Destiny 2’s Season of the Deep made a lot of sweeping changes to the sandbox this week, from Stormtrance buffs to much-awaited Starfire Protocol nerfs. But an unexpected set of tweaks and additions have made the biggest impression in the season’s first week.
Three-time Worlds First winner Saltagreppo posted an alarming clip to social media yesterday, highlighting Golden Gun’s ability to nuke Kalli, a boss from the Last Wish raid, in just 20 seconds with the right build. According to him, he’s been trying to raise awareness on this “infinite goldy issue” for months, but the addition of a 20 percent buff to Golden Gun’s damage and its ability to now stack with Kinetic Weapon Surge has made its power beyond unreasonable.
The crux of the “infinite” Golden Gun build starts with a specific Hunter Exotic: Star-Eater Scales. This pair of pants allows Hunters to not only gain more Super energy from Orbs of Power but also overcharges your Super if the Orbs of Power are picked up with a full Super bar, increasing its total damage output. With a full team of Hunters using this and a Marksman Golden Gun, they can deal massive amounts of damage and refill each other’s Supers with the Orbs the damage generates.
The potential this build already exhibited has only been exacerbated in Season of the Deep, where Golden Gun now does 20 percent more damage and can stack with Kinetic Weapon Surge—a mod that grants another damage boost of at least 10 percent.
Its ability to work with Kinetic Weapon Surge is certainly the element raising the most eyebrows, and Saltagreppo believes the way the build can currently function is unintended, but there’s yet another new addition that further enhances it in the form of the Powerful Attraction mod. This mod automatically collects nearby Orbs of Power after using your class ability, making the Super refill off the Orbs made by your fellow Hunters even easier to do.
Related: Destiny 2’s newly founded fishing community want their hobby to take over the game
“It’s like 2x the dps of anything else in the game,” the content creator said in the replies underneath the clip. “I have been talking about this infinite goldy issue for months. Also whether I win [the raid race] or not, I would like a normal race, not people using cheesy strats.”
His team’s deletion of Kalli isn’t the only clip making the rounds that shows off this strategy in action, and it’s clear that if it goes unchecked, more and more teams will be making use of this if Bungie doesn’t make quick adjustments to curtail its immense potential. When Saltagreppo was asked about what needs changing, he simply replied “anything. Remove the double energy on Orb pickup. Add a cooldown before you can pick up Orbs after a Super. Remove or reduce Orbs produce by Goldy. Literally anything.”
While this build’s requirement of five Hunters means it won’t be exploitable in the new dungeon, Ghosts of the Deep, that releases tomorrow, it is making the farms for the reprised Last Wish weapons a breeze for many people.
