Bungie Details New Enhancement System, Weapon Changes, and More Coming with Destiny 2: The Final Shape

Bungie revealed a number of changes coming with Destiny 2: The Final Shape, which includes an enhancement system revamp, Memento changes, weapon rebalancing, and clarified a couple ongoing questions.

With Destiny 2: The Final Shape every new weapon will either by craftable, or have the option to enhance. Bungie noted basically anything with an Origin trait, besides a few select weapons from season 17, will not be enhanceable. The most notable inclusions being Adepts from Vow, and King’s Fall, which can easily be obtained/bought in Pantheon.

At base level enhanced weapons will give players the ability to add a Memento, and masterwork. Raid adepts also gain the ability to change the first two slots. At level 11 players can enter tier two enhancement, which makes all perks in the third column enhanced. Hitting level 17 will give tier three and do the same for the fourth column. Bungie notes weapons with multiple perks will have both versions be enhanced, and all of this can be done without going to the Enclave.

Mementos are also getting a slight rework. Going forward Mementos will not appear in your inventory, and will cap at three instead of one.

Bungie also confirmed what items are going into the Destiny Content Vault. These are largely the usual things like seasonal content, plus previously mentioned things like shards and ritual bounties. However, Reddit user ArcticSeaOtter noticed Defiant Battlegrounds are among the items going in. Despite players typically annoyed at content being inaccessible, many were happy with the change due to how few enjoyed said content.

Bungie Support also confirmed the recently rereleased Zero Hour is not glitched, and the current difficulty is as intended. This will be disappointing news for some, but Bungie also confirmed the limited time BRAVE title will now only require nine of the 10 triumphs to unlock. This is due to Breaking the Charge, the triumph for defeating all three wave 50 bosses, being harder to unlock than intended.

Enhancement in The Final Shape

During the Lightfall year, players have gotten a taste of weapon enhancement with the raid Adept weapons from Root of Nightmares and Crota’s End. In The Final Shape, you’ll see that this system has undergone some upgrades, making enhancing your weapons easier and allowing us to comfortably expand this system to include more weapons. Here’s a quick recap on how weapon enhancement will work alongside some of the changes:

• Weapon enhancement allows the weapon to be upgraded to receive enhanced traits, a weapon level, and a memento socket. To upgrade your weapon, players can navigate to the inspection screen and insert the enhancement tier mod for standard currencies (raid Adept weapons will continue to use Spoils of Conquest).

• Enhancement Tier 1:
  • Replaces your Masterwork and provides the weapon with an enhanced intrinsic that matches the stat of your old Masterwork.
  • Provides a weapon level, a date when you first enhanced the weapon, and a memento socket.
  • Raid Adepts only: Since these weapons have a base-crafted version, we want the Adept versions to feel like a meaningful upgrade. Therefore, these weapons can visit the Relic on Mars to adjust their first two columns (typically barrels/magazines) in a similar fashion to how crafted weapons can augment these perk columns.
• Enhancement Tier 2 (weapon level 11 requirement):
  • Once the player inserts this mod, the left column trait(s) will automatically be upgraded to their enhanced perks. If you have multiple perks, this will update all traits in the column. Players will not need to visit the Relic on Mars to update these traits anymore.
• Enhancement Tier 3 (weapon level 17 requirement):
  • Once the player applies this mod, the right column weapon trait perks will automatically be updated to be enhanced. Like the left column, this will upgrade all of the traits present and does not require visiting the Relic.

We’ve heard the feedback that weapons should have more avenues to acquire enhanced traits. In The Final Shape, all new weapons will either be craftable or have access to weapon enhancement. In addition, weapons that remain active drops in the following activities will be eligible for enhancement:

• Vow of the Disciple raid Adepts
• Guardian Games
• King’s Fall raid Adepts
• Gambit
• Competitive Crucible (all of them)
• Trials of Osiris
• Crucible
• Iron Banner
• Vanguard Ops
• Nightfalls
• Prophecy Dungeon

This will include older instances of these weapons, as long as they have an origin trait. Unfortunately, due to some technical constraints, there are a handful of weapons instances from before Season 17 that have origin traits and are active drops, but they will not be eligible for weapon enhancement. If a weapon is not actively dropping in these activities and playlists or it’s under the legacy focusing options, it will not be enhance-able when The Final Shape releases. If weapons are reissued and become a part of a playlist’s active drops once again, we’ll update older versions that have origin traits to enter weapon enhancement. 

Mementos in The Final Shape

We’ve received a lot of feedback on weapon mementos, especially as new mementos have released in our seasonal events. In The Final Shape, we have a few changes coming that impact how you store mementos and apply them to your weapons.

• Crafted and enhanced weapons will no longer need to visit the Relic on Mars to apply mementos. Players can apply the memento of their choosing directly in the weapon inspection screen.
• Memento stack cap limits will be raised from 1 to 3.
• Mementos will no longer be stored alongside the player’s consumables. When The Final Shape launches, your mementos under consumables will show as faded. Then, once the faded memento is dismantled, you’ll see +1 memento added in the weapon inspection screen as a virtual currency. For players who figured out how to get around the original memento stack size limits, this will allow you to dismantle all those mementos safely, even if you temporarily go over the intended stack limit of three. If you are holding three (or more) of a particular memento, it will not drop again until you spend your mementos to be under the stack size limit of three.

Reduced Fragment Costs at Ikora In The Final Shape

Subclass Fragments purchasable from Ikora are expensive, particularly considering how many there are, especially for New Lights. In The Final Shape, we have reduced the cost of Fragments from 25000 Glimmer to 10000 Glimmer. Our goal here is to make these vital build-crafting elements more accessible for new and returning players.

This week in Destiny

Finally, a number of weapon changes were revealed in a developer insight. Due to the length we strongly recommend checking out the post, but the biggest changes are the removal of spec mods (boss, adept big ones, taken, etc), Kinetic weapons are losing their bonus damage, and some rather divisive changes to Divinity, Lament, and a few other exotics.