Destiny: The Taken King hype is steadily rising, with expansion set to release tomorrow. While some gamers are content to wait and see what will be available in the expansion until tomorrow, others are digging deep into the game's files, previews, and developer streams to try and find out ahead of time. That's been made harder, however, due to Bungie taking steps to hide in-game files from gamers, in order to maintain the surprise for those who actually play through the game.

However, that hasn't kept gamers from taking what is known about Destiny: The Taken King and speculating from there. Developer Luke Smith has mentioned that his favorite weapon is "Touch of Malice", but no one knows exactly what that exotic weapon is. YouTuber Arrekz Gaming, however, is hoping to illuminate the matter.

Arrekz Gaming has pieced together what is known about exotic weapon Touch of Malice, and has come to the conclusion that the weapon may be a pulse rifle or assault rifle. He believes Touch of Malice is pictured in an achievement image attached to completing The Old Hunger quest, entitled Hunger Pangs. The image pictures what appears to be a currently-unknown rifle with a mysterious energy source inside it. The energy source also matches the image of a new consumable found in the game's data, but its information is classified, and nothing more is known about it at this time.

[HTML1]

In addition, Arrekz believes that the Touch of Malice and Touch of Mercy weapon perks are both attached to the Touch of Malice gun. The Touch of Malice perk description explains that the final round of the magazine regenerates continuously, and grants the user a bonus damage effect in return for a penalty to the user's life force. Whether this is a continuous drain or a reduction of overall health is uncertain. Touch of Mercy, on the other hand, returns a portion of the user's health after three rapid kills.

If both of these perks are attached to the Touch of Malice gun, it should be possible for skilled Destiny players to balance the negative and positive effects that come with using this weapon. However, considering these two are not the only "Touched" perks, it's unclear whether they're both attached to Touch of Malice or not. There's also no absolute certainty that Destiny's Hunger Pangs achievement pictures the Touch of Malice, as Arrekz points out himself, there's still a mysterious new rocket launcher that's yet to be named.

Destiny Guardians are undoubtedly extremely eager to get into The Taken King and find out all of its secrets as soon as possible. Until then, one can only speculate about the weaponry in the game, but we'll soon know whether these ideas are true or not.

Destiny: The Taken King releases tomorrow for PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

Source: Arrekz Gaming, Destiny Tracker