Bungie has provided updates on upcoming changes for Destiny 2’s Ash and Iron expansion, including reversals on previously unpopular decisions, adjustments to power progression, new event details, and class-specific updates planned through the coming months.

Reverted and Updated Progression Changes

• Bungie reversed the planned reduction in power and engram drops for Solo Ops and related activities.

• Pinnacle engrams and Solo Ops reward rates will remain unchanged from their current state.

• Prime engrams will continue to auto-decrypt, eliminating the need for tower visits.

Fireteam Ops and Activity Adjustments

• Time limits for matchmade Fireteam Ops increased: Expert (+25%), Master (+50%), Grandmaster (+75%).

• Ash and Iron will increase drop rates for activities including Liminality, Inverted Spire, and Onslaught on Widow’s Court.

• Activity timers and drop values have been rebalanced for Solo, Pinnacle, and Fireteam Ops.

• Fireteam Ops will phase out unpopular mods (e.g., Grappler) from matchmaking but retain them for manual selection.

Power Reward Improvements

• Prime engram drop rates increased in activities with more base completion rewards.

• Bungie aims to make power climb from 200–300 and 300–400 less difficult, with more changes expected.

• Account’s highest power, not equipped power, will determine portal reward scores.

Raid, Portal, and Challenge Updates

• Desert Perpetual will receive weekly challenges awarding powerful rewards and improved gear tier drops.

• Conquests become replayable, with rerun rewards at standard portal levels.

• Time-bonus minimum scores set at 5% for meeting activity timers.

Heavy Metal Crucible Event Details

• Heavy Metal event returns September 2–9, featuring new legendary weapons, cosmetics, and updated event hub.

• Rewards include Heavier Duty emblem (rank 5), sword holofoil (rank 10), and kinetic shotgun holofoil (rank 15).

• Exotic sparrow obtainable at rank 14; Twitch drops available for event duration.

Class-Specific Changes

• Hunters: On Your Mark aspect reworked for weapon stat bonuses; Golden Gun/Deadshot and Marksman's Dodge updated for ammo handling and super duration.

• Warlocks: Turrets now count as grenades for perks; Empowering Rift grants ability energy over time and improved ammo reward mechanics.

• Titans: Howl of the Storm grants two melee charges and more crystals; Bastion aspect cooldown reduced in PvP.

Destiny Rising Launch Details

• New emblem "Starboard Forward" unlockable by completing "Bear the Light" in Destiny Rising, with code provided in-game.

• Initial impressions of Destiny Rising are mostly positive, though console access is not available.

Community and Communication Notes

• Bungie acknowledges need for better communication and improvements to reward tiers and power progression.

• Further community feedback is encouraged for ongoing changes.

Destiny 2 Ash and Iron Update

What's up guys, Houndish here, and today it's the day where the twid comes. And with the twid, we hope to see many positive things. In this one, Bungie continue to talk about changes they'll be making for Ash and Iron, which is the next content drop for Destiny 2 in September.

As we all know, there is a lot of focus on power and progression at the moment. Last week, Bungie seemed to be walking slightly in the wrong direction with regards to the kind of changes that we want to see in the player base. So let's see if we can go in a slightly better direction this week.

We'll break it down. Firstly, we should say Bungie announced that their planned reductions to power earned for a given grade within solo ops have been reverted. and the reduction in engrams that they were going to drop for Uncore, Starcrossed and The Whisper have also been reverted.

So Solo Ops will basically be the same as it is right now. And the same applies to those pinnacle engrams, which of course was the first little bit of a walk back from Bungie's previous position they announced last week. So worth highlighting those changes again. Initially, they've also said we won't have to go to the tower to decrypt prime engrams at the Crypt Arc and they'll continue to auto decrypt. So that's the corrections from last week's twid initially.

Moving further into the twit for this week though, Bungie outline a few other things that they're going to be doing in terms of portal activities and rewards. So firstly, for Fireteam Ops buffs, they say, "When it comes to Fireteam Ops, we know that we have work to do. Here's a list of buffs that we're planning on and some new changes that we're adding in response to your feedback." Some that have already gone live this week, increasing the matchmade fire team op's time limits across the board. So they've improved expert by +25%, master is +50% and grandmaster +75% so specifically in terms of timers, those are certainly more forgiven now. For ash and iron though, they say they're increasing the number of drops for liminality, inverted spire and onslaught on widow's court and activity timers have been rebalanced for solo, pinnacle and FireteamObs, and they say FireteamObs has a greater value for speed versus killing all enemies.

