This Week in Destiny - 10/12/23

This week in Destiny, we’ve got Sparrows, we’ve got PvP updates, we’ve got spoops with Festival of the Lost, we’ve got good vibes, and we're ready to rock with the latest This Week in Destiny.

Before jumping into this week’s topics, let’s take a quick look back at what we went over last week.

Topics covered last week:

• Exotic focusing and other economy changes.
• Season 22 mid-Season update preview.
• Deck of Whispers developer insights article recap.
• An update on the Destiny 2 cutscenes archival project.

Topics for this week:

• Festival of the Lost, let’s get spoopy!
• An update from our PvP strike team.
  • Checkmate tuning changes.
  • Matchmaking changes in Crucible Control.
  • Talking about spawn tweaks.
  • And more.
• Commemorating The Craftening.
• Any Sparrow is Always on Time if you’re brave enough.
• Player Support Report for an update on known issues.
• Weekly #Destiny2MOTW and #Destiny2AOTW picks.

All caught up? Groovy, let’s get into it!

Tomb Whom It May Concern, It's Almost Festival of the Lost Time!

Break out those tricks and those treats, Guardians, it’s officially spooktakular season! Festival of the Lost is back next week with Space Grandma ready to dole out those sweets and celebrate all of our mask-wearing shenanigans. For those itching to get into the Halloween-inspired spirit, here’s what you need to know about Festival of the Lost.

We’re really excited about a new addition this year that will make Haunted Sectors more rewarding when it comes to the experience itself and the rewards they offer. For the first time ever, we are introducing Legend Haunted Sectors. There’s a lot of loot to snag, so let’s break down what you can expect below:

Eerie Engrams

A new type of engram for 2023! Eerie Engrams have two uses. Players can crack them open individually for some treats, or use them as currencies for Hocus Focusing (which we will get into below).

How to Earn Eerie Engrams

Eerie Engrams will have a chance to drop upon completion of Haunted Sectors. Legend Haunted Sectors will have a higher chance of dropping Eerie Engrams.

Hocus Focusing

Eva Levante has seen what Rahool has been offering this Season with Exotic focusing and has decided that she'll offer her own spooky twist on the mechanic.

During Festival of the Lost, Eva will also offer players opportunities to acquire Exotic armor with four focusing categories in addition to the Legendary Weapons Eerie Engram focusing:

• Weapons Eerie Engram
  • Festival weapons for a higher candy cost.
• Exotic Arms Eerie Engram
• Exotic Legs Eerie Engram
• Exotic Helmet Eerie Engram
• Exotic Chest Eerie Engram

Hocus Focusing Costs

Focusing Type:

• Exotic Arms
  • 1 Eeerie Engram Cost
  • 2500 Candy cost
• Exotic Legs
  • 1 Eerie Engram Cost
  • 2500 Candy Cost
• Exotic Helmet
  • 1 Eerie Engram Cost
  • 2500 Candy cost
• Exotic Chest
  • 1 Eerie Engram cost
  • 2500 Candy cost
• Randomized FOTL Weapon
  • 1 Eerie Engram cost
  • 500 Candy cost
• Specific FOTL Weapon
  • 1 Eerie Engram cost
  • 1000 Candy cost

Special notes about Hocus Focusing:

• Players must own the expansion that the Exotic armor is tied to in order for it to be eligible to drop from Hocus Focusing).
• Required expansions for each Exotic armor piece are listed further below (The Forsaken Pack counts towards the Forsaken expansion requirement).
• Players will not need to have acquired the Exotic armor previously for it to be eligible to drop from Hocus Focusing.
• This means players who are still missing Exotic armor will have a chance to earn it from Hocus Focusing.
• Players will only receive Exotic armor for the class that they are currently playing while interacting with Hocus Focusing.

