Bungie is shaking up things in Destiny 2 through the release of the new expansion Shadowkeep. One of the biggest changes is to how armor works and the mechanics surrounding this key piece of a player’s overall power.
With new stats, changes to mods, tweaks to Masterworking, and other changes, Armor 2.0 is proving to be a huge benefit in some ways and a pain in others. From what’s been discovered so far, here’s everything you need to know.
10 How To Get 2.0 Armor Pieces
All of the old armor in your vault stash is now considered Armor 1.0; everything else you don’t have yet is considered Armor 2.0. This means that if you want to start experimenting with the new changes and see what all the fuss is about, then you need to go out and start grinding for new armor.
This isn’t to say you should ditch all of your old armor right away. Keep the strong pieces and bag the rest, but it is vital for long-term viability that you acquire some new sets.
9 Armor 2.0 Collections
The quickest way to get new armor is through Collections. All of the Exotic pieces will be delivered as Armor 2.0 and can be used right away. Depending on your stash of resources, you could very quickly beef up an Exotic set and be somewhat viable without any grinding or questing.
Unfortunately, all of those Legendaries you can obtain through Collections will not be Armor 2.0. Instead you’ll have to go out and get new copies. Take a moment to look through your Exotic Collections and consider switching out for some of the pieces there.
8 New Stats
Armor 2.0 has introduced some new stats and players not familiar with the first Destiny will be unfamiliar with their use and how they affect the old stats. So here is a quick review: Intellect reduces the cooldown for Supers, Strength reduces the cooldown for Melee based attacks, Discipline reduces the cooldown for Grenade based attacks, Mobility affects the character’s movement speed, Recover affects shield regeneration, and Resilience determines total health.
These stats will come in set amounts on new armor you find. If you want better stats or even different stats, generally speaking, you’ll need to grind out the armor piece with the stats you’re looking for.
7 Tiers Of 10
Another thing to keep in mind about armor stats is that they are only applied in tiers of 10. Meaning if you have, say 13 Resilience, the game treats it as if you have 10 Resilience. You won’t see an improvement until you raise it to 20.
This is important to keep in mind when outfitting your character, as it might be better to go with a different armor piece if the stat raise doesn’t equal 10. Swapping a loadout that gets you 39 strength and 25 mobility so you can get 30 strength with 30 mobility is much more beneficial, for example.
6 Masterworking
When you do get your hands on a Legendary set, you can upgrade it for a total of 10 levels. At level 10, the armor is considered a Masterwork and provides a +2 bonus to all stats, and increases the energy total for mods to 10.
It’s a subtle difference, but that +2 boost can mean a lot when figuring your loadout and can be enough to nudge you to the next tier. The extra energy is also vitally important, as you’ll see in a later entry.
5 New Mods
Perhaps the biggest update with Armor 2.0 are the changes made to mods. Going forward, mods have effectively replaced perks, which is a major improvement, as it can potentially cut down a lot on your overall grind. It also does away with rolling for perks, as you can now apply those perks to whatever piece of armor you want.
Each mod can be plugged or unplugged with no limitations, meaning they’re no longer one-time uses and they cut down significantly on how long you’ll be grinding for the mods you’ll be using. It also makes switching armor or trying new builds no longer a pain.
4 Obtaining Mods
You can get mods via Banshee-44, the gunsmith who’ll have some for sale along with other useful items like Upgrade Modules. The other way is through World Engrams.
As players dive further into the content, it’s likely there will be more sources to obtain mods from, possibly even quests or side challenges. Considering you only need a handful and they have unlimited uses, it wont take long to acquire enough for your needs.
3 Armor Energy
Before you go plugging mods willy-nilly, it’s important to remember there is a limitation to the number of mods you can have installed on a piece of armor. Each armor piece has an energy bank and each mod requires a specific amount of energy to be installed.
Energy is increased through upgrading for a total of 10 energy at Masterwork level. This means you have to mix and manage your mods to get the most out of that limited bank of energy.
2 Restrictions
Another limitation on mods are elemental restrictions. Each piece of armor has a particular element of energy it utilizes, and mods have a specific element they require in order to be used. The three elemental types are Arc, Solar, and Void.
This means if you want to install a Void mod that boosts your Hand Cannon damage, you need to have a piece of armor that is also Void-based. This can get complicated, as players will have to balance their armor elements to match their weapon elements, which can mean a bit of grinding to get the right pieces.
1 Universal Ornaments
This one isn’t critical to your power level or progressing through the story, but Universal Ornaments do provide a convenient layer of customization to your armor that is pretty cool. Any ornaments players earn through the Eververse store can be applied to any piece of armor.
This is useful for players who are forced to wear their only set of Void armor but want the look of another set entirely. Having Universal Ornaments can tweak the appearance of any armor to look how they want. As stated before, it’s not critical to gameplay and it won't affect power levels, but having the menagerie look on a new helmet you just picked up is a sweet feature.