Destiny 2: Season of Opulence guide – Release date, content plan and more

UPDATE:

For help with the expansion’s “The Invitation” questline, make sure you head on over to our The Invitation Quest guide. It includes the Imperial Treasure Map location, along with the easiest ways to complete the Glorious Harvest step too!

Get to grips with the Menagerie, with our comprehensive Menagerie guide hub. It contains a breakdown of all the stages, boss fights and also explains how the Chalice of Opulence works too.

LATEST UPDATE: Destiny 2 Season of Opulence – Roadmap, Pinnacle Weapons and more

You guessed it, Bungie’s swung by with another TWAB filled with Season of Opulence details. Let’s not dawdle around, here’s a quick roundup of the highlights:

Season of Opulence: Roadmap

Here’s what Bungie has planned for the Season as we progress through June and towards the end of July.

• June 4th – Menagerie & Crown of Sorrow
• June 11th – New Menagerie Boss & Truth Quest
• June 18th – New Menagerie Boss & Iron Banner Quest
• June 25th – Menagerie Heroic Mode
• July 2nd – Lumina Quest
• July 9th – Tribute Hall & Moments of Triumph
• July 30th – Solstice of Heroes

What’s the Menagerie?

Here’s a no-frills description of what the Menagerie entails.

• It’s a new six-man matchmade activity which’ll see you facing off against hordes of enemies and powerful bosses.
• Calus will give you a Chalice of Opulence. You’ll then head into the Menagerie and collect special runes for defeating enemies and the like.
• You’ll then be able to trade these runes for special rewards of your choosing.
• Your Chalice of Opulence can also be upgraded using a new currency called “Imperial” for more plentiful and powerful rewards too.

How do I use my Chalice?

Here’s how you’ll go about using your Chalice in conjunction with the Menagerie.

• Earn runes to slot on your Chalice through the following:
• Completing weekly bounties
• Opening up the weekly chests on the new Nessus Barge
• Using a consumable that will reward you a rune after a strike, Crucible, or Gambit completion
• The same consumable will also give other players in your fireteam a chance to earn an additional rune
• Slot the runes into your Chalice before you enter the Menagerie
• Play the Menagerie to earn your rewards
• Completing the Menagerie will award you the gear you chose with your rune selections
• Each rune affects what you receive and some of its properties, depending on how you slot them

How do I upgrade my Chalice?

To upgrade your Chalice, you’ll need to earn Imperials through the Menagerie. Here’s how it all works:

• You can earn Imperials several ways:
• Completing weekly bounties
• Completing certain Triumphs
• Using special consumables that allows for Imperial acquisition
• Chalice upgrades that allow you to earn Imperials through playlist activities
• You choose which upgrades you unlock first!
• Unlock additional rune slots to allow more control of an item’s specialization
• Upgrade it so you earn more runes, or more rune variety
• Upgrade to allow for additional powerful rewards from the Menagerie

Pinnacle Weapons

The Season of Opulence is also introducing three new Pinnacle weapons (a grenade launcher, sniper rifle and bow) all of which you’ll find over on Bungie’s official page.

Elsewhere, non-exotic Fusion rifles will be buffed, Sturm and Drang will be tweaked and Swords also.

UPDATE: Destiny 2 Season of Opulence – More big changes!

In its most recent TWAB post, Bungie detailed even more tweaks it’ll be making when the Season of Opulence arrives.

Here are all the key details straight from the post itself:

Power Surge

• Instead of Bounties, there will be a new Power Surge quest to kick off your Season of Opulence journey.
• You will also need to complete this quest to access the new Raid.
• Quest completion is account wide, meaning you’ll only have to complete it once for it to count across all of your characters.
• After one character completes the quest, alternate characters will be rewarded with Surge gear at Power Level 690.

Gambit Bounties

• Power boosts received from Gambit Bounties will now decrease once you’ve achieved 700 Power, and decrease even further once you’ve reached 720 Power.

