Following a rough couple of weeks for Destiny 2 and its server stability, the folks at Bungie finally have some positive news to announce for its turgid players. Starting next season, Guardians will be able to not only change the Elemental Affinity of a piece of armor, but will also be able to slot in Seasonal mods from previous Seasons. Both of these changes mean that good roles don’t have to go wasted if they don’t match your personal play style, or for the less stubborn out there, that you won’t have to change your play style to take advantage of a good roll.
“You’ll soon be able to change the Elemental Affinity on any piece of armor to either of the other two Affinity types directly from the item’s inspection screen by hovering your cursor over the armor’s energy icon,” according to this week’s This Week at Bungie. “This is intended to mitigate the experience of getting an armor drop with a stat roll you want, but the wrong Elemental Affinity. Changing an armor Affinity type will cost 1 Upgrade Module. If your armor is already upgraded to a higher energy level, the cost will be the total upgrade materials necessary to reach that energy value plus 1 Upgrade Module.”
To put it another way, if you’ve got a set of Masterworked gauntlets that you’d rather have as Void than Solar, you’ll have the pay to Masterwork them all over again, plus the convenience fee of one (1) Upgrade Module. No small ask, but this is Bungie after all.
Thankfully, changing out your Seasonal mods won’t cost anything more than what you’re used to: “Starting next Season, the Seasonal armor mod socket (e.g. Undying Mods, Dawn Mods) will also be able to use mods released during the Seasons before and after the armor piece was released. For example, armor with a mod socket from Season of Dawn can now equip Dawn Mods, Undying Mods from Season of the Undying, and [Redacted] Mods (from Season of [Redacted]).”
This, again, is hugely player-friendly and makes me a lot more interested in continuing to put effort into the year-long season pass that I already paid for with Shadowkeep. As soon as Season of Dawn made it clear that each new Season was going to introduce a new class of modifiers that, in turn, introduced their own new gameplay mechanics, thereby making the gear that I had just spent three months leveling irrelevant, I immediately lost all desire to do anything other than experience the new story content and bounce.
Because what’s the point? As soon as the next season starts, all the Season of Dawn stuff I put effort into would be replaced with new Season of the Butt mods that do totally different things and require a whole new grind that will, invariably, be replaced upon the arrival of the fourth season. But now, the armor I worked so hard on during Season of the Undying is future-compatible with whatever Bungie comes up with, and if a new piece drops that I feel is worth the investment, I can be sure that my hard-earned materials won’t be wasted. Good moves, y’all. Next let’s work on having fewer duplicates in the battle pass, and you might just win me back from Monster Hunter World: Iceborne.
