You can see the announcement of the Festival of the Lost making a return in the tweet from the official Destiny 2 Twitter account just below. The Halloween-themed festival will be returning next Tuesday, which is the traditional day that all Destiny 2 updates kick off on.

Goblins and Ghouls, Warlocks and Wolves prepare for a celebration so thrilling it will wake the dead! 🎃 Festival of the Lost returns October 6th🎃 Free for all players🎃 Join if you dare pic.twitter.com/FaJRjKBKk1October 1, 2020

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If you’re unfamiliar with Festival of the Lost, it’s an event that’s been running in Destiny 2 every October for a few years now. You’ll always be given fancy masks to wear while the event runs on, which last year happened to be a mask representing Master Rahool. The Haunted Forest might also return, a twist on the usual Infinite Forest mode from the Tower.

It looks like Eva Levante will be returning for the event, a merchant that regularly features in Destiny 2’s rotating events, who was last seen in The Dawning event for the game earlier this year. You’ll have nearly a month to take part in the Festival of the Lost event, until it concludes on November 3.

There’s a lot to look forward to in the future of Bungie’s shooter. Destiny 2: Beyond Light launches later this year in November, bringing an entirely new chapter to the game with brand new locations, as well as cycling out tons of old locations like Mercury, Nessus, and more.

For a complete look at all the other major releases yet to come this year, head over to our new games 2020 guide.

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If you’re one of the many free-to-play Guardians who only got into Bungie’s shared-world shooter through Destiny 2: New Light (opens in new tab), here’s a quick rundown of what these expansions get you. We’ll start with Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, the most recent expansion. 

Shadowkeep kicked off Year 3 of Destiny 2. It added a new raid, dungeon, and destination (the Moon), as well as a short but compelling campaign. It also introduced some of the best and most enjoyable end-game grinds in Destiny’s history, as well as some of its most potent weapons. Shadowkeep comes with the pass to the Season of the Undying, which will end on December 11. If you start playing right now, you can still hit the lion’s share of the seasonal activities, though. You can find more details in our Destiny 2: Shadowkeep review (opens in new tab). 

Forsaken is to Year 2 what Shadowkeep is to Year 3. More importantly, Forsaken was also Bungie’s answer to the problems of Year 1. It totally overhauled Destiny 2’s weapon and Power systems, and on top of a dungeon and raid, it delivered two fantastic destinations (the Tangled Shore and the Dreaming City) as well as a lengthy campaign, the impact of which is still seen in the game today. The activities in Forsaken are less relevant nowadays, but its campaign and destinations alone are worth the price of admission, and quite frankly everyone deserves to run Shattered Throne and Last Wish at least once. You can find more details in our Destiny 2: Forsaken review (opens in new tab).

Head here for more on the the Black Friday gaming specials (opens in new tab) to watch out for.

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The 12-page comic is the first of several upcoming issues chronicling one of Cayde’s Tangled Shore adventures. Cayde makes for the Shore to track down Araskes the Trickster, one of the eight Barons in Forsaken, but not before assembling a crew of new and old faces: Petra, Banshee the Gunsmith, Hawthorne, a Hunter scout named Nadiya, and a mysterious man named Jin who could pass for a Drifter lookalike (or prototype?). 

Cayde’s Ghost was killed by Pirrah the Rifleman, and he himself was shot by Uldren, but the Trickster and the other Barons also played a clear role in his death, which makes this little hunting party seem much more personal. The Trickster was also one of the more interesting Barons – at least in my opinion – but she never got much screen time, so it’ll be interesting to see how she’s characterized here. 

I’m not usually a comics guy, and the story of Forsaken isn’t exactly fresh in my mind, but I have to admit I rather enjoyed this little story and I’m looking forward to the next part. I’d love to see all eight Barons get this kind of character development. 

Bungie’s recent string of expanded universe media has proven unexpectedly compelling – the Season of the Drifter short stories (opens in new tab) still come to mind whenever I queue for Gambit Prime. 

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“We’ve received a ton of feedback from the community that the Forsaken changes affected smaller and less hardcore clans less positively,” said design lead Steve Dolan and senior designer Mark Uyeda. “These clans feel like they can no longer hit the levels they had in the past. We also heard that there is just too much emphasis on doing daily bounties. As a result of this feedback, we took some of the clan progression mechanics back to the workbench and made changes to improve the experience.”