Weapons Eerie Engram

• Heavy Acosmic Grenade Launcher
• Primary Horror Story Auto Rifle
• Energy Jurassic Green Pulse Rifle
• Energy Mechabre Sniper Rifle

Exotic Arms Eerie Engram

• Aeon Swift - Hunter
• Mechaneer's Tricksleeves - Hunter
• Sealed Ahamkara Grasps - Hunter
• Shinobu's Vow - Hunter
• Young Ahamkara's Spine - Hunter
• Forsaken's Shards of Galanor - Hunter
• Forsaken's Oathkeeper - Hunter
• Forsaken's Khepri's Sting - Hunter
• Forsaken's Liar's Handshake - Hunter
• Beyond Light's Athrys's Embrace - Hunter
• The Witch Queen's Renewal Grasps - Hunter
• The Witch Queen's Caliban's Hand - Hunter
• ACD/0 Feedback Fence - Titan
• Aeon Safe - Titan
• Ashen Wake - Titan
• Doom Fang Pauldron - Titan
• Synthocepts - Titan
• Wormgod Caress - Titan
• Forsaken's Ursa Furiosa - Titan
• Forsaken's Stronghold - Titan
• Shadowkeep's Citan's Rampart - Titan
• Beyond Light's Icefall Mantle - Titan
• Beyond Light's No Backup Plans - Titan
• The Witch Queen's Second Chance - Titan
• The Witch Queen's Aeon Soul - Warlock
• Claws of Ahamkara - Warlock
• Karnstein Armlets - Warlock
• Sunbracers - Warlock
• Ophidian Aspect - Warlock
• Winter's Guile - Warlock
• Forsaken's Contraverse Hold - Warlock
• Forsaken's Getaway Artist - Warlock
• Beyond Light's Necrotic Grip - Warlock
• Beyond Light's Nothing Manacles - Warlock
• The Witch Queen's Osmiomancy Gloves - Warlock

Exotic Legs Eerie Engram

• Fr0st-EE5 - Hunter
• Gemini Jester - Hunter
• Lukcy Pants - Hunter
• Orpheaus Rig - Hunter
• St0mp-EE5 - Hunter
• Shadowkeep's The Bombardiers - Hunter
• Beyond Light's Star-Eater Scales - Hunter
• Beyond Light's Radiant Dance Machines - Hunter
• Dunemarchers - Titan
• Lion Rampant - Titan
• Mk .44 Stand Asides - Titan
• Peacekeepers - Titan
• Forsaken's Antaeus Wards - Titan
• Forsaken's Peregrine Greaves - Titan
• Shadowkeep's Phoenix Cradle - Titan
• Beyond Light's The Path of Burning Steps - Titan
• Lunafaction Boots - Warlock
• Transversive Steps - Warlock
• Forsaken's Geomag Stabilizers - Warlock
• Shadowkeep's Promethium Spur - Warlock
• Beyond Light's Boots of the Assembler - Warlock
• The Witch Queen's Secant Filaments - Warlock
• The Witch Queen's Rain of Fire - Warlock

Exotic Helmet Eerie Engram

• Celestial Nighthawk - Hunter
• Foetracer - Hunter
• Graviton Forfeit - Hunter
• Knucklehead Radar - Hunter
• Wormhusk Crown - Hunter
• Shadowkeep's Assassin's Cowl - Hunter
• Beyond Light's Mask of Bakris - Hunter
• The Witch Queen's Blight Ranger - Hunter
• An Insurmountable Skullfort - Titan
• Eternal Warrior - Titan
• Helm of Saint-14 - Titan
• Khepri's Horn - Titan
• Mask of the Quiet One - Titan
• Forsaken's One-Eyed Mask - Titan
• Beyond Light's Precious Scars - Titan
• The Witch Queen's Loreley Splendor - Titan
• Apotheosis Veil - Warlock
• Crown of Tempests - Warlock
• Eye of Another World - Warlock
• Nezarec's Sin - Warlock
• Skull of Dire Ahamkara - Warlock
• The Stag - Warlock
• Verity's Brow - Warlock
• Forsaken's Astrocyte Verse - Warlock
• Shadowkeep's Felwinter's Helm - Warlock
• Beyond Light's Dawn Chorus - Warlock
• The Witch Queen's Fallen Sunstar - Warlock

