Heading into Destiny 2: Beyond Light, players are preparing for the new grind as they always do. Even though Bungie has implemented new restrictions for the World First raid race, plenty of D2 players are still hoarding bounties, holding onto exotic quests, and stockpiling materials. But although most of the old tricks should still work in Destiny 2 Year 4, one popular power leveling method is going away.
Prior to the launch of Destiny 2's Beyond Light expansion, Bungie confirmed that it is making a change to the gear awarded from Factions and Destination vendors. Rather than the gear being close or at the current power level of the player, these weapons and armor pieces will instead be 20 power levels below.
This is significant because many Destiny 2 players would turn in tokens and use the gear as a way to “fill out” their power level if a specific item was lagging behind. If, for example, a player was power level 1020 but their class item was power level 1010, they could try for a 1017-1020 power level class item from vendor packages. Increasing one's base power level is always crucial for leveling as fast as possible because it ensures the highest drops.
This trick was so popular, in fact, that there were Destiny 2 websites dedicated to tracking the power level of items granted from individual vendor packages. While Zavala might be giving gear that was 1 or 2 power levels under a player's base, Brother Vance on Mercury might have gear that was right at the player's level.
Of course, there were a lot of restrictions to this technique, like having the necessary tokens or destination materials in order to earn rank up packages. Players were also relying on RNG in the hopes of getting the right armor piece, which could lead to sitting at a vendor instead of playing the game.
Bungie clearly saw this as antithetical to the experience of Destiny 2 and decided to wipe it out. But the hope is that the changes the developer has planned for powerful rewards will make it so players don't even realize the rank up trick is gone.
Destiny 2 is supposed to have a smart loot system that aims to give players drops in slots that are the lowest power level, but longtime players know that the system rarely works as advertised. The token trick was extremely useful and it will be interesting to see how the change will impact the race to the new Destiny 2: Beyond Light power level cap.
Destiny 2: Beyond Light releases November 10, 2020 for PC, PS4, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. The PS5 version will release on November 12.