Destiny 2 Witch Queen Changes | What's Different

Welcome back, Guardians. The newest premium expansion for Destiny 2 has gone live, and thanks to The Witch Queen changes have happened. These range from major ones like all of the Void subclasses getting an overhaul and the new locations introduced in the campaign. But there have also been a ton of minor changes like UI, UX, and even what the vendors are packing. This brief Destiny 2 The Witch Queen changes guide is to help orient you to these changes.

Destiny 2 The Witch Queen Changes – HELM and The Tower

When you first log in to Destiny 2, you'll notice that vendors and social zones have been changed somewhat. For example, the HELM has had all of its different wings and locations closed off and renovated. Considering these wings were for dedicated characters and activities from Seasons of the Hunt, Chosen, Splicer, and Lost – all of which have been vaulted, these removals were to be expected. However, it appears the HELM's Umbral Decoder is still active. This means that, with the right materials, you can make Umbral Engrams more likely to give out specific armor or weapons with certain stats.

As for The Tower's vendors, two of them have got them have gotten major tweaks. The first is the Cryptarch Rahool. Not only can he decrypt Umbral Engrams now, he has a separate vendor menu where you can trade Glimmer and Legendary Shards for resources. This operates similarly to how The Spider's shop worked in The Tangled Shore, both of which have now been vaulted.

It must be noted that Rahool also sells a new material: Ascendant Alloy. This appears to be connected to The Witch Queen's new weapon crafting system. However, much like buying Ascendant Prisms, buying this Alloy will set you back 400 Legendary Shards and you can only buy one per weekly reset.

Next, there is the gunsmith Banshee-44. As part of the run-up to this expansion, Bungie encouraged players to trade in all of their Gunsmith Material resources since they were going to overhaul how they were going to work. Here are the changes. First and foremost, dismantling any piece of gear will, in addition to giving you Glimmer and Shards, will also increase your reputation rank with Banshee-44. This reputation rank works the same ways as the Vanguard, Crucible, and Gambit Reputation system. Complete bounties given out by Banshee and dismantle gear you don't need to slowly increase your rank. Once you hit a certain rank, return to Banshee for a reward, which will either be upgrade kits or rare upgrade materials.

Finally, there has been a slight change to weapon and armor mod availability. If you look at Banshee's store, you'll notice that he only sells weapon mods on a weekly rotation. This is because armor mods are now sold by Ada-1 in addition to her transmog services. Her location in The Tower is still unchanged.

Destiny 2 The Witch Queen Changes – Vanguard, Crucible, and Gambit

As for Vanguard and Gambit activities, a few minor tweaks and changes have happened as well. First is a minor one for Vanguard activities. The Battlegrounds activity from Season of the Chosen has stuck around, now renamed PSIOPs, and grant Vanguard reputation upon completion. If you don't want to go through the same handful of Strikes again and just want to rip through waves of enemies in a big arena, here is your alternative.

When it comes to Crucible, things are difficult to say with any authority since the game just dropped today. However, in addition to new PvP only rebalancing, it has been confirmed that the Eternity and Vostok maps have returned into the game's rotation.

As for Gambit, there have been a ton of quality of life improvements. Considering the last big addition to the activity was Gambit Prime way back in 2019 during Season of the Drifter, an activity that was vaulted when Beyond Light launched, this is a big deal. First, there is a brief description of what the objectives are in a game of Gambit. Kill enemies, collect the motes they drop, put them in a bank, kill the boss that comes out once the bank is full. Do all of this before the other team kills their boss. It's simple, short, and conveys the basics.

On top of that there have been several tweaks that make a world of difference. The number of motes needed to activate an invasion portal has changed. Furthermore, a team cannot save up multiple invasions, you have to use it or lose it. Furthermore, Invaders cannot see how many motes the enemy team is carrying, making it harder to pick out priority targets in the moment. Finally, enemy Blockers have gotten some some nastier additions like elemental shields and Stasis abilities. Overall, it's not a massive transformative experience, but it's nice to know Bungie hasn't completely abandoned this activity.

Destiny 2 The Witch Queen Changes – Minor Quality of Life Improvements

Finally, there are several small improvements that are super helpful for both new and returning players:

• The entire Witch Queen campaign can be replayed at anytime from the menu. Compared to the campaigns of Shadowkeep and Beyond Light, this is a big deal.
• That exact same campaign now has two difficulty modes. Finishing it on Legendary difficulty guarantees you better gear as well as an emblem to mark your accomplishment
• Every single unique status effect mentioned in your subclass menu is explained further with a text pop-up. This helps make sense of more obscure effects like Suppressed.
• The unique armor rewarded through your Season Pass scales again to your power cap. This means you can stick to your main class, switch over to a separate one, then power level them by redeeming season pass armor. This was around in prior seasons but weren't during Beyond Light and the seasons going forward

While we still haven't gotten into major The Witch Queen changes found in Destiny 2, we're hoping this quick guide will help you make sense of how Bungie rearranged the cosmic furniture in their sci-fi MMO Shooter. Good luck Guardians, and beware her lies.