Certainly not the best the Destiny franchise has seen, but it’s Campaign and Raid are among the best pieces of content in the game.
Season of The Risen didn’t necessarily land with a big splash, but was serviceable as far as Seasons that launch alongside expansions go.
But with the Witch Queen being Destiny 2’s best expansion since Forsaken, anticipation for the seasons that would follow was definitely High.
Especially after the consistently popular seasons during the Beyond Light year.
Well up first would be Season of The Haunted.
Now I feel it’s worth mentioning that with Season of The Haunted, Bungie opted not to share any information about the Season prior to its release meaning no promotional material or trailers to hype it up ahead of time and instead would do a bit of a blind launch.
This caused some bit of controversy, but also some level of hype, with it being sort of a mysterious Season drop.
But we’ll touch more on this topic later in the video.
As for Season of The Haunted itself, it was another Cabal Themed release, however this time intertwined with the overall Darkness storyline that would ultimately begin setting up the Story for Lightfall.
Calus was trying to link himself with the Pyramid Ship on the moon, which prompted his Leviathan ship to make a return above the moon Destination.
The first hints of the Witness and Calus teaming up would be the main story theme.
However, in terms of the Story related to the Gameplay, we’d be fighting Nightmares like we did in the Shadowkeep expansion.
Only this time, they aren’t OUR nightmares, they are the Nightmares of characters involved in the story.
Crow, Zavala, and Caitl.
Each week we’d help these characters try and defeat the things that haunt them.
Although the final mission of the Season was pretty strong.
In between helping our allies, we would board the Leviathan Ship once again, this time with a much different look to it.
Now covered in Egregore and filled with Scorn.
With it’s return, much of the area was explorable and relevant to completing Season Questlines and challenges which was actually really cool.
Basically turning it into a Patrol Zone.
Nightmare Containments were the primary activity taking place on the Leviathan and was the typical 6 man horde mode style event.
However, this time was actually pretty fun at least for the first few weeks.
Enemy density was high, lots of Bosses and Mini bosses to slay, a new Scythe weapon could be picked up similar to the Iron Axe from the Rise of Iron expansion.
It was chaotic fun.
The fun started to slow down though due to the incredible amount of grinding that this season required between the quests and grid upgrade, and if you’re crazy like me and went for the Seasonal Title, then you know just how tiresome it became to spend so much time on the Destination.
Season of The Haunted featured the return of several popular weapons from the past including Beloved, Drang, Calus Mini-Tool and Austringer which overshadowed the other new weapons added in the season.
And thanks to the addition of a new perk called Incandescent that could drop on the Mini Tool and Drang, it made these weapons even more desirable.
Solar 3.
0 would also drop this Season as the second subclass to receive an overhaul.
Initially the reception was fairly middling and the community quickly declared it to be much worse than last Seasons revamp for Void Subclasses.
However this sentiment would quickly change once players realized just how powerful certain builds could be.
As a Hunter main, nothing felt better than having the addition of Dynamite to add on top of my Shards of Galanor Blade Barrage build to achieve ultimate destruction.
But all classes could achieve equal power.
And with the Classy Restoration mod of the Season that healed you when you used a class ability, it would be the cherry on top that trivialized most PvE content.
Actually, the Resilience Buff would be that cherry on top as it received a MASSIVE buff that allowed for up to 40% damage reduction at tier 10.
Between some really strong builds, classy restoration, and The Resilience buff, this might have been the strongest our characters have ever been and maybe even ever will be.
2 Exotic Weapons were added in Haunted.
The first being Tresspasser, the Battle Pass weapon.
A returning exotic from Destiny 1 that is significantly stronger than it was back in D1.
And Heartshadow, a new exotic Sword obtained as a random drop from the Duality Dungeon.
Drop Rates could be increased by completing various challenges inside the Dungeon which is a great way to handle random chance exotic drops and should be the standard for all Raids and Dungeons in the future.
3 Exotic Armor Pieces were added as well.
The Rain of Fire boots for the Warlocks which reloaded your weapons while dodging airborne.
Second Chance gauntlets for the Titan which grant a second charge of the Shield Throw and made it stun Barrier Champions.
And lastly, Caliban’s Hand for the Hunter which made Proximity Knives scorch enemy targets as well as buff melee regen until the knife explodes.
So 2 of the 3 exotic armors added directly linked to the changes made with Solar 3.
0.
The Ritual Weapon for the Season was Chain of Command.
A High Impact Machine Gun that certainly was a machine gun.
It didn’t stand out as great, but wasn’t a bad option.
Just a middle of the road ritual weapon.
The New Dungeon Duality would release a few days after the Season went live, but would NOT be included with the purchase of the Season.
Instead, only Witch Queen Deluxe edition owners would have access to it, or players would need to purchase a separate Dungeon key for 20 dollars.
Obviously a very scummy business practice, especially with the Dungeons story and theme directly tied to Season of The Haunted itself, but I digress.
Duality itself was received to mixed reviews.
Nearly 50/50 for those that loved it or hated it.
Duality is one of the more expansive Dungeons in the game with really beefy and difficult encounters, and thankfully had some of the strongest loot found inside, which made it worth running weekly.
I’m in the camp that loves this dungeon, mainly from a gameplay perspective.
I’m not the biggest fan of the aesthetic and art design really.
But purely from the gameplay side of things, its my favorite Dungeon.
High enemy density, great boss fight mechanics, and a real challenge.
