Key announcements and new features from Bungie's final pre-Edge of Fate livestream for Destiny 2, including campaign details, raid updates, modifiers, new activities, and system changes.

Edge of Fate Trailer and Story Insights

• The trailer confirmed Lodi as a time traveler, addressing previous lore teasers.

• 1950s-themed elements and a brief new raid tease were shown.

• Expansion and raid themes are heavily inspired by "The Nine" and prophecy elements.

• Lore hints at a new major antagonist tied to prior Heresy narrative buildups.

Kepler Destination Features

• A new world tier selector offers Brave and Legendary difficulties at launch, unlocking Fabled and Mythic after campaign completion.

• Higher difficulties enable power scaling and post-game quests for exclusive rewards.

• Free roam activities and challenging encounters are region-specific, including complex Lost Sector-like events.

• New material, Faded Cipher, is used for vendor purchases; vendor details remain undisclosed.

Campaign Structure and Side Quests

• Campaign regions unlock side quests tied to specific areas.

• Side quests offer character backstory and can be completed at any time, independent of main story progression.

Raid Race and Contest Mode

• The raid race will occur four days after launch, moving back to a weekend schedule.

• Completing the Legendary campaign ensures power readiness for the raid, but optimal gear is still up to players.

Story Missions and Destination Abilities

• Shorter story missions supplement the main campaign, providing narrative beats and new abilities.

• Missions rotate in playlists and are efficient sources for Theta Ciphers.

• Campaign grants destination ability upgrades, enabling puzzle sequence breaking and new gameplay strategies.

Content Release Cadence and Comparisons

• Content will roll out over six months, starting July 15 with Ash and Iron later revisiting the Plaguelands.

• Comparisons to Rise of Iron expansion focus on pacing and content depth, with some features staggered post-launch.

Epic Raids and New Activities

• Epic Raids introduce altered encounters and increased difficulty, alongside expanded narrative and lore.

• A new Kepler activity is coming, with horde elements and high rewards, but is time-limited.

Exotic Weapons

• Graviton Spike (exotic hand cannon) is quest-based, while the exotic scout rifle is a season pass reward.

The Portal and Activity Modifiers

• The new Portal replaces traditional navigation with streamlined activity search and customization.

• Challenge modifiers (banes) and player stakes allow for tailored difficulty and impact reward quality.

• Boon/effect modifiers and weekly event modifiers offer positive gameplay impacts but lower reward tiers.

• Activities rotate into the Portal, with new activity types arriving during Ash and Iron.

Pinnacle Ops and Power Systems

• Old exotic missions debut under Pinnacle Ops with full modifier support.

• Power squish resets players to 10, with a 200 soft cap, and 450 seasonal bonus attainable.

• No weekly pinnacle cap; targeted high-power gear drops are now farmable.

• Infusion now uses unstable cores instead of upgrade modules, with season-based expiration.

• Seasonal power resets each season, affecting all players.

Seasonal Hub and Challenges

• A new hub centralizes daily/weekly challenges and a refreshable reward track, all free to access.

• Requisition tokens from the track enable bonus high-power drops from Zavala.

Conquest and Guardian Ranks Overhaul

• Conquest activities replace Grandmasters, providing fixed modifiers/power and high rewards.

• Guardian ranks revised: portal usage is emphasized, commendations/expansion gates/solo dungeon requirements are removed.

• All players reset to Guardian rank two at expansion launch.

Questions / Follow-Ups

• Vendor details, particularly the Alter Relativity, remain unclear.

• Future specifics around Ash and Iron activities and epic raids TBA.

• Long-term player sentiment toward seasonal power resets and limited-time activities remains to be seen.

Destiny 2 Edge of Fate Update

Fellas, today we're gonna be breaking down yesterday's livestream. This being the second and final livestream from Bungie, leading up to the launch of Edge of Fate. Now, Bungie actually opened up with a brand new trailer to begin the stream, and in this trailer it confirms the community speculation of Lodi being a time traveler of some sort. It also explains the 1950s date that we saw on the most recent TWAB, And they very briefly tease what looks to be the new raid. As you can see, our six guardians here standing in the scene.

