Destiny 2’s Season of the Witch to feature ‘brutal’ reprisal of Crota’s End raid

In keeping with the Hive theme set forth by Destiny 2’s Season of The Witch, releasing today on Aug. 22, the next raid reprisal to hit the game will take Guardians on a journey down memory lane toward the first major Hive boss they had to defeat.

Releasing next week on Sept. 1, Bungie announced today that the Crota’s End raid will be coming to Destiny 2 in Season of the Witch. Crota’s End was the second raid introduced to Destiny after Vault of Glass, with players tasked with taking down Oryx’s son in the Hellmouth on the Moon. As with the reprised raids before it, Crota’s End will feature a day-one raid race to crown a new World First as well.

Despite Crota’s End being notoriously one of the easier raids in Destiny’s history, game director Joe Blackburn described its reprisal as “brutal” during the Showcase. Both the returning Vault of Glass and King’s Fall raids did feature small tweaks and updates to some of their encounters to better match the experience players expect from Destiny 2 raids, so it’s reasonable to assume Crota’s End will receive a similar treatment to up the difficulty to match current day power levels.

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But what’s even more notable with this reprisal is that the armor featured in the trailer comes from the Age of Triumph rendition of Crota’s End that was hosted toward the end of Destiny’s life cycle. It’s been a loud piece of feedback from players that the returning raids should feature the popular, neon-soaked armor sets that came from those raids during that event, but up until now, each reprisal has only come packaged with the armor that the raid launched with.

Crota’s End will launch with contest mode enabled for the first 24 hours on Friday, Sept. 1. After the raid race has been completed, a World’s First team has been crowned, and players have had an opportunity to earn the day one emblem, the raid will become accessible at the normal difficulty. As with the reprisals before it, Crota’s End will also be a free-to-play experience.