This Week In Destiny – 08/31/2023

This week in Destiny, Crota is back in all his rotating, crotating glory.

We're stoked to watch you take him on, but we'll get to that in a minute.

Did you complete this week’s story mission? How did your screenshots come out? Have you traversed your way through Altars of Summoning and shown those enemies who is the strongest of them all? (You, duh.) [Deep breaths] We know that was a barrage of questions, but it’s been so much fun running alongside you all, especially seeing everyone zoom around with Strand. So keep it up, and keep those commendations coming.

Last week we talked about:

• Destiny 2 Showcase “remember when’s.”
• Guardians for Maui update.
• Calling all creators.
• Feeling nostalgic with older Seasons.
• Featured Quests, what are they?
• Three new Season 22 Strand Aspects and what they do.
• World First rundown.
• New emblems, who dis?

This week we have lined up:

• Crota’s End raid and Bungie Rewards.
• Iron Banner dates.
• Turtle power.
• Cabbage patch.
• But what about Stasis?
• Prime Gaming update.
• Player Support Report.
• The #Destiny2AOTW and #Destiny2MOTW picks.

It’s crotating time

We are less than 24 hours away from the Crota’s End reprised raid, and we wanted to give you some reminders before hopping into the raid tomorrow.

• You will need to be at 1790 Power to be at the cap for all of the encounters to take the raid on.
• To give our servers some room to breathe, there will be no bounty or weapon crafting progress for combatant kills below boss tier within King’s Fall and Crota’s End while Contest Mode is enabled.

We are going to change things up a bit, too. When the first team completes the raid and subsequent challenges, we’ll verify that and proclaim them the World First winners via the DestinyTheGame account. However, we'll still be performing a thorough security validation, and if we find any activity that breaks our World First rules, we will disqualify that team and award the next team the belts. We just want to handle this on our end and not make you wait around for a winner to be declared. So even if you see an announcement, finish strong in case there were any shenanigans because you could still have a chance at the title. Good luck, Guardians!

Necrochasm

Yes, it’s coming back! To celebrate this return of a fan-favorite weapon, we have a guaranteed reward for those who are brave enough to take on Crota’s End during Contest Mode.

• Players that acquire the Bottomless Pit quest from the raid vendor during the 48-hour Contest Mode period in Crota's End will have the quest automatically marked as complete and all rewards placed in their inventory immediately.
• The quest does not require any currencies to purchase it.
• Rewards will include Husk of the Pit, Eidolon Ally (fully Masterworked), and Necrochasm.
• Players will notice they can acquire Essence of the Oversoul from completing raid encounters and Triumphs. This is required to complete the Bottomless Pit quest if they don't finish within the Contest Mode as well as to complete the weapon catalyst's objective for Necrochasm.
• During the Contest Mode period, players who obtain the weapon catalyst will not be able to progress the objective on it, and it will statically show the objective progress at 20/35 Essence of Oversouls collected, regardless if they collect additional Essences.
• After Contest Mode ends, all Essence of Oversoul that the player has acquired thus far will still be respected and the player may begin making progress on the catalyst objective, continuing from the number they previously acquired.
• Players that acquire the Bottomless Pit quest after the 48-hour Contest Mode will have to complete the quest starting from the beginning to obtain the quest rewards.

Bungie Rewards  

We can’t forget about the loot, right? We’ve got quite the set of Bungie Rewards, and personally, I cannot wait to get my hands on that ring. (Heh, get it? Hands, ring... )  

The following Bungie Rewards are only available to players who complete the requirements within Destiny 2 by the deadlines listed below.

Crota’s End Raid Ring - Complete the Crota's End raid by 9:59 AM PT on September 12, 2023.  

Crota’s End Raid Pin - Complete the Crota's End raid by 9:59 AM PT on November 28, 2023.

Crota’s End Metal Poster by Displate - Complete the Crota's End raid by 9:59 AM PT on November 28, 2023.  

Swordbearer Title Pin - Earn the Swordbearer title by 9:59 AM PT on February 26, 2024.  

And of course, a raid isn’t a raid without a raid belt, right? Here is the silvery new raid belt for the Destiny 2 version of Crota’s End.

Twitch Rivals

We’re partnering with Twitch Rivals for the main event, kicking off at 9:30 AM PT on September 1! Tune in on Twitch for live coverage of our Crota’s End World First race, featuring returning fan-favorite commentators, Professor Broman, Reck1568, and Adam Savage who will be covering the action while participating teams from around the globe compete for the belt. From 10 AM PT on September 1 to 10 AM PT on September 3, you will be able to earn the new Every End emblem via Twitch Drops by tuning for two hours on the Twitch Rivals channel or one of the approved participating streamers listed on this page.