Crown of Sorrow Raid

• The Crown of Sorrow raid begins on day one of Season of Opulence at 4 PM PDT.
• Players who want to compete will need to complete the Power Surge Quest.
• While Contest is active, players will face an enforced challenge throughout the Raid. This means, Power beyond certain levels will provide no advantage for a given fight (e.g., for the first fight all Power above 700 won’t provide an advantage, and for the final fight Power above 720 will not provide an advantage).
• We are going to deploy the update at 8AM Pacific and the game will be down until 10AM Pacific, so that as many players as possible can get through the download and verification step and be ready for Opulence launch.

The Eververse

• Every new Eververse item in Season of Opulence will be available for direct purchase via Silver or Bright Dust. Most of these offers will be time limited, with new items available weekly.
• Season of Opulence’s Bright Engram will contain a collection of community favorite legacy items, with a focus on the “Best of Year One.”

UPDATE: Destiny 2 Season of Opulence – Sandbox Changes

The Destiny Dev team delivered a blog post filled with just a handful of its plans for Season 7’s sandbox.

We thought we’d post all the key details straight from the blog post just below:

Whisper of the Worm

Whisper of the Worm was already adjusted in Season of the Drifter, but an Exotic that can generate an infinite amount of Heavy ammo is still a gigantic outlier and renders many weapons irrelevant for certain encounters. While Exotics are intended to be powerful and novel, bypassing the ammo economy can tend to force us to adjust enemies to compensate. This effectively results in Sniper Rifles as a whole being punished because of Whisper’s unique ammo ability. As a result, we’re removing the ammo generation ability so that we can increase the effectiveness of all other Snipers that don’t have an endless ammo supply.

• White Nail pulls ammo from reserves rather than creating it
• Reserve ammunition increased to 18 (without ammo reserve perks)

Sleeper Simulant

The reduction of bounced shot damage for Sleeper Simulant is already present on several important enemies. We are now making this reduction part of the weapon. The difference in damage is too large between a single precision shot of Sleeper Simulant and an angled shot that pierces the target and then also hits the target again with the bounced projectiles. Much like Whisper, we’ve had to adjust enemies around that potential. By making these changes a permanent part of the weapon, we can get it into a more balanced position.

• Reduced ricochet/bounce damage on boss combatants
• Modified precision behavior—total damage is unchanged, but non-precision shots are significantly more forgiving

Lord of Wolves

Lord of Wolves received a massive increase in damage with the full benefits of the Shotgun changes in Season of the Drifter. This made it a lot more popular, but we got a significant amount of feedback that Release the Wolves activating on every kill made it difficult to control the weapon’s ammo consumption. As a result, we’re allowing you to swap between the two states to control the output, while also reducing its output slightly.

• PvE damage reduced by 20%
• Release the Wolves perk has been reworked:
• No longer triggers automatically on kill
• This effect is now triggered by holding reload, similar to “The Fundamentals” on Hard Light and Borealis
• PvE damage and range bonuses on this effect has been removed and replaced with a universal damage bonus instead

Ace of Spades

Ace of Spades is pretty hot in the Crucible, and has been since its inclusion in Destiny 2: Forsaken. The number of perks on the weapon, combined with the semi-permanent effect of Memento Mori gives the weapon too many advantages compared to other weapons. Now that Memento Mori ends when you stow the weapon, you’ll need to make a decision on whether or not you’ll keep the weapon drawn to retain the bonus.

• Memento Mori now ends if the weapon is stowed
• The PvP damage bonus of Memento Mori was slightly reduced to prevent two-tapping Guardians while Vengeance (One-Eyed Mask) was active
• Specifically, you need four resilience to survive this
• Memento Mori is active for six shots again (up from five)

Exotic Armor

Along with the weapons above, we will also be making some changes to some Exotic armor pieces. Primarily, we’re paying attention to pieces of Exotic armor that grant back Super energy. We felt they are increasingly becoming “must-pick” gear choices. Orb generation from teammates is meant to be the best way to accelerate your Super generation. These Exotics are allowing players to bypass this teamwork mechanic by generating a large amount of Super energy without relying on other players’ orbs.