In March, Destiny 2’s clan XP system will be reverted to how it was when the game launched. Daily clan bounties will be removed, and instead players will earn clan XP simply by completing activities like Strikes, public events, or basically anything else. Three weekly clan bounties which require clanmates to play together will remain, with one PvE, PvP, and raid bounty available each week. These bounties will award Legendary gear and clan XP, and tie into the new clan reward system. At clan rank three, weekly bounties will award mod components; at rank four, they’ll also reward enhancement cores; and at rank six, your clan will unlock a fourth weekly bounty with an unspecified objective. 

It’s unclear if these weekly bounties will award powerful gear, and Bungie has yet to confirm what the new weekly clan XP cap will be. That said, this system sounds like a sizable step up from the current one – which, as Dolan and Uyeda said, is absolutely anchored to daily bounties.

In the same update, Bungie quietly confirmed that more Exotic catalysts – something players have been requesting for months – will be added in the Season of the Drifter. Regarding the clan perk that buffs Crucible and Strike catalyst drop rates, the studio said: 

“If you already have them all (lucky you), we plan to release a few more from our Year 1 reserve during Season of the Drifter for you to chase. They won’t be released day one of Season 6, but keep your eyes on the patch notes for availability.” 

Note that, as a follow-up to this week’s power update, excess Ethereal Keys (over the cap of five) and Iron Banner bounties will be removed from player inventories at the start of the next season. So if you’re holding onto any, cash them in soon. 

Read up on everything coming in Destiny 2 Season of the Drifter (opens in new tab) in our roundup. 

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“We have just delivered a server-side update to reduce the power requirements for all the encounters in the Lost Forges by five,” Bungie said in a blog post (opens in new tab). “We fully acknowledge that this is a small move, but it is the one that we can make today. This is not the full extent of the changes to the player experience that we are investigating, but it should give Guardians at 600 power a better chance at completing the activity.”

Bungie acknowledged that “some players at 600 power have been unable to dive in and beat the final boss without grinding for new power first,” and that this is not the experience it wanted to create with The Black Armory. The studio also said it will provide more details on “how you can catch up and acquire the power you need to join the quests to recover these Lost Forges” this week, which will hopefully address The Black Armory’s other stumbling block. 

We spoke to Bungie about the future of Destiny 2 DLC and the structure of its annual pass (opens in new tab).  

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As of Tuesday, October 16, Destiny 2’s Curse of Osiris and Warmind DLCs will come bundled with its new Forsaken expansion, Bungie announced in a recent blog post. Both DLCs are required to access Forsaken, but previously they were only available under a separate season pass. Bungie says it’s put them together to “make it less complicated for other Guardians to begin their journey in Forsaken.” 

Note that Destiny 2’s annual pass, which covers three smaller DLCs starting with this winter’s Black Armory, is still sold separately. Even so, it’s nice to see Destiny 2’s underwhelming year one DLC blended into Forsaken. Forsaken is absolutely worth buying, and this is one less barrier to entry for new and returning players.

To compensate players who’ve already purchased Forsaken and Destiny 2’s previous DLCs, Bungie is also giving away a “Veterans of the Hunt” bundle this December. Anyone who plays Forsaken before October 16 will receive the Tiger Stripe Black shader, the Veterans Nameplate emblem, a bundle of consumables like vanguard and crucible boons, and the Knife Trick and Coin Flip exotic emotes (names subject to change). These emotes “will be made available on Eververse sometime in the future,” but the shader and emblem will remain exclusive. 

Judging from its colors, the Tiger Stripe Black shader is similar to the Old Guard shader in Destiny 1, which was awarded to players who purchased the Dark Below and House of Wolves expansions before the release of The Taken King. In fact, the whole bundle is similar to The Taken King’s VIP rewards, right down to the big cat motif in the Be Brave and Veterans Nameplate emblems. It just goes to show closely Destiny 2 has followed the playbook of its predecessor. 

Destiny 2 may be in for another blast from the past. According to recent leaks, the upcoming Black Armory DLC will bring back three fan-favorite exotics and add a new tier of gear. 

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Destiny 2: Forsaken (opens in new tab) wouldn’t be much of a Destiny expansion without a few good cheeses. We’ve already seen a curious Blind Well exploit (opens in new tab) fueled by the exotic fusion rifle Telesto, plus a method to outright remove the enemies (opens in new tab) from the first fight of the Last Wish raid, but players are just now getting into the really questionable cheeses. This week alone, players discovered a way to skip most of the final fight in the new Last Wish raid, as well as a glitch that lets you loot the entire Shattered Throne dungeon without having to fight anything. 