Iron Banner

Iron Banner returns next week in all its week-long PvP glory. This go-around, on top of having a new emblem and shader available, we have a couple weapons from the two foundries we made official this Season, Cassoid and Nadir, featuring their own foundry origin traits. First up is Point of the Stag from Cassoid, finally returning with random rolls. (It retains the ability to get the perks from its original fixed roll, too.). Then we’ve got The Guiding Sight, which is now Strand. Many of the Nadir weapons originally released in a time when there was only Kinetic damage in the top slot, so expect to see a lot of these weapons come back as either Strand or Stasis in the future.

• The Guiding Sight - Strand High-Impact Scout Rifle
  • Left Column: Enlightened Action, Demolitionist, Moving Target, Tunnel Vision, Perpetual Motion, Gutshot Straight
  • Right Column: Hatchling, Adrenaline Junkie, Kill Clip, Encore, Cascade Point, Precision Instrument
  • Origins: Skulking Wolf, Nadir Focus
• Point of the Stag - Arc Precision Bow
  • Left Column: No Distractions, Archer's Tempo, Pugilist, Slickdraw, Elemental Capacitor, Shot Swap
  • Right Column: Vorpal Weapon, Eye of the Storm, Swashbuckler, Precision Instrument, Golden Tricorn, Dragonfly
  • Origins: Skulking Wolf, Wild Card

We’ve got all three Iron Banner weeks lined up for you:

• Iron Banner Week 1: 9/5 - Fortress
• Iron Banner Week 2: 10/10 - Control
• Iron Banner Week 3: 11/14 - Fortress

Turtle power

In August of this year, while scouring the depths of Titan in Season of the Deep, Bungie partnered with five content creators and their awesome communities to raise funds for Brazil’s Projeto Tartabinhas, which uses scientific research, community education, and sustainable tourism to help sea turtles live and thrive. Our goal was to raise enough money over the course of five days to adopt one turtle through their adopt-a-turtle program. But our Guardians exceeded all expectations and were able to adopt not one but seven turtles!

Introducing Cayde-96, Caiatl, Filamentosa, Ahsa Sasquepola, Tiadorinha, Sagira, and Forbas.

And a big turtle hug thank you to these content creators: Cavaco, TheVanguardBR, oEverson_, MahrioJr, and LegionarioGG.

Cabbage patch

And now, a quick note from the Engineering team: During the early hours of Season of the Witch, many players temporarily experienced CABBAGE error codes. We’d like to take a brief moment to walk you through the issue and what we are doing to prevent it in the future.

As part of every release, Destiny 2 code is deployed to a wide variety of servers. Some of these servers are tiny “cloud servers,” which allow us to scale up into the cloud when Destiny 2 traffic gets particularly high. In order to make sure this resource is available if we suddenly need to scale, we deploy our services to these tiny cloud servers with every release. During the deployment of Season of the Witch, a critical step was missed where these servers were not shut down when they were supposed to be, and because they were active, the system attempted to route players to them for gameplay, kicking players out with a CABBAGE error. As soon as our team recognized the issue, these cloud services were removed from rotation, and CABBAGE errors subsided.

The team is taking several measures to prevent this issue from happening in the future. Firstly, our deployment process has been updated to make sure that these particular servers are correctly shut down before we allow players into the game with extra verification. Then with the Season 23 launch, we will be rolling out several code improvements to our services to prevent this issue, regardless of process, and improve our ability to recover if any similar issue were to occur. Thanks again for your patience while we fixed this issue, and we hope you enjoy Season of the Witch!

But what about Stasis?

For our Stasis lovers out there, we have some things coming up regarding your Stasis abilities in Season 23. Not only will the Seasonal Artifact feature Stasis perks, but there will also be some Stasis ability changes coming, including Glacial Quake, Frostpulse, Winter’s Shroud, Glacier Grenade, and more! We will have an Artifact and abilities preview with more details as we get closer to the Season 23 launch.

Prime Gaming update

Prime Gaming is back this week with their latest rewards update. From Tuesday, August 29, to Friday, September 29, when you link your Bungie account to your Twitch account, you will be eligible to get the new Dawn of Invention Exotic Emote Bundle, which includes:

• Dawn of Invention Exotic Emote. 

• Aoki/Faas Exotic Ghost Shell.
• Dead Fall Legendary Ship. 
• Verdant Projection Legendary Ghost Projection. 

For more information, check out our article here.

Player Support Report

Oryx’s cringe-fail son returns

The Player Support team is back this week and ready to share information about current bugs, known issues, and Contest Mode disables.

Known Issues List  |  Help Forums  |  Bungie Help Twitter 

RAID CONTEST MODE DISABLES

Below is the list of gear, items, and weapons that will be disabled during the Crota's End reprised World First race and Contest Mode. Traits and functionality on the following items will be nullified within the raid, with additional negative impacts to Power levels if equipped:

• Tessellation Exotic Fusion Rifle
• Warlock Weavewalk Aspect (currently disabled in all raids and PvP activities)
• Titan Banner of War Aspect
• Foetracer Exotic Hunter Helmet
• Elemental Munitions Mod
• Overload Hand Cannon Mod

For any changes to this list, please follow @BungieHelp on Twitter. We also have this Bungie Forum link here that is being continuously updated by our Player Support team for those who prefer to veer away from social media platforms.

