It’s that time of the season again when the best of the best in Destiny 2 Season 19 come together and sharpen metal with metal in the fires of the Crucible. Lord Saladin is back and he has brought Ciaitl’s legions to spice things up in the Iron Banner.
When is Iron Banner Coming Back?
Iron Banner will start immediately one day after Eva has packed up the Dawning decorations on January 03, 2023. The moment she does, Lord Saladin will arrive, banner in hand, to usher in the first Iron Banner of 2023.
Now, Lord Saladin has been busy training the Cabal’s legions his own way. He has authorized them to take part in the event through the new featured game mode for this season – Fortress.
Here’s a brief rundown of how it works.
What is Iron Banner Fortress?
Similar to Zone Control, Guardians will fight over zones and attempt to capture them for their team to score points, however, in Fortress, remaining on a checkpoint after the initial capture will progressively fortify the zone with cabal reinforcements courtesy of Empress Ciaitl.
Rules:
- Fortifying a zone will summon Cabal turrets to defend the position until they are dispatched by the opposing team.
- After a zone is fortified, you can choose to stay and defend or leave the cabal turrets to hold the territory for you while attempting to capture more zones
- You can Fortify a zone up to 4 times. The first 3 tiers will summon Cabal Turrets (one for each tier). We don’t know yet what happens at the final tier, Bungie will provide that information in Tuesday’s update. We’re thinking of drop ships with some armored friends.
- Winning consecutive games of Fortress will award a special gift from the Empress herself. We wonder if it is covered in gold.
Bungie has commented that through playtesting, they managed to strike a balance between capturing zones and holding them. And they can’t wait for the community to get their hands on it and experience their first attempt at PvP and PvE elements in one match type.
Update:
We have more details on the new Iron Banner Fortress game mode.
To win, score more points than your opponent by capturing and defending the zones. The Hunt activates twice per match.
Zones: Gain 2 points for each zone your tea controls at each time interval.
Zone Advantage: The state when your team controls 2 zones. Your team gains 4 points at each time interval.
Power Play: The state when your team controls all 3 zones. Your team gains 6 points at each time interval.
The Hunt: Occurs twice per match. Caiatl sends a high-value zone via Drop Pod. This zone is quick to capture and awards a large number of points over a shorter period of time.
Destiny 2 Iron Banner Rewards
The reward for this Iron Banner will be the reprised Destiny 1 Taken King Armor that long-time guardians will no doubt see again.
Additional rewards:
- Dark Decider Auto Rifle
- Gunnora’s Axe Slug Shotgun
Weapon removed from loot pool:
- Forge’s Pledge Pulse Rifle
- Riiswalker Shotgun
Quitter Penalties
He’s a little something that Bungie’s been working on in connection to PvP and the players who unfortunately quit during Crucible matches.
Bungie has stated in its most recent TWAB, “It’s high time to revisit quitter penalties. We’ve been able to gather more player data over the past month and we’re confident these metrics inform how we will move forward in curating a healthy PvP environment for everyone.”
From data collected from the implementation during Season of Plunder and the possibility of connection issues, the dev team has decided to remove quitter penalties from the quickplay playlist.
And starting in Season 20, the team will be testing a new feature in Crucible Labs, removing the ability to return to Orbit while in a Crucible Match. They are also considering removing the option to quit the game while engaged in PvP, but they want to want to gauge player feedback before any huge changes are made.
That’s all have on Iron Banner at the moment. Check back with us again soon for another article about Destiny’s latest PvP game mode.
Check out this video from Youtuber Aztecross where he goes over the final TWAB of 2022, including details on Iron Banner and Destiny’s future.