Destiny 2's Season 22 brings a slew of changes to how weapon crafting and the progression of crafted weapons work in the game, aiming to deliver a more meaningful and rewarding experience for players. Alongside reworks to both Exotic weapons and general weapon archetypes, these changes culminate in some pretty substantial alterations to how some weapons feel in Destiny 2.
Weapon crafting was first introduced during The Witch Queen expansion, allowing Guardians to build specific weapons from the ground up. The process enables players to choose the perks in use on the weapon and even upgrade those perks into Enhanced versions as the tool levels up. However, before a weapon can be crafted, players must unlock its pattern by obtaining red-bordered "Deepsight" versions of the desired weapon. Crafting can be initiated via The Relic in The Enclave, accessible through Savathûn's Throne World.
Season 22 Changes to Crafting Currencies and Resources
Starting from Season 22, Resonant and Harmonic Alloys will be phased out of the crafting process. Like prior currencies that have departed from the game, players can trade their remaining stock to Rahool for Glimmer in the Tower. These resources will no longer be received after dismantling weapons and won't be required for crafting upgrades. Eventually, Resonant and Harmonic Alloys will disappear from the game entirely.
Season 22 Changes to Crafted Weapon Progression
Bungie has recognized some inherent issues with the leveling process for crafted weapons. Because the leveling process, especially for crafted weapons with limited ammo, can require quite a bit of time, many players have repeatedly run enemy-rich bits of content to level up crafted weapons quickly. Instead of restricting this playstyle, Bungie is enhancing other paths to weapon progression. Additionally, an entirely new way to level weapons has come with Season 22 as an option to help players stay ahead of the ever-increasing armory of potential craftable weapons.
- Activity Completions and PvP Kills: Significant boosts have been granted to weapon progression through activity completions, and PvP kills. Furthermore, since PvP kills occur much less frequently than PvE kills, defeating Guardians in PvP during Season 22 and beyond will offer even more progression.
- Boosted Activity Completions: Expect higher progression across activities like Crucible, Trials of Osiris, Dares of Eternity, Wellspring, Gambit, and even for Platinum score completions of Legend and Master Solo Lost Sectors.
- Rollover Progression: A longstanding community request, any excess progression now carries over to the next weapon level. This change leads to an overall efficiency increase in leveling weapons through all activities.
- Weapon Level Boost via Currency: A new slot will appear on crafted and enhanced weapons, allowing players to use Glimmer and Enhancement Cores to directly increase a weapon's level. Though this boost has no ceiling, costs rise as the weapon's level increases.
Season 22 Changes to Neomuna Crafted Weapons
The evasive nature of Neomuna weapon patterns has been a point of contention. Starting in Season 22, a few tweaks should make acquiring patterns for these weapons less hassle.
- Achieving the score challenge for the weekly Neomuna pinnacle story mission now ensures a Neomuna weapon pattern once every reset.
- Drop chances for Deepsight Neomuna weapons will be increased via the Neomuna vendor engram upgrade. And if players have already acquired this upgrade, it will be retroactive.
- The Throne World vendor engram upgrade will similarly benefit the Throne World Deepsight weapons.
- A bug in the Deepsight drop system was fixed; it could decrease the red-border drop rate as players approached the completion of a pattern set.
Destiny 2 is available on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S