LUMINOUS VOID SHADER

An unintentional change was made to the Luminous Void shader with Update 7.2.0.2. We are currently working to revert this change and return it to its previous appearance. Players should be aware that the shader as it displayed currently will no longer be accurate once this change is reverted in an upcoming update.

GJALLARHORN BEHAVIOR UPDATES

Beginning with the launch of Season of the Witch, Gjallarhorn's behavior was slightly altered. This was due to a recent fix to an issue causing projectiles to inadvertently damage immune enemies. The side effect of this fix has unintentionally impacted how Gjallarhorn operates.

Due to Gjallarhorn's boss DPS dominance, we had previously planned to dial down its damage in a future update. Because this unintentional change resulted in similar changes to those planned, the current behavior of Gjallarhorn will be maintained while we monitor performance.

LOADOUTS RE-ENABLED

With the release of Update 7.2.0.2, the Loadouts function has been re-enabled. Players will now be able to access their existing Loadouts and create new ones; however, items will be unavailable to be pulled from player vaults for Loadouts until a full fix is released in an upcoming update.

SONAR STATION VENDOR

We are currently investigating an issue causing the Season of the Deep Sonar Station vendor to no longer offer bounties, preventing the completion of the weekly Aquatic Operations Challenge.

SPECIAL DELIVERIES KIOSK

Beginning with the launch of Season of the Witch, items such as pre-order rewards and Secret Stash bundles have been moved off of the Cryptarch to the new Special Deliveries Kiosk in the Tower. Players missing items should double check this vendor for available rewards.

New Light players will continue to be able to access these rewards from Shaw Han in the Cosmodrome. 

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:

• Opaque Cards from the Lectern of Divination display that they are rewarding Witch’s Engrams, but they are not successfully granting rewards.
• Vanguard Ops, Crucible, and Gambit playlists are awarding pinnacle Legendary engrams instead of focusable Exotic engrams.
• Shader previews are unavailable when previewing gear in vendor-focusing menus.
• The perk description for the Astrocyte Verse Exotic Warlock helm is inaccurate.
• The cooldowns for Tangle generation are inconsistent across different sources.
• The Last Will and Testament quest can no longer be successfully completed.
• Hung Jury and Wendigo are currently unavailable for legacy focusing from Zavala.
• Explosive barrels ignore the damage reduction granted by the Warlock Weavewalk Aspect.
• The Tessellation Exotic Fusion Rifle incorrectly applies blur to the entire screen when aiming down sights.
• The Secondary Energy ornament for the Armamentarium Titan Exotic chest armor is missing a detail piece on its back.
• The craftable version of Dead Man’s Tale does not display owned or available ornaments on inspection.
• The Bulbul Tarang emblem does not appear in Collections and cannot be claimed.
• Swapping shaders or emotes while in a locked loadout activity will result in players being returned to orbit with an error.
• The Photonic Vest Hunter chest armor is unavailable for Armor Synthesis.

Sparrows and raids and Hive kitties, oh my!  

Hippy: We all have that story of our first vehicle that, at some point, just began making the weirdest sounds. You could either get mad at the bizarro noises that erupted from your engine, or you could promise to “never give up” and break into a dance that would make Rick Astley proud.

Movie of the Week: I have Sparrow concerns. By SlavicKP_ via Twitter. 

Sam: With World First coming up fast, here is a quick recap of what happened the first time around—we mean, if you are Jasmine and Aladdin. 😉

Movie of the Week: A whole new raid.

Hippy: Hi. Me again with a bonus MOTW pick. Eris Morn Hive kitty, enough said. 

Bonus MOTW: With great power comes great kitty snacks. By Oddmb_ via Twitter.

Devour

Bruno: I'm a huge fan of Francisco de Goya and the deeply disturbing themes of his Black Paintings. (Please, read about them here.) I'm also a huge fan of Eris Morn, so putting those two together blew my mind, and I'm so happy it happened. Immaru probably isn't though. Anyway, congratulations to the artist. Keep these coming! Maybe Velazquez next time?

Art of the Week: Eris devouring her ‘son.’ By ElCapitan_works on Twitter.

Ivan: Usually I’m checking #Destiny2AOTW for all the amazing creations. This week, however, I was specifically looking for our new Hive god, Eris Morn. You can feel her energy and power through your monitor! Couldn’t say it better than the title:

Art of the Week: Aiat! Aiat! Aiat! By JchanTM_ on Twitter.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

And there we have it for this week’s TWID. Between the start of the new Season, the Destiny 2 Showcase, and Crota on the horizon, we have had a lot to take in and even more to come. 

We will be cheering you all on, and we cannot wait to see who takes home the belt this time. Thanks for hanging out with us today, Guardians. Now go get ready for Crota and friends. 

Stay crafty,

Sam