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The new Destiny 2 Season Pass is similar to the Battle Passes available in games like Fortnite and Apex Legends in that it provides miscellaneous rewards as players earn XP and increase their seasonal rank. These rewards include cosmetics, gear, crafting materials, and permanent bonuses like improved loot or XP. The Destiny 2 Season Pass does make a few changes to this familiar formula, however, and some of its finer points aren't immediately clear, so we've collected everything you need to know about the new seasonal reward system.
Destiny 2 Season Pass price
Each Season Pass will cost $10. However, the Season Pass for season eight, which kicks off in Shadowkeep, is included with the expansion. So if you buy Shadowkeep, you won't need to buy the Season Pass separately. This is presumably Bungie's way of introducing players to the new system before directly asking them to buy into it.
Once season eight ends, you'll need to pay $10 each season to access the new rewards and activities. Fortunately, like all future Destiny 2 expansions, Season Passes will be available a la carte on a standalone basis. This means that if you don't like what season nine has to offer or you just aren't playing at the time, you can skip it and still buy the season 10 pass later on.
In addition to the Season Pass itself, Bungie says it will also allow players to purchase ranks as a catch-up mechanic that would become available in the final two to four weeks of the season. The pricing for buying ranks has not been announced, but Destiny 2 director Luke Smith did explain Bungie's approach to the idea.
"In the same way that we’ve been doing seasonal catch-up for Power, we think providing a late-in-the-season rank catch-up makes sense," Smith said in a blog post. "This initial version is our starting point, and the way we’ve designed Seasons moving forward means that we’re going to be able to have the flexibility to tune how this works once we see how Season of the Undying goes."
"Our goal in tuning this is for our most committed Destiny players, who start on week 1, to reach Rank 100 simply by doing the things they already love spending their time on," Smith added. "If that’s not happening, we have the freedom and ability to adjust. We want Destiny to be your home however you want to play and hit 100. You may never want or need to buy a rank. We just want our community to be able to play together as easily as possible and narratively be part of the Destiny world as it changes."
What do you get with the Destiny 2 Season Pass for the Season of the Undying?
Again, purchasing a Season Pass will unlock all the new content and activities in that season in addition to the rank rewards. The rewards from the rank system are a bonus, not a separate purchase. It's also worth remembering that there will be some free content available in every season. With that in mind, let's go over everything that the Destiny 2 Season Pass for season eight, the Season of the Undying, unlocks.
New activities
First, let's look at the broad strokes - the content and activities that come with the Season Pass for the Season of the Undying. Remember that Shadowkeep is where you'll find new missions, Strikes, PvP maps, the new raid and dungeon, and content like that. This is just the stuff that will roll out throughout the season.
- The Vex Offensive, a new activity with daily and weekly bounties and rewards. This activity is Season Pass-exclusive.
- The Leviathan's Breath Exotic bow. This Exotic quest is Season Pass-exclusive.
Rank 1-100 rewards
Next up: rank rewards. Kudos to Reddit user PlainBen for compiling this image showing all the rank rewards displayed on the official Season of the Undying page.
There are 100 ranks and each one has a premium reward - that's the stuff you get if you own the Season Pass. Some ranks also come with free rewards for players who don't own the Season Pass. These are indicated in the top-right corner of each cell of the image above. At rank three, for example, Season Pass owners will receive a permanent XP boost and a bundle of Glimmer, while players who don't own the Season Pass will just get the Glimmer. At rank 100, Season Pass owners will receive an Exotic ornament for Erianna's Vow and a Bright Engram, while players who don't own the Season Pass will only get the Engram. You get the idea.
The image above offers a good view of the kinds of stuff included in each season. Most rank rewards are things like crafting or planetary materials, Bright Engrams or Legendary Engrams, or Vex Offensive Legendary armor pieces. That said, some rewards are new items with unique effects, so we've picked out the most important free and premium (but mostly premium) rewards below. Note that the new Scrounger items give you a bonus chance of receiving specific loot in specific activities.
