This Week at Bungie - 5/26/2022

May 26, 2022 - Hippy

Before we begin today’s TWAB, we wanted to acknowledge the horrific events in Uvalde, TX, earlier this week. We are all shocked and saddened by this unprovoked madness and our hearts go out to the victims and their families.

It's our hope that games and supportive communities can provide respite, and we encourage everyone to prioritize their own mental health needs right now, whether that means gaining comfort from your hobbies or taking a break to focus on yourself and your loved ones. Take care of one another.

Finally, we also wanted to provide some resources to help with mental health:

NAMI: The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) provides education, support, advocacy, and public awareness so that all individuals and families affected by mental illness can live fulfilling, healthy lives. NAMI believes that our culture, beliefs, sexual identity, values, race, and language all affect how we perceive and experience mental health conditions. For members of our community who identify with an underrepresented group, they can find cultural-specific resources here.

JED: The Jed Foundation protects emotional health and prevents suicide for teens and young adults, giving them the skills and support they need to thrive. If you are in need of resources to either care for your own mental health, or support a friend or family member in need, we encourage you to check out the valuable information provided on their site.

This week at Bungie, we geared up and set out to answer the ultimate question. The question that matters more than anything else: Is the Moon haunted? Well, that’s for you to decide, but while you’re knocking that around in your noggin’, we’ve got some exciting things to share for Season of the Haunted, including preparing for the new dungeon that drops on Friday, brand-new activities, and even more surprises to uncover.

We know the wait was tough, but the team here could not be more excited. Sure, we’ve got the meme behind the new name, but this Season also houses a deeper look into the minds of some of our favorite characters, while also challenging Guardians to find their courage once more and persevere no matter what, especially when facing down twisted Nightmares of the past. So, what are we showing off today? Well, how about we start with a second look at the trailer you’ve all been so patiently waiting for, and then dig in more on some gear of the Season, a breakdown on how to get the Solar 3.0 Fragments, shiny new ornaments inspired by the subclass upgrade, and even a little rap surprise from one of our community members.

Excited? Yeah, me too. Let’s dive in, shall we?

Season of the Hype, er... We Mean Haunted

Season of the Haunted, it’s finally here. But before we dive in headfirst, let’s all just take a second and take a deep breath. An- OH MY GOD, THE NEW TRAILER DROPPED. Earlier than originally intended, but still—just in case you missed it and the newest ViDoc about Season of the Haunted:

In addition to the new Crucible map and Rift’s return with the Iron Banner rework (which you can read all about here), Season of the Haunted comes with even more adventures to dive recklessly into. Calus is back in the spotlight as the Leviathan returns and begins to wreak all sorts of havoc in the most devious of ways. We’ll get to buddy up with Eris Morn to stop Calus in his quest to connect with the Witness. You remember the Witness, right? The big bad that even had Savathûn running scared. Yeah, the Witness is still making its mission to become everyone’s problem, which means we’ve got to work fast to get the answers we seek to uncover the sinister reality that lurks beneath the surface.

Season of the Haunted dives deep into the philosophy of what it means to be; the duality of existence. Are you ready? Good, because it’s about to get intense.

With the new Season comes new activities, as well. Let’s start with the weekly mission, Sever. Sever challenges a team of up to three Guardians to navigate the seedy Underbelly of the derelict Leviathan to battle it out against hordes of foes to find and sever Calus’s power. His connection to the Nightmares that he can control is strong, sure, but we’re stronger. At least, we hope so...

The second activity is called Nightmare Containment. This is a free-to-play public event aboard the Derelict Leviathan that is designed to be just as chaotic as it is fun. Take on intense battles against Cabal and Scorn and dive a little deeper into the nightmare reflection of our world. The team is excited about how this activity will play out through Season of the Haunted. Nightmare Containment is specifically designed to be always worth the player’s time because it scales depending on the number of Guardians participating. More Guardians? Faster boss burns and even more loot potential.

By now, most of you have discovered the Scythe, the relic that makes taking on Season of the Haunted Sever missions and the Nightmare Containment activity even more impressive. If you couldn’t tell, heavy metal music and the idea behind becoming a damage-dealing Reaper were both heavy influences of this Season, and the Scythe very much reflects that. So how does it work?

