Bungie recently released Destiny 2: New Light this month and it basically feels like a reboot of the gameplay while the story continues from the events that have transpired after release such as the Osiris and Warmind campaigns which are available for free for players who never experienced those two small expansions. Well before we get into that content, we’ll show you what new players for Destiny 2 New Light has during the Shadowkeep Expansion.
First off before you start let’s get into the game’s seasons. Currently it’s the season of the Undying where the Vex have decided to stop our progress from getting into the Black Garden. So we’re getting a lot of Vex-related gear. Players get a free battle pass as a result with all sorts of rewards that you can grab. If they’re armor pieces, you can grab an armor piece for each character to level them up. Additionally, you’ll get a seasonal artifact called the Gate Lord’s eye where you can earn additonal mods for your weapons and armor in order to tackle the Vex head on.
The tower is the main hub for all guardians that contains all of the bounties and missions for the activities you’ll be doing during the course of your Destiny 2 playthrough.
Vanguard strikes are run by Commander Zavala, the Titan Vanguard of the Tower. He will have all of the Strike-related bounties and quests. Bounties are small challenges you can do during the activity they’re related with. In this case they’re Strike related so that means you’ll be doing things like get percision headshots, kill this many enemies, doing energy damage, etc. Additionally you can pick up pursuits which are basically quests related to the activity that will give you some pretty good rewards such as a legendary gun if you were to complete them.
For the strikes themselves, you have a lot to choose from. You can do daily story missions which rotate every day for different rewards. Vanguard Strikes are your average strikes that cycle periodically and have buffs and debuffs as well.
For Nightfalls you got your average one where you gain points, are timed, and have the ability to put multipliers to your score for more rewards. Additonally, if you don’t want to put down your own modifiers, Nightfall: The Ordeal acts just the same, except it has its own hard modifiers and has its own weekly challenges for you to complete, these nightfalls change weekly and their challenges will grant you great rewards so make sure you do your best before the Nightfalls cycle ends.
Lord Shaxx and Lord Saladin are in charge of the Crucible and Iron Banner perspectively. The Crucibles that Lord Shaxx is in charge of are several PVP modes where players can fight each-other using equipment found and will gain some interesting loot depending on how well you did. There’s a variety of gamemodes so you can have a pretty good time doing PVP if that’s your thing. Lord Shaxx will provide you with the bounties and pursuits related to the Crucible.
Additionally, during certain times of the Season, for one week, Lord Saladin will bring his Iron Banner challenge to the Crucible so players can earn some unique and powerful weapons and armor. The mode plays just like a normal control point, except you can wipe a team if manage to get all of the points at the same time. It’s all a matter of skill and power and you have to complete a pursuit before gaining any of these items.
The Gunsmith is run by Banshee-44 who will gladly sell the player upgrade modules and mods while providing you with calibration bounties that will reward you with the upgrade modules which you’ll use to upgrade your favorite weapon to a higher power level, so keep doing these bounties and take care to upgrade only what you need. You can also give him weapon parts found by scrapping weapons to give you weapons and shaders.
Suraya Hawthorne is the Clan Steward, and she is in charge of giving you your clan bounties. Every week, you can get a set of clan engrams for doing Crucible, Nightfalls Gambit and Raids with clanmates. If you get your clan level up, you can earn better engrams.
Gambit is a PVE and PVP activity that is run by the Drifter. He’s in charge of all of Gambit activities. Gambit places a team of 4 versus another team to fight the most enemies on their side and kill the primeval final boss. If it’s normal Gambit it’s best out of three rounds, if it’s Gambit Prime however, you get slightly better rewards and it’s only one round. It’s a very interesting mode and is well worth your time. If you get far enough into Gambit, then you can head into the Reckoning Arena where you fight waves of enemies to get Gambit-related gear with unique Gambit-related Perks.
Also, the Drifter has a small side-story quest that is fairly unfinished, hopefully we’ll get something out of it in the end.
Benedict 99-40 is secretly working for Lord Calus, the all-powerful emperor who sees guardians as signs of power and amusement. The Leviathan includes a series of long raids that have a lot of unique puzzles and mechanics for players to figure out. Generally if you have a full team that knows what you’re doing, you’ll get great rewards.
Not only that, Benedict will also give you weekly bounties which will reward you with imperials and runes for the chalice you’re given after doing the steps to complete the invitation to the Leviathan.
