Destiny 2 is overhauling its beloved horde mode next week

It didn’t take long for Onslaught to steal the hearts of Destiny 2 players when it launched in April 2024. Six months after its release, the horde mode is getting a revamp with Episode Revenant, which releases on Oct. 8.

The new version, called Onslaught: Salvation, featured heavily in today’s Revenant devstream and will take center stage in the second episode. To entice players, it brings more defenses, new maps, different enemies, and potentially buckets of loot. The demonstration took place on Widow’s Court, another repurposed PvP map.

Onslaught: Salvation will have the three usual variants: the 10-wave playlist version, the 50-wave regular version, and the 50-wave Expert run. From wave 30 onwards, players have a “small chance” to get a masterwork, double-perk weapon, according to staff designer Clayton Kisko. The Expert difficulty boosts those chances since it offers more chests.

Some of the new defenses include an operable turret, which gets Scorch rounds when upgraded, and an airstrike module that lets you booby-trap and lock down areas by raining fire on them. It’s unclear if they will appear on the horde mode’s regular version.

The old Tripwires, the ugly ducklings of Onslaught, will also get a bump in their usability. They will explode with slowing fields from Stasis, but upgrading them lets these defenses create Stasis Crystals. Though this may not seem that surprising on its own, the seasonal Artifact for Revenant brings a ton of Stasis-related perks, so this once-scorned defense system can bring more value to your team. These changes will bleed over to the base version of Onslaught.

Onslaught: Salvation enables Power level differences, so the activity is bound to be more difficult at the beginning of the episode. It should become less difficult after players have the time to bump their Artifact levels or get back on the Sisyphean seasonal pinnacle grind, however.

Tripwires aren’t the only aspect of Onslaught getting a glow-up. The team is reworking the less-than-popular Mothyards map, largely considered the worst of the three base maps by a long margin. The changes are “taking a little bit longer,” according to Kisko, so fans may not see the map’s new look at the beginning of Revenant.

Players can sink their teeth into Onslaught: Salvation when Revenant releases in Destiny 2 next Tuesday, Oct. 8.