This is a fanfic of the Bungie Update, a kind of web-log of various fixes and additions to the game Destiny 2. The thehomeland build is a dream-build of the D2 game, that XB1 gamertag thehomeland wishes could happen to pull it out of the ashes..
THIS WEEK AT BUNGIE – THE ONE ABOUT THEHOMELAND BUILD 1.0 – 02.14.2018
We here at Bungie have been hard at work implementing a massive rebuild of the Destiny 2 game architecture, to suit the whims of one particular gamer that we all know and love, gamertag ‘thehomeland’ who has been playing our games since before Halo. His valuable input has been instrumental in showing us just how high the flames go of the pile of hot garbage we created in ignorance of his profound wisdom, and we here at Bungie are thankful for his input about the new direction we’ve begun to take Destiny 2 for the betterment of the community.
>>> Token Vendors
>> All vendors who operate on the basis of tokens will still accept tokens, and tokens will still be found out in your travels, but now redemption from a token vendor’s maxed-out meter will contribute toward a numbered level with that vendor, by which you will be able to purchase level-locked weapons and gear.
Additionally, each increment of 20 levels gained will add a new level-locked weapon or gear option to work toward. Every 50th level you hit, you will receive 10 masterwork cores. Every 75th level you hit, will add a vendor-exclusive exotic to the loot pool until level 300, for a total of 4 possible vendor-exclusive exotics. Each additional Destiny 2 DLC will include 2 additional vendor-exclusive exotic tiers to grind toward.
>>> Postmaster
>> The Postmaster bot has a new tab to browse, Special Delivery. These include codes that you have redeemed on the Bungie site from various sponsored promotions, and other special consumables gained throughout your travels.
A notable Special Delivery is a consumable package, that will accumulate until you reach increments of legendary shards, bright dust, or other items that have hit your max or from other new incidents noted below. For instance if you have somehow reached the new glimmer max of 200,000, the postmaster will collect any excess glimmer earned in your travels and will store it until you have reached at least 200 over, and will create stacks of 200 as one is reached.
You can collect those stacks once you’ve spent enough below the max, and their contents will be immediately added to your totals. The totals for various other spendables like legendary shards, or bright dust, have their own totals until you can collect them.
>>> Shaders
>> All of the multiples of a single shader you had, have been broken down and stored in the Postmaster’s Special Delivery according to the stacking consumable process for the respective value. Each particular shader you’d collected previously are now viewable in your normal shader inventory as single shaders, to be used with no numerical limit but still at their respective cost to apply it. Each shader that you receive as a reward elsewhere in your travels, will be broken down automatically and collecable from the Postmaster according to the stacking consumable process in Special Delivery.
>>> Dedicated 1-Week Event Dates
>> All 1-Week events, such as Iron Banner, Faction Rally, and now Sparrow Racing, will always begin on The first, second, and third Tuesday of the month, in that respective order. You won’t need to wait for an announcement to see whether it’s coming up, so you can rely on specific dates for these events to occur. There will be special events every other month (Festival of the Lost, The Dawning, etc) beginning on the fourth Tuesday and run thru the first Monday of the following month in time for Iron Banner.
>>> Eververse
Eververse will now only contain items of a given event, on the 2nd event following, so they can’t be simply immediately purchased. If there is a DLC drop that contains new loot, you can’t just go buy it immediately; you’ll have to wait at least 2 major events (4 months max) before it becomes available at Eververse. Major events include the Dawning, Festival of the Lost, Crimson Doubles, release of DLC/expansion, etc, which occur every 2 months — but not counting regular monthly events like Faction Rally, Iron Banner, or Sparrow Racing.
>>> Gunsmithing
>> You will now be able to apply Gunsmith mods of any type (kinetic/ energy/ power) to any type of gun, so it will be filed in the appropriate slot on your guardian loadout screen. This will allow you to have kinetic rockets, power hand cannons, and the like, but their effectiveness on the field of battle will also change appropriately.
Kinetic rockets will act as large slug rounds with no blast radius and retain their slow reload, while power hand cannons will dish out incredible damage but suffer greatly on kick stability. Kinetic snipers will suffer from low precision, kinetic shotguns, power auto-rifles, and other combinations will suffer other setbacks that will make their use riskier.
>> You can now also infuse a gun’s masterwork status into another weapon to make it a masterwork, carrying over that status to the new one that had not been, just as you would its power level.
