House Of Wolves Will Change Destiny In Some Huge (Possibly Great) Ways

During a livestream today, Bungie shared a bunch of new information on the upcoming second expansion pack for Destiny, a video game named after a Calvin Klein fragrance. Although House of Wolves might not have a raid, it will bring along a few new features that Destiny needed really badly.

The most important news: you’ll be able to upgrade any legendary or exotic weapon or armor piece to the highest level possible, thanks to a new upgrade path that Bungie’s calling “Ascend.”

Check it out:

Ascending a weapon takes it up to 365 Attack, while ascending a piece of armor will bump it up to max light and armor value. And you’ll get to keep all the perks and upgrades you’ve already unlocked—no more grinding weapon levels over and over again like you had to do when The Dark Below came out. Bungie’s learned from their mistakes for this one.

To reiterate, you’ll be able to upgrade any purple or yellow gear, which solves a ton of Destiny’s biggest problems. For one, you won’t be limited just to the highest-end gear if you want to hit max level—all that old armor you found in the Vault of Glass and Crota’s End will now actually be worth keeping around. And you won’t have to worry about which of your exotic pieces is vanilla and which got an upgrade in the first expansion.

We still don’t know what Etheric Light is or how we’ll get it, but it appears that exotic weapons will instead require Exotic Shards for a proper upgrade. No Xur necessary.

(Yes, you’ll be able to upgrade the Vex Mythoclast. Joy of joys.)

On top of all this, Bungie’s also adding an option for more hardcore players called Reforge. Check it out:

In other words, you’ll be able to reroll the randomized perks on any new weapon until you’re happy with the ones it’s got. Like ascend, this new reforge feature will require resources you’ve probably been hoarding for months now, like glimmer and motes of light. (Seems like you can only reforge new House of Wolves weapons, though.)

During the stream, Bungie also walked us through the new social space, called The Reef, which will work like the Tower in some ways (with vault access and a bounty tracker bot) but will also introduce new vendors for Queen’s Wrath bounties and House of Judgment gear, both new to the expansion. (We saw Queen’s Wrath bounties late last year for a week or so, but we haven’t seen them since. They’ll be totally new this time around.)

Over at the Tower, the Speaker will now serve as a dump for all your old materials—you’ll be able to exchange ascendant shards and energy for glimmer and motes of light, for example.

Bungie says they’ll elaborate more on the big new activities—called the Trials of Osiris and the Prison of Elders—in future livestreams over the next few weeks.

House of Wolves will be out on May 19. You can watch the whole archived stream here

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