Unfortunately this dungeon is also marred by one MAJOR bug that still has not been fixed 8 months later which is infuriating.
It’s a complete dice roll whether ringing the bell will kill you.
I spent many hours going for a Solo Flawless run only to have it ruined by this glitch a few times, however I was able to finally get it after pushing through the pain.
The Rift game mode from Destiny 1, essentially capture the flag, made its return for Iron Banner, along with a new map Disjunction which is quickly became the most hated map amongst the community.
And opinions on Rift, weren’t that far behind.
Changes were made to the mode from Destiny 1, like making it round based where after a team would score, players were reset, instead of just flowing as one continuous match.
And maybe its due to PvP just generally not being in a strong place, but Rift was generally disliked amongst players.
Trials of Osiris received some new loot to chase including a Fusion Rifle and Sidearm.
As well as a new armor set, though the mode itself remained divisive amongst the playerbase as something to avoid.
Solstice of Heroes would return towards the end of the Season now titled just Solstice.
Despite some changes to the Event, it was pretty much business as usual, however this year would be one of the best ways to obtain high stat roll armor where players could select specific Stats to focus which certainly increased players interaction with the event.
This would also be the first introduction of Event Passes which is a separate 10 dollar Battle Pass filled with Solstice themed items.
Continuing to push monetization even further in the game.
Overall, Season of The Haunted started out pretty strong and on paper should be revered as one of the better Destiny seasons.
However, by the end of it, many players felt a bit let down.
With the Quality in Witch Queen going above and Beyond in multiple areas, players hoped to see the Witch Queen seasons evolve a bit more as well and unfortunately, Season of The Haunted felt very much like just another Season of Destiny.
This is likely due to the growing fatigue of the Seasonal Model and the Lack of content for the Core Activities like Strikes, Gambit, and Crucible.
Season of The Haunted didn’t give the strongest impression that the Witch Queen seasons would be a step up from last years.
But players hoped that the next season would impress.
On August 23rd Bungie would stream their Lightfall Showcase announcing the new Expansion.
And towards the End of The Stream would highlight Season of the Plunder which was dropping after the Stream ended.
The Story setup for Plunder surrounded Eramis, the Villain from Beyond Light who had escaped her Frozen Stasis prison and would attempt to steal 8 Relics of Nezarec for the Witness who promised to help Eramis regain power and strengthen her group of followers.
Mithrax would be a returning character for this season and we learned more about his troubled past and are introduced to his daughter Eido.
Each week we’d need to track down these relics and defeat some fallen Pirates in what could described as, basically lost sectors.
In fact the missions themselves were made up of Lost Sector areas from previous vaulted content which caused a bit of a controversy, understandably.
By the end of the story, Mithrax and Eramis have a sword fight, Mithrax wins, spares Eramis, and she escapes on her ship.
Plunder’s story really felt like filler from the get-go and felt a bit disconnected from the overarching plot of Destiny 2 despite some of the story and lore tying in with some important events from the past.
While there were some interesting tidbits of story related to the Fallen race as a whole, there wasn’t much that went beyond some surface level character development of a few characters.
As for the gameplay loop and Seasonal Content.
2 different activities would be available that played off one another.
First, a 6 player matchmade activity.
Ketchcrash.
Set aboard some fallen ships, known as Ketch’s.
This played into the Pirate theme pretty hard with the idea of it being like we are boarding their pirate ships and plundering the loot.
Not a bad premise at all, but pretty standard as far as gameplay is concerned.
Moving between areas, clearing out minibosses, then confronting a final boss.
So basically Menagerie number 12.
It wasn’t the worst activity, but certainly wore out its welcome much faster than many of the previous 6 man seasonal content drops.
And that idea could be applied even more-so to the second activity called Expedition.
What basically could be described as a 3 man public event that where you cleared out some enemies and pushed a payload.
What probably would have been a somewhat tolerable activity, quickly became one of the most hated due to the overly drawn out challenges and grinding required for the seasonal Title.
The grind was exponentially increased between these two activities.
The grind would be extended even further thanks to Bungie bringing back more currencies and upgrade paths with Treasure Maps that would be required to obtain Seasonal loot.
After many complaints surrounding the tedious grinds of the Season, Bungie would address the situation, except, with only a few weeks left in the season.
Bungie would significantly reduce grind for challenges to both praise and disdain from the community.
Those who were behind were glad they could catch up easier, but those who put in the work already, felt cheated.
And players hoped that this level of Grind would simply not return in future seasons.
Now the question is, was any of this grinding worth it? Well the weapons released in this Season did actually have some hype behind them.
With a new perk called Voltshot being available, as well as a few other new perks.
Unfortunately, the weapons themselves were a bit underwhelming and really needed those perks to even be considered viable.
Arc 3.
0 released in Plunder, being the final subclass type to receive a 3.
0 update.
The result would be mixed.
Warlocks in particular feeling a bit neglected.
However Hunters and Titans would receive some VERY powerful build options.
Hunters would even receive a new Super called Gathering Storm which quickly became one of the strongest DPS supers in the game.
And Titans would reign supreme with probably the Strongest build in the games history.
The Touch of Thunder Heart of Inmost Light build.
The standard 2 exotic weapons 3 exotic armor pieces released this season as well.
Delicate Tomb, the Season Pass fusion rifle was an interesting twist on a fusion Rifle to act like a blunderbuss of sorts and had perks that played into Arc Builds pretty well.
