Destiny 2 players took over the Destiny subreddit on Friday, in celebration of Gjallarhorn Day. Every post, save for one about the Redrix’s Broadsword quest, was themed around Gjallarhon and the moderation of those posts was at a minimum.
It was a rare chance for the Destiny subreddit to let loose, much in the same way it did back when Xur sold Gjallarhorn on August 17, 2015. There were posts with players talking about deleting their characters, some simply begging for upvotes, and one really long post that was comprised only of people commenting, “Gjallarhorn.”
For those that might not remember Gjallarhorn day, it was something. Only twice during the history of Destiny 1 did Xur sell Gjallarhorn. Once during the second week of the game, and once right before the launch of Destiny 1’s first major expansion, The Taken King. Eventually, in the Rise of Iron expansion, Bungie gave all players their own Gjallarhorn, with a black Gjallarhorn skin for pre-order holders, but at the time, Gjallarhorn day was something special.
Players had faced a lot of elitism if they didn’t have Gjallarhorn, since the weapon rendered plenty of bosses to rubble very quickly. Nightfall Strikes with solar burn (heck, even without solar burn) were notorious for the fast Gjallarhorn clear. Even beating the final boss in Vault of Glass, Atheon, was made easy thanks to the exotic rocket launcher.
And as one might imagine, players that didn’t have Gjallarhorn became jealous. Then, Xur sold the weapon on the 49th week and any that could log in for the weekend and had the Strange Coins were able to see what all the fuss was about. And yes Bungie did nerf the weapon to make it less useful, but it was still a special day. Hence the celebration.
It’s funny that Gjallarhorn Day would come around while a lot of the community is debating whether Destiny (and now Destiny 2) is making things too easy for players. There was a time when rewards were special, and Gjallarhorn was easily one of those. But eventually it became something that anyone could acquire and lost some of that feeling of uniqueness. Hopefully, when Destiny 2’s Forsaken expansion launches, Bungie can recapture some of that feeling with rewards.
Destiny 2: Forsaken releases September 4, 2018 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.