The Great Beyond is set to bring drastic changes to Destiny 2, and this is particularly true for Buildcrafting 2.0. With the introduction of the Season of the Deep, players will find themselves immersed in a new system for customizing their Guardians, one that puts a strong focus on the Armor Charge mechanic for activating perks and abilities. A transformation is in store, one that promises to make the experience of tinkering with armor mods more exciting than ever before.
Currently, Armor Charges can be triggered by obtaining Orbs of Power, and upon activation, a variety of advantageous buffs and abilities determined by your loadout are temporarily accessible. These will be expended by different mods or lapse after a predetermined duration. Some mods prioritize healing, while others focus on vigor and energy creation – as long as you acquire Orbs of Power, you’ll always have a stockpile of Armor Charges.
The challenge here is that to acquire an Orb of Power, you’ll have to venture into potentially hazardous domains, depending on the degree of difficulty you’ve chosen for the game. For Season 21, Bungie claims they’re providing a “more generous” method of gathering, through the use of buildcrafting and two fresh armor mods.
The Powerful Attraction mod for armor is the first of its kind, capable of drawing in all Orbs of Power within a designated area when the class ability is activated. Bungie considered the possibility of a “Seeking Orbs” modification, yet technical issues made it unfeasible to implement.
Elemental Charges is the upcoming armor mod that will change the way we approach our subclass, introducing four new collectibles, Firesprites, Ionic Traces, Stasis Shards, and Void Breaches. Gathering one of these elements matching your damage type will give you a progressive chance of gaining a stack of Armor Charge, and destroying a Strand tangle can trigger the same effect. Bungie has also adjusted the rate of gaining stacks of Armor Charge depending on the collectible, to accommodate the varying capabilities of generating each elemental collectible.
Complementing these changes is a tweak to the Shoot to Loot weapon perk that will be available in Season 21, as you’ll be able to “loot” Orbs of Power in addition to ammo boxes by firing at them. Bungie did consider applying this enhanced perk to subclass-spawned objects, but this is currently technically unfeasible. Buildcrafting will also expand next season with three new Strand Aspects for Lightfall owners, which Bungie named: Titans get Flechette Storm, Hunters can acquire Threaded Specter, and Warlocks can experiment with The Wanderer.
The long-awaited Season 21 promises to bring some dramatic modifications to Destiny 2, starting with Artifact perks and the introduction of the ability to refund individual ones with a single click. Bungie promises that this will make buildcrafting quicker and more convenient, affording Guardians the luxuriant convenience of being able to make adjustments to passive perks without having to reset the entire Artifact. Additionally, there are some significant alterations being made to Commendations, Guardian Ranks, and the process of acquiring Exotics.
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