Upcoming ‘Destiny 2’ Nightfall And Prestige Raid Changes Detailed By Bungie

Bungie continues to share details about changes coming to Destiny 2 over the next couple of months. Thursday’s information dump concerns the new Nightfall Strike Scoring feature plus a surprise change to Prestige Raid. The studio finally has a fix ready for the Lost Sector Loot Chest as well.

Nightfall Strikes Scoring

Destiny 2 will receive Nightfall Strike scoring with the 1.1.3 update scheduled for February 27, per Bungie’s development roadmap. The change to a scoring mode came about as the studio recognized the current time limit mechanic for Nightfalls has been a disappointment due to the fact it simply forces players to rush through the Strikes. Destiny 1 players will be familiar with scoring from Prison of Elders and Heroic Strikes, however, Bungie has some interesting twists planned for newest iteration.

Nightfall Strike scoring will still have some emphasis on completing the activity in a timely manner but will focus on rewarding players for engaging and defeating enemies with an opportunity to make the Strike even more difficult and rewarding through the use of Challenge Cards.

The scoring system in Nightfall Strikes will be based on the sum total of the individual performances and will be driven by kills followed by orb generation. The latter will undoubtedly make the use of Masterworks weapons al the more important.

Speed will be a factor as a score decay mechanic will cause a fireteam to lose points over time. Additionally, new points earned will be cut by 50 percent at the 15-minute mark, and no new points will be earned after 18 minutes. Bungie is aware the score decay and time thresholds will likely receive some pushback and will be watching both closely for adjustments. The developers want to avoid a repeat of scoring in Prison of Elders in Destiny 1, where players just sat in an encounter and repeatedly killed enemies to artificially boost their scores.

Challenge Cards are the most interesting new addition to the Nightfall Strike scoring. These are earned by completing a normal or Prestige Nightfall and can be applied to the Prestige version. The cards are treated as a new consumable item that can be used to apply a score multiplier along with some special additions. Bungie plans to add more modifiers in the future, but the first set will consist of the following.

• Void/Solar/Arc Singe — Provides a 25 percent increase to player and enemy damage of the corresponding element.
• Extinguish — Fireteam wipes return the team to orbit.
• Power modifier — Decreases your power to gain a score bonus.

Bungie is still working on unique rewards for Nightfall Strikes but will have Nightfall emblems to start. These will show a player’s personal best score and provide an aura if it exceeds a Bonus Threshold. This aura will also boost a Fireteam’s Vanguard Token drops by 25 percent in Strikes. There will also be more difficult to obtain variants of these emblems available at higher thresholds, but there is no mention of what those thresholds are or how they might affect rewards.

Prestige Raid Changes

Some exciting changes are also on their way to the Prestige Raid with the catch they won’t arrive until May with start of Season 3 and the release of the second DLC expansion, Gods of Mars. Bungie elected to delay the release of the Eater of Worlds Raid Lair Prestige mode because of the desire to add difficulty and replayability to raid activities.

When released in May, the Prestige Raid mode will require Guardians to complete the activity using a curated loadout of weapons plus a special modifier. For example, Bungie could require a fireteam to use a Hand Cannon in the Kinetic Weapon slot, a Scout Rifle in the Energy Weapon Slot, and a Linear Fusion Rifle in the Power Weapon slot while also granting a modifier to increase Precision damage and return ammo back to the magazine when landing precision hits.

Bungie does warn these Prestige Raid changes may be pushed to a later update due to the amount of work required.

Lost Sector Loot Crates

Finally, Bungie has figured out how to get Lost Sector Loot Crates to behave and will be rolling out a fix starting next Tuesday, February 13. Players will now only be able to open the chest after killing a Lost Sector boss. So, no more running out of the zone and returning to open the chest over and over again.

This change also comes with the welcome news that Bungie is completely removing the controversial throttle on Lost Sector rewards.