Even in it's third year of life, Destiny 2 continues to be an evolving experience for players. Bungie has moved to a more seasonal structure following its breakup from Activision, giving fans a heads up when new content is on the way. In addition to seasons and dedicated expansions like Forsaken and Shadowkeep that introduce sandbox updates, Bungie has also made sure to keep things fresh during seasons where needed, squashing bugs,  done it's best to keep balance in mind by buffing and nerfing gear, tweaking super abilities, and much more.

Season of the Dawn continued that trend last week by introducing a hefty list of changes, updates, and additions. As expected, the Destiny 2 sandbox was fundamentally changed once again with a fair amount of items related to community feedback. The official notes are quite long and includes plenty of very minor updates. On the other hand, the Season 9 update has a lot of major changes including three subclass overhauls and even a change to the Eververse store based on the experience of season 8.

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So in an effort to sort through only the most important items, here are the 10 biggest changes that Bungie made to Destiny 2 with the Season of Dawn.

saint-14 perfect paradox

Solar Subclass Buff

Arguably the biggest change made to the game arrived for three solar subclasses that the community widely agreed was underperforming compared to the others.

For Warlocks, the Attunement of Sky, aka the top Dawnblade tree, has been upgraded to make the player more lethal from above and increase their movement speed. To help do this, Icarus Dash has been enhanced with extra speed and mobility. The melee attack has been replaced with a new ability called Celestial Fire, which acts similar to handheld supernova for Voidwalkers. Basically, it fires off a spiral of three explosive solar projectiles, allowing players to attack from a distance. Heat Rises was also reworked and now allows players to consume their grenade in order to extend glide time and reduce in-air penalties for weapons. Winged Sun lets players perform actions while gliding like using Celestial Fire, shooting weapons, and toss grenades. Getting a kill in air also grants melee energy and extends the Heat Rises duration.

For Hunters, Bungie focused on the Way of the Sharpshooter bottom tree. To help set it apart from the top, 6-shot Golden Gun tree, this path now has increased auto-aim distance and reliability when aiming down the sights in Golden Gun. The biggest change is the new melee ability called Weighted Knife. Any precision hit will be a 1 hit kill and completely refill the melee ability. However, the knife is slower to wind up and throw but it will bounce once. Practice Makes Perfect is largely the same, but the effect lasts longer, gives less energy, and stacks twice. Crowd Pleaser and Line 'em Up are now combined together and the new ability is called Knock 'em Down. This new ability increases stability and ADS speed in exchange for precision kills. It lasts for 10 seconds but it can be extended for additional precision final blows or assists.

Finally, the middle tree named Code of the Devastator for Titans has been adjusted. This skill tree is the newest one for Titans, having been added inside of the Forsaken expansion giving them a giant flaming maul. Roaring Flames now lasts 25% longer, increases the damage of the Throwing Hammer, and gives it a larger pickup radius. The super ability also lasts longer and the heavy slam explosion reaches higher to hit jumping or floating enemies. Light attacks cost less, while the heavy slam costs just a little bit more.

The update also made minor tweaks to other subclasses as well such as increasing the damage for Thundercrash, adding a short window to not break invisibility after casting a smoke bomb, and modified the handheld supernova charge time.

Recluse Gets Adjusted

This one may be fairly divisive among the community as the Recluse submachine gun has widely been one of the more stronger weapons in the game, especially inside of the Crucible. For that reason alone, it has become the bane of many players existence. To bring the weapon back in line, Bungie has altered its signature perk, Master at Arms.

graphic of The Recluse SMG from Destiny 2

Prior to Season of Dawn, the Recluse's Master at Arms perk essentially made all damage a critical hit regardless of the location in addition to a damage buff. Following this update with the perk active, the damage bonuses and buffs are now only activated on headshots, while any other body part will be normal damage. While the gun is still capable of big damage, especially at close range, this change should have an impact on the weapon. Needless to say, this should make most PvP players happy to hear.

One-Eyed Mask Is (Slightly) Less Scary

This is another divisive change, that will likely please non-Titans. Arguably the best Titan exotic in the game as well as a massively popular option for PvP modes, the One-Eyed Mask is no longer giving players an overshield after they defeat an enemy that inflicted damage on them.

Unlike the Recluse, this may not be as impact as Bungie believes. Sure, losing the shield hurts, but players are still getting a damage buff, health regeneration, and marking targets. Even following the nerf, it's still a valuable exotic item and will likely continue to be a strong option going forward. At the very least, the nerf gives other classes a fighting chance, even if it is a small one.

Season Pass User Interface Enhancements

Within the Season of the Undying, the battle pass featured a lot of bonuses for reaching various tiers. Things like XP bonuses, more chances to earn gear, and more. As nice as that was, the game wasn't great at communicating all of these bonuses and how they stacked. For Season of Dawn, Bungie has added a number of user interface tweaks to the battle pass screen to better relay information to players.