The Touch of Malice would make a return from Destiny 1 and would be a random drop from the King’s Fall raid, which we’ll talk about in a moment.
The weapon was as strong as it was in D1 and even received some interesting changes so it became highly sought after for obvious reasons.
A grenade launcher that looked like a cannon and shot cannon balls instead of grenades.
It had some unique perks that made it stand out, but really didn’t see much use due to this Season being DOMINATED by Linear Fusion Rifles in the heavy slot.
The King’s Fall raid made a return from Destiny 1, making it the second raid from D1 that has been reprised.
The raid stayed mostly the same as it was in D1, although made a few mechanic changes.
Most notably to the Golgoroth fight which now requires teams to fight the boss 100% as intended.
Oryx also received some great changes that made his fight more focused on damaging Oryx himself, rather than damaging him by completing various steps of mechanics.
From the gameplay side of things, D2 King’s Fall was a major improvement over D1 King’s Fall, the same way that VoG was with it’s reprisal.
The raid weapons also saw improvements, with more valuable roll potential.
The only downside in terms of loot, was the choice to not bring back the Age of Triumph armor sets for the raid, but they didn’t do that with Vault of Glass the previous year so it wasn’t expected.
Still, a missed opportunity.
Iron Banner this season brought along a new game mode, Eruption.
Eruption is essentially Cranked from Call of Duty if you remember that mode from Ghosts where after you get a kill, you’re on a timer where you will explode unless you keep getting kills.
In Destiny, getting kills saves you from dying, but also grants increased super and ability energy with successive kills.
What this does is make a more fast paced crucible experience which ended up being fairly popular.
It’s a high risk, high reward style game mode that made Iron Banner more tolerable during Season of The Plunder.
Festival of The Lost came as expected in October and did not change at all from Beyond Light’s Year bringing back Haunted Sectors.
It brought a new Armor Set, that despite being voted on by the community, many people ended up disliking, but the new Sniper became a favorite.
Like Solstice, it brought along an Event Pass for some extra cash which is a bit hilarious considering this event already exists for the sole purpose of selling microtransactions, and a new Title could be earned.
One that required an immense amount of grinding of course.
A month later, one of the more controversial things of the season would take place.
A “Telesto Event” if you can call it that.
On November 8th upon reset, the exotic Fusion Rifle Telesto would begin acting weird.
Essentially like it was broken.
Of course playing in to the meme surrounding the history of the weapon where this gun genuinely has broken the game several times.
Now the controversy comes up when discussing what this all meant.
Players had been starving for a new secret quest or puzzle since Bungie had slowly moved away from those events over the last couple years, so with how Telesto was acting, and Bungie posting cryptic tweets and emblems about the weapon, players started losing their minds trying to uncover this new potential puzzle or secret.
Bungie would post on Twitter saying there was no secret of any kind and that this was just a fun little easter egg, but players weren’t buying it and continued to search for secrets for a few days before finally giving up.
Now this was a letdown to a large number of players who have always loved the secret quests and missions of the past.
And the event would turn out to be what players felt was like a slap in the face.
And did not find it amusing.
And to fuel the flames even further, a Bungie Engineer would post on reddit that Destiny 2 is not built in a way that supports building secret missions, even the ones in the past.
Which okay fair enough, but even with that being the case, Bungie DID make secret missions in the past for Destiny 2 so this just made fans even more confused and frustrated.
Long story short, This Telesto Event did more harm than it did good in the eyes of many players and I’m sure it’ll be the last time we see Bungie do something like this.
And the final send off to Plunder would be a community event where we as a community would upgrade the Eliksni Quarters.
And how would we do that? By collecting Captains Coins which are obtained from Ketchcrash, Expedition, Public Events, and pretty much everything else in the game.
So essentially, the event was, go play the game.
This event would last about 2 weeks and the reward for collecting 400 million coins was simply underwhelming.
Not just the cosmetic rewards, but the Eliksni Quarters themselves barely saw any renovations worthy of 400 million coins so the event was mostly memed on by the community and would be deemed a letdown.
Season of The Plunder had some good ideas, and a few bright spots with things like King’s Falls return, Arc 3.
0 and the build potential it brought, but again, it felt like a filler season in pretty much every way.
Story, Gameplay, Loot, most of it wasn’t too memorable, and by the end of the Season, Destiny 2 would have it’s lowest ever playercount recorded on Steam.
And burnout on the Seasonal Model would reach an all time high amongst players.
Could the next Season bring them back?
Bungie would continue the trend of not announcing the next season prior to its launch day.
The playerbase wants to get hyped, wants to get exciting, so this trend continued to frustrate players, and ask that it not continue in Lightfall.
But Season of the Plunder came to an End on December 6th, and so began Season of The Seraph.
First up the story.
Season of The Seraph would make a return to the Bray family, Rasputin storyline after over a year it’s been absent.
Ana Bray wants to remove Rasputin from the Engram he’s been trapped in, but can’t figure out how to do it.
So she reluctantly needs to ask for help from her father Clovis.
Hive and Fallen have been attacking old Rasputin Bunkers, and mainly the Hive who are going after the Bunkers under order of Xivu Arath who is looking for some heavy firepower in the form of Rasputin’s Satellites.
Certainly a lot more in line with the overarching plot than Season of The Plunder, but not by much as it does still feel like sort of a random deviation, like a random temporary threat.