Now, to no one's surprise, thematically, very much Nine-inspired, or at least like prophecy-themed, which really does make me wonder who's going to be the big bad in this raid. If you've been keeping up with the lore from Heresy, there's a lot of buildup and setup for this new entity that we should be dealing with in this next expansion. Now, kicking off the actual stream, we have DMG, the principal comms manager, who was joined by Robbie Stevens, the assistant game director, who explained a bit more about the Kepler destination and what we can expect.

Firstly, they showed off the new world tier selector that will be available on Kepler. Now, like previous expansions, we're going to have access to two difficulties for the campaign to start, that being the brave and legendary difficulties. But after the campaign is completed, you will then unlock fabled in mythic difficulties, where each will have power enabled, whereas brave and legendary do not.

Now, with each escalating difficulty, you'll be rewarded with better gear for completing objectives and also have new post-game quests associated with each. For example, the mythic quest unlocks a variant armor set for the Keplar set that has a different set bonus as well as a unique shader, which is really cool. I like that they're tying this behind difficulties. Now, also, we got to learn about the new free roam activities coming to Keplar that will take place in the regions of the destination.

For example, the one we see during the stream was in the Gorge area. Robbie went on to explain that each encounter is similar to a Lost Sector, but has many more mechanics and is more complex. He also said that there will be specific veins that are exclusive to Keplar that were tailored specifically to its content. Now, we also got to look at the faded cipher material. Now, this material will be what's used to be combined with the destination materials, and you will use that to purchase specific items from the destination vendor, also known as the alter relativity.

Now, unfortunately, we didn't get any other information on the vendor or what exactly can be purchase and that's kind of the trend in both of the streams. Bungie is being very tight-lipped when it comes to this destination, especially involving the story in the lore. Then they went on to talk about the daily focus for each region where essentially each day one of the four major regions will be the focus and this can be seen at the destination vendor.

Now to me this sounds similar to how the Pillhart worked with the overthrow where each day the main match made an overthrow activity that would reward Ergo Sum would be in one of the different regions of of the destination. Now we're also going to have attunement for both armor and our weapons, which means we're going to be able to focus specific drops. And this will affect all drops on Keplar, which as you can imagine in the power grind, that's going to be incredibly beneficial. Now something new that's going to be coming with Edge of Fate are the introduction of side quests. These will serve to flesh out some of the new characters of the world and also give us a better understanding of the destination as a whole.

Essentially, as you go through the campaign and you're unlocking different regions, these side quests will also then be unlocked and they're specifically tied to that region. The beautiful thing is, is that you can complete these at any time. The example they gave is that if you want to just be line and do the main storyline, you could do that and then circle back and hit those side quests.

Or you could do the side quests as you're doing the main storyline and just collectively hit it all at the same time. And the next topic they rolled in was about the raid race. Now this year's raid race is going to be a bit different.

as it's going to take place four days after the launch of Edge of Fate. And yes, you heard that right. Four days instead of three.

Meaning Bungie is moving back to launching raids on Saturday. They did this way back when for Valid the Disciple. And I think a lot of people did appreciate the launch of raids on the weekend. That way it gives everybody an opportunity to tackle contest mode. Now, if you're concerned with the grind to be raid ready, fear not.

Essentially, if you just complete the legendary campaign, you will be power raided. ready for the day one raid. Now, Robby made a great point. This doesn't mean that you're loot ready, just power ready. Meaning if there is specific loot out there that we're going to want to snag to give us an edge, maybe in terms of DPS, that comes down to us.

If you take, for instance, last year for Final Shape, think about how pivotal Steel Hunt was for DPS. There's a reason why it was like 80% hunters last year that completed contest mode. Now, Robbie also talked about story missions.