When looking at the Seasons tab of the director, new symbols appear under the current Battle Pass to show which bonuses are active and how much the player is getting. Not only that, Bungie squashed a bug so players can now view Season Pass armor with the correct stats and energy type when previewing it.

Eververse Tweaks

For many fans, season 8 represented a low point for the Eververse microtransaction store. While the store moved to the director for easier access, ways to acquire Bright Dust largely decreased, users felt that most items up for sale were locked behind a paywall, and there was no way of knowing what items would be offered for bright dust.

silver bright dust season of dawn

Thanks to community feedback, Bungie has tweaked a number of things with its in-game store. Transparency is the biggest change as the studio confirmed that Season of Dawn will feature around 80% of the Eververse items for both Bright Dust and Silver. In addition, social media channels will keep fans informed of what will and won't be offered for Bright Dust.

For 200 Bright Dust, players can purchase a Concentrated Mattergem consumable at the store which has a chance to drop an Upgrade Module when a boss is defeated. Bungie also added in a safeguard which will actively prevent people from attempting to purchase items they already own. Keep in mind that not everything will be offered for Bright Dust as the developer confirmed that the store is a major source of revenue and helps continue to pay for the development of the game.

Escalation Protocol Becomes Less Restrictive

While this activity may not be as popular as it once was, Bungie added a number of tweaks that makes it much more player friendly for those still grinding out weapons and armor.

The biggest change is that beating Wave 7 no longer requires players to have a key first. It can be opened after every successful completion of the final boss phase. Better yet, each chest reward gives the player one piece of Escalation Protocol armor until the full set is obtained. At that point, a random piece of armor will be given. The unique sounding weapon set have not been changed and are still tied to the weekly boss.

Finally, Decryption Keys and Key Fragments are being removed entirely from the game and players inventories as well. That should help open up some slots for players to store more items.

Season 9 Crucible Map Rotation

Fans may be a bit disappointed that Season of Dawn doesn't have a stronger focus on the Crucible, but that doesn't mean the PvP side of the game doesn't have a few updates rolling out this season. The first and most obvious change is that Rusted Lands, a popular map from the first game is making its big return in Season 9. In addition, Dead Cliffs, Legion's Gulch, Retribution, and Solitude have been added back into the game after taking a season off.

On the other side of the rotation, Emperor's Respite, Equinox, Firebase Echo, and Vostok have been removed, though they're still available inside of Private matches. Based on Bungie's pattern, it's likely they'll be returning next season, with another set of maps getting pulled.

In terms of playlists, Elimination has made its way back into the game after spending season 8 inside of the Crucible Labs testing area. While it's not officially Trails of Osiris, it's likely the closest thing fans will get for the time being.

Xenophage Buff

xenophage in pit of heresy dungeon

The very disappointing season 8 exotic may finally be able to shine in the Season of Dawn thanks in large part to a number of damage buffs.

To help make the heavy machine gun more viable, its PvE damage has been increased by 50%. On the PvP side, players will be getting more ammo for the weapon. hen picking up a heavy ammo crate, players can grab 4 high explosive rounds form a shared crate and 6 for a non-shared one. It's currently unknown how this buff has helped, but at this point, anything is better than nothing.

Mod Adjustments

While Armor 2.0 generally received positive reviews from players, the new system wasn't perfect. This season, Bungie is continuing to evolve the mechanics by making a number of adjustments to how mods can be used with armor.

Bungie has removed stacking restrictions on most armor mods, meaning players can now utilize multiple identical mods for an increased effect. One thing to note that the more identical mods that are set in armor will have diminishing returns than if the player used all different mods. Ammo Finder and Ammo Scavenger have been more generalized and unlocked for all players for the head and leg armor slots.

As expected, the new season has also brought with it all new armor mod sockets which has been applied to Vanguard, Crucible, Gambit, Iron Banner, and Mercury destination armor so they can utilize the Dawn Armor mods granted from Obelisks and the artifact.

It may not be flashy like some of the other items in this list, but Bungie has also reduced the cost of slotting a Weapon Mod from 5000 to 500 glimmer. This should go a long way to helping players experiment a bit more with different loadouts without feeling like they're throwing away glimmer each time.

Improved Bounties

Bounties also got a much needed overhaul in Season 9. The weekly Field Calibration that previously tasked players with playing Strikes, Crucible matches, and Gambit has been combined into a single objective that gains progress from any of the three modes. This changes allows players to simply play what they want without forcing them into something they may not enjoy.

The Gunsmith received repeatable bounties similar to what Drifter, Zavala, and Shaxx have on a daily basis. Along with Drifter, these bounty vendors have also received new weekly and repeatable bounties to help mix things up.

Speaking of the Crucible, all grenade and melee repeatable bounties have been removed and many of the completion requirements have been reduced. Mode specific daily bounties have been added and can be obtained one per day based on both full-time and rotator playlists.

Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is available now for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One.

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