Bungie aims to drastically change the way the armor system of Destiny 2 works with the new expansion Shadowkeep, including mods and perks. But how? Here is what we know so far.
This is set to change in the fall: With the announcement of the upcoming Fall expansion Shadowkeep, Bungie revealed that Destiny 2 will receive more RPG elements.
One example of this is the armor system, which they plan to overhaul significantly in the fall. With Armor 2.0, the name of the feature, players will finally be able to customize their gear the way they want.
Armor 2.0 – How the armor system of Destiny 2 changes with Shadowkeep
Here is how the armor system is now: Currently, pieces of armor offer limited room for individual customization—whether visually or in terms of their attributes.
It often happens that you have a set that you either like aesthetically or one that has the right stats for your individual playstyle. Both rarely match.
Therefore, many guardians often choose armor pieces that perform better rather than those that they find more visually appealing. That is set to change soon.
This is Armor 2.0: This new system will come into play with the Shadowkeep expansion. Armor 2.0 allows players to equip any mod they have unlocked into any piece of armor.
The pieces of armor now serve merely as empty shells that can be customized according to personal preferences using various modifications. There seem to no longer be fixed mods or perks—only multiple mod slots for different attribute categories.
When selecting one of these mod slots, all mods available for that specific slot will be displayed to the player and can be activated there.
Thus, it ultimately resembles a type of transmog system where you can apply the appearance of an item with strong attributes to the look of your choice—where the appearance can be derived from any item of the same category that you have already found.
However, the showcased images depicted a legendary item with a total of four mod slots. Whether exotic gear offers more or fewer slots and can thus be individualized to some extent is currently unknown. It is conceivable that Exotics will then have fixed attributes altogether. There is still no definitive answer on that.
By the way: In this context, attributes Strength, Discipline, and Intellect from Destiny 1 are apparently coming back, which could give the entire system additional depth. These can be clearly seen in the images.
This new feature will also be important: As part of the broader customization options and more RPG elements, artifacts are also set to play an important role. However, these have changed significantly compared to Destiny 1.
They now function as an item on which various perks and bonuses can be unlocked, allowing you to further adapt your character to your personal playstyle.
The perks are divided into several tiers. At each tier, multiple perks can be activated, which presumably need to be found first. With increasing levels, the perks appear to become more powerful.
According to Bungie, perks of the last tier should come quite close to that of an Exotic. Some of the visible icons suggest bonuses for cooldown reduction or shorter reload times for certain weapon types.
Furthermore, artifacts seem to be season-bound or must be leveled up during a season to unlock higher perk tiers. As one of the images states for an attribute: “Will be disabled at the end of Season 8.”.
Whether there will be just one artifact with fixed seasonal perk sets or several artifacts with various perk and bonus combinations is currently not definitively known. However, Bungie refers to artifacts in the plural in the video.
Even though only superficial details are known so far, the changes look promising. It will be interesting to see what else Armor 2.0 can do and how exactly this system is structured.
Update: For more information on Armor 2.0, click here.
What do you think of Armor 2.0 so far? Are you looking forward to learning more about it, or are you satisfied with the current system of Destiny 2?