But, most seasons follow that idea so this isn’t entirely a unique problem with Seraph.
As for the story missions from a gameplay perspective, they are much more substantive than the ones in Plunder or even Haunted.
Seasonal Content this time is a 3 player battleground style activity.
Heists.
And these involve ridding the Hive and Scorn from Rasputin Bunkers.
Fairly straightforward activity that play almost like a strike, it added some cool unique mechanics like the Seraph Tower line of sight, but unfortunately we likely won’t see this mechanic expanded to any other area of the game.
The Heists can be fun and a bit more challenging than previous Seasonal Activities but can quickly become a bit repetitive due to the missions themselves not deviating much from one another.
Even though the location changes, the bunkers are essentially the same, especially when it comes to the final boss encounter.
Now in these Heist missions, Bungie added a modifier to the playlist that keeps enemies 5 power levels above you at any given time which is what lends to the increase in challenge.
Which makes the difficulty feel just about right for seasonal content.
It shouldn’t be super challenging like endgame content, but shouldn’t be as easy as they have been in the past, so this modifier is a near perfect middle ground.
No exotic armor was added in Seraph, however 3 Exotic Weapons instead of the usual 2 would be added, the first being the Manticore, the season pass exotic.
A bit of a unique weapon that’s more gimmicky than anything else.
Allowing you to build up energy that makes you hover in place while shooting.
Hierarchy of Needs, an Exotic Bow that is a rare drop from the new Spire of The Watcher Dungeon.
A pretty decent addition to the list of Exotic Bows.
And lastly Revision Zero which has it’s own Exotic Quest mission.
Now this mission is much more puzzle oriented rather than combat focused which makes it a bit unique as far as these Exotic missions are concerned.
And essentially this mission is a mini deep stone crypt raid run where you utilize almost all the mechanics found in that raid throughout.
Even the final boss is essentially just Taniks Phase 1.
The feedback surrounding this mission is pretty split between those that loved it and those that found it to be one of the weaker ones.
But one thing is for certain, it’s worth running the mission to get the Revision Zero Pulse Rifle.
A very unique and powerful exotic.
Veles-X is the seasonal ritual weapon which like previous seasons, wound up being fairly mid, however under the right circumstances has some utility.
The new Dungeon Spire of The Watcher released a few days after the season released, and like Duality was exclusive to Deluxe Edition owners or owners of the 20 dollar Dungeon key.
Also like Duality, Spire of the Watcher was received to mixed reviews, again about 50/50 love or hate it.
Spire is much shorter than Duality, and other Dungeons of the past, and has much simpler mechanics.
The first half of the Dungeon is essentially just a game of shoot some power cores to reroute power, paired with some platforming, and then the first boss is essentially just a reskin of the Consecrated Mind from the Garden of Salvation raid.
Very underwhelming mechanically and fairly easy.
And after a bit more platforming, you’re at the final boss.
Which thankfully is the Dungeons highlight, and utilizes the mechanics learned from the previous encounters to the fullest, although is still a very simple fight.
And if you’re looking for a quick and easy dungeon run, this is good for that, but most of the community felt it was just alright.
As for the loot, some decent options for weapons like Scout Rifle which is basically a Legendary version of Dead Man’s Tale, and of course the Armor which is very cowboy outlaw themed which is completely subjective to your own tastes, but something I actually quite like.
And of course, the Exotic Bow Hierarchy of Needs which is highly sought after.
The Dawning made it’s annual return with a few changes and a some new loot to chase, but like Festival of The Lost, the event still mainly comes around for the sake of cosmetic sales in eververse and to sell you the new Event Card.
Beyond that, the Dawning exists as just a Bright Dust farm.
Iron Banner returned this season with yet again, a new game mode called Fortress.
Which works a bit like control, with occasional Cabal turrets dropping in during a match which can be used as a catch up mechanic for the other team.
This mode really highlighted the strength of Bubble Titans and was an interesting attempt at marrying PvP and PvE outside of Gambit.
And like most of the content this season, the communities opinions are split between those that really enjoy the mode and those that don’t like it.
Probably the biggest highlight was the return of the fan favorite Taken King armor sets from Destiny 1 which prompted many players to engage with Iron Banner for the sake of obtaining these armor sets.
Competitive PvP received a bit of an overhaul at the beginning of Seraph, finally getting a more proper ranked ladder system akin to many other PvP games.
Now how Bungie implemented this system is still hotly debated about whether it was positive or negative or a mix of both.
Though I don’t think it’s received the amount of praise Bungie was hoping for.
Now Season of The Seraph is coming to a close very soon, just a couple weeks out from ending and besides one more finale community event coming, we’ve pretty much seen all the content it had on offer.
Initially the season was greeted with players noting the burnout of the Seasonal Content model, however as time has progressed throughout the season, opinions have shifted to be a bit more positive overall.
And with recent sandbox tuning and gameplay changes being received positively like the fix to in air accuracy, the community is feeling a bit more positive about heading into Lightfall.
However there are still concerns, especially in relation to the core game content and how Seasons will be handled in Lightfall.
The Witch Queen seasons were certainly a mixed bag, and while the content wasn’t terrible itself, the burnout on the seasonal model reached it’s peak this year.
Will Lightfall live up to the hype, will it address some of the major painpoints the playerbase felt over the course of this year? Only time will tell.
Certainly not the best the Destiny franchise has seen, but it’s Campaign and Raid are among the best pieces of content in the game
So the Witch Queen was a good expansion.
