It’s been a huge week in Destiny with the Witch Queen reveal and start of Season of the Lost.  There’s lots of new things coming in Witch Queen that I expect will bring a new wave of interest in the game.  And in the meantime, for the next six months, we have Season of the Lost.  Here are my initial impressions:

Seasonal Activity:  Astral Alignment

The seasonal six person activity follows the model of seasonal activities before:  a couple of tasks/stages to get to the boss, and then a boss fight.  This first week it takes place in the Dreaming City.  Bungie has spiced it up a bit by adding some mechanics to learn to make the encounters go smoother (i.e., you can clear without them, but it’s easier if you know them) which will add a bit of interest particularly early in the season.  In general this activity meets my expectations for a seasonal activity. I expect to enjoy it for the first few weeks but be more than happy to stop playing it once all of the new seasonal challenges are done.

Quest:  Shattered Realm: Forest of Echoes

A really nice surprise is getting a new soloable activity like the expunges right from the beginning, and this one has mysteries!  This is easily my favorite part of the new season so far, and I’ve really enjoyed exploring the arena and trying to figure out how everything works.  There are definitely a few kinks — it does seem possible to put yourself in a spot that is very difficult and maybe impossible to get out of and multiple deaths don’t seem to reset your respawn point.  (I was lucky enough to find myself on a titan when I got into one and managed to get out with creative use of thundercrash.)  But overall this activity is just absolutely fantastic.

Part of the quest is finding Ascendant Anchors and unlike prior hidden things we had to find these are scattered and sometimes hidden but pretty much all not too hard to find if you are actually looking for them.   I really appreciate that because I’ve been able to actually explore and look for them myself rather than getting frustrated and just looking up locations on Youtube.

I thought expunge was great last season but this is even better and I’m just thrilled with it.

Vendor rank-up changes

Vendor rank-ups for Gambit, Crucible and Nightfalls/Strikes are now all on a similar scale with bonus progress being given for activity streaks — that is, playing the same activity over and over — rather than win streaks:

From Destiny 2 Update 3.3.0 Patch Notes, at Bungie.Net

For me, this is a mixed bag.  I like that the systems are the same and that progress is similar for each.  I don’t like that the most efficient way to gain progress is to play the same activity over and over again.  I like to vary my play more than that and will get restless after about an hour of doing any activity.  Moreover, though Bungie said that breaks to go to the tower would not interrupt a streak, there does seem to be some kind of timer on it because I have lost a streak even without doing anything other than going to the tower and then taking a break.

EDIT (08/31/2021): I’ve now seen that streaks persist even overnight, so I think what happened is that I was time out to orbit for inactivity at the Tower and that reset my streak.

I would feel much better if the activity streak concept were expanded to count all daily activity rather than having to start over if you need to take a break or want to do something else for a bit.

Trials of Osiris

Bungie announced lots of trials changes, but trials will not return until September 10 so I won’t give my thoughts until I’ve had a chance to play.

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All in all, a great start to the season.  I’m looking forward to it.