Of course if raids aren’t your thing, then Calus has an arena where a series of challenges will be placed against a team six other guardians including you and if you complete it, you’ll get rewards based on what runes you placed on your chalice.
Additionally you’ll get access to the Tribute hall found on Nessus’ Orbit where you can fill up the hall with tributes that you can buy for what looks to be a lot of currency. Luckily if you do the bounties here, the prices will drop up to 80%. If you do the daily Champion Bounties here, you can probably get that discount in no time. Just make sure to appease Calus as he is our lord and savior.
Ada-1 is in charge of the Black Armory, after an introduction quest, you’ll be able to attend the Forge Activities which are found on the various planets, the different forges move around, but the research frames you complete during a forge activity will grant you a weapon specific to that frame. Additionally, you can unlock some unique exotics from the Armory, and maybe there’s a big secret you can figure out?
These are the main planets of Destiny in which you’ll be doing general bounties for. They each have an introduction story mission and generally have the same type of equipment that rotates every week. Additionally you’ll be doing the same type of activities that have their own twist depending on the planet.
Lost Sectors are mini dungeons that are found when on a planet’s free roam, you can tell that there’s a lost sector if you find an arch-like symbol. If you complete the lost sector, you get to open the chest at the end which will hopefully get you something good.
Adventures are the orange markers on your map that will take you on a little side-mission during free-roam. Complete them for a small reward.
Patrols will give you an even smaller side-mission which will give you some even smaller rewards.
Public Events will happen periodically from planet to planet and differ depending on where you’re at. If you’re smart enough, you can turn these public events into Heroic Public events under certain circumstances. These events happen during free-roam so other players can simply walk right in to help you. If you beat a heroic event, the chances for your rewards get better.
Mercury is where the Osiris missions start and is the home of the Infinite Forest. Here you can do a pretty big public event and participate in obtaining the Lost Prophecy Verses in order to get the unique verse weapons. They require you to beat some heroic versions of the Osiris missions, so be prepared.
Mars is the home of the Wramind known as Rasputin. Here you can do quite a few things, like collect memory fragments and get some cool gear. The main thing you’ll be really doing on Mars are Escalation protocols. Collect enough Key fragments, and you can do escalation protocols in order to unlock some unique weapons. Escalation protocols are a series of Public events that will take you across Mars and beat waves of enemies in order to reach the highest level and encrypt those key fragments to get some gear.
The Tangled Shore is part of the Forsaken Campaign and contains some endgame activities. For one you can collect ghost fragments from activities around the Shore and if you get enough, you can collect the various bounties that Spider has to offer. If you find the bounties, you can gets some unique gear, so go and do them if you wish. Wanted Bounties change every seven days so make sure your bounty is complete before the week is over.
The Dreaming City is also a Forsaken Campaign area that also contains plenty of endgame activities. You can collect Dark Fragments from doing the surrounding Public Events and you can use these fragments to buy Charges of Light for the Blind Well event unique to the Dreaming City. The Blind Well will require you to defend yourself in areas where you won’t be damaged in, and if you walk outside of the area, your vision will be impaired and you will slowly die. If you defeat the bosses at the end when the Well gets overclocked which is over tier 3, you will get some big rewards along with plenty of experience. You can do this event as many times as you want, so go crazy if your team can handle it.
The Moon is the newest area for the Shadowkeep expansion and it does introduce new players to tons of quests to do and missions to complete. After beating the main story, the player will be able to do bounties for Eris Morn and turn in souls to the Lectern of Enchantment for Moon-based weapons.
Not only will you be grinding for weapons from the Lectern of Enchantment, but you will also be able to do nightmare hunts in which you’ll fight rotating bosses weekly on the moon. The missions are like strikes, but come with some new debuffs. If you wear dreambane armor from doing bounties and turning in essences, these debuffs will happen less, and will reward you with essences to get more weapons from.
Finally on the moon rests the Vex Offensive activity in which Ikora wants you to defeat the Vex in a mini raid who are impeding on your progress to the Black Garden. Of course you aren’t doing this empty-handed, Ikora has tons of bounties related to this activity and will have Data Seeds to give you in order to get unique vex-themed weapons. We’ve yet to see what lies at the end of the Vex Offensive event as a Vex Gate is currently being made behind her, so we’ll have to see the end of this soon.
Well what do you think about Destiny 2? Do you think that there’s more for you to do in game? Let us know in the comments.
For more information regarding Destiny 2, check out here.
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A Nintendo Switch trailer was also released.
According to SteamDB.
An announcement trailer was also released.