Bungie Hosts In-Game Fashion Show Ahead Of Destiny: Age Of Triumph

Bungie has been rolling out new details about Age of Triumph over the course of three live streams on its Twitch channel, and today brought the final installment. The majority of the stream was spent showing off some spiffy new raid armor ornaments and changes to raid weaponry, but we also got some hints about balance changes. The big takeaway remains what it has been throughout conversations about Age of Triumph; this update is planned as a victory lap for the game, with a chance for players to return to older adventures and have a large percentage of the content from the first three years of Destiny become relevant once again. 

From a visual perspective, it was hard to beat getting a look at some dramatic new ornaments for every one of the four raids in the game. Vault of Glass, Crota’s End, King’s Fall, and Wrath of the Machine will now all have armor sets that can be obtained at max light and power, but all four of those sets also have the option for applied ornaments that enhance their appearance. We’ve included screengrabs of the art for each of those sets throughout this post. In addition to some dramatic visual effects, some of the sets also have dynamic elements; both the Crota’s End and King’s Fall ornaments have lighting effects that drop out and then fade back in after a Guardian takes damage.

The new raid ornaments are obtained by confronting each week’s featured raid, and ornaments earned can be applied to any raid set, not just armor pieces from the raid you were playing. For example, you can earn an ornament in Crota’s End, and use it on an armor piece from the Vault of Glass. 

In addition to raid armor sets, we also got a glimpse of an Age of Triumph-themed set of armor that will be obtainable through the boxes that will launch with the update. You can get three of these boxes through featured activities each week, or pay real money to get additional boxes and chances for this Chroma-enabled set. 

The other big news to come out of the stream is that Guardians are about to see a bunch of new exotic weapons, or rather old legendary weapons that have now become exotic. Specifically, all four raids now feature adept elementary primary weapons as potential drops, attainable in the weekly featured raid. In the case of Vault of Glass and Crota’s End, these are the elementary primaries we’ve seen before, like Fatebringer and Vision of Confluence. In the case of King’s Fall and Wrath of the Machine, we can expect that the familiar raid primaries will return, like Doom of Chelchis, but they may now have elemental ammo types (arc, solar, or void). Here’s the catch; all of these raid primaries will now be exotic weapons, and take up the slot on your character for using an exotic. As such, as an example, you wouldn’t be able to use both an Adept Fatebringer (in your primary slot) and a Black Spindle (in your special weapon slot) at the same time. It sounds as if all of these weapons can be obtained as legendary weapons, but without the elemental effects.

We also got a glimpse at other popular returning weapons,  including Vex Mythoclast, Necrochasm, and newly ornamented exotics like Lord of Wolves, Dragon’s Breath, No Land Beyond, and Suros Regime.

On the balance front, the stream gave us some of the top level points around this most recent sandbox pass. Hand cannons are seeing a slight range nerf, while auto rifles are getting a range boost. The Truth rocket launcher is getting one more round in its backpack and is now one of the fastest reloading rocket launchers in the game. No Land Beyond acts more like a traditional sniper rifle under fire. Skorri’s artifact now only triggers after you get a kill. Sidearms now come back after death with one full magazine, rather than stacking new ammo on top of what you already had. And special weapon crates in PvP now reload your weapon instantly on pick-up. These were just some of the changes mentioned, and presumably many more small changes will be on display when Age of Triumph (otherwise known as Destiny update 2.6.0) launches on March 28 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. 

Our Take
Some of the new raid ornaments look incredibly cool, and I’m excited to try and outfit my guardians. While for me personally I will always be more enthusiastic about new Destiny content than rehashing old content, I’m nonetheless pleased that this final update for the first Destiny game is aiming to leave so much of the great content accessible and fun to play for the entire community as the game goes into retirement.