Certainly not the best the Destiny franchise has seen, but it’s Campaign and Raid are among the best pieces of content in the game.
Season of The Risen didn’t necessarily land with a big splash, but was serviceable as far as Seasons that launch alongside expansions go.
But with the Witch Queen being Destiny 2’s best expansion since Forsaken, anticipation for the seasons that would follow was definitely High.
Especially after the consistently popular seasons during the Beyond Light year.
Well up first would be Season of The Haunted.
Now I feel it’s worth mentioning that with Season of The Haunted, Bungie opted not to share any information about the Season prior to its release meaning no promotional material or trailers to hype it up ahead of time and instead would do a bit of a blind launch.
This caused some bit of controversy, but also some level of hype, with it being sort of a mysterious Season drop.
But we’ll touch more on this topic later in the video.
As for Season of The Haunted itself, it was another Cabal Themed release, however this time intertwined with the overall Darkness storyline that would ultimately begin setting up the Story for Lightfall.
Calus was trying to link himself with the Pyramid Ship on the moon, which prompted his Leviathan ship to make a return above the moon Destination.
The first hints of the Witness and Calus teaming up would be the main story theme.
However, in terms of the Story related to the Gameplay, we’d be fighting Nightmares like we did in the Shadowkeep expansion.
Only this time, they aren’t OUR nightmares, they are the Nightmares of characters involved in the story.
Crow, Zavala, and Caitl.
Each week we’d help these characters try and defeat the things that haunt them.
Although the final mission of the Season was pretty strong.
In between helping our allies, we would board the Leviathan Ship once again, this time with a much different look to it.
Now covered in Egregore and filled with Scorn.
With it’s return, much of the area was explorable and relevant to completing Season Questlines and challenges which was actually really cool.
Basically turning it into a Patrol Zone.
Nightmare Containments were the primary activity taking place on the Leviathan and was the typical 6 man horde mode style event.
However, this time was actually pretty fun at least for the first few weeks.
Enemy density was high, lots of Bosses and Mini bosses to slay, a new Scythe weapon could be picked up similar to the Iron Axe from the Rise of Iron expansion.
It was chaotic fun.
The fun started to slow down though due to the incredible amount of grinding that this season required between the quests and grid upgrade, and if you’re crazy like me and went for the Seasonal Title, then you know just how tiresome it became to spend so much time on the Destination.
Season of The Haunted featured the return of several popular weapons from the past including Beloved, Drang, Calus Mini-Tool and Austringer which overshadowed the other new weapons added in the season.
And thanks to the addition of a new perk called Incandescent that could drop on the Mini Tool and Drang, it made these weapons even more desirable.
Solar 3.
0 would also drop this Season as the second subclass to receive an overhaul.
Initially the reception was fairly middling and the community quickly declared it to be much worse than last Seasons revamp for Void Subclasses.
However this sentiment would quickly change once players realized just how powerful certain builds could be.
As a Hunter main, nothing felt better than having the addition of Dynamite to add on top of my Shards of Galanor Blade Barrage build to achieve ultimate destruction.
But all classes could achieve equal power.
And with the Classy Restoration mod of the Season that healed you when you used a class ability, it would be the cherry on top that trivialized most PvE content.
Actually, the Resilience Buff would be that cherry on top as it received a MASSIVE buff that allowed for up to 40% damage reduction at tier 10.
Between some really strong builds, classy restoration, and The Resilience buff, this might have been the strongest our characters have ever been and maybe even ever will be.
2 Exotic Weapons were added in Haunted.
The first being Tresspasser, the Battle Pass weapon.
A returning exotic from Destiny 1 that is significantly stronger than it was back in D1.
And Heartshadow, a new exotic Sword obtained as a random drop from the Duality Dungeon.
Drop Rates could be increased by completing various challenges inside the Dungeon which is a great way to handle random chance exotic drops and should be the standard for all Raids and Dungeons in the future.
3 Exotic Armor Pieces were added as well.
The Rain of Fire boots for the Warlocks which reloaded your weapons while dodging airborne.
Second Chance gauntlets for the Titan which grant a second charge of the Shield Throw and made it stun Barrier Champions.
And lastly, Caliban’s Hand for the Hunter which made Proximity Knives scorch enemy targets as well as buff melee regen until the knife explodes.
So 2 of the 3 exotic armors added directly linked to the changes made with Solar 3.
0.
The Ritual Weapon for the Season was Chain of Command.
A High Impact Machine Gun that certainly was a machine gun.
It didn’t stand out as great, but wasn’t a bad option.
Just a middle of the road ritual weapon.
The New Dungeon Duality would release a few days after the Season went live, but would NOT be included with the purchase of the Season.
Instead, only Witch Queen Deluxe edition owners would have access to it, or players would need to purchase a separate Dungeon key for 20 dollars.
Obviously a very scummy business practice, especially with the Dungeons story and theme directly tied to Season of The Haunted itself, but I digress.
Duality itself was received to mixed reviews.
Nearly 50/50 for those that loved it or hated it.
Duality is one of the more expansive Dungeons in the game with really beefy and difficult encounters, and thankfully had some of the strongest loot found inside, which made it worth running weekly.
I’m in the camp that loves this dungeon, mainly from a gameplay perspective.
I’m not the biggest fan of the aesthetic and art design really.
But purely from the gameplay side of things, its my favorite Dungeon.
