Destiny 2 gets transmog details, huge Bright Dust changes, and help for "bounty fatigue"

On the heels of the Destiny 2: Beyond Light launch trailer, Bungie released a buffet of details on economy and loot changes coming in the expansion, including Bright Dust shifts and bounty tweaks. 

Bright Dust, the free currency used to purchase items in the Eververse store, is being relocated and ultimately reduced in Beyond Light. The free rewards for the 100 seasonal ranks will now offer 7,500 Bright Dust, and the paid season pass will add 3,000 to the pot. Weekly bounties, once the primary source of Bright Dust, will now grant 100 Bright Dust each – half of what they used to. 

The goal here, Bungie says, is to make grinding bounties on multiple characters less essential, and to increase the amount of Bright Dust that "the vast majority of players" can reasonably earn. This change will certainly make earning Bright Dust a less tedious, more passive process, but it will also lower the amount of Bright Dust available to players each season. As such, reception to this change has fluctuated wildly among players depending on how heavily they play Destiny 2. 

Speaking of bounties: while Bungie isn't introducing a total overhaul for bounties in Beyond Light, it is preparing "a new mechanism to provide players with a set of non-expiring and account-scoped objectives each week that will grant lots of Season rank progress." This system is expected to arrive next season (that is, in season 13), but that's all we know for now. Still, it's good to hear Bungie is taking the Year 3 "bounty simulator" feedback seriously. 

The Power level climb, meanwhile, will see some big changes this season. Beyond Light will have a soft Power cap of 1200 (any drops boost you), a hard cap of 1250 (only powerful sources boost you), and a pinnacle cap of 1260 (only pinnacle sources boost you). It will also boost all players to 1050 on launch day to level the playing field. The climb between those caps will play out differently thanks to two big loot changes. Firstly, Gambit, Crucible, and Strike activities will always have a chance to drop powerful rewards no matter how much you play them. Secondly, gear received from vendors will drop at 20 levels below your current Power, so no more token-powered leveling. This will dramatically shake up how players level new characters, and it should promote more diversity among activities. 

Non-token currencies are getting some changes, too. The planetary materials tied to the destinations leaving the game this fall (Titan, Mars, Io, and Mercury) will be deprecated in season 13, so you should spend them as soon as possible to get full value. However, outdated collectibles like faction tokens will be deleted when Beyond Light launches. 

I suspect quite a lot of armor will be getting deleted soon, too – not by Bungie, but rather by players. See, director Luke Smith finally confirmed that the transmog cosmetic system coming in a future season will let players use armor from their collection to change their appearance. In other words, players no longer need to hold onto good-looking armor just in case they want to transmog it in the future. So, as Smith said, "You can delete all that shit."

Bungie topped off all this number-crunching with another highly requested quality of life change: all sparrows can now be summoned instantly, so you don't need to keep rolling for the Speed Demon perk. Praise the Traveler. 

Smith also explained why future Destiny 2 expansions will probably never be as big as Forsaken.