Destiny 2 resonant elements and deepsight attunement will be removed as in-game elements in the popular FPS game come the Destiny 2 Lightfall release date, according to a recent post in the game’s This Week at Bungie series. Destiny 2 introduced weapon crafting into the game with The Witch Queen expansion. However, even with several quests throughout the past year designed to help train players on how to craft and reshape their favourite weapons, the process of distinguishing weapons with resonant elements, deepsight resonance, and extractable weapon patterns was still pretty confusing. It was also difficult for players to track as they embarked on their favourite activities – one of which being the Destiny 2 Final Dawn quest.
“As part of an initiative to integrate weapon crafting into the broader core economy, we will be completely removing resonant elements from the game. Standard currencies such as glimmer, enhancement cores, etc. will replace the element costs that exist today,” the blog post says. “We’ll also be removing the deepsight attunement objective altogether.”
The snippet says the game will still use resonant and harmonic alloys but that Bungie has plans to overhaul these in the future. However, ascendant alloys used in weapon crafting will continue to be in use for now.
These appear to be relatively late-game changes before Lightfall and the introduction of the Destiny 2 Strand subclass, as the excerpt suggests they are “hot off the presses.”
The discontinuation of resonant elements and deepsight attunement objectives is welcome among players. It makes far more sense to use straightforward currencies such as enhancement cores and glimmer to shape such weapons, which players already use to upgrade non-crafted weapons and armour.
Resonant elements and deepsight resonance have been sources of confusion for many players. Weapons that feature extractable resonant elements and deepsight resonance drop with red borders, as do weapons that drop with extractable weapon patterns. All red border weapons require players to level up the weapons to extract these elements or patterns. As a result, players often needed clarification as to what, precisely, they needed to do to be able to craft specific weapons. For example, early on, players found some weapons that offered deepsight resonance were not craftable.
It seems Bungie introduced this complicated weapon crafting unlock process to get players to experiment with different weapons and perks. For example, levelling up five of the same weapon to extract a pattern means players are likely to level up versions with different perk options, so they can ideally settle on which perks they like the most to craft the weapon. Once players craft a specific weapon with their preferred perks, they must level it up to unlock even more perk options. While this process is confusing enough, efforts to track elements such as deepsight resonance and resonant elements in addition to pattern extractions can quickly lead to confusion. For example, players might level up a red border weapon only to find out they’re at the maximum resonant elements they can carry.
Although players have mixed feelings about whether weapon crafting is good for the game’s overall health, many would argue it beats farming the same activities repeatedly to attempt to earn a weapon with a specific god roll. Recently, Bungie increased drop rates for red border weapons in activities such as the Destiny 2 King’s Fall raid and the Destiny 2 Spire of the Watcher dungeon, responding to outcry that it was tedious to attempt to earn enough red border weapons to extract specific patterns.
While Destiny 2 weapon crafting perks shouldn’t necessarily be easy to earn, they should be attainable, and the process for doing so should be easy to understand. Unfortunately, the barrier for entry to understanding weapon pattern extractions, deepsight resonance, and resonant elements was too high for some players, deterring them from the process of weapon crafting completely. Shifting weapon crafting to the broader world economy is a terrific way to get more players to take advantage of weapon crafting features in one of the best multiplayer games on PC available.