so the upper limit of your build stats will be higher. These changes also affect Exotic armor. Exotic class items will be the only items grandfathered into this new system with better stats.
Some of the game’s current stats are also being reworked or outright replaced. Mobility, arguably the worst stat in the game, is being replaced withWeapons. Increasing this stat will improve your weapon damage, reload speed, handling, and even improve ammo drops when scaled past 100.Healthis Resilience and Recovery combined, andClassis now the stat that governs your class ability cooldown.
Armor in the 2.0 world will be converted to use these new stats once Edge of Fate releases.
Gear Tiers
Itemization is getting a fairly large shakeup in Edge of Fate.All weapons and armor pieces from this expansion and onward will now drop with a gear quality ranging from one to five.Items of a higher tier will drop with more perks, more enhanced traits, and higher stats. Content difficulty correlates with the quality of gear you receive; the more difficult, the better. This system applies to weapons and armor, although gear tiers affect both categories differently.
Standard weapon; no enhanced traits or perks
52-57 stat total
58-63 stat total
64-69 stat total
Enhanced barrel, magazine, and mod options.
70-75 stat total
Enhanced origin traits; unique holofoil design.
75 stat total; stat tuning
The difference between a T1 and T5 weapon is fairly minor, as the weapon’s enhancements only provide a 10-20% stat buff on average. You’re effectively getting a second or third masterwork for free on your weapon, something only PvP mains will notice. Weapon metas will still be influenced by trait combinations,notstat tiers.Treat this as adept gear for all weapons, not an indication of power.
Armor is a completely different story.T5 armor is objectively the best in the game.Each piece rolls with stat totals that exceed what’s currently possible, and all T5 armor pieces gain a stat tuning socket once masterworked. This allows you to shift five points from any stat to the item’s attuned stat. T5 armor also comes with 11 mod points instead of the usual ten, allowing for greater mod flexibility when buildcrafting.Armor is getting a massive upgrade from this system, while weapons are mostly getting stat bumps.
Elective Modifiers
Since all items feature this new tiered rarity system, you’ll need a way to make content harder to start farming for T5 items. Meetelective modifiers, a new way to adjust content difficulty. If you played during Forsaken, this is effectively the old Nightfall card with a broader selection of modifiers.
Before you start an activity, you’ll be able to select which modifiers you want to affect the run.Modifier options include Power Level restrictions, enemy banes, imposed penalties such as locked loadouts, and even beneficial gameplay augments.Each modifier you toggle will adjust the score multiplier of the activity. Harder modifiers grant a score bonus; easier modifiers lower your score bonus.
Your final score dictates what types of rewards you can receive.Activities use a ranking system from C to A,with A+ being the highest rank possible. Completing an activity with a higher score will grant bonus drops. We believe this also impacts the item tiers of each item you get, but this is just speculation.
Seasonal Power
The Power Level grindis seeing some minor changes in the next expansion.All items will now have a hard cap of 200 and a seasonal bonus power that exceeds that cap.The hard cap is achieved by earning Powerful Gear rewards from weekly activities, similar to how the game works now. This cap does not change or reset.
Seasonal bonus power is a new mechanic that will cause certain seasonal items to drop with a higher Power Level than the current hard cap.To infuse these items into your gear, you’ll need to use Unstable Cores, a rare currency that’s awarded from harder content and through dismantling gear with seasonal bonus power. The seasonal bonus power cap appears to be 300 based on pre-release footage, although it might be higher.
Unstable Cores are removed at the start of a new season. You cannot stockpile them.
This system has supplanted Artifact Power and the Pinnacle Power grind. You’ll need to play harder content to get items with a higher seasonal bonus power, which you can then infuse into your items to reach a higher Power Level.Your seasonal bonus power resets at the end of the season, so this will be an ever-present grind starting in Edge of Fate. We’ll have guides on how to get through the Power grind as quickly as possible once the expansion is out.
Balance Changes
As with every major expansion, The Edge of Fate will launch with a myriad of sweeping sandbox changes that will likely shift the buildcrafting meta. Ina recent TWID, Bungie revealed thatall melee damage bonuses will become additive, from multiplicative.This results in a lower damage ceiling for melee characters, but the vast majority of builds will receive a net buff from this change.
Sweeping balance changes to weapon archetypes, abilities, and more are expected to be revealed in the coming weeks. We’ll update this section as we learn more.
