Bungie is nerfing Destiny 2's Mountaintop quest and buffing loot from Menagerie, Reckoning, Gambit Prime and more

(Image credit: Bungie)

To help fill the void left by the Destiny 2 Shadowkeep delay - which is a pretty small void, since it's only a two-week delay - Bungie's rolling out some quality of life changes for the now-extended Season of Opulence. In a new blog post, the studio outlined nerfs to some infamous quests, buffs to pitiful drop rates, and even some difficulty changes. 

Let's go through this one activity at a time. First up, Gambit Prime. Bungie says the drop rate of weapons in Gambit Prime will be "highly increased" in the next big update, with a mercy rule in place to guarantee a drop after a set amount of games. The Reckoning will receive an identical loot boost, and the difficulty of the activity is also being reduced, presumably to compensate for the nerfs to Super-regenerating Exotics which were a big part of why Bungie made Reckoning so hard in the first place.

Speaking of buffed loot: the Menagerie chest glitch isn't coming back, but Bungie says "Menagerie chests will become more rewarding as Calus sees fit" as the Season of Opulence winds down. This suggests that players will receive extra loot from the Menagerie in the final weeks of the season, so that'll be one to watch. 

Rounding out the loot changes is a buff to the BrayTech weapons, which are so rare that they've become an infamous final gatekeeper to the Wayfarer Seal. Fortunately, the daily limit on BrayTech Schematics is being removed, and the ones you turn in will also have "better chances toward weapons that players do not own." In other words, if you still haven't gotten that last weapon to drop, the odds are about to tilt in your favor. 

In a similar vein, the quests for two popular Pinnacle weapons are getting taken down a peg. Those would be the tedious Wendigo GL3 quest, and the frankly diabolical quest for the Mountaintop grenade launcher. Bungie didn't specify how these quests will be changed, but promised that "specific quest objectives will be tuned based on player feedback." From personal experience, I'd wager that the number of kills and multi-kills required for Wendigo will be reduced. For Mountaintop, the number of multi-kill medals definitely needs to come down, but honestly the whole quest could use a trim. If you, like me, have been putting Mountaintop off, it looks like this season will be your best shot at it. 

These are all really nice changes, and while they seem to have come out of nowhere, they've also been requested by players for weeks (or months, in some cases), so I certainly won't complain. Destiny director Luke Smith says he's got a big "State of the Game" breakdown planned for this month, and these changes bode well for what Bungie has in store. 

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Austin Wood
Senior writer

Austin has been a game journalist for 12 years, having freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree. He's been with 12DOVE since 2019. They've yet to realize his position is a cover for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a lot of news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.

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