Also, because these items are so overwhelmingly strong in situations where players face off against large numbers of enemies, some activities were designed considering the use of armor such as Orpheus Rigs, Phoenix Protocol, Skull of Dire Ahamkara, etc. This means if someone in your fireteam doesn’t have these Super Exotics equipped, the activity becomes far more difficult.

We are making some changes to these armor pieces to try to preserve their power fantasy and still leave them as viable choices for difficult activities without making players feel like they must have them equipped or be at a huge disadvantage.

Super-Generating Exotic Armor Changes

• Skull of Dire Ahamkara, Orpheus Rigs, and Phoenix Protocol now receive Super energy back with diminishing returns, making it rarer to get a full Super back
• Shards of Galanor and Ursa Furiosa had their Super gain caps reduced to be in parity with other Super Exotic changes
• Gwisin Vest had its energy reduced from 15% to 8% for killing one to two Guardians
• Still scales up similar to before when killing three or more Guardians
• PvE energy return remains similar to before

UPDATE: Luna’s Howl and Not Forgotten Nerfs

Ever since Luna’s Howl and Not Forgotten arrived on the scene, players have both loved and despised these Hand Cannons in equal measure. They’re incredibly strong in the Crucible so wielding them feels punchy, powerful and rewarding. Being on the receiving end, though – not so fun.

Each weapon’s incredible power lies in the intrinsic perk “Magnificent Howl”, which grants a short period of bonus damage if you manage to land two precision shots in a row. Activate this and you’re practically unstoppable.

With this in mind, Bungie’s going to be dishing out nerfs to both weapons once the Season of Opulence gets underway.

Video by xHOUNDISHx

Here’s a look at the nerfs:

• Magnificent Howl will be adjusted so that it increases only body-shot damage, resulting in a two headshot/one body-shot kill.
• Magnificent Howl will still give an advantage due to requiring less precision hits for optimal time to kill.

Bungie’s also changing the weapon’s archetype, moving it from a 180 RPM Hand Cannon to a 150 RPM precision weapon.

UPDATE: Community Summit

Bungie is hosting a Season of Opulence community summit featuring some of the Destiny community’s most prolific members. It’ll be an opportunity for Destiny stalwarts to get hands on with some of the new content and offer constructive feedback to help better the upcoming expansion.

This isn’t the first time Bungie has enlisted the help of Destiny content creators, as it hosted a crisis community summit before the launch of Destiny 2’s Forsaken Expansion. At that point in time, the game desperately needed saving and it certainly helped the game turn a corner.

It’s great to see Bungie going through the same motions that made Destiny 2’s Forsaken expansion great. Here’s hoping the Season of Opulence delivers!

Destiny 2: Season of Opulence – Everything we know so far

Here’s a roundup of all the content we know is arriving with Destiny 2’s Season of Opulence.

• Bungie is changing how Enhancement Cores for infusion work. Scrapper Bounties will be removed and Bungie will be making Enhancement Cores more accessible. When the next season starts, Scrapper Bounties will be replaced with a selection of daily and weekly bounties purchasable with Gunsmith Materials.
• We know there’s going to be a Power Increase, we’re thinking along the lines of 680-750-ish.
• There will be more Exotic Quests, Vanity Rewards, Triumphs, Lore Books and the likes of Iron Banner returning.
• As expected, the Season of Opulence will bring with it new weapons and armour to chase.
• One of the most exciting prospects is the all-new Raid. We’re not sure where it will be set, but there’s a chance it could be something to do with Emperor Calus, or at the very least, set within a similar “opulent” universe.
• We’ll be getting a brand new 6-player matchmade activity. We’d hedge our bets on this being an alternative to a Raid, or at least a grindable dungeon to some extent. Unsurprisingly there are many high Power Level players who simply don’t get to experience Raids because they don’t have a fireteam to consistently group up with. Perhaps this will be Bungie’s way of getting these players involved in similar content without having to commit so much time and effort.
• Finally, there are two mysterious pieces of content which will be revealed at a later date. Who knows what Bungie has in store, but here’s hoping for some extra PVP modes or sweeping changes to older content like the Blind Well and Escalation Protocol to make them more relevant.