Season 22 is just around the corner, so I wanted to go through all the details that we know about, plus speculate on some we don’t know about. Today I’m going to round up all the official info we’ve had from Bungie so we can look ahead to everything coming in Season 22.
Season 22 kicks off on August 22nd, the very same day as the Destiny 2 Showcase, where we’ll find out more about The Final Shape, Season 22, plus hopefully we’ll get some information about the future of Destiny 2 after the Light vs Darkness Saga wraps up. If you’ve been playing for the last few years, then you’ll know the formula, mid-expansion and the end of the summer we get the big next expansion reveal, and sometimes this can have a big impact on the seasonal content too.
While there are a few things we don’t know, there are some things we do including a returning raid, the exotic mission rotator, new weapons, new story, economy changes plus we have a new crucible map coming in Season 22. Without further delay, lets dive into it.
Returning Raid
Every third season for the past couple of years we’ve had a reprised raid. First we had The Vault of Glass, then we had Kings Fall and now we have a few options for the returning raid – and each comes with a few challenges. The remaining raids from Destiny 1 are Crota’s End and Wrath of the Machine. Crota’s End might make the most sense, given the revival of the Hive themes in the main story with Xivu Arath coming to the forefront of the story, plus the potential revivial of Savathun in Season 22.
Wrath of the Machine is arguably the more popular raid from a fan perspective, although the exotic reward for that raid (Outbreak Prime), is already in Destiny 2 as Outbreak Perfected. This raid also has Splicer Fallen, which is an enemy type we don’t have in Destiny 2 at the moment, although in theory they could be replaced with regular Fallen.
I have a feeling Crota’s End is coming back, given the it’s thematic ties to the current story, plus we already have Crota in the game, albeit through Nightmare form.
Exotic Mission Rotator
Exotic Missions are some of the best content in Destiny, and we’ve had some classic missions over the years. Bungie is promising an Exotic Mission Rotator will be coming to the game in Season 22, allowing fans to relive some of the best exotic missions of the past.
Bungie has said they will start with these 3:
Presage (to unlock Dead Man’s Tale)
Vox Obscura (to unlock Dead Messenger)
Operation: Seraph Shield (to unlock Revision Zero)
These are all very good missions, but the one I really want to step back into is the Whisper Mission, plus Zero Hour would be a nice addition too. Hopefully we’ll get these in future seasons. For now, Presage and Serpah Shield are very good additions. Personally I wasn’t a hyge fan of Vox Obscura all that much, even though it was good to navigate Destiny 1 Mars again. Presage was Bungie dipping their toe in the horror aspect of the game, which led into Season of the Haunted very well. Operation Seraph Sheild was a great mission in it’s own right, reusing elements of the Deep Stone Crypt raid.
It’s worth noting because Presage is coming back, that means Dead Man’s Tale is being removed from Xur, plus it’s going to be craftable in Season 22, so maybe keep an eye on Xur’s DMT’s between now and the end of the season to pick up a good one.
Weapons
Here’s some of the weapons coming in Season 22. We don’t know about the seaonal weapons yet, but we do have a good idea for playlists like Vanguard Ops, Cruicble, Gambit, Trials and Iron Banner.
Crucible
Unending Tempest – Stasis Submachine Gun
Strikes
Luna Regolith III – Solar Sniper Rifle
Gambit
Qua Xaphan V – Void Machine Gun
Nightfall
Warden’s Law – Kinetic Hand Cannon
Pre Astyanax IV – Solar Precision Bow
Iron Banner
The Guiding Sight – Strand Scout Rifle
Point of the Stag – Arc Bow
Trials of Osiris
Igneous Hammer – Solar Hand Cannon
Cataphract GL3 – Strand Heavy Grenade Launcher
There are a couple of stand out weapons here. Warden’s Law coming back as a Nightfall weapon is very exciting, this was one of my favourites when it first released. Igneous Hammer is an interesting choice, given it’s domination in the crucible last time around. Bungie have said regarding hand cannons “we are bringing back a certain type of Hand Cannon, and actually making it a new archetype”.
Bungie also followed up with this about Warden’s Law.
When we were looking at weapons to bring back for Nightfall rewards this Season, we knew we wanted to do something unique. The Warden’s Law Hand Cannon fit the bill; it was a fun idea from back in the Forsaken days that never really caught on with players due to the difficulty in landing both shots from the vertical spread that it fired. So, we thought to ourselves, how could we make this gun feel better to use, while maintaining the identity it originally shipped with?
