Engram focusing has been a major focus (sorry) in Destiny 2 for some time now. And soon, players will be able to focus Exotic engrams, changing a major aspect of the game’s loot mechanics. Beginning in season 21, Guardians can visit Rahool to turn their Exotic engrams into specific pieces of gear they’re looking for.
When this change goes live, Exotic Engrams will no longer auto-decrypt into armor pieces. Instead, they will remain in your inventory. From there, you can visit Rahool to decrypt them for free, getting a random piece of Exotic gear just as how you would have before. In addition, however, you can focus the engram in one of two ways.
The first option will allow you to focus an Exotic engram to a specific expansion’s release. For the cost of one Exotic engram, one Ascendant Shard, and 30,000 Glimmer, you can get a piece of gear for a particular slot from a particular year of Destiny 2. So you could, for instance, focus Red War leg armor to get a leg Exotic from the first year of the game’s history.
The second option will simply allow players to directly focus the Exotic armor they want. Looking for a particular roll of Sunbracers? You got it, but it’ll set you back one Exotic engram, three Ascendant Shards, 60,000 Glimmer, and one Exotic Cipher. (The Exotic Cipher stack limit is being raised from one to five to compensate for their increased use.)
Presumably, Destiny 2 Ghost mods which allow players to target specific stats in their armor drops will also work with the Exotic focusing system. Bungie notes that players won’t be able to focus new pieces of armor, so you’ll still have to get those first via Lost Sectors or Vex Strike Force for the time being.
What do you think of the ability to focus Exotic engrams? It’s pretty steep, especially for focusing specific armor drops, but it’s a nice option to have and should make getting an Exotic engram drop a little more exciting and useful than it’s been for a while now.
