Inhales
Alright let’s talk about Destiny 2: Shadowkeep armor. The verdict: It looks good, I’m very hype, god why isn’t it October 1 yet??
Here are the details:
Starting with your retooled Solstice legendary armor onward, Armor 2.0 will reintroduce three stats from Destiny: Intelligence (which governs your Super regeneration), Discipline (grenade regeneration) and Strength (melee attack regeneration). Mobility (base speed and jump height), Resilience (shield strength) and Recovery (health regeneration) are going to remain, and all six stats will be measured on a zero to 100 scale.
If that wasn’t enough, every piece of Armor 2.0 armor you collect will have a base value for each stat, which is a pretty big departure from the way both Destiny and Destiny 2 armor stats have been measured thus far. Class items will have no inherent stat values, but like the rest of the armor, will have modification slots for you to experiment with.
On that note, random perks are just… gone. You no longer need to rely on RNG “god rolls” to get an armor combo that works for you, you simply need to have the right mods available to you. Mods themselves are no longer consumables; when you earn one, you unlock it forever. To get around the power creep this might cause, each mod will come at a cost.
Every piece of armor will have an energy level and an energy type (void, arc and solar). The energy level is pretty similar to Destiny 2’s concept of masterworking, in which you can pour a certain amount of resources into an upgrade for your gear, eventually reaching maximum power. (In addition, masterworking your gear in Shadowkeep grants that gear +2 to all base stats.)
What Shadowkeep does differently is allow you to allocate that power in whatever ways you want. The mods you collect have certain energy costs, and while some are stackable across your desired build, other mods are not and will grey out if you’ve used them on another piece of gear.
What’s great about this is if you decide you don’t want to use a particular mod anymore, you can simply unequip it. Since the mods are no longer consumable, you don’t have to commit or worry that you won’t get another copy of one without grinding.
Some other fun stuff revealed during the stream: you can see your ghost and sparrow on your character screen now, your Glimmer cap has been raised to 250,000, and any Exotic gear you have collected ever will drop as Armor 2.0 from your collections, starting October 1. We also caught a glimpse of the new materials you’ll need, like enhancement prisms and Ascendant shards (necessary for masterworks), along with a promise that more would be revealed at Gamescom and that there will be way more ways to get resources.
Oh, and Universal ornaments look dope, but they won’t overwrite Exotics, and all the Legendary armor you can currently get will drop as Armor 2.0 starting on October 1, including stuff from Vendors.
So what does this mean for the game? Well, during their initial DLC reveal for Shadowkeep, Bungie reiterated again and again that they were embracing their RPG roots. With Armor 2.0 it certainly seems like they’re committing to that venture, and from the demo, it looks like we’ll be able to modify and fine-tune our Guardians in much more satisfying ways than, “Hunter go fast,” or “Titan hit big.” It’s a nice change of pace, and I can’t wait to play it.
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