High enemy density, great boss fight mechanics, and a real challenge.
Unfortunately this dungeon is also marred by one MAJOR bug that still has not been fixed 8 months later which is infuriating.
It’s a complete dice roll whether ringing the bell will kill you.
I spent many hours going for a Solo Flawless run only to have it ruined by this glitch a few times, however I was able to finally get it after pushing through the pain.
The Rift game mode from Destiny 1, essentially capture the flag, made its return for Iron Banner, along with a new map Disjunction which is quickly became the most hated map amongst the community.
And opinions on Rift, weren’t that far behind.
Changes were made to the mode from Destiny 1, like making it round based where after a team would score, players were reset, instead of just flowing as one continuous match.
And maybe its due to PvP just generally not being in a strong place, but Rift was generally disliked amongst players.
Trials of Osiris received some new loot to chase including a Fusion Rifle and Sidearm.
As well as a new armor set, though the mode itself remained divisive amongst the playerbase as something to avoid.
Solstice of Heroes would return towards the end of the Season now titled just Solstice.
Despite some changes to the Event, it was pretty much business as usual, however this year would be one of the best ways to obtain high stat roll armor where players could select specific Stats to focus which certainly increased players interaction with the event.
This would also be the first introduction of Event Passes which is a separate 10 dollar Battle Pass filled with Solstice themed items.
Continuing to push monetization even further in the game.
Overall, Season of The Haunted started out pretty strong and on paper should be revered as one of the better Destiny seasons.
However, by the end of it, many players felt a bit let down.
With the Quality in Witch Queen going above and Beyond in multiple areas, players hoped to see the Witch Queen seasons evolve a bit more as well and unfortunately, Season of The Haunted felt very much like just another Season of Destiny.
This is likely due to the growing fatigue of the Seasonal Model and the Lack of content for the Core Activities like Strikes, Gambit, and Crucible.
Season of The Haunted didn’t give the strongest impression that the Witch Queen seasons would be a step up from last years.
But players hoped that the next season would impress.
On August 23rd Bungie would stream their Lightfall Showcase announcing the new Expansion.
And towards the End of The Stream would highlight Season of the Plunder which was dropping after the Stream ended.
The Story setup for Plunder surrounded Eramis, the Villain from Beyond Light who had escaped her Frozen Stasis prison and would attempt to steal 8 Relics of Nezarec for the Witness who promised to help Eramis regain power and strengthen her group of followers.
Mithrax would be a returning character for this season and we learned more about his troubled past and are introduced to his daughter Eido.
Each week we’d need to track down these relics and defeat some fallen Pirates in what could described as, basically lost sectors.
In fact the missions themselves were made up of Lost Sector areas from previous vaulted content which caused a bit of a controversy, understandably.
By the end of the story, Mithrax and Eramis have a sword fight, Mithrax wins, spares Eramis, and she escapes on her ship.
Plunder’s story really felt like filler from the get-go and felt a bit disconnected from the overarching plot of Destiny 2 despite some of the story and lore tying in with some important events from the past.
While there were some interesting tidbits of story related to the Fallen race as a whole, there wasn’t much that went beyond some surface level character development of a few characters.
As for the gameplay loop and Seasonal Content.
2 different activities would be available that played off one another.
First, a 6 player matchmade activity.
Ketchcrash.
Set aboard some fallen ships, known as Ketch’s.
This played into the Pirate theme pretty hard with the idea of it being like we are boarding their pirate ships and plundering the loot.
Not a bad premise at all, but pretty standard as far as gameplay is concerned.
Moving between areas, clearing out minibosses, then confronting a final boss.
So basically Menagerie number 12.
It wasn’t the worst activity, but certainly wore out its welcome much faster than many of the previous 6 man seasonal content drops.
And that idea could be applied even more-so to the second activity called Expedition.
What basically could be described as a 3 man public event that where you cleared out some enemies and pushed a payload.
What probably would have been a somewhat tolerable activity, quickly became one of the most hated due to the overly drawn out challenges and grinding required for the seasonal Title.
The grind was exponentially increased between these two activities.
The grind would be extended even further thanks to Bungie bringing back more currencies and upgrade paths with Treasure Maps that would be required to obtain Seasonal loot.
After many complaints surrounding the tedious grinds of the Season, Bungie would address the situation, except, with only a few weeks left in the season.
Bungie would significantly reduce grind for challenges to both praise and disdain from the community.
Those who were behind were glad they could catch up easier, but those who put in the work already, felt cheated.
And players hoped that this level of Grind would simply not return in future seasons.
Now the question is, was any of this grinding worth it? Well the weapons released in this Season did actually have some hype behind them.
With a new perk called Voltshot being available, as well as a few other new perks.
Unfortunately, the weapons themselves were a bit underwhelming and really needed those perks to even be considered viable.
Arc 3.
0 released in Plunder, being the final subclass type to receive a 3.
0 update.
The result would be mixed.
Warlocks in particular feeling a bit neglected.
However Hunters and Titans would receive some VERY powerful build options.
Hunters would even receive a new Super called Gathering Storm which quickly became one of the strongest DPS supers in the game.
And Titans would reign supreme with probably the Strongest build in the games history.
The Touch of Thunder Heart of Inmost Light build.
The standard 2 exotic weapons 3 exotic armor pieces released this season as well.
Delicate Tomb, the Season Pass fusion rifle was an interesting twist on a fusion Rifle to act like a blunderbuss of sorts and had perks that played into Arc Builds pretty well.
