In this week’s Weekly Update for Destiny, Bungie addresses heavy ammunition. There is a bug that is so deeply rooted in the system that it will take at least four more weeks to fix it. Additionally, innovative ways to defeat Crota in Hard Mode are introduced.
The “Heavy Ammunition” bug, which repeatedly strips Guardians of their heavy ammunition, is one of the major topics in social networks and forums surrounding Destiny. It makes raids more challenging, costs Glimmer, and is just incredibly annoying. What’s worse is that it has been mentioned so often, and yet, at least according to casual opinion, it shouldn’t be a big deal to fix.
Guardians are constantly reminding Bungie to fix the bug as quickly as possible. It occurs when Guardians in Destiny wear armor that is supposed to increase their capacity for heavy ammunition.
The “Heavy Ammunition” bug has plagued Destiny for months
On Reddit, there’s been a “fun” thread created daily for a while now: Bungie should finally take care of this.
And when it was announced last week in the Weekly Update how many strange coins Xur has collected through the Icebreaker, a thread was quickly opened, wishing for exact figures on how much heavy ammunition had disappeared for this Weekly Update. As expected, Bungie has withheld this information.
The bug is deep in the heart of the system
Bungie is naturally aware of the problem and explains in the Weekly Update why it takes so long to address a fix. It is an error that lies hidden in the depths of the code.
When a Guardian respawns (after their death, after a cutscene, or when returning from orbit), the Guardian and their ammunition are recreated.
The system assigns them ammunition that is supposed to match the last ammunition they had. However, the weapons and thus the ammunition are created before the armor’s “capacity” is accounted for, and here there are modifiers that can increase the ammo reserve. This is quite a serious problem that is not easy to solve, at least not without introducing serious new issues. Simply removing the feature is also not an option.
The basic flaw here is an ordering problem. Our inventory system creates your weapons when your characters spawn. When that happens, it tries to restore the same fraction of ammo that you had when you died. The bug occurred because the weapon is created before capacity modifiers from armor perks are applied, so the persisted fraction yields fewer rounds.
At Bungie, they believe they are getting closer to a remedy, a targeted fix, and are promising a solution to the problem that hopefully will be deployed by the end of February.
The error seems to lie at a critical junction where various systems of Destiny come together. Thus, a solution that doesn’t create more problems than it solves is delicate.
Creative solutions for Crota
Otherwise, the Weekly Update for Destiny brought, as so often, relatively little new.
Praise was given to the strategy and skill of the Guardians in disposing of a certain “Crota” and highlighted two particularly effective strategies that Bungie likely hadn’t thought of themselves.
And perhaps as a small ray of hope for the hoarders among you: In the comments, the community manager assured that Bungie is discussing expanding the vault, the storage space for Guardians. They know how much Guardians want this, and they want it too. Such new features take time to develop.
On Fridays, there’s always a double combo within 10 hours. First comes the Weekly Update at night, then Xur will be back in the Tower on Friday, January 30, at 10:00 AM. We will report whether he has brought us more. It would be appropriate if he brought heavy ammo syntheses with him. Some Guardians would be more pleased with that at the moment than with any Exotics.
If you are waiting for him and want to pass the time: Here is our well-organized Destiny themed page.