Schendzie posted the above video showing the (latest) Last Wish exploit in action. Immediately, something’s a bit off: Schendzie and his team start the encounter against Riven with everyone in the left ‘crystal’ room rather than the usual split of three left and three right. From there, instead of doing a rotation of eyes and symbols and stages – you know, the entire fight – they go from the left room to the right ‘tree’ room using a bugged corner of the arena. For some reason, this corner doesn’t register on the map properly, so when you stand in it the game teleports you up to the start of the encounter. This allowed Schendzie’s team to dogpile the right room where Riven appeared and promptly fire several dozen rockets into her mouth. It turns out that kills her. Who would’ve thought? 

The strange thing about this cheese is that just shooting a bunch of cluster bomb rockets at Riven isn’t unusual. That corner of the crystal room is clearly bugged, but Schendzie and his team only used it to get to Riven, not to kill her. In other words, even after the teleport is fixed, there’s seemingly nothing to stop teams from crowding into one room and restarting the fight until Riven appears in that room – nothing but power, that is. As Schendzie explained on Reddit (opens in new tab), everyone needs to be around 580 power or higher in order to deal enough damage for this rocket strategy to work. After all, if you fail to kill Riven in one shot, with nobody in the other room to call out which of her eyes to shoot, you’re guaranteed to wipe. 

But while the rocket raid cheese may be tough to fix, the Shattered Throne cheese highlighted in the above video from Ninja Pups (opens in new tab) calls for a pretty straightforward patch. It relies on a classic Destiny cheese: fiddling with death timers. As Ninja Pups explained, all you need to do is load into the Throne with a buddy, get some enemies to spawn, and kill yourselves. When the death timer hits zero, one of you needs to select and confirm “change characters” from the options menu. The person who changes characters will leave the fireteam, but when the remaining player spawns back in, no enemies will appear and they’ll instantly receive their powerful loot drop from the Throne. You and your friend can easily reverse the roles and repeat this process for every encounter in the Throne. As Ninja Pups said, “this is super broken and Bungie should definitely fix this.” 

Wondering if Destiny 2: Forsaken is worth your time and money? Check out our full review. (opens in new tab) 

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Destiny 2 guide (opens in new tab): Complete campaign walkthrough and guides – updated for Forsaken

Forsaken is the latest of these updates, an expansion arriving one year after the release of the base game and several months on from the disappointing Curse of Osiris (opens in new tab) and Warmind DLCs, billed by Bungie as a comeback equal to what The Taken King did for the original Destiny in 2015. That’s very big space boots to fill, given how Year 2 Destiny is nostalgically looked back on as the best days the series has ever seen but, after spending more than three weeks testing out the expansion’s campaign, endgame content, and quality of life updates, there’s no denying that the developer has filled that tall order quite comfortably, and then some.

Let’s start with Forsaken’s campaign, which is, by my account, the best storyline Bungie has written for Destiny to date. Taking cues from TV space westerns like Firefly and Cowboy Bebop, the deeply personal quest to avenge Cayde-6 doesn’t so much as raise the stakes as it does colour them with some much need pathos. There’s no megalomaniacal villain with vague designs for world domination here; this is about friends, family, and the lengths we’ll go to for the people we care about.

It’s a shame that our new antagonist Prince Uldren, who’s responsible for Cayde’s death, ends up being something of a non-entity, a mere cog caught up in Bungie’s lore-heavy fable, but Forsaken’s strengths as a Destiny 2 chapter is in its ability to finally question the “light vs dark” dogma our Guardians have been lapping up for years. Not only is the campaign’s ending surprisingly bleak and provocative, it sets up future subplots for Destiny 2 that are still unfolding across the game as we speak.

The final frontier

In addition to the campaign, Forsaken also drops two new Patrol Zones onto Destiny 2’s crammed galactic map; The Tangled Shore, a collection of asteroids that the galaxy’s hive of scum and villainy call home, and The Dreaming City, the bright, miasmic motherland of The Awoken, and Bungie’s vision for a new kind of endgame playground. It’s easy to forget that Destiny 2 is by far and away one of the best looking shooters out there, but both of these new areas are happy to remind you all over again. 

The Dreaming City, in particular, is a must-see destination, not just because its otherworldly skyboxes of dewy mists, craggy rocks, and peaking pearly towers is a resplendent feast for the eyes, but the environment continues to transform and permutate with every passing week. Even recently, new dungeons, secrets, characters, and visual variations have appeared without warning via the weekly reset, adding yet further intrigue and draw to its appeal as an ethereal sandbox for high level Guardians. 

