The time has come for Bungie to host its usual reveal twitch streams, this time they’re revealing Destiny’s latest expansion; The Taken King which kicks off year 2 of Destiny’s life.. In this the first stream of three, they’re revealing the changes in The Tower that will take place on the 15th September. Deej one the Destiny Community managers along with Mark Noseworthy the Executive Producer of Bungie, joined by Senior Design Lead Tyson Green. These changes include a new inventory design, new inventories for the current vendors and some new vendors, as well as some general changes giving better rewards and improving those unfair RNG’s.
One of the main changes is the new level cap at 40, but also the new way of reaching that level cap, Bungie is leaving the old way of armour containing light which increases your level and changing to the usual way in which levels are gained in video games with experience. There are numerous ways in which experience can be earned in Destiny, including completing story missions for the first time, killing enemies of the “guardians” completing Daily/Weekly Heroics and also Nightfall Strikes. However light levels are being scrapped entirely, they now have a new use; to increase the damage done to enemies and damage received by them also. They also have a new way of light being calculated, by averaging the total light from all your weapons and armour and also in The Taken King, your Ghost shell.
There is also a change to the intellect, discipline and strength values that control the recharge rate of abilities in that they have been reduced, however, their effect is increased and now they show the effect they have and how long your recharge rates will be. Other items that have been changed are the class items and ghost shells that previously only served as vanity items, they now have perks and defense values. The final change they have made with items is that new weapons can be “infused” this means that if you have a weapon with higher damage than another you can dismantle it to boost the damage of the lower one to be the same as the higher one was, meaning much more choice in which weapons people can use.
In The Taken King your Ghost will be customisable with you, The Guardian being able to find or buy new shells for it to equip into your menu. The ones we were shown can give you a variety of different perks for example shells bought from The Speaker will be able to show you where nearby upgrade materials are hiding, and Shaxx the main voice behind the PvP side of Destiny will sell shells that will grant bonus experience upon killing a specific Class in the crucible.
There has also been a change to the way quests and bounties will work in The Taken King, they have been separated and the story quests will no longer take up room in your bounty slots which has been increased to now hold 16. You will also be able to “follow” quests or bounties which allow you to quickly check your progress with them without having to trek through the game’s menus, in this section of the stream they showed the descriptions for a few of the story quests we will be facing in the new expansion also. The final addition to the inventory is that the crucible and vanguard marks have now been replaced with legendary marks, which are now used to buy items in the tower and will be given when dismantling legendary items and as rewards from crucible and vanguard activities. As a reward for buying The Taken King Bungie are giving everyone an item that will be given to everyone who buys The Taken King which upon use immediately raises a character’s level to 25, which means that every single person who buys The Taken King can start playing its Story missions and quests right away.
There will be a lot of new changes to the existing vendors. The Speaker will have new ghost shells for sale and he will be selling new versions of his old class items which now have defence values and perks, he will also no longer be selling emblems.
The Faction Vendors will give you a new option to pledge allegiance which is a weekly option, they also may give you quests upon you reaching certain levels of reputation.
The Crucible also sells new ghosts with various crucible perks, other than that the only other change is a new bounty that has the same reward as nightfalls.
Not much has changed about The Cryptarch except for the fact that he is now selling legendary engrams instead of mostly common and that it was mentioned that when decrypting engrams with him you will no longer get motes of light or strange coins.
The Gun Smith has had the most changes made to him with the addition of reputation levels for him and a new feature called weapon testing, where you go kill enemies with a weapon he gives you and it gives reputation for him. The other big change is the option to order weapons from the foundries (Suros, Hakke, Tex Mechanica etc.) once you’ve ordered a weapon it will arrive the following Wednesday, this has made the Gunsmith a far more useful vendor in The Taken King.
The Vault has received the welcome change of having a lot more space added for weapons and armour, it now has 72 slots, with different pages for different item types. The amount of space for other items hasn’t increased, but there won’t be as much needed, due to a couple of changes that Bungie have made.
The need for vault space has been greatly reduced due to the fact of the Emblem and Shader collection vendors that have been added, now you can go up to a terminal and see all of the shaders or emblems you have earned and can add them to your inventory, you can even see those you haven’t earned and how you can obtain them.
Bungie have also added in new Exotic collection vendors which show you all of the exotics you have earned, there is one for armour and one for weapons. With these new vendors you can buy the exotics you had but dismantled due to lack of vault space. Bungie have also added new and improved versions of the exotics, some that even have entirely new looks and perks and if you obtained the old versions of them in year one you can obtain the new year 2 versions by buying them off this vendor.
Deej, Mark and Tyson finished off the reveal by having a dance party, showing off the new dances that will likely by the new “emotes” which was announced by Creative Director Luke Smith’s during that controversial Eurogamer interview. By this reveal it looks like Bungie is putting in a lot of effort to make the next year of Destiny filled with more choice and more rewards, which were things that were often complained about in year 1. The next reveal takes place in one of the new strikes that will be added in The Taken King, next Wednesday.
