If you’ve ever farmed Shuro Chi’s checkpoint in Destiny 2‘s Last Wish raid, odds are you can recite Petra Venj’s dialogue by heart: “For generations, the Dreaming City housed one of the Awoken’s most closely guarded secrets.” In season 22, though, you can use Glimmer and Enhancement Cores to easily increase a crafted weapon’s level, according to a blog post from today—though the option to brute-force levels is still on the table.
Today’s Dev Insights blog post outlined a few crafting changes slated for season 22, including the addition of a quicker way to level weapons. Given the sheer amount of craftable weapons added each season and how long it takes to fully level one, this new avenue eases the loadout pressure on using specific weapons and potentially makes Shuro Chi a less popular farming spot (though she will likely continue to see a horde of guardians knocking on its door daily).
“Crafted and enhanced weapons will both receive a new mod slot in their weapon details, where you can spend Glimmer and Enhancement Cores to boost the level of the weapon,” the blog post reads. “This mod will increase the weapon’s level directly, leaving your existing progress towards the next level untouched.”
Related: Destiny 2 director admits controversial State of the Game post ‘wasn’t up to our standards’
The system won’t have a cap on level upgrades, but its costs will go up as the weapon levels rise. Using Glimmer and Enhancement Cores is a somewhat low barrier (especially for veteran players), though guardians have asked for an upgrade to the Glimmer cap for years. Newer players who don’t have many enhancement cores to spare, however, are bound to have to level weapons through usage.
While Bungie said farming Shuro Chi and similar encounters isn’t ideal, the team wouldn’t take that option away from players, and instead will offer more paths to increasing weapon levels. The option to directly level a weapon with currency is a step in that direction, but the plans include more. Players will see a bump to crafting level progress from certain activities, including Crucible, Trials of Osiris, Dares of Eternity, Wellspring, and Gambit (though Vanguard Ops and Nightfalls are noticeably absent from that list).
Guardians can see another long-anticipated feature finally making its way to the game in the future, too: weapon level progress will finally carry over, instead of resetting whenever you reached a full level.
In the current system, any experience gained over the threshold to the next level is wasted. Getting 30 percent progress while you’re at 90 percent to the next level, for instance, would just put you at zero XP on the following level. Now, that would put you 20 percent across the line, making it more efficient and less worrisome.
Bungie is also deprecating Harmonic and Resonant Alloys, meaning these once-important crafting materials will be phased out. These materials were an extra step in the crafting process, given they only dropped from dismantling weapons.
While weapon usage will continue to be the core way to level a weapon (even if it does mean murdering hundreds of Thralls), the upcoming features could make crafting less exhausting and more seamless.