The Dreaming City is also where Guardians can enter The Last Wish, the first full new Raid since last year’s Leviathan. Bungie wasn’t messing around when it promised a real challenge for veteran Guardians to sink their teeth into, and while I still think Guided Games needs be better at enfranchising those who don’t necessarily have the time or resources to even try The Last Wish, the love and care that’s gone into Forsaken’s Raid is evident from the very beginning. 

It’s really, really hard, but – unlike Leviathan – Last Wish handsomely rewards those who put in the investment needed to beat it, well beyond the immediate gratification of Exotic loot. Not only that, but by showing the aftershock of the Raid’s completion upon The Dreaming City via a continuous stream of new content, Bungie has imbued The Last Wish with more meaning and connection to the wider Destiny universe, demonstrating a knack for organic storytelling that the studio hasn’t shown interest in since the early days of Destiny. 

Elsewhere, Crucible has finally found rejuvenation as a viable and enjoyable use of time in Destiny 2, now that Bungie’s made its long awaited revisions to the sandbox systems and time to kill ratio, creating a faster but ultimately fairer playing field. The revamped weapon and armour slots, where certain weapon types are no longer bound to certain slots, allows players to experiment more freely with differing character builds and play styles, which in turn makes it easier to adapt to the evolving competitive meta. 

Then there’s Gambit, Forsaken’s PvP/PvE hybrid mode, which is barrels of fun purely on the basis of its originality as a multiplayer experience alone, though Bungie is still figuring out the small print when it comes to ensuring a balance amidst the armoury of new weapons that players are now deploying against each other.

And it’s in the small print where Forsaken could definitely use some extra work, as Bungie is still struggling to make sure every aspect of Destiny 2 is as rewarding as it is enjoyable to play. Bounties, for instance, have made a welcome return, but they remain almost just as problematic as they were in the first game. You still need to purchase each Bounty from vendors manually, adding unnecessary travel time to Guardians who just want to get through their weekly grinds, forcing them to visit the Tower, Dreaming City, and Tangled Shore before they can even make decent headway. 

Speaking of The Dreaming City, its new, high level public event The Blind Well is a much more entertaining spin on Warmind’s wave-based Escalation Protocols, but right now it’s too difficult to find enough nearby Guardians to complete even the lower tiers of the activity. And when you do find yourself in a steady rhythm of levelling, Bungie seems to have taken the criticisms of overabundant Exotics way too seriously, frantically taking it to the other extreme as a result. When once they used to drop like candy, I’m now 30 hours into Forsaken and can count the amount of Exotics I’ve come across on one hand. Finding the right balance between payoff and progression can be tricky, but the stinginess of the new drop rate is a real demotivation against replaying certain activities right now. 

At least the new Exotic gear that does drop is always a nice surprise. You can tell the new bow weapon types have been a real labour of love for Bungie, where every twang and quiver of arrow and string channels itself perfectly from controller to screen, while Forsaken’s exclusive pieces of Exotic armour all come equipped with deliriously creative perks that wouldn’t look out of place in a Borderlands game. 

Dream team

Forsaken has also added three new subclass trees to Destiny 2’s Titan, Warlock, and Hunter classes, injecting the combat with yet more dynamism and variability, and the added supers and special abilities that Guardians can wield as a result are both wildly devastating and visually striking, not to mention gleefully fun to deploy. 

The Titan’s Thundercrash is my new personal favourite, letting you launch yourself into crowds like an electric missile with a death wish, while the Hunter’s Blade Barrage and Warlock’s Nova Warp ensures every class feels like a superhero discovering their new powers all over again, with the potential for experimental fireteam compositions once again significantly raised. 

If Destiny 2 never really clicked with you, Forsaken’s not going to change your mind, nor does it intend to. Instead, this is Bungie’s apology letter to those who have stuck with the game through all its ups and downs over the past year, sealed with a promise to begin a new era of Destiny that’s better for everyone. There’s still plenty of work to be done to spruce up Destiny 2’s sustainability and accessibility over the long term, but Forsaken’s cleared away the rubble left by Year One’s failings and erected something much more impressive in its place. 

Not only that, but the weekly updates that continue to keep The Dreaming City interesting suggests Guardians will, at the very least, have plenty to be getting on with while Bungie works out the finer details of its updated systems. Cayde-6 may be dead, but Destiny 2’s heart beats on stronger than ever.