As you may already know, Guardians are going head-to-head against some impressively intimidating Nightmares, so this heavy-swinging beauty comes in handy with its flaming projectiles that can be launched at any foe. Use the Scythe to fire those fiery fireballs to prime enemies for that delectable one-two punch move that is designed to go in and cause a particularly stylish form of mayhem. Rip and shred through enemies and throw those horns up, it doesn’t get more metal than that.

Haven’t had a chance to check it out yet? This is how the Scythe works:

Light Attack:

A horizontal slice that launches out a wide Solar projectile.
4-hit combo.
Hitting enemies with the light-attack projectile Scorches them (30+20 stacks) and deals damage.
The light attack also does melee damage to nearby targets when the player swings.

Air Attack:

Launches out a single Solar projectile with a cool spinning slice. Same projectile as the light attack, just with more aerial flare.

Heavy Attack:

Slam the Scythe into the ground and send out a fan-shaped group of AOE flame damage.
Hitting enemies with the heavy attack Scorches them (50+40 stacks) and deals damage.

Scythe Perk:

When you defeat enemies with the Scythe, you spawn orbs of healing Solar light that float back to you and grant Restoration +2.

New Dungeon, Who Dis?

A new dungeon has arrived and yes, it definitely puts a new spin on existential crisis. Normally, this is where we reveal all sorts of new information for the TWAB readers out there, but in the spirit of this Season, we want you to experience it for the first time with a feeling of discovery. Believe us when we say that we couldn’t be more jazzed up to hear your thoughts!

Also, don’t worry—the wait won’t be long, the new dungeon goes live tomorrow, May 27, at 10 AM Pacific.

A Quick Rundown on Hauntingly Fresh New Gear

With every Season also comes new ways to show off that customized Guardian style, and Haunted is no different. From a Haunted aesthetic to getting in touch with your inner Eris Morn, here is a closer look at some of the different looks you can make your own. Can we also just take a second to appreciate the Nightmare Seasonal armor ornaments, because wow:

The Season Pass also includes a new Seasonal ornament for Trespasser, new shaders, emotes, and more to unlock simply by playing Destiny 2. As shown off in our official reveal earlier this week, here’s just a small recap of some of those rewards:

Solar 3.0 Fragment Details and New Solar Armor Ornaments

Just like Void 3.0, Aspects and Fragments will be your best friend when exploring unique new playstyles, perfecting existing combat choices, or just going ham on a new iteration of a subclass that maybe hasn’t fit your niche in the past. The choice to dive all-in on that fiery action is yours, but—and we may be biased here—Solar 3.0 is pretty darn nifty, so we hope you check it out. Plus, you can quite literally fight fire with fire, who doesn’t want to do that?

By now, many Guardians have already started diving into what Solar 3.0 means for new combat possibilities. Just like with Void 3.0, Solar’s revamp can be done through Ikora in the Tower before meditating at the kiosk near her to lock in the newly learned disciplines. You may or may not have noticed that there are a few select Fragments are locked. Don’t worry, it wasn’t Telesto this time, this is actually intentional. Since we’re a one-team-one-fight type of bunch, there are four Fragments that can be unlocked via the community working together. How? Glad you asked, dear reader.

Guardians can unlock additional Fragments for Solar 3.0 by completing a number of Nightmare Containments. Each Guardian that fights the good fight will count as a completion, so having a full fireteam that is focused on the objective will benefit groups greatly. Basically, double the progression for a team of six versus, say, a team of three. The goal is to hit 20-million completions as a community. When we hit that goal, those four Solar 3.0 Fragments will be unlocked and ready to pick up from Ikora.

That being said, there is one thing to note about the Fragments. There was some confusion during the launch of Season of the Haunted and we wanted to explain what happened and what is intentional. The four locked Fragments were always intended for this particular community-driven initiative, but there was a small hiccup on day-one. To clarify this, the four Fragments that will unlock after the above community effort are:

Ember of Empyrean
Ember of Char
Ember of Ashes
Ember of Wonder

However, some players reported being able to receive some of these early. This is connected to something the team found in their investigation that allows early access for veteran players who had previously built into the Solar subclass, whereas newly-created Guardians still have these locked. This has caused some players to unlock Ember of Ashes and Embers of Wonder, which were intended to be locked. Also, some players were unable to acquire Fragments that should have been unlocked for everyone at the start of Season of the Haunted. Those players were not able to receive two Fragments, which were meant to be available on day one, called Ember of Eruption and Ember of Searing.