We felt the most important thing was to move away from the idea of it firing a spread, which is when multiple shots are fired at the same time with a single trigger pull (think Shotguns), and to allow it to fire a burst, which is when multiple shots are fired one after the other with a single trigger pull (think Pulse Rifles). The initial version of the new Warden’s Law pretty much had it becoming a Legendary version of Crimson, complete with a three-round burst (but minus the healing on kills). And while that was fun it never felt right, and it also felt like it took something away from Crimson itself. We went through several variants, including a handful that modified the time between the bullets in the burst, before settling on a two-round burst with a slightly longer delay between shots than normal (normal bursts fire at 900 RPM, this one fires at 600 RPM).
Next, we knew we had to tune it to give players a reason to run this over a standard 120 RPM Hand Cannon, and we also knew we needed to make it feel great to use, while still leaving room for perks and stats to improve it. We spent time focusing on several major parts of the equation: the damage per burst, the PvP time-to-kill, and the recoil pattern. Because the weapon is harder to use than a normal Hand Cannon, in that you must hit two shots in a burst with each trigger pull instead of just one, we decided to allow it to do slightly more critical hit damage and kill just a bit faster than something like Igneous Hammer. We utilized the damage profile that Aggressive Frame Hand Cannons had some years back, dealing up to 90 damage per burst against players (25 per body, 45 per crit). Then we slightly reduced the burst delay (the time between the bursts themselves, as opposed to the time between shots within a burst) so that it has a slightly faster 0.93s time-to-kill instead of the standard 1.00s.
We were also very careful to tune the recoil pattern in such a way that it felt manageable at a base level, but that still motivated players to utilize perks to improve it. The pattern itself is doubly important because the tightness of the burst has a direct impact on how usable the gun is at longer ranges. Since we were allowing the gun to deal more damage and kill more quickly, we did not want it to be able to reach the same maximum ranges as standard 120 Hand Cannons, so we designed the recoil pattern in such a way that (without manual recoil control and a little bit of help from perks), it would be more difficult to land two crits from the same burst at 35m+, while still maintaining a smooth feel and decent ease of use at closer ranges. We’re really excited for you all to get this revamped weapon into your hands, and we hope you have as much fun shooting it as we had working on it!
Economy Changes
We have a few econonmy changes coming in Season 22.
- Post-match rewards for Crucible, strikes, and Gambit changed due to player feedback: Weapons coming back into the pools for Crucible, strikes, Gambit, Nightfalls, Iron Banner, and Trials of Osiris.
- Increased drop rates for ritual engrams upon completion.
For new Masterwork material caps (and the philosophy behind the below changes in the original article):
Ascendant Shard:
Old cap: 10
New cap: 30
Ascendant Alloy:
Old cap: 10
New cap: 30
Enhancement Prism:
Old cap: 50
New cap: 100
Crucible
In Season 22 we are due a new Cruicble Map, one that’s going to be set in the Vex Network. In Season of the Deep we had Meltdown returned, and it’s great to be finally getting a new map, and hopefully this one is better than Disjunction. The Vex Network has been a popular setting from Season of the Splicer, plus since Lightfall we’ve been hoping into the Vex Network more often for the HyperNet Current Strike on Neomuna, plus the exotic mission for the Vex Glaive in Season of Defiance. I’m looking forward to jumping into this new PVP map, and hopefully it’s going to be a fan favourite.
Story
The story hasn’t yet been confirmed but its looking likely its going to be focused on resurrecting Savathun. During the Witch Queen the big twist was the Hive were granted the Light by the traveller, and Savathun was gravely injured in her battle against Mara. Savathun crawled to the Traveller, died and then was resurrected in the Light. At the end of the campaign we killed Savathun, and her ghost Imarru fled. We’ve seen lore entries of Eris dissecting Savathun’s Corpse, however, it’s likely we’ll have to find Immaru and convince him to resurrect Savathun in our upcoming battle against The Witness.
I am hopeful we’re also going to see Xivu Arath for the first time, especially given her excellent voice work this season in the Exotic mission for Wikid Implement. There are plenty of other story threads Bungie could go off on, but I’d like to see more of Savathun, plus also bring in more Eris Morn and Drifter. We’ve had plenty of Drifter in recent seasons, but it’d be great to have Savathun, Xivu Arath and Eris in the same season.
Let me know what you want to see from Season 22 in the comments.