These are a little something different that's being introduced. And the way they were explained is that they're going to be smaller in scale to a campaign mission, but we'll still have story beats within them to move the narrative forward. while also being a source of some new abilities.

Now these will be anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes in length, and we'll even have a story mission playlist in the higher world tiers. Now this will rotate through a bunch of randomly selected story missions and was mentioned as one of the best ways to earn Theta Ciphers, which will be a necessity in this next expansion. Now one of the last things spoken about in this section was about destination abilities in Secrets. So we now know that we're gonna be earning destination abilities throughout the campaign Which means that many encounters were designed with what abilities the player may have unlocked already But after the campaign is completed many old puzzles will have different ways to solve them just due to the new upgrades that we've unlocked for the abilities For example when finishing the campaign will unlock matter spark upgrade to be used anywhere Which essentially allows us to use the matter spark without needing to find a path like you normally would.

Now, what this does is that this leads to many instances of sequence breaking for players that they explained was very much intentional, as they want players to think outside the box a bit, and if you think you can solve something in a specific way, you probably can't. Now, the comparison that Bungie made to Rise of Iron was also explained a bit more. Essentially, it isn't meant to be a direct comparison, but more so of a ballpark estimation to size of the destination and the depth of the campaign itself.

Now, the reason why I feel like Robbie addressed this is over the past like a week, people have been bringing up the amount of content that we got in Rise of Iron versus what we're getting in Edge of Fate. I get the comparisons. You could justify it on both sides.

For instance, a lot of people brought up the fact that Rise of Iron just had more content, had more exonics, had PvP maps, things like that. But then there are also people saying, whoa, that was content that was dropped all on us at one time instead of it being spread out over the course of a year. Granted, no one really likes time gating.

And keep in mind, this is not even going to be over the course of a year. This is going to be over the course of six months with the initial batch of content dropping July the 15th with Edge of Fate. And then we're going to have something called Ash and Iron, which will be taking us back to the Plaguelands.

But all of that is like, in terms of full scope, wrapped together. Now, Robbie also mentioned Epic Raids. And to be honest, guys, I can't remember if anyone has even talked about Epic Raids yet.

I'm pretty sure Bungie had it in a roadmap, but I'm not sure if they called it Epic Raids raids or not. When it was explained to me what epic raids was though, to me it's going to be the same raid, but the encounters have changed. Think of like Pantheon, where there were small tweaks to certain encounters, with some being major like double rogues.

However, it was emphasized that there will be more narrative and lore contexts that will be tied to these epic raids. And yes, they are supposed to be more difficult. Keep in mind, this is something that's gonna be launching in Ash and Iron, which I would assume at that point, we all are sitting there with like maxed out gear, tier 5 and everything.

And so, epic raids, I would assume, would be fairly challenging. I will say on this front, I really do hope Bungie does mix things up. I love what they did with Pantheon.

I love the reimagining the certain encounters, the additional walks. Like, I don't even care if they meme a bit. Go crazy. Make it truly epic. Now, lastly, we did get a small tease regarding a destination activity.

As yes, we are getting a new destination activity for Keplar, but we weren't given a name or really any details as they want us to experience it for ourselves. Now, the information we did get about it was that it was described as being its own thing, being this blend of Vex Incursion and Wellspring. Now, this will be a three-player match-made activity that will have horde mode elements, as well as mechanics and boss encounters. Now, this activity will also be one of the best places to earn re-rolls of the three new exotic armor pieces that can again be obtained via the legendary campaign, but was also described as being highly rewarding in general. Now, they also said the activity is technically time-limited, which is kind of crazy, considering no one in the Destiny community likes time gates or FOMO.

Something tells me, though, with, like, time travel and that being, like, a big focus in this expansion, that this is all gonna make sense war-wise. Still, though, I'm not saying people are gonna enjoy it. I will say, guys, I have got to play the new activity.

