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“Trials” comes to Destiny 2 less than two weeks after launch

Guardians in Osiris's armour

The console launch of Destiny 2 is just five days away and, accordingly, Bungie have announced when its endgame activities will unlock. Why does this matter to us on PC? Because the announcement includes word of the “Trials” game mode.

Learn the ways of Trials and the Crucible in our Destiny 2 PvP guide

We previously had no idea when Trials would release – Bungie had committed only to launching it before the first expansion. Thanks to this week’s Bungie update, we now know that:

  • The Raid will unlock at 10:00 Pacific (18:00 BST) on September 13
  • Trials will unlock at 10:00 Pacific (18:00 BST) on September 15

Trials is to PvP as the Raid is to PvE. In its original form as Trials of Osiris, the goal was to win nine rounds of a highly competitive game mode without a single loss. That would earn you a trip to Osiris’s hideout, the Lighthouse on Mercury, where you could claim some highly prized endgame loot.

Osiris’s name is conspicuously absent from Bungie’s announcement – with the rogue warlock now the focus of Destiny 2’s first DLC, it seems Trials is getting rearranged. Leaks and rumours suggest it’s now called Trials of the Nine (evidence here – beware of spoilers later in the article!) and will be built around either the Survival or Countdown game modes, or possibly both.

It’s nice to see that we won’t be kept waiting for Trials, and this is also good news if it means Bungie will keep a similar release schedule for the PC version of Destiny 2 – on console, the Raid is unlocking a week after launch, which is more notice than we usually get to prepare (though it’ll still be a rush).