The team has made the decision that they don’t want to remove any Fragments from people who have unlocked them, and the goal is for all six Fragments to unlock when we hit the community goal mentioned above—we’re sure it’ll happen in no time. Fire can’t be tamed; and apparently, that is also true in Destiny 2.

So, what does this mean for players now? For now, we encourage players that have the unlocked Fragments to play around with them and experiment with different playstyles. For everyone else, we’re getting closer to reaching the unlock goal and we hope you enjoy the new Season until then.

For ornaments, these need no introduction. Just take a moment and feast those eyes on the latest fashion trend to hit the Tower that players will be able to scoop up from Tess at Eververse:

And, of course, a Guardian should always arrive in style with these Eververse options, which can also be found in a bundle for anyone looking to have it all:

Iron Banner Shenanigans

In case you missed it, we previously shared a ton of news about Iron Banner and explained some of the reasoning behind its most recent evolution. If you missed that memo, you should mosey on over to our previous breakdown right here to learn more about the specifics, but the gist is that we want to make Valus Forge’s competitive event feel more like... well, an event. Because of that, we’re amping up the ante and moving the event frequency to twice a Season: May 31 and July 12. To spread the might of Iron Wolves, Valus Forge will now be front and center in Eva Levante’s usual spot.

We’re also disabling Power level, so that sweet gear you’ve been holding onto—you can go ahead and dust those off. Iron Banner also comes bearing a new PvP map alongside Rift. The new map, called Disjunction, will be available for all modes, though Rift is just for Iron Banner until Season 18. We think you’ll really enjoy this new area, and not just for the intended design that allows for more ways to strategize. Not only does it continue the Throne World theme, but it is also one of the largest maps we’ve ever had in PvP. It’ll be a good time, but we’ll also be keeping our eyes peeled for any feedback you have for us!

It's Not a Sprint, It's a Marathon

You know us, we’re always down for a good charity initiative and we’ve got even more gameplay goodness that you won’t want to miss. From 09:00 AM PT on June 3 to June 10, there will be a shiny new gaming marathon stream for St. Jude’s Hospital during our GCX celebration. Interested? Good! You can join in on the streaming madness right here during the official GCX stream!

Some sweet prizes are on the horizon for those that want to chip in and do a little good. For those wanting a little added flare, a $20 donation to charity will land you the Spectra Sea emblem. A $60 donation will land you the Euclidean Theorem emblem. The best part? All proceeds go to help St. Jude in its mission to give children and their families hope and strength through trying medical times.

We hope you stop on by during the latest GCX celebration and enjoy the event!

Player Support Report

We are Haunted by leaks.

Once again, our immensely talented and wonderful Player Support team is coming in hot with new info about known issues and what the team is looking at in the immediate future. You all know the drill, let’s get right into it.

This is their report.

Known Issues List  |  Help Forums  |  Bungie Help Twitter

HOTFIX 4.1.0.1

Next Tuesday, May 31, Destiny 2 Hotfix 4.1.0.1 will be released. View our Destiny Server and Update Status page for maintenance times, as well as the timeline below (all times are Pacific):    

9 AM: Destiny 2 maintenance begins.    
9:45 AM: Destiny 2 is brought offline.     
10 AM: Destiny 2 Hotfix 4.1.0.1 will begin rolling out across all platforms and regions.   
11 AM: Destiny 2 maintenance completes.

DUNGEON CRASH WORKAROUND

Tomorrow at 10 AM PDT, our newest dungeon will go live! During testing, we discovered an issue where players who had set their Sound Effects (SFX) to 0 would crash in the activity. To ensure this doesn’t happen, players should set their SFX to at least 1 or above until we can hotfix this issue next Tuesday.

GUARDIAN GAMES EMBLEM DISTRIBUTION

The Guardian Games emblem, Glory's Claim, will be distributed next week to the top 10 percent of players who participated in the event.

