Destiny 2’s The Witch Queen expansion is only a few weeks away, and Bungie is ramping up its weekly blog posts. The studio revealed on Thursday that the game will get some major economic shifts when the new expansion hits on Feb. 22, as well as the date for the next raid — Saturday, March 5, a little less than two weeks after release.
The biggest reveal around the economy is that Bungie will decrease the amount of “blue drops” in Destiny 2. Blues are “rare” weapons and armor in Destiny, and they’re largely useless. They serve a purpose when players are first leveling up, but quickly clutter players’ inventories during the weeks and months between a new season or expansion.
Starting in The Witch Queen, blue engrams won’t drop in playlist activities (Strikes, Crucible, and Gambit) for Guardians who have surpassed the Power “soft cap” — the point where blues stop being useful. While this means that players will still stumble on more blues when exploring the world around them, it should make inventory management much more streamlined.
Banshee-44, the Gunsmith, will also see a big rework for The Witch Queen. Like Zavala and Shaxx before him, Banshee will get his own reputation track. Players can level up Banshee’s rep — and presumably get some rewards — by dismantling Legendary or Exotic weapons and completing his specific bounties. Because of this change, veteran players will need to spend all of their Gunsmith Materials and Weapon Telemetries before the expansion hits, as they’ll disappear on Feb. 22.
Mod Components, which players currently use to buy old weapon and armor mods from Banshee-44 and Ada-1, are also going away. Players can instead buy mods with Glimmer, and both vendors will sell four mods a day instead of just two.
Master Rahool, Banshee’s neighbor, will be taking on a more important role in The Witch Queen. In addition to taking over Spider’s resource store — since Spider will disappear along with the Tangled Shore this February — Rahool will also sell Enhancement Prisms and Ascendant Shards. Banshee-44 and Ada-1 will stop selling these items once Rahool adds them to his inventory, but they’ll still cost the same. As another quality of life improvement, Rahool will be able to decrypt Umbral Engrams, removing the need to leave the tower to open them. Players who want to spend resources to focus their engrams — guranteeing certain drops — will still need to go to the HELM.
Finally, Xur will get some added love in The Witch Queen. Hawkmoon and Dead Man’s Tale are both unique Exotics in that you can run their mission repeatedly to get different roles — Exotics usually have the same perks every time you get them. But since the Presage and Harbinger missions are going away on the 22nd, Xur will get a new batch of Hawkmoons and Dead Man’s Tales every Friday. The Catalysts for these weapons — as well as those for Ager’s Scepter, Outbreak Perfected, Whisper of the Worm, and The Fourth Horseman — will also drop from playlist activities.