It's solid. I think you guys are gonna like it. Granted, I didn't get to dial things... all the way up the way I wanted to, but my experience with it is that it's a destination activity that can be fairly challenging, and it was pretty fun to play. It had a good splash of mechanics involved as well.

Now, in regards to the two new exotic weapons that we've seen previously, we now know how we're going to acquire them. For Graviton Spike, which is the exotic hand cannon, this will be earned through an exotic quest, and that quest will be on Keplar. Now, the exotic scout rifle, this is the season pass reward.

Now, the next part of the stream was all focus on the new modifiers, as well as the portal, and how we can customize each activity that we play. Now, they went over the portal again, but to keep it brief, this is meant to be the new front page for Destiny 2, as described by Bungie. Essentially, less clicks, less digging. You don't have to search through menus.

You just find the activity that you're trying to play. Now, I know to a veteran player, you're looking at this and you're like, hell no, cross please. This looks like some mobile UI bulls**t.

And believe me, I get where you're coming from. But dude, at the same time, can we just acknowledge it's easy to get lost in our current destinations? Hell, I even found myself yesterday looking for the Court of Blades activity. I was like, where is that thing again? Now, the destination tab will still be there.

It just won't be the first thing you see. Now, Kepler itself will not be accessible through the destination tab. You can only access it through the portal.

And what you'll notice from that stream is that Bungie really wants us using the portal. I mean, Really, like Guardian ranks are tied to our portal and through the portal is where you're going to be able to customize the difficulty of activities, which Bungie broke down even further. The first row of modifiers are referred to as challenge modifiers. These will increase combatant power while also adding additional difficulty.

Now, the first section they showed off were banes that will be grouped together in groups of two, and this determines which banes will show up in the activity. For this example, we first see Rage and Front Shielding. For Rage, this reads... Affected combatants deal increased damage and have increased damage resistance as their health levels decline.

Then Front Shielding states that affected combatants have a shield that protects them from frontal damage. Try shooting them from behind. Next, they show Threaded and Caltrops. For Threaded, this states that dealing non-critical damage to affected combatants will spawn hostile Threadlings.

You heard that right. Now, some of you may be thinking, that's not that bad. Fellas, you remember those Threadlings in Sunderer Doctrine? This one sounds like hell.

Now, Caltrops reads, Affected Cabans drop damaging elemental pools during combat and after being defeated. Lastly, they showed Front Shielding again, but this time with Avalanche. This reads that Affected Cabans periodically release Stasis Crystals that targets Guardians and slows them on impact.

Now, you can already see that the Banes here, Bungie Duck kicked it up another level, right? These will make your runs more difficult, but it also increases your potential potential score. And that score is what dictates the tier of your rewards.

Now, we also got to see some new modifiers with some variable difficulties. For example, we see stasis threat, which we have currently, and that's a 25% increase to incoming stasis damage. But we also see difficult stasis threats, which bumps that up to 50%.

But that increases potential rewards. Now for the normal threats, the potential score was 535,000. But with the Difficult Threat, that moved the score up to 557,000.

So as you see here guys, more difficulty means higher rewards and therefore higher tier loot. Then we also saw a new modifier called Hot Step, which states that when defeated, challenging combatants drop fire at their location. We see Subtle Foes, which states that certain foes are stealthy when at a distance. They become visible when near a guardian. Now Bungie mentioned this is like almost complete invisibility, even more so than like Hunters inside of Crucible, which is kind of wild.

Next is Glass Cannon. The player with the greatest number of final blows during an activity takes more incoming damage. Now that right there is hysterical.

I don't really know how much more damage you take, but dude, if you got that one teammate that's always popping off, hey brother, you a gamer, right? Why don't you rock Glass Cannon for us? See if you can take one for the team. Now, for the example in the stream, they were doing Master Empire Hunt, and with this assortment of banes and modifiers they selected, this put them at Silver 2. In this case, that equals a Tier 3 reward.