The Verdict

4

4 out of 5

Destiny 2: Forsaken

By channelling community feedback into an all-encompassing package, Forsaken finally makes Destiny 2 feel essential again

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Destiny 2: Forsaken raid start time, level recommendation, and everything else you need to know (opens in new tab)

Players have slowly but surely been receiving this Legendary vehicle as a random drop from specified activities in Destiny 2, and news is spreading of its humble brilliance. For one thing, it looks amazing, with that red and black decal and Star Wars-y back thruster giving off exactly the sort of vibes you’d expect from one of Cayde-6’s former possessions, but there’s material benefits to the Sparrow too. 

Entitled The Gambler’s Palm, the vehicle boasts two perks; the first, Tuned Drive, gives the Sparrow a chance to drop with a 160 speed rating, the highest possible threshold for a Destiny 2 ride of its kind, while the second is a Random Basic Mod dependent on Bungie’s new RNG algorithm. As far as we can tell, there’s two main activities to grind in Destiny 2: Forsaken for a chance at getting The Gambler’s Palm to drop, but make sure you own the expansion, alongside the base game and its Curse of Osiris (opens in new tab) and Warmind DLCs first. 

Run The Hollow Lair Strike in The Tangled Shore

This one’s pretty simple. Several Guardians have reported (opens in new tab) that The Hollowed Lair Strike, in which you fight and defeat The Fanatic Baron boss for the third and final time, is the best place for The Gambler’s Palm to drop. Some players have stated (opens in new tab) that killing other Barons has also given them The Gambler’s Palm, too, so these Adventures/Strikes in general aren’t a bad choice for seeking it out. 

There’s no guarantee that it’ll happen of course, given the randomised nature of loot rolls, but the likelihood of the Sparrow popping up once you’ve defeated The Fanatic appears to be higher than almost anywhere else in Destiny 2: Forsaken, so start grinding!

Complete The Spider’s Wanted Bounties in The Tangled Shore

The second avenue for Gambler’s Palm hunters is the official source mentioned by the item itself in-game. Specifically, the Sparrow’s bio states that it can be acquired from Completing Wanted Escapee Bounties for The Spider in The Tangled Shore. You can pick these up from the Fallen Vendor in his lair for Ghost Fragments (opens in new tab), and completing them offers the chance for The Gambler’s Palm to drop, as confirmed by those who already discovered it this way. 

Wanted Escapee Bounties require you to hunt down and kill a specific enemy in various Lost Sectors, Patrols, and Adventures around the galaxy, and will change and refresh every seven days with the weekly reset. There’ll be 14 per week, so you won’t be short of Bounties to complete for a chance at getting Cayde’s Sparrow though, again, its possibility of dropping is never guaranteed. 

Nevertheless, these are your best bets for finding The Gambler’s Palm, and paying respects to Cayde in style, namely by driving round the galaxy on his super stylised Sparrow. Best of luck, and happy hunting. 

For more Destiny 2 walkthroughs, guides, tips and tricks, make sure you visit our Destiny 2 guide (opens in new tab) hub, or if you’re after some general help then check out our Destiny 2 tips (opens in new tab) for the things we wish we knew before we started playing.

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First, players had to follow a complex series of terrain glitches and difficult jumps to get to the chest itself; normally you’re only supposed to get to that part of the world in the course of running through Last Wish. This video will show you the roughly five-minute process, but do note that Bungie has now “suppressed” the chest ahead of the raid going live, so it will no longer be a productive run. More power to you if you just want to go for a strange journey behind the walls of The Whispering City, though.

That would get you a single piece of loot from the new Last Wish set of items, which was cool but not really game breaking. Then somebody discovered (opens in new tab) that if you made a new character and completed Destiny 2’s first mission, you could open the chest again! And again and again and again! That’s the story behind this image making the rounds of a Warlock with the full, new armor set.

To recap, that Warlock now has all of their class’ Raid armor, days before the Raid even goes live. You can see why Bungie would want to nix that as soon as possible.

According to a post on the official forums (opens in new tab), the chest itself will no longer yield any loot until Bungie can restrict it to the actual Raid activity. However nobody’s exploit-gotten gains will be removed from their inventories. It still took some appreciable effort – all that glitchy platforming and alt grinding – and didn’t hurt anybody else, so I’m glad tricksy Guardians aren’t being left with nothing to show for it.

Prepare for more strangeness with this Destiny 2: Forsaken Paul McCartney Easter egg (opens in new tab). 

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