KNOWN ISSUES

While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:

Opulent Chests do not visually open as intended upon receiving rewards.
Certain Seasonal Challenges are incorrectly recording progress at a character level instead of an account-scoped level.
Multiple Hand Cannons no longer have a visual scope.
On Xbox One, the impulse effect when dunking a core during the Nightmare Containment appears completely black.
Solar icons for class abilities, melees, and movement have blue backgrounds when viewed from Ikora's inventory.
Solar Hunter's Acrobat's Dodge ability displays the Fists of Havoc icon when equipped.
The Glory’s Claim and A Good Sport emblems from Guardian Games do not appear in Collections.
Several activities and missions are becoming blocked. We have made a change on the backend to limit the number of fireteams in these areas to one, which we believe will resolve the issue until we can release a more permanent fix.
Players are unable to collect the Burdened engrams in the final encounter of the Grasp of Avarice dungeon.
Characters sometimes are extremely zoomed in on the Character inspection screen and only show the boots they are wearing.
The Gunsmith’s weapons don’t have a Masterwork slot on them.
Several Guardian Games items, including quests, weren’t removed for some players at the launch of Season 17.
The Bait and Switch enhanced raid perk isn't working as intended.
Using the Loyal Companion emote can sometimes cause the game to crash.
Telesto is causing crashes crashes when players interact with Banshee.

No, we aren't kidding.

Some new armor and older perks are showing watermarks instead of their proper icons.
Some Artifice armor from the Grasp of Avarice dungeon have lost their extra mod slots.
Some players are experiencing low framerates when in their menus or looking at the Director.
The Trespasser Exotic and a few other items don’t appear in Collections.
The Season 17 Crucible Vermillion shader has too similar a name to the Season 8 shader, Crucible Vermilion.
The Hrafnagud ornament for Celestial Nighthawk is no longer available to equip.
The Telesto held by Banshee-44 disappears at random.

Terrifying

For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our Help Forum linked above.

Lights, Camera, Minecraft?

It’s another week filled with new content from the Bungie team and glorious creations from you, the players, that make it all worth it. We love seeing them, so please don’t stop creating them. The funny, the inspiring—we want to see it all. This week, the themes in Season of the Haunted are heavy, so the latest picks are leaning hard on the funny and the calming. Oh yeah, and a bonus round to playfully poke at one particular journalist that I’ve known since my journalism days, and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to have a little fun at his expense. With love, of course.

Anyway, let’s get into it!

Movie of the Week: Void

"Void"🟣

Learning how to make music with sounds from Destiny.

Hope you enjoy! Best listened to with🎧 #MOTW pic.twitter.com/KLgzlsTbKg
— Omulei - D2 (@omulei) May 25, 2022

Movie of the Week: Last Wish Raid, But Make It Minecraft

B-b-b-BONUS round:

Movie of the Week: The Tassi Grassi

I turned @PaulTassi into a Destiny 2 Emote! Thanks to @destiny_thememe for the UI elements for this!@DestinyTheGame @DestinyGameUK @DirtyEffinHippy @A_dmg04 @Cozmo23 #MOTW #Destiny2 #blender https://t.co/tNhxQl932z
— Pairrot 🦜 (@Pairrot12) May 19, 2022

An Art Section Needs No Name

Happy TWABsday Guardians! As you know, we are just a few days into the Season of the Haunted and the Solar 3.0 art has been… shall we say, on fire! We are still giving you some time to see all of the things and explore before we share any spoiler-type art, but for now, enjoy!

Art of the Week: Season of the Spoopy

Season of the Spoopy!#Destiny2Art #destiny2 #AOTW pic.twitter.com/be03sLD2m7
— KevinRaganit 🌻🌻🌻 (Comms closed til June) (@KevinRAGES) May 24, 2022

Art of the Week: The Crown

Had this image stuck in my head for a few years now, but never thought I could do it justice. Hopefully I did.#Destiny2 #Destiny2Art #AOTW @DestinyGameUK @DirtyEffinHippy pic.twitter.com/Ys4nF86Wk6
— Maerlyn- (@TheMaerlyn) May 20, 2022

B-b-b-BONUS round two:

Art of the Week: The Witness Comes Bearing Gifts

The Witness came bearing gifts from beyond!#Destiny2 #Destiny2Art #AOTW @A_dmg04 @DirtyEffinHippy pic.twitter.com/nyBYrYY2ry
— this isn't even my Final Shape (@Knight_in_Space) May 23, 2022

Oh look, some news here too! We love a good emblem just as much as the next Guardian, so we have a few new unique ones to share for those Guardians that are bursting with creative energy! Check out the two new emblems for AOTW and MOTW below:

Want a shot to earn one of the new emblems? Don’t forget to tag us in your art and video creations with #Destiny2Art, #AOTW, and #MOTW for a chance to be featured and don a new player profile look.

