Destiny 2 is closing in on its next big expansion with the Witch Queen releasing on February 22nd, 2022. And that means the changes coming are slowly teased every week by Bungie in their Weekly TWABs. Last week it was about changes to mods and Armour. This week, Bungie revealed the date of the Raid launch and the power levels needed for the expansion.
Witch Queen Raid
The raid for Witch Queen will be releasing on March 5th, 2022 (10:00 AM Pacific) which will be on the weekend. Also, this gives the players 10 days to level up for the raid while taking place on a weekend.
As usual, there will be a Contest Mode which caps everyone’s power level for the raid to make it hard and also account for the competition of the raid race. More on that to be revealed later.
New Power Cap
Destiny always resets its power grinding with each new expansion and this time it is no different. For any new players who are not familiar with it, here are the various power caps in Destiny as explained by Bungie:
- Floor – The lowest possible Power for a piece of gear; starting point for new characters.
- Soft cap – The point at which general drops stop being automatic upgrades; Powerful gear drops are now the best way to gain Power.
- Power cap – The point at which Powerful drops stop being upgrades; Pinnacle gear drops are now the only way to gain Power.
- Hard cap – Max possible Power from Pinnacle drops (ignoring Artifact Power)
The Power floor will be updated to 1350 to all players with the Witch Queen. Through general gameplay, players can reach the soft cap of 1500 by earning general gear through activity completions, chests, and more. This includes Rare and Legendary drops.
Once reaching the soft cap, players will need to earn Powerful drops from vendor challenges and other objectives in the game. Once reaching the Power cap of 1550, the only upgrades that players will find are from endgame activities that offer Pinnacle rewards. After which players can reach up to 1560 with the Pinnacle for the hardest endgame activities. This is like 210 levels to grind.
Blue Weapons and Engrams
Beginning in The Witch Queen, blue (Rare) rewards will stop dropping from playlist activities (Crucible, Strikes, Gambit, etc.) once players have reached the soft cap. Players above the soft cap (1500 Power in The Witch Queen) will instead see a slightly increased chance at receiving Legendary rewards from these activities, or a small amount of Legendary Shards.
Blue weapons and armors will continue to drop from enemies and chests while playing Destiny 2, but we hope that this will reduce the need for players to manage their inventories and reduce the frequency of visits to the Postmaster when running playlist activities.
Vendor Changes
Banshee-44 is getting a new reputation system that matches the other vendors in the Tower, such as Zavala and Shaxx. This means some of the items that were previously associated with Gunsmith Reputation, namely Gunsmith Materials and Weapon Telemetries. Players will now earn Reputation Rank progress with Banshee-44 when dismantling Legendary and Exotic weapons and armor or by completing daily Gunsmith bounties.
Starting in The Witch Queen, weapon and armor mods sold by Banshee-44 and Ada-1 respectively will no longer require Mod Components to purchase and will instead cost 10,000 Glimmer each. Also they are increasing the number of mods available on each vendor at a single time from two to four. Ghost Mods that generated Weapon Telemetries will be removed, as they no longer serve a purpose.
Master Rahool will be inheriting Spider’s material exchange duties in The Witch Queen. Rahool will also be picking up some of the wares that Banshee-44 and Ada-1 once offered, specifically the sale of Enhancement Prisms and Ascendant Shards. He will also be able to decrypt Umbral engrams.
Hawkmoon ,Dead Man’s Tale and Exotic Catalysts
As of February 22nd, 2022 the Harbinger and Presage Exotic missions will no longer be accessible. As there are randomly rolled exotics they will not be added to the Monuments of lost light, but rather they will show up as part of Xur’s inventory each weekend.
Their cost will be as follows:
- 1 Ascendant Shard
- 1 Exotic Cipher
- 125,000 Glimmer
- 200 Legendary Shards
Along with that their catalysts with a few other weapons will be moving to the core playlist:
- Hawkmoon
- Dead Man’s Tale
- Ager’s Scepter
- Outbreak Perfected
- Whisper of the Worm
- The Fourth Horseman
This is a great addition making these guns more accessible and the catalyst for Outbreak was unavailable for so long. All around great change.
Bounties and other things
This is the list of what bounties will be staying and which ones will be removed only the expansion launches.
- Iron Banner bounties will not be removed at the end of the season.
- Bounties acquired and completed at any point during this season will be retained after The Witch Queen releases.
- Note: Bounties retained from Season of the Lost will be capped at 1350 Power and not give players any bonus Power next season upon redemption.
- Additional note: These bounties will be removed at the end of Season 16, as Saladin will be taking his turn in our rollout of vendor reworks.
- Final note, because I have you here: Our final Iron Banner of the season will be during the final week of Season of the Lost.
- Seasonal bounties related to Season of the Hunt, Season of the Chosen, Season of the Splicer, and Season of the Lost will be removed at the end of the Season.
- Bounties from the Tangled Shore destination will be removed at the end of the Season.
- Some daily bounties from general activities or destinations may be removed depending on objective or reward balancing on a per-bounty basis.
On a whole this is a great news. With the raid being on a weekend along with many of the changes making the game more accessible. This is just an exciting time to be a Destiny 2 player.
