Bungie has revealed what’s coming with Destiny 2’s big armour 2.0 update, and as the studio’s nickname for the changes suggested, it’s a substantial rework for the whole armour system. Your gear has new stats, new ways to implement mods, and a whole bunch of fresh ways to help you customise and build your character when the Shadowkeep release date hits.
Discipline, Intellect, and Strength stats will return from the original Destiny (as previously confirmed), which gives you six stats to work with. The stats now go from zero to 100, and every piece of armour will offer its own bonuses to those stacks. Each stat is divided into ten point thresholds which unlock character buffs – every ten points in Strength, for example, gives a bonus to your melee cooldown.
Each piece of armour has an energy type and energy value, which will determine what mods you can equip. Mods have their own energy types and costs, so you can build your pool of armour perks with mods of appropriate types. You’ll permanently unlock a mod once it’s slotted in, so there’s no need to keep farming each type.
You can upgrade your armour – you’ll have to collect new and returning mats like Enhanced Prisms and Ascendant Shards to do it – which will increase your energy cap for mods and bring up your stats. Your energy cap can go up to ten, and once your armour hits masterwork status you’ll get a +2 bonus on every stat.
Every Legendary armour piece you pick up as a drop after the launch of Shadowkeep will be armour 2.0, even if they come out of old raids and content. Exotic items can be upgraded to the armour 2.0 system through the collections menu, but they will come with fixed rolls, so there’s still a reason to grind for further drops.
Perhaps most importantly, the Glimmer cap is getting upped to 250,000.