>>> Kiosks
On the second floor, above the Cryptarch under the tents, will be Kiosk Alley, including: (with more in the works)
>> Custom Emblems: In addition to finding all of your emblems acquired so far, you will be able to customize specific stats to specific emblems of your preference. Do you prefer Striker kill count, but think the blue emblem clashes? Use a faction emblem, or any other emblem you’ve acquired perhaps that matches your armor colors, that keeps track of your preferred stat to show off.
>> Lore Collection: In PVE, there are numerous objects scattered around that you can scan for a snippet of dialogue and speculation. Compare that dialogue at this kiosk, and check whether you have all 20/20 of the scannable objects on an explorable space, or whether you only have 19/20 and need to find that last one. There will also be new collectible items similar to Destiny 1’s ghosts, which this kiosk can keep track of how many of each kind of collectible you found, for which areas.
Other Kiosks, elsewhere, include:
>> Sparrow and Ship Kiosks will be available near Amanda Holliday’s repair bay, which include all of the Legendary and Exotics of each that you’ve collected since you began playing, so you can keep your favorites without worrying about losing your collection.
>> Cayde-6 will have a Kiosk to track stats on how many treasures you’ve found and where, and finding increments of 10 treasures will reward you a unique Cayde-6 consumable that may or may not ever be useful.
>>> Leveling
>> How your power level is raised, and the level of ordinary rare/legendary drops is also changing to be easier to understand, plus add to the incentive to grind, and will make getting even rare drops to offer a potentially positive effect on your power level.
Engrams that you normally get, that decode automatically, will drop randomly as 1-2 levels higher than the lowest-leveled item your guardian is currently carrying. If all you are carrying is a kinetic hand cannon at 330, a special AR at 330, a power sniper at 330, a helmet at 330, gauntlets at 330, pants at 325, and a mark at 330, your pants at 325 will make engrams drop at either 326 or 327, until you can infuse your pants to a higher level. If you infused your pants with a 327, engrams will drop at 328-329, etc.
If you keep at least one of each kind of gear on your guardian at all times, you will always be able to apply any engram received, to any piece in your inventory, until they have all reached a new increment higher. Once you get that last piece upgraded, you can start applying engrams across the board again.
Mods will still boost your total power level for that item by 5, but will now be displayed for example as 330(+5) if legendary modded, for ease of understanding the base level and which engrams/drops are eligible for infusing. Power engrams will still drop at their typically-higher levels as before. Exotic engrams will drop at 2-3 levels higher than the lowest equipment power level, making incentive to get exotics greater.
Additionally, each week, the maximum power level will be raised for all players by either 1 or 2, and will not be announced to which it is raised. This will take place of the need to bump up the max power level to much higher with each DLC, as it will be raised gradually each week.
>>> Amanda / Cayde-6
>> Amanda will now offer a random selection of special ships for shard-purchase, that come with a standard vanguard shader. Each season, 3 new overall ship structual designs will be released into the pool of potential Amanda ships, not to mention at least 5 new ship structural spin-offs (already existing ship based structures with equipment changes like features from other ships appended to the outer surface) released for every major event.
>> Cayde-6 will now offer a selection of auras for shard-purchase, with various PVE exploration perks like resource location identification markers with a distance limit as wide as the loading zone (as opposed to the 30-meter distance of some ghost perks), location of yellow-bar enemies, and others to discover.
>>> Guardian Inventory
>> Each tab of your guardian’s inventory will now be D-pad up/down scrollable for multiple pages, such as for each shader you’ve collected (permanently) so far, and you can have at least 3 pages of each tab’s contents to view before needing to store any in the vault.
>> We are re-introducing cross-class armor infusion for increases of power, including the masterwork status as described above in Gunsmithing.
>>> Guided Games Interfaces on the Farm
>> The wait time for Guided Games is a problem because of the boredom with sitting at a waiting screen with little indication of the progress. We’re trying to alleviate part of this delay by making the lobby for Guided Games be actually found on the Farm as a vendor, and starting it up will unlock various errands around the farm similar to the Sentry jumping puzzle, so that the longer the wait for the guided game, the better the possible end-match bonus once the corresponding Guided Game is completed, and will be shared with the Guiders.
When your Guides are ready, they will meet you in person on the Farm to confirm your team-up and the errands will lock again. The Guides in question will also receive an end-match bonus for helping someone based on the errands they’ve performed on the Farm while waiting, so even if the Guided player contributes little to the Guided Game itself, they can at least offer a kind of tip to their Guides for the assist.
