New Info Revealed for Destiny: The Taken King

Bungie’s Destiny: The Taken King stream took place last night, bringing loads of new details on the upcoming expansion and the studio’s approach to Year 2 of the sci-fi shooter.

We hosted the stream on the site yesterday, so you may have seen it all already. And if you missed it I’ve embedded the archived footage at the bottom of the post. But for those of you who can’t be arsed with all of that, here’s some bullet-pointed notes about the biggest changes.

LEVELS / STATS

The new Light Level system is calculated as the average of your Attack and Defence stats across all equipped items. This now also includes Ghosts and Artifacts, in addition to your armour.

Strength, Intellect and Discipline stats will be more clearly communicated. Instead of showing a percentage, the user interface will show the cooldown times of each of your abilities.

Each purchase of The Taken King comes with a single item called a Spark of Light. The Spark of Light allows you to automatically level a character to Level 25. Level 25 is the minimum level to play The Taken King.

WEAPONS

There’s a sword! It’s called the Arc Edge and it looks like a weapon you can carry with you all the time, not just a Sword of Crota-esque thing. In addition to allowing you to swing it around like a badass, the sword can also block against Solar and Void attacks.

When you acquire an Exotic weapon or piece of armour, you will gain access to its perks immediately, instead of having to level it up.

Exotic blueprints are a record of all the Exotics you’ve ever had in your collection. If you’ve ever sharded an Exotic you’ll still be able to access the blueprint in order to create a new one.

Exotic blueprints are shared across all your characters. So you only have to acquire an item once and you’ll be able to get it for your Warlock, Hunter and Titan.

Some of the Exotics from Year 1 are being upgraded for Year 2. Some, not all. We don’t have a categorical breakdown of what has made the cut and what hasn’t.

There’s a new Infusion system. It’s described as the equivalent of Ascension, for Year 2 items. It allows you to take an equivalent or higher level weapon that you don’t want and feed it into the weapon you want to infuse, therefore boosting its Attack rating.

QUESTS AND BOUNTIES

In Destiny Year 2 you will be able to hold 32 quests in your inventory.

You will be able to turn in Quests at any time, without returning to The Tower or The Reef.

New Quests and Bounties will be added to the game.

If you complete all 5 weekly Crucible bounties in one week, you’ll get “Nightfall tier” rewards.

THE TOWER

In Year 2, when you’re in The Tower, you’ll be able to choose which of your weapons you display on your back. Wanna show off that ace new Rocket Launcher or your Arc Edge? You can totally do that.

VAULT SPACE HAS BEEN DOUBLED. There will be 72 slots for weapons, 72 slots for armour and 36 slots for Inventory items.

All Faction reputation earned during Year 1 will carry over into Year 2.

In Year 2 you will only be able to change your Faction once a week. You will do this by pledging, not by equipping the relevant Class Item. All Cangaurd and Crucible rep earned during that week will go into that Faction.

Factions must now be pledged to and can only be swapped once a week. Once you pledge to a faction you will gain reputation for the faction and the Vanguard / Crucible as well.

Packages earned from levelling up with a Faction will be guaranteed a Legendary. Shader drop rates will also be increased and there will be a lower chance of earning duplicates.

The Cryptarch will sell legendary Engrams, purchasable with Legendary Marks that are GUARANTEED to turn into a Legendary item.

The Gunsmith will allow Guardians to test weapons in the field.

The Gunsmith will host something called Armsday. Gaining reputation with The Gunsmith will allow you to place Armsday Orders for new weapons. A different set of weapons will be available each week. Armsday is on a Wednesday.

OTHER STUFF

Dismantling a Legendary item in Year 2 will now give you Legendary Marks.

Ghost shells will have stats that contribute to your Intellect, Discipline, Strength. They’ll also have skills, like the ability to assist you in tracking down Spirit Bloom.

Class Items (Capes, Bonds, Whatever Titans Have) will have their own perks.

Vanguard and Crucible Marks will be replaced with Legendary Marks.

There will be no cap on how many Marks you can acquire in a week and they will be shared across all characters.

Collections will help you keep track of the Exotics, Ships, Emblems and Shaders in the game, telling you which you have and letting you know how to track down the ones you don’t.

Source - X360A