Exotic Chest Eerie Engram

• Lucky Raspberry - Hunter
• Ophidia Spathe - Hunter
• Raiden Flux - Hunter
• The Dragon's Shadow - Hunter
• Forsaken's The Sixth Coyote - Hunter
• Forsaken's Gwisin Vest - Hunter
• Shadowkeep's Raiju's Harness - Hunter
• Beyond Light's Omnioculus - Hunter
• The Witch Queen's Gyrfalcon's Hauberk - Hunter
• Actium War Rig - Titan
• Armamentarium - Titan
• Crest of Alpha Lupi - Titan
• Hallowfire Heart - Titan
• Forsaken's Heart of Inmost Light - Titan
• Shadowkeep's Severance Enclosure - Titan
• Beyond Light's Cuirass of hte Falling Star - Titan
• The Witch Queen's Hoarfrost-Z - Titan
• Sanguine Alchemy - Warlock
• Starfire Protocol - Warlock
• Vesper of Radius - Warlock
• Wings of Sacred Dawn - Warlock
• Forsaken's Chromatic Fire - Warlock
• Forsaken's Phoenix Protocol - Warlock
• Shadowkeep's Stormdancer's Brace - Warlock
• Beyond Light's Mantle of Battle Harmony - Warlock

One more thing before we move onto what's coming up in PvP land... You like Mementos? Do you like that slick new car black leather look? Then you're definitely going to enjoy the haunting new Memento that will be dropping in Festival of the Lost this year for a limited time only:

Just like usual, this Memento is a random drop that will come in the form of an Eerie Engram. It won’t begin immediately, but we’re sure you’ll Triumph over any challenges that may be between you and looking snazzy as heck... or, at the very least, snazzy as your loadout.

A Boo-tiful PvP Strike Team Update: Checkmate, Spawning, and More

Checkmate? Well, check. Matchmaking news? Check. More weapon focusing? Check and check. We've got our latest PvP Strike Team update ready for those excellent Guardian peepers, starting with a new look at the feedback y'all offered up for things like Checkmate, matchmaking, and more. Take it away, Strike Team.

Checkmate

We heard you like Checkmate! We want to make sure we get the tuning just right before it makes it way out of Crucible Labs. So, please bear with us as we plan on making frequent, iterative changes to the modifier. Some of the changes you can expect to see soon:

• Adaptive Hand Cannons will once again 3-tap at any resilience.
• Rapid-Fire Pulse Rifles will 3-burst at 6 resilience.
• High-Impact Pulse Rifles will 2-burst at 4 resilience with all critical hits.
  • [Updated 10/12/2023 at 12:17 PDT]
• Reduced Heavy ammo spawn frequency.

We plan on running Checkmate in Crucible Labs for the remainder of the Season, so expect to see Control and Survival coming back for round two.

Matchmaking

Speaking of frequent, iterative changes: We are continuing to improve upon our matchmaking system. With the mid-Season patch, we are compressing the skill-band used for matchmaking in the Control playlist. Think of it as reducing the number of divisions in the skill band. The result is that there are more players in each remaining division and therefore more players to match with, yielding quicker matchmaking times while continuing to recognize differences in skill level.

With this change, the matchmaking experience for your first match or two will be out of sync as your skill gets remapped. We will be iterating on this into the next Season.

Spawning

It is known that there are long-outstanding issues with spawns, such as spawn trapping, spawn flipping, and not spawning at all. We made a few changes in recent Seasons, reverted some, went back to the drawing board, and here we are again, ready to take another stab at it. Iterations... it's a common theme. Previously, we made more systemic changes and less targeted changes. This time we’re doing the opposite: less systemic and more targeted. We’re specifically looking to address issues on Altar of Flame and Cauldron. We don’t expect to fix every issue, but if we succeed in resolving some of the more frustrating cases, we’ll apply those lessons to other cases and maps.

Next Season

Things to look forward to in the following Season:

• Crucible playlist reorganization (including a 3v3 rotator node)
• Competitive Crucible changes (including Competitive weapon focusing, rank adjustment updates, and 3v3 Countdown Rush)
• Trials flawed card rewards (rewards for win streaks less than 7!)
• More Checkmate modes (Dominion and 3v3 Clash, a.k.a. Skirmish)

We’ll be providing more details on those upcoming features soon!

In Loving(Ish) Memory of The Craftening

Halloween may be the most spooktakular holiday of the fear, but The Craftening sure did give our dev team a nice scare back in September. There was chaos, mayhem: Exotics acting like Legendary weapons, Legendary weapons acting like Exotics, and nothing in the world made a lick of sense during that week period. Who needs Frankenstein when you can become your own mad scientist at the Relic, ammit-rite?