Can I Pet That Dog?

If you’ve found yourself moseying on over to Tess at the Eververse store, you may have noticed an adorable new emote that actually lets you pet the dog. For that reason alone, it is an awesome grab, but what makes this deal even sweeter is what this particular emote offers in terms of putting out a little good out into the world. Here to talk about the latest charity initiative is Bungie Foundation’s Christine Edwards.

Christine: Season 17 kicks off with a heartwarming in-game opportunity for Guardians to further the Bungie Foundation’s mission of supporting children’s health and wellbeing by purchasing the Loyal Companion emote from the Eververse. Not only do players get an adorable canine companion to interact with in the form of a cute new emote, but 100% of proceeds will also be donated to the Bungie Foundation.

As we head into Bungie Day in just over a month, you’ll be hearing far more about the origin story of this adorable emote—but for today, we’ll just give you a bit of a teaser.

The Loyal Companion isn’t just any dog. He’s a real-life Belgian Malinois named Artemis and the best friend of a very special Guardian whose story we will share with you in the coming weeks. A story of resilience, recovery, and triumph only made possible by the Destiny community and his dog Artemis.

We can’t wait to share this heartfelt story with you on Bungie Day, but until then, we hope you all get a Loyal Companion of your own so that we can continue to help other Guardians in need.

Guardian Games Cup Shenanigans

We tried something new this time around with Guardian Games by adding an element of real-life friendly completion. It was a blast seeing communities rally together for their favorite content creators, and we aim to do more fun things like this in the future. But, for now, we’re sure you’re interested in one thing: Who won?

International Publishing’s Joanna Chen is here with a quick breakdown of the events, with a full blog post dropping this week with more fun stats.

Take it away, Joanna!

Joanna: After three exciting weeks, the Guardian Games are over, and we have the winners of the inaugural Guardian Games Cup activity too. A massive thank you to the 42 teams from around the world who joined in on the fun and games, and to all of you for supporting your favorite teams and raising over $222K USD for Direct Relief in partnership with the Bungie Foundation.

Here’s a look at the teams that put it all on the line for their class:
Guardian Games Cup winner: Eclipse, led by AndyEdition
Warlock winner: Icarus Bangers n’ Dash, led by FalloutPlays
Titan winner: Punchyboys, led by Butters
Hunter winner: Bulletproof, led by Zoe_

The winning Guardian Games Cup team will receive lovely, personalized gold trophies (as seen below), as well as a special piece of artwork of their fireteam by Gammatrap. Each winning class team will be receiving similar prizes, with their trophies bringing that silver flare.

The team that raised the top amount is team Punch-a-Bunch led by Datto himself, with a whopping $30,150 raised. They will be receiving a custom piece of artwork by PherianArt.

To learn more about the first-ever Guardian Games Cup, check out the full blog post here.

Before We Let You Go

We’ve got some exciting things coming down the pipeline, including Solstice of Heroes—now simply called Solstice—dropping in July alongside our annual Bungie Day celebration! We’ll have more details on both of those events in the near future, but for now, we've got some existential dread to conquer and some Nightmares to face.

We have been loving all of the feedback and excitement you’ve been sharing; it’s been great to see Guardians worldwide severing the Nightmares and facing the next step of the Destiny 2 journey. From cosmic horror to the duality of the “human” experience—our grief, our individual trials and tribulations, our hope. These are heavy themes that we wanted to provide a heads up on, but each thematic thread weaves into a beautiful story that we can’t wait to watch you all experience as this tale unfolds.

We’re just getting started, so hold onto your butts, Guardians, it’s going to be one heck of a ride. While you dive all-in, just a friendly reminder to drink your water, take your vitamins, and put your kindest foot forward. We’ve got some Nightmares to confront.

“I should go,”

<3 Hippy