Bungie today published its final This Week at Bungie blog post ahead of next week’s Destiny 2: Shadowkeep launch, and while most of the ground covered has been tread before, a few new details regarding the post-Shadowkeep machinations of Bright Engrams and pinnacle weapons did sneak through.
For as long as Guardians have been at Destiny 2‘s level cap, they’ve received a Bright Engram from the Eververse shop each time they gained another level’s worth of experience. These Engrams contain random cosmetic items from the shop’s history, and I’d feel safe in guessing that Bright Engrams are how most Guardians acquire the majority of their weapon ornaments, ships, and sparrows.
Well starting with the launch of Shadowkeep and New Light on October 1, Bright Engrams no longer drop once per post-cap level. Instead, they’re now one of the many rewards available in the Season of the Undying’s battle pass progression, and it isn’t until you’ve leveled the battle pass to 100 that Bright Engrams will once again drop — at a rate of once every five levels.
For all of us out here who cannot (or will not) spend extra money on a full-price game we’ve already bought, this marks a significant reduction in our ability to obtain fancy cosmetic items that don’t actually matter at all! And that’s sort of a bummer until you remember that last part!
The change, according to someone writing under the pseudonym “Destiny Dev Team,” is being made for the exact reason you think it is: Pinnacle weapons are too damn good, and they’re too damn hard to get.
“Most of them far exceeded the efficacy they should have been at,” the developer said. “Another issue is that they cause problems in the player ecosystem, particularly in the case of the Crucible pinnacle weapons. Due to the nature of PvP and PvE, anything that works well in PvP is likely going be extremely effective in PvE as well. This forces players into the Crucible if they want the ‘best’ loadouts.”
Ritual weapons, in comparison, will be closer to the “interesting novelties” that pinnacle weapons were originally intended to be. As such, they’ll be easier to come by than pinnacle weapons, but you’ll still have to complete a quest of some kind to get your hands on ’em. As seen above, the first Vanguard ritual weapon is Edgewise, which looks to be a new machine gun. Crucible gets Randy’s Throwing Knife, which I’m guessing is a scout rifle, while Gambit gets a sub-machine gun called Exit Strategy.
I’m gonna be honest with y’all, I’m way more interested in who the hell “Randy” is than any of these changes. I’ve read as much Destiny lore as is available on the internet and for the life of me, I cannot recall anyone named Randy — let alone a Randy important enough to get their own weapon. Is Randy the artist that designed the gun? Or an upcoming raid boss, mayhaps? Will we slowly uncover Randy’s secrets as the Season of the Undying unfolds? Why doesn’t Randy know the difference between a gun and a knife?