Now, next, they showed off the player stakes, which is meant to change how you're playing the game. Now, it doesn't necessarily make the enemies harder, but it was described as if you were playing with one hand behind your back. Now some they showed off were locked loadouts, no HUD, no starting ammo, and even one called the Avant Garde, which makes it so that you can only use new weapons and armor for the given season. So again, just loot with the blue icon on it. Now this is actually crazy because like no HUD really does change the game.

Like try going playing PvE right now with no HUD. I'm actually going to be practicing. But it's hard to keep up with anything because like you can't see any of your status effects. You can't see your health. You almost have to like pay attention to your guardian and like how he reacts and behaves to get an idea of where he stands when playing Nohut.

Now moving on, they showed the next section, which is Boon and Event Modifiers. These are the positives that you can select to either help make the activity easier or simply to have more fun. Here you have things like Surges.

specifically Strand and Void. We saw Stasis Slide, which is a boon from the Nether activity, where sliding after sprinting for a short time creates a freezing Stasis Wave. We see Healing Finishers, which heals you when you finish a combatant.

Volatile Pickpocket, which reads that finisher final blows grant you a free Void grenade. Hypercritical, which makes combatants take more precision damage, but less non-precision damage. Air Superiority, which makes you deal increased damage while airborne, which immediately makes me think Wings of Sacred Dawn.

might actually be meta, Livewire, which reads that sprinting for a short time causes you to become amplified. And while you're amplified, receiving melee damage calls down lightning strikes around you. Now, this section is also where you can select that triple strand grapple that they've teased prior.

where essentially your grenade is replaced with three grapple charges that recharge quickly, but get this, it doesn't allow you to grapple melee. So it's purely used for movements. Now, something to note here is that since all of these are making it easier for you, this will lower your reward rank rather than raising it.

For example, they added Livewire and this dropped the rank down to B plus from an A. Now lastly here, they talk about event modifiers. This one specifically being double bonus focus, which rewards a second drop from bonus focus activities.

Now these will be rotating modifiers that affect the whole portal and can change weekly or daily, or even with a given event that may be active. I would look at this as like double drops that we occasionally get for things like Crucible or Vanguard, but of course these modifiers seemingly go further than that. DMG even hinted at one that buffs specific weapons from the Suros Foundry. They also clarified that we'll be getting new modifiers with certain events, as well as with the Ash and Iron when that releases.

Now as for the activities in the portal, these will be rotated in and out with new stuff coming online for the first weeks of the expansion. Then as events start popping up, this will add potentially even more activities and even more modifiers that we mentioned previously. Now they also teased a brand new activity type coming with Ash and Iron, and they mentioned that it's not just a new activity, but a new type.

I really don't know what they mean by that because at this point in Destiny, I feel like I've already seen a little bit of everything, but all right, Bungie. Bring it on. Now, before moving on to power and how that's going to work, Pinnacle Ops was brought up, but only briefly.

Essentially, at launch, old exotic missions will be found under Pinnacle Ops, and this will have all the changes we previously talked about within the portal, like banes, modifiers, etc. More is going to be added to Pinnacle Ops in the future with Ash and Iron, but we don't have any information on that currently. Now, this takes us to power.

As we all probably know by now our power is currently being squished with edge of fate Everyone is going to start at 10 power working their way up to 200 power Which is the new soft cap now this works just like it did previously where this cap can be obtained for pretty much Anything in the game including crucible now they're replacing the artifact power bonus We currently have with the seasonal power bonus, which we can get up to 450 before ash and iron Now, it was also mentioned that we can go beyond that, but not too many details was mentioned about that. Now, the pinnacle limit we used to have is no longer a thing. You won't have any limit to how much higher level gear you can earn in a given week. And they also stated we would be able to more consistently target farm-specific gear that may be lacking in power.

So if you need higher power boosts to drop, you'll be able to specifically target that drop rather than before when it was all random. We'll also have different challenges in-game that were described as acting as experience. which provide more hits of powerful gear. Now, something else that was brought up was about upgrade modules.