The Touch of Malice would make a return from Destiny 1 and would be a random drop from the King’s Fall raid, which we’ll talk about in a moment.
The weapon was as strong as it was in D1 and even received some interesting changes so it became highly sought after for obvious reasons.
Cry Mutiny was the Ritual weapon.
A grenade launcher that looked like a cannon and shot cannon balls instead of grenades.
It had some unique perks that made it stand out, but really didn’t see much use due to this Season being DOMINATED by Linear Fusion Rifles in the heavy slot.
The King’s Fall raid made a return from Destiny 1, making it the second raid from D1 that has been reprised.
The raid stayed mostly the same as it was in D1, although made a few mechanic changes.
Most notably to the Golgoroth fight which now requires teams to fight the boss 100% as intended.
Oryx also received some great changes that made his fight more focused on damaging Oryx himself, rather than damaging him by completing various steps of mechanics.
From the gameplay side of things, D2 King’s Fall was a major improvement over D1 King’s Fall, the same way that VoG was with it’s reprisal.
The raid weapons also saw improvements, with more valuable roll potential.
The only downside in terms of loot, was the choice to not bring back the Age of Triumph armor sets for the raid, but they didn’t do that with Vault of Glass the previous year so it wasn’t expected.
Still, a missed opportunity.
Iron Banner this season brought along a new game mode, Eruption.
Eruption is essentially Cranked from Call of Duty if you remember that mode from Ghosts where after you get a kill, you’re on a timer where you will explode unless you keep getting kills.
In Destiny, getting kills saves you from dying, but also grants increased super and ability energy with successive kills.
What this does is make a more fast paced crucible experience which ended up being fairly popular.
It’s a high risk, high reward style game mode that made Iron Banner more tolerable during Season of The Plunder.
Festival of The Lost came as expected in October and did not change at all from Beyond Light’s Year bringing back Haunted Sectors.
It brought a new Armor Set, that despite being voted on by the community, many people ended up disliking, but the new Sniper became a favorite.
Like Solstice, it brought along an Event Pass for some extra cash which is a bit hilarious considering this event already exists for the sole purpose of selling microtransactions, and a new Title could be earned.
One that required an immense amount of grinding of course.
A month later, one of the more controversial things of the season would take place.
A “Telesto Event” if you can call it that.
On November 8th upon reset, the exotic Fusion Rifle Telesto would begin acting weird.
Essentially like it was broken.
Of course playing in to the meme surrounding the history of the weapon where this gun genuinely has broken the game several times.
Now the controversy comes up when discussing what this all meant.
Players had been starving for a new secret quest or puzzle since Bungie had slowly moved away from those events over the last couple years, so with how Telesto was acting, and Bungie posting cryptic tweets and emblems about the weapon, players started losing their minds trying to uncover this new potential puzzle or secret.
Bungie would post on Twitter saying there was no secret of any kind and that this was just a fun little easter egg, but players weren’t buying it and continued to search for secrets for a few days before finally giving up.
Now this was a letdown to a large number of players who have always loved the secret quests and missions of the past.
And the event would turn out to be what players felt was like a slap in the face.
And did not find it amusing.
And to fuel the flames even further, a Bungie Engineer would post on reddit that Destiny 2 is not built in a way that supports building secret missions, even the ones in the past.
Which okay fair enough, but even with that being the case, Bungie DID make secret missions in the past for Destiny 2 so this just made fans even more confused and frustrated.
Long story short, This Telesto Event did more harm than it did good in the eyes of many players and I’m sure it’ll be the last time we see Bungie do something like this.
And the final send off to Plunder would be a community event where we as a community would upgrade the Eliksni Quarters.
And how would we do that? By collecting Captains Coins which are obtained from Ketchcrash, Expedition, Public Events, and pretty much everything else in the game.
So essentially, the event was, go play the game.
This event would last about 2 weeks and the reward for collecting 400 million coins was simply underwhelming.
Not just the cosmetic rewards, but the Eliksni Quarters themselves barely saw any renovations worthy of 400 million coins so the event was mostly memed on by the community and would be deemed a letdown.
Season of The Plunder had some good ideas, and a few bright spots with things like King’s Falls return, Arc 3.
0 and the build potential it brought, but again, it felt like a filler season in pretty much every way.
Story, Gameplay, Loot, most of it wasn’t too memorable, and by the end of the Season, Destiny 2 would have it’s lowest ever playercount recorded on Steam.
And burnout on the Seasonal Model would reach an all time high amongst players.
Could the next Season bring them back?
Bungie would continue the trend of not announcing the next season prior to its launch day.
The playerbase wants to get hyped, wants to get exciting, so this trend continued to frustrate players, and ask that it not continue in Lightfall.
But Season of the Plunder came to an End on December 6th, and so began Season of The Seraph.
First up the story.
Season of The Seraph would make a return to the Bray family, Rasputin storyline after over a year it’s been absent.
Ana Bray wants to remove Rasputin from the Engram he’s been trapped in, but can’t figure out how to do it.
So she reluctantly needs to ask for help from her father Clovis.
Hive and Fallen have been attacking old Rasputin Bunkers, and mainly the Hive who are going after the Bunkers under order of Xivu Arath who is looking for some heavy firepower in the form of Rasputin’s Satellites.