>>> Infinite Forest
>> The Infinite Forest will now more accurately live up to its name, by two new game modes that are selectable how you would normally begin an Adventure. The starting flags will be placed on either side of the triangular gate before you enter.
The first, called Team Osiris, will match you up automatically with 2 other guardians seeking to explore. The Infinite Forest will become a series of gates that you normally experience on an Osiris mission or Adventure, but instead of loading a mission when you reach the next corridor, you will load a new set of Forest gates as before, but with a slightly higher difficulty, and a range of possible modifiers for each set of Forest gates. To unlock a gate, at least two guardians must be present and holding the appropriate unlock button.
You will also have the option to travel down more than one path of gates, to reach a nearer or further corridor, and selection of which path to take will be decided by the 2/3 majority decision made at the respective gate. After 3 such series of Forest gate decisions, you will enter the next corridor and be matched up with a second set of 3 guardians for a final 6v1 team up against a strike-tier boss but strong enough to require 6 guardians manning the assault against it. There are secrets to this forest, and entering one corridor may have better or worse impact on the final battle’s outcome, so all the better to enter with a trusted team of 3 to navigate the Forest gates to choose the corridor you believe will provide the best future.
The second, called Osiris Gauntlet, is a solo mission (or up to 3 other guardians you invite, not match-made) where you navigate a near-endless series of gates that gradually increase in difficulty. After every 10 gates passed, you will be presented with the option to continue on to a strike-boss, that corresponds in difficult to how many guardians are present and how many gates you’ve passed, which the party leader decides.
If you have the time, you can always pass the strike boss and continue for another 10 gates. Once the boss at gate 10, gate 20, etc, is defeated, you will be returned to the Mercury patrol, but each of the 10 bosses up to gate 100, is unique and offers unique rewards like emblems, shaders, ships, and more. It is highly unlikely that casual gamers will be able to complete the gate 100 boss even with max power.
Your first completion of either of these two options will unlock unique tracking options in the Custom Emblem kiosk for corresponding tasks. There are also various bits of Lore to collect from each boss encounter, which will be reviewable at the Lore kiosk.
>>> PVP
>> In your Guardian settings screen, you can now set PVP match endings to visit the standard score screen as usual, or you can set it to a weapons-disabled, damage-off, free-running mode with a minimalist score off to the side, so you can spend your unused supers, jump to your death, or whatever you like during the (extended) countdown before the next match.
>> Unlocked for all players immediately in the custom emblem kiosk, is a teabagging tracking stat, which tracks how many crouches you perform within about 5 meters of the guardian you just killed, for about 5 seconds after their death. After each 500 teabags counted, you unlock new teabagging emblems to let your enemies know just who they’re dealing with.
>> Specific PVP playlists are now available for consistency of gametype without getting stuck into a game mode that you dislike. You can choose strictly Clash, Control, Supremacy, and others.
>> Mayhem rotates week-by-week as to which type will be featured, but will always have some kind of Mayhem playlist open.
>> It is now your option as to whether you wish to play 4v4, 6v6 for each playlist.
>> There will be a secret difficult weekly PVP challenge that is unlisted, that will grant you a consumable that will unlock access (access ending on weekly reset) to a special 4v4v4 Clash match, in which your team will compete against 2 other teams for a powerful engram prize. You will be able to play the special 3-team playlist until you win the Powerful engram prize.
>> Three times per day, if you score a side-winning goal on either the Tower or Farm soccer field (causing the fireworks or flares respectively), you will be granted a consumable that unlocks access to 3 matches of a ‘Grifball’ PVP match type, which consists of an 8v8 soccer match on a field the size of Ghaul’s final battle ship surface, using the Tower’s secret traveler-ball, that can be propelled using the power weapon of your choice, with reduced gravity and guardian damage turned off.
>> Custom Games will now feature buffing or nerfing options for you to experiment with on your own, as applied to weapons and abilities you specify. Our servers will gather data about games played with those buffs or nerfs, and add to our understanding of the dynamics. If you complete a full custom match with otherwise standard match settings, played with certain buffed or nerfed settings which match future buffs or nerfs issued officially, you will be issued a special exotic emblem to identify your help.
There is now also a Custom Games matchmaking feature, where you can set certain more-subtle requirements you would prefer to match into, or host your own match according to your own settings, for others to be match-made into — including whether power level matters.