Upgrade modules will no longer be needed to infuse. Instead, you'll need the new unstable core material, which we've talked about before. The main thing with these is that they expire at the end of each season, so you can't hoard hundreds of them. You need to go out, farm some more. Very similar to upgrade modules.

Now, something to keep in mind is that seasonal power will be reset each season. So, for example, when Renegades comes out, everyone will be set back to 200 power, which I know a lot of people are like, what the hell, Bungie? Really? You're really trying to pull a Diablo on us? Yes, they are.

Now, lastly, for the power section, they spoke again about how you can level up your power class. completely through the crucible if you wanted to, with things like trials and competitive providing even faster rewards to help increase your power. Now, let me just say, guys, I have observed y'all year over year, season to season, and let me just say, most Destiny players don't like seasonal grinds. Like a lot of you are like, "Okay, annual grind, we get it." But season to season, grinding power levels, that's not everyone's favorite thing to do.

I'm really curious how Bungie is going to play this. I will say having the ability to customize our own difficulty, having so many different banes, even positive modifiers that could just make the game more fun, I'm no doubt intrigued, but I'm curious to see how this is going to play out in the long run. Now moving on, we were also introduced to the seasonal hub. This will house daily and weekly challenges as well as the weekly reward track.

Now this track will give various things from brine dust to upgrade materials and even a new currency called requisition tokens. Now this can be turned into Zavala to earn bonus drops that will be higher tier and even a higher power. Now this refreshes every week and you can earn two pieces of armor and two weapons.

And keep in mind, this is all free. Like we saw the event track, nothing here needs to be paid for. Everything here is completely free.

Now also in the seasonal hub is the conquest page, which was explained to be the grandmaster replacements inside the portal. These are fixed powered, fixed modifiers, no fireteam power, but they offer really strong rewards for completing them. And below this, we also saw the conqueror seal, which is now earned through completing the conquests each season, but it'll still maintain the amount of gilding you have on it currently. The way this seems to be explained is that Conquest is for those out there that don't want to go through each one of these modifiers.

You just want to press and go. Now, the last thing that was talked about on the stream was the slight rework to Guardian ranks, mainly with the challenges that are associated with it to actually level up your rank. Many challenges have been replaced with challenges revolving around the portal.

Again, Bungie really wants us to use the portal. For example, you'll no longer need commendations, there's no more expansion gates for levels, and the solo dungeon requirement was also removed. Of course, those still have the unique cosmetics associated with them, like the emblem, for example, but it won't be required for Guardian ranks. Now, we are all also being dropped down to Guardian rank two with the launch of Edge of Fate. So that's it, guys.

That's essentially the breakdown and the final breakdown from Bungie. Now, of course, we got the blog posts and the TWABs, But in terms of live streams, that's it, man. I will say as we get closer to the weekend, I'm gonna be putting together a video of just my complete thoughts. I really do wanna just kinda share my insight into Edge of Fate, what to expect, and really just give you my thoughts on where Destiny is currently.

In the meantime, though, I would love to hear your thoughts on what we've covered today. Let me know if there's anything here that you're excited about or vice versa. If there's something here that you're looking at and you're just like, yo, what in the world were they thinking? Fellas and ladies, thank you all for coming and watching. And as always...

Slap that like button like your mama told you right.

Yesterday Bungie had their 2nd and final developer livestream for The Edge of Fate.

This stream actually contained a lot more information compared to last time so we decided we would make a video to break it all down for you guys.

#destiny2 #bungie #edgeoffate

Kepler Destination & World Tiers 3:32

Raid Race & Power Grind 4:27

Story Missions 4:59

Destination Abilities & Secrets 5:43

Rise of Iron Comparisons 6:42

Epic Raids 7:37

New Destination Activity 9:02

The Portal & Activity Modifiers 15:37

Ash & Iron New Activity Tease 16:12

Power & Progression 18:24

Seasonal Hub & Conquests 19:26

Guardian Ranks Rework 19:59