Destiny’s biggest expansion to date – The Taken King is close, coming along with it is update 2.0. Bungie are promising a lot of big changes in both, so here is a run through all the major changes you need to know about if you’re thinking of jumping on board with The Taken King.
Firstly, who is the taken king?
Oryx, The Taken King, is hell-bent on vengeance (after you kicked his sons ass in the Crota’s End raid) and is raising an army of corrupted “Taken” forces by manipulating the Darkness itself. You must find a way into his impenetrable Dreadnaught ship to defeat The Taken King before he and his dark army consume our civilization and bring our solar system to ruin.
Available Versions
- The Taken King – £39.99, Gives you access to The Taken King expansion. With a Pre-order bonus of Weapons Pack and Suros Arsenal Pack.
- Legendary Edition – £54.99, Give you access to Destiny base game, The Dark Below expansion, House of Wolves expansion and The Taken King expansion. Pre-order bonus Weapons Pack and Suros Arsenal Pack.
- Digital Collectors Edition – £74.99, Gives you access to all of the Legendary Edition content plus Three exotic class items featuring XP bonuses, three class specific emotes, and three armour shaders.
Subclasses
The Taken King will be adding in three new subclasses which will have to be unlocked via a brief narrative mission.
The Hunter’s new subclass is called Nightstalker. It is a void class and acts more as a support class with the new super ‘Shadowshot’ being able to tether targets to the ground slowing them down for Guardians to dish out serious damage. It can also deal major damage to a single target so you can still grab some sweet bow kills with it!
The Warlocks new subclass is called Stormcaller – an Arc class whos super lets you shoot lightning out of your fingertips like a god damn Sith Lord! this class has made me want to create a new character entirely just because I really, really want to fry people. This one looks like my favourite of the new subclasses.
Finally you have the Titans new Subclass called Sunbreaker (not to be confused with Sunbreakers the exotic armour). Basically the Sunbreaker is like Thor – your super is a flaming hammer, which looks badass – you can throw it at people from a distance, or you can just get up in their puny faces and smash them in to the ground.
New Enemies
The Taken are the new enemies that you’ll be facing. Cabal, Vex and Fallen have been taken over by Oryx and now look all shadowy and a bit goth. In a nut shell, Oryx kind of rips them out of our dimension and mutates them with the darkness. So expect to see a lot of new variations of each enemy type in terms of looks and attacks. Some will now throw orbs of darkness that will blind you, some will have area of effect attacks, whilst others can split in to two and rapidly multiply. It’s sure going to mix things up a little bit!
New Story Missions
Obviously there are new story related missions being added. There will be 8 new missions which will consist of 6-7 hours worth of gameplay. Once these are complete additional missions and quests will open up including an event called The Taken War.
Level Cap & Light Levels
The level cap has now been increased to level 40, and the way that you can earn light levels has been tweaked. Now everything that you equip will hold a light level – armour, weapons, accessories, even your ghost. Your light level is now worked out as an average of your attack and defense across all equipped items.
Strikes & Raid
There will be a whole new Raid called Kings Fall that will launch 18th September. There will also be 4 (3 for Xbox One owners) new strikes added to the game. However, Xbox One owners will also get access to the year one Playstation exclusives. Existing strikes are also set to get a tanked version, so you can expect a new challenge from old strikes.
The Strike playlists are also getting an overhaul with 3 new playlists being added.
- Vanguard Legacy – Year one Strikes only
- Vanguard Marmoset – The Taken King Strikes only
- Vanguard Ursa – Random Heroic Strikes (Requires level 40 and replaces the weekly Heroic)
Not much is known about the raid as is the norm. But it will be the largest raid to date and will support the normal 6 fireteam members. It will also feature a name mode and not just your normal and hard core mode, but what the other mode is, is still unknown.
Nightfalls have also been given a buff and now require you to be level 40. A very welcome change is that wiping will now no longer send your fireteam back to orbit.
Multiplayer Maps & Modes
There are three new multiplayer modes being added.
- Rift – Similar to CTF, you have to carry the ‘spark’ and try to dunk it in the enemy zone to score points.
- Mayhem Clash – Deathmatch on steroids. Supers, Grenades and Melee charge at a much faster rate.
- Zone Control – No points will be awarded for killing, you only gain points for taking and holding objectives.
Additionally we will get 8 (7 on Xbox One) new maps to play on.
- Ghost Ship
- Sector 618 (Playstation exclusive)
- Memento
- Vertigo
- Bannerfall
- Exile
- Crossroads
- Frontier
Existing playlists Salvage and Elimination will become permanent fixtures for the Crucible.
New Patrol Area
The Dreadnought will be the main new playable area promising lots of secrets for you to uncover. Phobos will also feature, but it will most likely only be a brief showing. Probably most notable is the fact that you can’t use your sparrow whilst on the Dreadnought.
It will also feature multiple enemy races, so don’t expect to just see Taken and Hive, along with new public events, new activities and boat load more secrets.
New weapons & Armour
Obviously there is going to be a lot of new armour and a whole bunch of new weapons including quite a few new exotic items. Bungie have promised that there will be more weapons and armour than the base game and both expansions combined. That’s a hell of a lot of new loot to get!
Whilst we haven’t exactly got to see loads of the new weapons, especially the exotics, we have seen swords! Yes, Swords, and they look awesome, but you have to be level 40 to be able to wield one of these bad boys!
New Ghost
Say “Bye, bye Dinklebot” Yup, Peter Dinkledge will no longer be the voice of your ghost. As part of Update 2.0 Nolan North will now be voicing your ‘little light’. It has also be confirmed that there will now be new Ghost skins to find and unlock.
New Cut scenes, UI & Quests
This expansion will be adding in new cut scenes, new NPC interactions, a re-worked UI along with new quests, quest lines and bounties – up to 16 in total can now be held at one time.
Additionally, you will be able to get subclass specific quests, quests from the gunsmith, quests for completion in the Crucible and a whole new way to track them all in the new User Interface.
You’ll also be able to complete quests just by bringing up your Ghost, no more going to the tower to hand in bounties!
Court of Oryx
This is a new Public Event area on the Dreadnought. You have to offer a Rune that can either be purchased or found, this will then allow you to unlock a special public event that up to 9 people can participate in, but still only 3 players in a fireteam. There are 4 tiers of events each with increasing levels of difficulty, once complete you will gain access to a large chest containing loot.
Other Notable changes
- Crucible and Vanguard marks are now grouped together as Legendary Marks
- Upon purchase you will have one Spark of Light – this grants you the ability to instantly level a character to level 25.
- Some year one exotics will be getting updated.
- New shaders are being added, some of which will also be able to be applied to some exotic armours.
- Any exotic weapon quests you have will auto be auto completed
- YOU CAN SKIP CUTSCENES!
- A lot of weapon balancing including Auto Rifle buff, Pulse Rifle nerf etc.. etc…
- New perks being added to weapons and armour e.g. burn resist perks for armour
- All year 1 exotic armour will eventually have a year 2 upgrade option
- Class specific materials, Plasteel plating, Sapphire wire and Hadronic Essence is being replaced by Armour Material.
- Year 2 green items will be more powerful than year 1 items
- Running consecutive Vanguard strikes nets extra xp and increases the chance for better loot drops.
- New audio cues alert you to scan artifacts offering up more lore and information
- All year one Playstaion exclusive items will be available to all
- Trials of Osiris will be leaving for a few months, but will return bigger and better than ever
I’m pretty sure that’s most of the major stuff you need to know about. But to be honest there are still a fair few other changes taking place. Needless to say Bungie are doing their darndest to make this expansion be the best one yet!
-Will
