Destiny 2 developer Bungie has confirmed that exotic vendor Xur will not offer random rolls during Season of Dawn. While this was a change that players hoped to see from Xur moving forward, it is not going to be part of the studio’s plan just yet. Instead, Xur will say the same exotic armor roll that is available from the Destiny 2 collections tab.
Destiny 2 Community Manager dmg04 confirmed the news on the game’s subreddit, hoping to get ahead of any community frustrations before the first Friday of Season of Dawn. There had been discussions among the community whether Xur would change in future Seasons of Destiny 2, but that does not appear to be the case.
Each week, Xur appears somewhere in Destiny 2 with a selection of exotic items for sale, 1 weapon and 3 armor pieces. On its face, Xur is useful because he helps Destiny 2 players acquire the exotic weapons and armor that they may be missing from their collection. But as time rolls on and players fill out their exotic collection, the appeal of Xur has died down.
Then, when Bungie introduced new systems for armor into Destiny 2, Xur became a little more interesting, if only because of the perk rolls he could sell. One week, for example, Xur sold One Eyed Mask with Enhanced Hand Cannon targeting, which was an extremely good perk roll for the powerful Titan exotic. At the very least, the random perk rolls on armor made Xur worth checking out week-to-week.
With the introduction of the Armor 2.0 system, the hope was that Xur’s viability would increase since he could sell different combinations of stats on his armor. But instead Xur sold the basic exotics that players could acquire from their collections, and that is not going to change in Season 9.
Dmg04 explained that the goal of Xur still remains to help players obtain the exotics that they may not already own. First, the three exotic armor pieces and one exotic weapon are available as curated by Bungie, and then the Fated Engram can help players with acquiring an exotic they don’t yet own (from the Year 1 and Year 2 loot pool).
The good news is that the Fated Engram is being combined with the basic Exotic Engram to create an engram that guarantees players a missing exotic. After that, the engram will give players a random exotic weapon or armor piece, with the armor piece featuring random stats.
Depending on community response throughout the season it’s possible that things will change in Destiny 2 Season 10. Season of Dawn feels a lot like a season of learning for Bungie, who will need to set the tone for the game’s mid-year content offerings moving forward.
Destiny 2: Season of Dawn starts December 10, 2019 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.