Destiny 2 is giving players a buff they've wanted for years, so of course it's also a nerf

Destiny 2 ascendant materials
(Image credit: Bungie)

In an extremely Destiny 2 moment, Bungie's making a long-requested quality of life change with one hand and removing a handy workaround with the other.

As the developer detailed in a short new blog post about economy changes, Destiny 2's infamously finicky masterwork materials are getting increased resource caps. Ascendant Shards (golf balls, we pros call them) and Ascendant Alloys are going from a cap of 10 to 30, and Enhancement Prisms are going from 50 to 100. 

It's hard to overstate how long and how regularly people have been calling for increased resource caps on these endgame materials, so make no mistake, this is a good inventory change. There's a catch, though. While the inventory cap is going up, the account-wide cap is actually going down because we'll no longer have the option to store excess materials at the Postmaster going forward. As Bungie explains: 

"Now that the caps have been increased, we are removing the ability for these items to go to the Postmaster. If players already have full stacks of any of these materials in their inventory, moving forward, these will behave like Glimmer, and the player won't receive any more of the items until they are below the cap." And before you panic, no, any materials you have in the Postmaster won't get deleted. 

Right now, you can only hold 10 golf balls in your actual inventory, but you can also stash 10 more in the Postmaster on each of your three characters, giving you a theoretical cap of 40. The risk there is that if you don't keep your Postmaster clear, your hard-earned retirement golf balls may be deleted to make room for a worthless Legendary engram, and losing a stack of golf balls is the Destiny 2 equivalent of being kicked in the groin by a horse. Just ask some of my clanmates.  

It's actually surprisingly easy to hit that cap of 40 with a good fireteam during a double-loot Nightfall week, but Bungie says "it turns out that less than 1% hold more than the new increased caps of these materials at their Postmaster." Honestly, I can't say I'm surprised. 

There's probably a fair technical reason behind Bungie's decision to remove the Postmaster shenanigans, and frankly, saving up 40 golf balls is just a luxury more than anything. I reckon this small total reduction is worth it for the easy inventory access. 

This change will arrive in Season 22, and Bungie says it has more economic changes coming in the "near future" to "keep Destiny 2’s economy in a healthy state and avoid any possibility of currencies inflation." 

Destiny 2 fans have joined WoW players in clowning on AI writers with help from their new god, Glorbo. 

Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.