Destiny 2's Festival of the Lost Halloween event kicked off today alongside the second Iron Banner of the season, and Bungie dropped a big sandbox update to ring them in. Update 2.0.4 is now live and has made dozens of fixes and improvements to a variety of activities and gear, including Sleeper Simulant, Whisper of the Worm, and One Thousand Voices.
Sleeper Simulant, handily the most dominant heavy weapon in Gambit, had its aim assist reduced. Meanwhile, the aim assist on other linear fusion rifles was increased, making them even snappier than before. Which comes as a bit of a surprise, seeing as how linear fusions like The Queenbreaker were already disgustingly accurate and easy to use (and arguably even more of a menace in Gambit), but I digress.
Scout rifles, which Bungie quietly nerfed a few months ago, received a much-needed damage buff today. Bungie's inexplicable nerf made scout rifles completely unusable in PvE, to the dismay of many players (such as myself). Sadly, I don't think this buff is going to change that all that much. I ran a quick damage test using a 150 RPM scout rifle and a 150 RPM hand cannon and found that hand cannons do roughly 50 percent more damage per shot than their scout rifle counterparts. Scout rifles have more range, yes, but even with some damage dropoff, hand cannons still win in almost every scenario.
The infamous Edge Transit grenade launcher, which is grossly over-represented in the neutral heavy weapon loot pool, also received a nerf of sorts. Three more heavy weapons - the Through Fire and Flood grenade launcher, Zenobia D rocket launcher, and Crooked Fang-4fr linear fusion rifle - have been upgraded to year two status and added to the pool of heavy weapons. So, you should see fewer Edge Transits in the future.
On top of Edge Transit's nerf, loot in general, specifically the loot awarded from powerful drops, received a buff. The update "raised the lower end of powerful gear," increasing the average power gain per drop. I quickly tested this as well, and found that even the smallest powerful drops now award a boost of two rather than a boost of one. That might not sound like much, but every level matters once you hit the upper power soft caps, and this change effectively doubled the value of many powerful drops.
The full patch notes also contain a laundry list of bug fixes. Here are some of the most interesting ones:
- Fixed an issue where Healing Rift and Well of Radiance could prevent weapon perks such as White Nail and Magnificent Howl from working properly (Note: This introduced a bug where White Nail may occasionally activate after 2 hits. This will be addressed in a future update.)
- Fixed an issue where One Thousand Voices would sometimes speak at the volume of One Hundred Thousand Voices
- Fixed an issue [in Gambit] where the invasion portal would sometimes not open throughout the match
- Fixed an issue where the Last Wish Ghost and Sparrow were not dropping at the intended drop rates
As previously reported, update 2.0.5, due on October 30, will bring yet more highly requested changes. For starters, it will nerf Sleeper Simulant in Gambit even further by reducing the amount of ammo it receives from heavy ammo bricks. This update will also add partial duplicate protection to Exotics and skew them toward Forsaken Exotics, making it less likely for players to receive old and/or redundant Exotics. A fix for Destiny 2's stingy masterwork core economy is also on the way in the form of new Spider and scrapper bounties which award cores.
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