Bungie continues to deliver exciting news that will change the face of Destiny 2 with the fast-approaching arrival of the Beyond Light expansion. Recently, Bungie revealed a new way for players to earn Powerful Rewards, which are essential for raising their Guardians' Power levels, and getting geared for end game content.
Beyond Light will be shaking up Destiny 2 in a big way, removing a large swathe of items, locales, and quest content in favor of a new, modern player experience. The new quests will also yield access to a powerful new Stasis tree for every Guardian class. Furthermore, hitting the Hard Cap for Power is getting easier, as players will now be able to obtain Powerful Reward by participating in strikes, Crucible, and Gambit matches, as well as Seasonal drops.
The dev team stated that this change will allow players who prefer to focus on PVP to continue to level up their Power level, and provide players an alternate method of obtaining Powerful rewards, if other reward sources are too daunting. Bungie did note that the fastest way to raise Power levels is still to complete weekly reward sources, but having another way to obtain Power is a welcome change. And Guardians will doubtlessly want to hit the cap as quick as possible—Beyond Light's first Raid Race kicks off shortly after launch.
Bungie has also revealed Destiny 2's new Power Caps for Beyond Light. While players will be able to use the new Powerful reward drop system to reach the Hard Cap of 1250, reaching the Pinnacle Cap of 1260 will require players to earn pinnacle rewards. Furthermore, when players first log into Destiny 2's next season, all weapons and armor will be at 1050 Power or higher, which should give Guardians who are lagging behind a leg up on tackling new content.
Hopefully, providing players easier access to Powerful rewards will mollify players who are upset about changes to Destiny 2's Bright Dust economy. Both changes seem to favor more casual players, however, as weekly Bright Dust bounties are being reduced from 200 to 100, with additional Bright Dust obtainable through the seasonal pass. Bungie notes that the majority of players will be earning more than they were before, but serious players' earnings will be taking a hit of roughly 31%.
It is difficult to assess how Beyond Light will be received on the whole, given the sweeping changes Bungie is implementing. The forthcoming expansion is more like a soft-reboot of the franchise than a direct sequel, like prior installments of fresh content. And while a great deal of information about Beyond Light has been released, there are still many question marks offering tantalizing possibilities, including the potential return of some previous favorite locales.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One with next generation releases forthcoming. Beyond Light is set to release on November 10th.