- Rank 1: Bundle containing Eriana's Vow Exotic hand cannon and Vex Offensive armor (premium)
- Rank 6: Trailblazer Legendary emblem (premium)
- Rank 7: The Gate Lord's Eye Artifact (free)
- Rank 9: Night's Chill shader (premium)
- Rank 10: Belgian Flying Kick finisher (premium)
- Rank 11: Catalyst Quest Boost Alpha which boosts Eriana's Vow Exotic Catalyst progress (premium)
- Rank 18: Blackheart Growth transmat effect (premium)
- Rank 20: Legendary Shard Dismantler which grants one bonus Legendary Shard when dismantling Legendary or Exotic items (premium)
- Rank 25: Exotic Engram (premium)
- Rank 30: Pluperfect Legendary auto rifle (free)
- Rank 35: Eriana's Vow Exotic hand cannon (free)
- Rank 43: Strike Armor Scrounger (premium)
- Rank 45: Temporal Clause Legendary machine gun (free)
- Rank 50: First Frost shader (premium)
- Rank 53: Gambit Armor Scrounger (premium)
- Rank 60: Exotic Engram (free) and three Enhancement Prisms (premium)
- Rank 63: Crucible Armor Scrounger (premium)
- Rank 64: Vex Offensive gauntlet armor ornament (premium)
- Rank 65: Exotic Engram (premium)
- Rank 67: Vex Offensive legs armor ornament (premium)
- Rank 70: Three Enhancement Prisms (premium)
- Rank 71: Strike Auto Rifle Scrounger (premium)
- Rank 73: Gambit Auto Rifle Scrounger (premium)
- Rank 74: Exotic Engram (premium)
- Rank 77: Vex Offensive class item ornament (premium)
- Rank 80: One Ascendant Shard (premium)
- Rank 81: Gambit Machine Gun Scrounger (premium)
- Rank 83: Crucible Auto Rifle Scrounger (premium)
- Rank 85: One Ascendant Shard (premium)
- Rank 87: Vex Offensive chest piece ornament (premium)
- Rank 88: Pluperfect Legendary auto rifle ornament (premium)
- Rank 90: The Exotic ship Never Live It Down (premium)
- Rank 91: Crucible Machine Gun Scrounger (premium)
- Rank 93: Strike Machine Gun Scrounger (premium)
- Rank 94: One Ascendant Shard (premium)
- Rank 95: Temporal Clause Legendary machine gun ornament (premium)
- Rank 97: Vex Offensive helmet ornament (premium)
- Rank 98: Exotic Engram (premium)
- Rank 99: Exotic emote Clash of Swords (premium)
- Rank 100: Eriana's Vow For Wei ornament (premium)
How do you level up and claim rewards?
Unlike Battle Passes in other games which often require specific challenges in order to increase your rank, the Destiny 2 Season Pass is driven purely by XP. Anything that earns you XP, from completing Strikes and Public Events to turning in bounties - basically just playing the dang video game - will advance your seasonal rank. Smith offered an example of what leveling looks like in his earlier blog post:
"I see you: 'Did Bungie just raise the XP needed to get a rank to some ridiculous level so that players have to buy ranks at the end of the season?' The answer to that question is NO," he said. "For example, in our internal team tests, playing Strikes in a fairly relaxed manner (18 minutes per Strike play time) with full stacks of bounties can get a Seasonal Rank in less than one hour. Every week, Guardians also get rest XP bonuses (per account), where their first three ranks are at triple XP. Playing Strikes with full stacks of bounties and rest XP should get 10 ranks in around 8 hours. And knowing you, we’ll all see even better ways you’ll min-max your time to clear your ranks."
Strikes may well prove to be a good source of XP, but I can't stress enough that you can do literally anything. Gambit, Patrols, Crucible, raids, daily missions - anything that gives XP, which is basically everything in the game. Players will surely min-max the XP grind and work out the most efficient activities to repeat, but the point is, as long as you're playing Destiny 2, you'll be advancing your Season Pass.
