Destiny 2 is currently all over the place as it attempts to figure out its power gains and loot systems which have been overhauled for the launch of its new “era” and its Edge of Fate expansion.
One consistent refrain I’ve always said about Destiny is that more than not, it should be overly generous with its rewards and loot. Now, the game has taken that to heart with its new Solstice event, which is giving out so much loot and such high quality loot, many genuinely believed it was a bug, myself included. Bungie has confirmed it isn’t/
That event was Solstice, which like many things about Destiny 2 has been stripped down and Portal-ified. Bungie has killed off the EAZ and Bonfire Bash, the unique activity that rolled around once a year. Instead, they have thrown a bunch of fire-based modifiers into the Portal, which are…actually quite fun if you’re running a solar build. But on the other hand, it’s just more Portal, which is like 90% of the game now.
What’s going on here is that running certain activities gives you a special “Solstice Engram” filled with one of three weapons from the event, a bow, grenade launcher or SMG, and once you unlock its armor, that can drop too. Not really unusual, of course.
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However, the catch here is that all of this gear is dropping one Tier higher than anything else you’re currently getting. As in:
- 200+ power now gets Tier 3 drops with a chance of Tier 4
- 300+ power now gets Tier 4 drops with a chance of Tier 5
- 400+ power generally gets a whole lot of Tier 5s
It is a little hard to explain how insane this is in the current context of the game and its new loot system. For instance, it took me a few dozen hours to reach 300 power and start getting Tier 3 drops. Then, after that, you get a single Tier 4 piece of gear about every 15-20 runs of a Portal activity. Getting a Tier 5 was literally impossible.
Now? After a single day I’ve gotten dozens of pieces of Tier 4 gear, replacing my entire old build almost instantly. I’ve gotten two Tier 5 pieces of armor and three Tier 5 weapons. The weapons are less of a big deal as it’s only three of them, and Tier 5 does not represent some huge surge in power.
But armor? Going from Tier 3 to Tier 4 or even some Tier 5s is a massive power upgrade, giving you dozens and dozens of stat points dramatically reducing your cooldowns and giving you huge chunks of damage or healing that you didn’t have before. More or less what’s happened is my entire old farm has been replaced by something immediately 5,000% more profitable over the course of the next two weeks. You almost need this farm unless you want to be thrown back into the cold of the eternal grind after this ends.
Again, I said be generous, but this is so generous I’m not entirely sure Bungie understands how their whole Tier farming economy has been to this point. But as it stands, this is easily the most rewarding event Destiny 2 has ever had.
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