On top of that though, they say new in Ash and Iron will be that they're increasing the number of drops for many more activities in FireteamObs. The team is still working on finalizing which specific activities can buff up, and we'll share more details after we finish validating the change. But additionally, they're removing unpopular mods like Grappler from FireteamObs' matchmaking pool.

Although they say it will still be available when selecting and customizing modifiers for that activity. So a few more changes there, which I think sound positive, and hopefully they're going to tie in a little bit with some of the other stuff that Bungie are doing. So moving on for portal rewards, they say...

The following changes are focused on increasing rewards or increasing reward quality. So the chance of prime engrams per completion and activities with more base completion rewards such as liminality and inverted spire will provide more chances for prime engrams to drop. And then they're also working on creating a more consistent power reward experience for the upper power climb. Now, they don't outline anything brand new in terms of the general power climb the bit before the final 50 ranks, but they do say, adding this on social media after the twid, that increasing prime engram rates will help to increase power from drops as you climb.

The team does have more improvements planned as well. The climb from 200 to 300 is hard to approach and the climb from three to 400 is also hard, but in some different ways. So we can expect more details in the future.

Obviously, if Bungie feel that the increase to prime drops is also going to benefit the general power climb, as in they'll be dropping frequently enough, then that's a positive sign. I also think it's positive that they've identified specific power bands that are kind of difficult right there. Obviously, we don't have additional specifics, but in Indications that the general power climb is also on their radar, and hopefully some of those changes will also make it into Ash and Iron.

Moving on though to the Twit again, scooping out a few buffs that they'd spoken about last week, for Desert Perpetual, the weekly challenges are being added. On On top of that, they're improving gear tier drops and gear attunement is being added as well. With those weekly challenges, it's important to mention they will be drops of powerful rewards. So the raid is going to get better in terms of actually leveling up.

There'll be more of a reason to do it. But for the portal, they say the time bonus earned will grant 5% minimum score if you make the timer and the account's highest power will be used for reward score rather than equipped power. so we'll no longer need to wear the highest power gear while actually playing to get the highest score possible.

Plus they've said that conquests will be replayable. They did say though specifically that the rewards for reruns of those conquests will be sort of standard portal rewards so not at the same tier that we get for the first completion where some of the harder ones actually drop a bunch of tier 5 gear. Going back to the change for Solo Ops, or the nerf they've reverted, they say in the long run, we're still going to be cautious about a singular ops category or activity becoming the go-to for power leveling.

We want Destiny to be a game where you want to hop in with your friends to level, rather than declining an invite to spend more time in a solo activity for the sake of progression. In this case, we understand that alternative experiences need to be brought up a bit more to help things feel good, rather than pushing other options down in the short term, and we don't want players who generally just want to play solo or pinnacle ops feeling like they're getting caught by a strained nerf. So the current approach is to bring options up and to make sure they feel good before we look at the problem children, and our hope is to continue to iterate and improve the progression through the power band with these increases to fireteam ops, to portal, as well as a combination of improvements to the Crucible that we've made and additional improvements to Raid rewards coming in the update in September as well.

So generally some better communications right there. I think there'll still be a lot of feedback regarding sort of reward tiers and the general power climb, not just the bit that is the final 50 levels, right? It's kind of hard on paper to say how good that's going to feel with changes for things like the Raid. Obviously, not everyone plays the Raid, but hopefully that'll be more of an incentive and Fireteam Ops, not losing rewards specifically, is going to be good as well.

I do think, as Esoteric pointed out, actually Bungie have some solutions that are already built into the game, like all the bonus drops for specific activities. If Bungie ensured that more of those were powerful, even if they had to refactor the amount of drops actually available, that would be a huge plus for the general power climb. Safe to say though, Bungie have levelled with players a little bit more this week than they did last week. It definitely comes across as less tone deaf, but there is 100% more work to do on the front of rewards.