You Guardians were massive troopers while our teams worked hard to get everything back into working order, and we’re stoked to see the creativity many of you had when experimenting with this new world of possibilities. And who knows, maybe that week will inspire some fun shenanigans in the future? For the immediate future, however, we wanted to commemorate this wacky time in pure Bungie fashion: with a new emblem! Everyone who played between September 15 (Friday) at 9 AM PDT and September 21 (Thursday) at 10 AM PDT will receive the emblem when it's ready to go in Season 23. Here's a sneak peek:

Drive Responsibly, Guardians

You don’t gotta get ready if you’re born ready. Always On Time is a beloved Sparrow for a few reasons, but the primary one is its speed. There are so many other amazing vehicles to cruise around the galaxy in, so do you choose aesthetic or efficiency? Why not both?

Beginning in Season 23, we’re making that need for speed universal across all Sparrows. After all, you can’t fight crime if you ain’t cute, and that absolutely applies to our handy-dandy modes of transportation, too.

Drive responsibly, Guardians.

Player Support Report

Who's ready for spooky season?

Another week, another Player Support Report! Here's what we've got coming down the pipeline this week.

Known Issues List | Help Forums | Bungie Help Twitter

CLOSING THE CHAPTER ON GROUPS

On November 14, 2001, Groups (then known as Chapters) were created to help foster our community. Throughout the years, Groups have been vitally important to Bungie.net, creating the first forums for the website. However, for the past decade, Group usage has slowly been decreasing, to the point where we believe it’s time to say goodbye to them.

Within the past six months, out of the 5.1-million Groups that have been created, only 65 were active with at least one post in them. Breaking that down further, only 16 were active in the past month, 10 of those had over 10 posts in them, and only 3 broke over 100 posts.

This decision did not come lightly, and we’ve been postponing it for several years. But with our website’s future hosting multiple IPs, we must upgrade and begin the process of shutting down older features that no longer see usage.

Over the next few months, Groups will be set to read-only, to allow users to view ones they are a part of and save their memories before we fully shut them down. We don’t currently have a firm timeline yet, but once we do, we’ll let you know.

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:

• Some weapons purchased from Banshee-44 can have a different Masterwork than what was displayed.
• The Osmosis perk is not successfully activating on all weapons.
• The Ascension Major Arcana card’s buff is not applying Scorch to enemies.
• Suppression or jolt effects can sometimes apply to allies in Savathûn’s Spire.
• Unearned Exotic armor ornaments can sometimes show as available in the appearance screen but cannot be equipped.
• Hive swords will occasionally consume a player's enlightenment but fail to be picked up in Crota's Reprise.
• The Photonic Vest Hunter chest armor is currently unable to be transmogged.

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.

It's Yeet or Be Yeeted When You Have Clumsy Teammates

Hippy: You know what? Just tag me next time, jeez...

Movie of the Week: Clumsy teammates? You may be entitled to compensation by Pugdemic via Twitter/X

Hippy: Sorry, but this encapsulation is just too perfect not to share with the reveal of The Craftening emblem. We appreciate you, Guardians, for always creepin' it real.

Movie of the Week: That time Destiny 2 had a Purge

Eris Deserves a Vacation

Br1: Eris had a lot on her plate these past weeks, both literally and figuratively, so it's great that the amazing artists in our community are always willing to reward her immeasurable efforts with their talents.

Art of the Week: The Overachiever by The Mighty Gefan via Twitter/X

Ivan: Eris stole the show this Season, and we feel it in your amazing #Destiny2AOTW and #Destiny2MOTW submissions. Keep the good stuff coming!

Art of the Week: My Accolyte by Moonveil via Twitter/X

And that’s a wrap on the latest This Week in Destiny! Hope you enjoyed the latest round of updates and this week’s Iron Banana… er, Banner. Go out there and make Lord Saladin proud. And for those witchful thinking Guardians looking to gild their Iron Lord title, we hope you have a gourd time achieving those goals. Don’t forget to keep calm and carry a wand, and don’t go losing your ghoul over a match. It’s all about having some skele-fun.

OK, OK, even I can admit I went a little too hard on the Halloween puns, but c’mon! It’s the best time of the year, fight me.

Just your usual reminder to make sure you’re drinking your water, practicing that self-care, and always leading with your kindest foot forward.

“I should go,”

<3 Hippy