Blue engrams are not new in Destiny 2, but they are now becoming an increasingly larger curse for players. Especially when the leveling phase is over, they are simply useless and dismantling them costs an enormous amount of time.
Basically, during the leveling phase, every player is happy when a blue item with a higher power level drops. In Destiny 2, there are different loot levels for engrams at the beginning, which really help players progress.
- The first loot is white engrams.
- As you level up, you first get green engrams and then progress to blue engrams.
- Once that is achieved, the most sought-after items are only legendary purple and exotic yellow engrams.
But the longer you play Destiny 2, the more you really begin to hate blue engrams, because they become increasingly useless.
Blue engrams are not useless but can become annoying: At first, you can still put up with the blue drops alongside the legendary and exotic engrams. After all, they give weapon master materials and some glimmer when dismantled. For a while, you actually still have enough need for them. But eventually, many players find the engrams to be just an annoying and time-consuming burden.
Blue engrams become relevant for Destiny 2 veterans only when a new DLC, like “The Witch Queen”, makes a big jump in power level.
The “Blues” lead to full post offices and the loss of valuable items
Players receive blue engrams in Destiny 2 everywhere even after the leveling phase. They drop, for example, at public events, from open-world chests, and during playlist activities.
Those who play longer activities, such as raids or nightfall strikes, quickly have a full inventory and soon after an overflowing post office. The majority of that is blue engrams. Everything that is not picked up is sent to the player’s post office. This way, they quickly lose track of how much has really accumulated.
During the holiday event, additional engrams snow in: Right now, for the holiday event, the problem with blue engrams has become even more negatively noticeable. Those who baked diligently and delivered all the cookies were virtually overwhelmed with blue engrams by the thankful NPCs.
The player and YouTuber Hynra demonstrated on his channel what exactly 100 “Hot Cross Buns”, the holiday cookies for Ada-1, yielded in blue loot.
This costs players nerves and valuable items: If you miss just once and do not regularly empty your post office, you may lose very valuable items that are still sitting in the post. Just one blue engram too many can cause a stack of up to 10 of the valuable Ascendant Shards to be “shoved” out of the post office.
That is really annoying, because these materials have been hard-earned by the players with a considerable time investment. No wonder that eventually one gets the “Blues” from it.
Storage slots are tight and limited: Players cannot do much about it at the moment. Anyone who already has 10 Ascendant Shards and 50 Upgrade Prisms in their inventory must use the post for all further ones as “storage”. It would not help, for example, to put the Ascendant Shards from the post directly into the vault, as Bungie does not allow them to be stored there. They have to take the risk.
Dismantling costs a lot of time and unnecessary trips: Of course, dismantling a blue engram only takes a moment and perhaps a flight to the Tower. However, many short moments eventually add up to a substantial amount of time.
Furthermore, players are constantly forced to keep their inventory clean, especially during activities. If they do not do this, they risk that too many blue items might be sent to the post that they may have accidentally not picked up.
For long-term players, blue engrams are therefore only useless, unnecessary, and a bothersome obligation. Their need for weapon master materials is often more than covered, and they long for a better solution.
Players want a quality-of-life adjustment for “Blues”
Is this fair or burdensome? The blue engrams are basically “trash loot”. Destiny 2 wants to be fair by giving every player their loot, but they are not satisfied with it. Players have long been wishing for Bungie to come up with something for their “Blues” with the frustratingly high number of blue engrams.
These five solutions could potentially be implemented in Destiny 2 and might help improve the situation for players in the future:
- Solution 1: Bungie implements a manually activated option in Destiny 2 to automatically dismantle blue engrams. That such a thing is possible is known from Destiny 1, where players already dismantled green engrams this way.
- Solution 2: Blue engrams are no longer automatically sent to the post. What the player does not pick up stays on the ground. This already works in a similar way when picking up glimmer.
- Solution 3: Bungie gives Destiny 2 a “kill button” for blue engrams. This approach has already been demonstrated by Outriders. The shooter uses an “item marking system.” This allows players to batch process multiple items at once and also mark items of a certain tier for quick recycling.
- Solution 4: Bungie ensures that all players who have already reached the soft cap for the season simply do not receive any more blue engrams.
- Solution 5: Destiny 2 completely gets rid of blue engrams so that every drop in the game is a legendary purple engram. There are enough legendary sources for new players who are still leveling up.
Community power should motivate Bungie to take action: The recent call to action by Paul Tassi via forbes.com has once again focused on the blue issue.
He believes that the worst enemy of a Destiny 2 player is no longer Savathun, but the overwhelming amounts of blue loot: “Even though dismantling takes about two seconds, I estimate that I have spent several days of my life dismantling blues in Destiny 2 because they are so prevalent and useless.[…]”
His enthusiastic call to everyone in the Destiny 2 community is therefore:
My fight against the “Blues” continues. Please join me in this fight. Together we can defeat the blue.
Paul Tassi via forbes.com
What do you think about it? Do you also have the “Blues” and think Bungie needs to come up with something for this loot category? Do you believe that if the community points out often enough, Bungie will actually change something? Which of the five solutions would be your personal favorite? Or do you perhaps even have an even better idea?
