With Destiny: The Taken King slowly but surely inching its way closer to release, developer Bungie has been doing all it can to prepare players for the expansion’s launch. So far, they have detailed major changes to the PvP meta, revealed new experiences like the Court of Oryx and the Shield Brothers strike, and offered closer looks at some of the new exotic gear Xur will be selling come September 15th.

But, of course, Bungie still has so much to cover in the weeks/days leading up to Destiny: The Taken King’s launch, specifically with regards to the finer details. Obviously, there are going to give the major events, like the new King’s Fall raid, their due, but what happens to the established daily and weekly routines in Destiny? More specifically, how will our weekly strikes change in year 2?

Changes to Nightfall Strikes

Well, today’s Bungie Weekly Update has all the answers, and the changes are significant. Starting first with the Nightfall Strike, Bungie has decided to remove the Nightfall buff from existence until they can find a better use for it. Because the buff helped players earn extra experience for the week, most players rushed to complete the Nightfall Strike as soon as possible, and Bungie wants to curb that behavior. Instead, the developer has tweaked the experience gains to reflect the lack of a weekly buff.

Moreover, Bungie is doing away with the Nightfall punishment in Destiny: The Taken King, meaning players will no longer be kicked to orbit upon a full team wipe. Like the Weekly Heroic Strike, the Nightfall will now keep track of the fireteam’s checkpoints, and restart them there if they wipe. However, if one player dies, they will be hit with a 30-second revive timer, instead of an instant revive option like before.

No More Weekly Heroic Strike

Speaking of the Weekly Heroic Strike; that weekly ritual is now gone. In its place, Destiny will be adding a Heroic Playlist that acts like a never-ending rotation of Heroic Strikes, with the first three strikes granting Legendary Marks to the player’s account (not each character). Players will also be guaranteed a Legendary Engram drop during each character’s first completion of a Weekly Heroic Strike from the playlist.

In essence, Bungie is giving players a way to keep grinding Weekly Heroic Strikes for Legendary Marks, while also giving them first-completion incentives. And without a cap on Legendary Mark gains for the week – you can’t hold more than 200 Marks at a time, though – players will likely turn to this playlist for their money grinding.

The one omission from the new Weekly Strike info is whether or not players will earn Strange Coins upon completion. In fact, Bungie has yet to address whether Strange Coins will still be a currency in The Taken King, as far as we know.

PvP Rituals and Daily Missions

And finally, as previously detailed, Lord Shaxx will have his own weekly PvP rituals for Crucible fans to complete. The Crucible handler will offer a bounty called ‘The True Meaning of War’ that will grant Nightfall tier rewards.

Daily rituals will also change to an account wide completion instead of a character wide one. To offset that change, Bungie has boosted the rewards for completing the Daily Story Mission and the Daily PvP mission so that players can focus on one character.

By and large it sounds as if Bungie is letting these weekly rituals feel more like that. Rather than rush to complete them or constantly switch characters to do so, Destiny: The Taken King will make the rewards greater and offer them account-wide. Sure, doing away with the Nightfall punishment makes the strikes a little easier, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

Oh, and one last thing to note: any players who hope to jump right into these Weekly rituals should know that they all require level 40 and players will have to beat Oryx before accessing them. Whether that’s in the King’s Fall raid or a story mission is unclear, but it sounds like the first thing on everyone’s to-do list is a showdown with the Hive king.

What do you think about the changes to the weekly rituals? What do you like? What do you dislike?

Destiny: The Taken King releases September 15, 2015 for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Source: Bungie