>> In keeping with the split between more casual PVP and competitive, Trials of Osiris has been also split between them. Competitive will offer play where power level does matter and also greater rewards for completing both a flawless and 10 wins before reaching 3 losses, but guardians with a more casual approach to PVP can still play their own separate Trials playlist where (a) you are matched up with 3 randoms, (b) losses are still tallied but don’t knock you out, but your rewards increase based on the fewer-and-fewer numbers of losses.
>> Iron Banner will also be split between casual and competitive, offering a power-relevant competitive version with greater rewards, while a more casual power-irrelevant Iron Banner with less (but easier) rewards will still be offered. Both Trials and Iron Banner will offer the 3-tier challenge process with goals unique to those types.
>>> Misc / Subtle Changes
>> The opening guardian selection screen has been altered to include a more details breakdown of what your guardian has accomplished, with an extensive array of levels of achievement including nightfall completions, raid completions, trials completions, total guardian kill count, total non-guardian kill counts, and several others. It has been formatted so these details appear when hovering over which you will select, making for an ideal screenshot opportunity to share. Also on this screen is the ability to mark a specific guardian which will auto-load and bypass this screen at startup, taking you directly to orbit with them. You can always return to this screen normally to change which guardian will auto-load, via the normal switch-guardian method.
>> You can now move your ship around during loading screens, instead of them making a weaving motion on their own. There are actually certain subtle things to accomplish here by doing so, which will unlock 5 new ship-themed emblems per season.
>> Crest pickup radius is broadened so you don’t have to literally place a foot onto it to grab one. Your dead body will also now collect strictly enemy crests, so if you are killed on your way to capture one, you can still fall onto it with the right momentum, in addition to some other intriguing possibilities.
>> Clan experience distribution is now much more precise, with smaller increments instead of random lumps of 500 just for walking around in the Tower. Every 30 regular enemies, every 20 yellow-bar enemies, every 10 guardians killed in PVP all receive unique smaller XP rewards, in addition to end-of-strike rewards, raid phase completion, incremental Trials wins rewards, and more.
If your clan reaches max XP for a season, your whole clan receives a unique emblem special to that season, and at the custom emblem kiosk is unlocked a tracking for XP totals you’ve personally earned you’ve accumulated across all seasons, even beyond the amount you earned over the personal 5000 maximum.
>> There is no more timer at the end of strikes when running solo, since the lobby is never carried forward to the next strike anyway. This allows you to browse stats as long as you like, explore the final room as much as you like, or dance/emote with strike players as long as you like. Instead of only Directory or Quit to Orbit, there is now a “Proceed to Next Strike” countdown option to hold whenever you want, but will still bring everyone in your game party if you’re the leader.
>> Force field barriers that block your path to areas typically explored by Adventures, are now removed so you can explore those areas at your leisure. If it’s a barrier that you can disable in the Adventure, you can disable it on regular patrol also, to explore those areas.
>> See that ledge that is so obviously a ledge you could totally perch onto, but are blocked by some invisible wall that won’t let you grab it? We’re reducing those invisible obstructions so you can perch on those ledges, or altering the graphics so those ledges won’t be there if there is a good reason you should not get up there. We’re also reducing the number of turn-back zones so that you will die for reasons like falling down into the water that would actually make sense.
>> Each PVE and PVP challenge completed will be replaced by another more-difficult challenge of a similar nature, up to 3 tiers, with corresponding value of rewards for completion.
>> You can now select any previously completed story mission from Ikora, and there are story-mission related challenges, including additional 3-tier challenges as described above.
>> The triangle icon that shows a resource location when using a ghost with a resource-location perk, is now more obviously different from the item-collecting patrols triangle icon. The time to accept a patrol mission at a beacon is now also reduced to Destiny 1 speeds.
>> At the Cryptarch, you now have the option to trade in 10 Legendary engrams for an exotic as many times as you like per week, and once per week you can trade 5 exotic engrams for a powerful engram.
>> Regional chests now reappear with each weekly reset.
>> Special Quests (Drang, On the Comms, etc) and all DLC-related quests will now appear on the new right-trigger sliding menu on the Director (whereas left-trigger shows current regular quests like Call-to-Arms, Nightfall, etc).
>> The official Bungie forums will now have a feature suggestion section, where you can upvote or downvote particular features that you believe need the most urgent attention.
>>> In Conclusion
We will be continue to work with thehomeland to discover other new and exciting features and adjustments to add, to bring Destiny 2 out of Gamestop’s 99-cent bin before all of the DLC has even dropped. Please look forward to additional updates about more ‘thehomeland’ builds.
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