And you'll have to let me know your thoughts in the comment section. Next up though, Bungie say Heavy Metal will be back in the Crucible next week, so it's starting on the 2nd of September, and there'll be new legendary weapons, cosmetic rewards and an updated event home. So there'll be an emblem called Heavier Duty for achieving rank 5, a new sword holofoil for hitting rank 10, and a new kinetic shotgun holofoil for hitting rank 15. If you're curious about what those weapons are going to be, I did speak about them in a separate video, so I'll link that one down below.

But they say the exotic sparrow will also be available once again for achieving rank 14 through the duration of the event. with weapons on it, which is pretty cool. So the event will be up for seven days up until September 9th, where of course we get Ash and Iron. They also say Twitch drops will be available through the entirety of Heavy Metal, so we can watch a participating streamer on Twitch for one hour to receive the Mad Dog emblem. And yeah, that's all they really have to say regarding Heavy Metal for the moment.

The final bit of the twit though, they speak about class fantasy and identity in the game, and some changes that they're hoping to start releasing in September, others will drop in October, and some may be as far out as Renegades, they don't specify which of the changes will land at which specific times, but they say For Hunters, the On Your Mark solo aspect is planned to allow stacks of On Your Mark to now give weapon stat instead of weapon handling and reload speed, and the max of the 40 weapon stat at 10 stacks. They're also rescaling the stack count to a maximum of 10 stacks, and Precision Hits will now give 1 stack, with Precision Final Blows giving 2 stacks. Then Precision Final Blows at 10 stacks will cure instead of giving Radiant, Give me your thoughts about that. For Golden Gun and Deadshot, they say it now refunds ammo on Golden Gun Final Blows instead of Ignitions, and it extends the super duration on Golden Gun Final Blows, with the duration gain diminishing with Final Blows, and of course that will grant less in the Crucible. And finally, for Marksman's Dodge, the class ability, it now reloads all weapons on activation, and now picks up nearby ammo bricks on activation as well.

So that in particular sounds pretty good. Otherwise, for Warlocks and reinforcing the Warlock identity, in general they say the following Warlock turrets now count as grenades for stats and perks. So that includes Ionic Sentry, Arxol, Helion, Bleak Watcher, and Child of the Old Gods. Then on Empowering Rift, it will now generate neutral game ability energy over time, and kills while standing in an Empowering Rift generate bonus ammo progress, so it'll be +15% for special weapons and +10% for heavy weapons. That's all they talk about regarding warlocks right there.

I think there will definitely be a hunger for more than that. A couple of positive improvements. And of course, before most of those actually land, I'm sure Bungie will have more to talk about, we hope. Otherwise, though, for Titans, they say for Howl of the Storm, the stasis aspect, it will now grant two melee charges and they've changed the stasis crystal spawn pattern and added four more crystals. Then on Bastion, it will generally have a faster cooldown inside of PvP.

So those are some additional changes that they're planning over the next few months. Again, I'm sure Bungie will have more to say than just these, especially as we get closer to sort of Renegades and things. Very finally for the twid though, they talk about the Destiny Rising launch.

So there'll be an exclusive emblem for Destiny 2 players by completing something called Bear the Light in Destiny Rising, which I think is sort of a launch event that'll present itself when you first sign into that game. And once you complete it, a redemption code will populate on your screen in order to unlock the emblem, which is called Starboard Forward. And we can see a preview of that on the screen right there.

So there we go. You'll have to give me your thoughts on Destiny Rising if you have the opportunity to jump in. It seems like some folks are enjoying it. quite a bit, at least in the early stages. Mew Mew emulator, which is actually owned by Netease.

So that's also on the front page of the Destiny Rising site. Obviously, no availability for consoles specifically, but if you're going to jump into it, give me your thoughts about that in the comments section. For the moment, guys, that's what we have to speak about.

So... Like I said, I feel like there's a lot more that Bungie need to do in terms of the kind of candor of the conversation. It's definitely improved a bit, at least indicates that Bungie are a bit more aware of how the community feels. But yeah, they need to give us more, man.

And I'm hoping we'll hear about it soon. If you want to be kept up to date with more Destiny content, though, hit subscribe. Otherwise, though, cheers for tuning in. And I hope you guys have an awesome day.

Destiny 2 NEW Power Changes, Progression Buffs, Ash & Iron Changes, NEW Weapons, Class Buffs, Heavy Metal Event, Reward Updates & MORE (Edge of Fate & Ash and Iron News)