Certainly a lot more in line with the overarching plot than Season of The Plunder, but not by much as it does still feel like sort of a random deviation, like a random temporary threat.
But, most seasons follow that idea so this isn’t entirely a unique problem with Seraph.
As for the story missions from a gameplay perspective, they are much more substantive than the ones in Plunder or even Haunted.
Seasonal Content this time is a 3 player battleground style activity.
Heists.
And these involve ridding the Hive and Scorn from Rasputin Bunkers.
Fairly straightforward activity that play almost like a strike, it added some cool unique mechanics like the Seraph Tower line of sight, but unfortunately we likely won’t see this mechanic expanded to any other area of the game.
The Heists can be fun and a bit more challenging than previous Seasonal Activities but can quickly become a bit repetitive due to the missions themselves not deviating much from one another.
Even though the location changes, the bunkers are essentially the same, especially when it comes to the final boss encounter.
Now in these Heist missions, Bungie added a modifier to the playlist that keeps enemies 5 power levels above you at any given time which is what lends to the increase in challenge.
Which makes the difficulty feel just about right for seasonal content.
It shouldn’t be super challenging like endgame content, but shouldn’t be as easy as they have been in the past, so this modifier is a near perfect middle ground.
No exotic armor was added in Seraph, however 3 Exotic Weapons instead of the usual 2 would be added, the first being the Manticore, the season pass exotic.
A bit of a unique weapon that’s more gimmicky than anything else.
Allowing you to build up energy that makes you hover in place while shooting.
Hierarchy of Needs, an Exotic Bow that is a rare drop from the new Spire of The Watcher Dungeon.
A pretty decent addition to the list of Exotic Bows.
And lastly Revision Zero which has it’s own Exotic Quest mission.
Now this mission is much more puzzle oriented rather than combat focused which makes it a bit unique as far as these Exotic missions are concerned.
And essentially this mission is a mini deep stone crypt raid run where you utilize almost all the mechanics found in that raid throughout.
Even the final boss is essentially just Taniks Phase 1.
The feedback surrounding this mission is pretty split between those that loved it and those that found it to be one of the weaker ones.
But one thing is for certain, it’s worth running the mission to get the Revision Zero Pulse Rifle.
A very unique and powerful exotic.
Veles-X is the seasonal ritual weapon which like previous seasons, wound up being fairly mid, however under the right circumstances has some utility.
The new Dungeon Spire of The Watcher released a few days after the season released, and like Duality was exclusive to Deluxe Edition owners or owners of the 20 dollar Dungeon key.
Also like Duality, Spire of the Watcher was received to mixed reviews, again about 50/50 love or hate it.
Spire is much shorter than Duality, and other Dungeons of the past, and has much simpler mechanics.
The first half of the Dungeon is essentially just a game of shoot some power cores to reroute power, paired with some platforming, and then the first boss is essentially just a reskin of the Consecrated Mind from the Garden of Salvation raid.
Very underwhelming mechanically and fairly easy.
And after a bit more platforming, you’re at the final boss.
Which thankfully is the Dungeons highlight, and utilizes the mechanics learned from the previous encounters to the fullest, although is still a very simple fight.
And if you’re looking for a quick and easy dungeon run, this is good for that, but most of the community felt it was just alright.
As for the loot, some decent options for weapons like Scout Rifle which is basically a Legendary version of Dead Man’s Tale, and of course the Armor which is very cowboy outlaw themed which is completely subjective to your own tastes, but something I actually quite like.
And of course, the Exotic Bow Hierarchy of Needs which is highly sought after.
The Dawning made it’s annual return with a few changes and a some new loot to chase, but like Festival of The Lost, the event still mainly comes around for the sake of cosmetic sales in eververse and to sell you the new Event Card.
Beyond that, the Dawning exists as just a Bright Dust farm.
Iron Banner returned this season with yet again, a new game mode called Fortress.
Which works a bit like control, with occasional Cabal turrets dropping in during a match which can be used as a catch up mechanic for the other team.
This mode really highlighted the strength of Bubble Titans and was an interesting attempt at marrying PvP and PvE outside of Gambit.
And like most of the content this season, the communities opinions are split between those that really enjoy the mode and those that don’t like it.
Probably the biggest highlight was the return of the fan favorite Taken King armor sets from Destiny 1 which prompted many players to engage with Iron Banner for the sake of obtaining these armor sets.
Competitive PvP received a bit of an overhaul at the beginning of Seraph, finally getting a more proper ranked ladder system akin to many other PvP games.
Now how Bungie implemented this system is still hotly debated about whether it was positive or negative or a mix of both.
Though I don’t think it’s received the amount of praise Bungie was hoping for.
Now Season of The Seraph is coming to a close very soon, just a couple weeks out from ending and besides one more finale community event coming, we’ve pretty much seen all the content it had on offer.
Initially the season was greeted with players noting the burnout of the Seasonal Content model, however as time has progressed throughout the season, opinions have shifted to be a bit more positive overall.
And with recent sandbox tuning and gameplay changes being received positively like the fix to in air accuracy, the community is feeling a bit more positive about heading into Lightfall.
However there are still concerns, especially in relation to the core game content and how Seasons will be handled in Lightfall.
The Witch Queen seasons were certainly a mixed bag, and while the content wasn’t terrible itself, the burnout on the seasonal model reached it’s peak this year.
Will Lightfall live up to the hype, will it address some of the major painpoints the playerbase felt over the course of this year? Only time will tell.
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