No less than four of Destiny 2's explorable zones are soon to be removed from the live game. This has understandably created a rush to experience all the content said zones have on offer, as well as old Raids. Thankfully, Bungie anticipated this and made the grind more tolerable, including an upcoming tweak to the acquisition of Sleeper Nodes on Mars.
The main destinations leaving Destiny 2 for the Destiny Content Vault are Titan, Io, Mercury, and of course, Mars. Players have until November 10 to complete any unfinished pursuits, triumphs, etc. on these destinations such as the coveted Warminded emblem earned by unlocking all 40 of the Martian Sleeper Nodes.
To some, this might not look like such a bad treasure hunt, but there is a caveat. To unlock a Sleeper Node, a player needs an Override Frequency, obtained by combining four Resonate Stems, which can be looted from Mars activities such as Lost Sectors and Public Events. Every Sleeper Node has a corresponding Override Frequency but which one the player gets after combining four Stems is (somewhat) randomized.
Fans had found some pattern regarding Override Frequencies and player location but it doesn't protect players against bad luck. It's especially hard to collect the last missing few nodes, making this one of the most notorious grinds in the game, especially for an exclusive emblem.
Bungie confirms that it is highly rare to get an Override Frequency for a node in the player's current area, such as Aurora Reach or Braytech Futurescape. To unlock a specific node, it is recommended players leave that node's area before crafting the Override Frequency.
However, the main problem was that there were two lists that tracked player progress, one in the background and one in-game. The background list is what was supposed to be responsible for duplicate protection, but it was frequently cleansed. This was never communicated to the players as their in-game checklists never reset.
The dissonance between the in-game list and background list is why players would receive so many duplicates as the game internally didn't recognize player progress. After September 8, the background checklist will not be reset anymore, however, players are encouraged to open nodes they've already unlocked just one more time. Doing this will permanently update the background checklist, minimizing the chance of duplicates in the future.
This doesn't mean the progress players see in their Triumphs page has been dialed back to zero, but players will need to re-open nodes if they'd like to benefit from bad luck protection. Bungie states that it is impossible for the team to completely protect players against duplicates but says the changes being implemented will substantially reduce the amount of effort it takes to complete all 40 Sleeper Nodes. The article makes it sound like there may be more hidden tweaks that went into this duplicate protection patch but no further details are given.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, Stadia, and Xbox One, with PS5 and Xbox Series X versions also in development.