Destiny: The Taken King expansion: Everything you need to know

The game also offers you a lot of things to do at the level cap: You can explore the new Dreadnaught patrol area, you can proceed into strikes or you can follow the quest chains the NPCs in the Tower offer you. But it may not be clear what your goal is once you reach max level, or how these different activities help you to progress toward that goal.

Lucky for you, we’ve got your back. This is a zero-bullshit look at how to get the best gear in the least amount of time.

Xur, the tentacle-faced weekend merchant, operates differently as of The Taken King’s release. In addition to his usual slate of three exotic armor pieces — one per class — Xur now sells either an exotic weapon engram or an exotic armor engram. He also offers something called a Legacy Engram, which bears the same yellow color as an exotic engram but is guaranteed to turn into a Year One exotic; the engram is meant for players who want to fill out their collection.

Along with exotic engrams and gear, Xur always offers an assortment of items such as ammo syntheses. In The Taken King, he also sells a consumable called Three of Coins; a pack of five costs seven Strange Coins. Three of Coins increases the chance of an exotic drop the next time you kill a boss known as an “ultra.” The effect stacks, although not in the usual way — your exotic chance won’t quintuple if you pop five Threes of Coins at once. Instead, the way it works is that if you kill an ultra but don’t get an exotic, the next Three of Coins you use will be more likely to produce an exotic drop upon killing another ultra.

Regardless of the size or seriousness of a particular problem, you can bet that Destiny players are complaining about it — and rightfully so. Why is this broken? How quickly can you fix it? Why haven’t you fixed it yet? Why is it a problem in the first place? Shouldn’t an experienced studio like Bungie know better?

The Taken King doesn’t just represent Bungie’s attempt to make Destiny anew; it’s an opportunity for a fresh start in dealing with the game’s vocal community.

There were things going on, of course, and if you wanted to dig into the Grimoire Cards and lore of the game it even began to make a little bit of sense. But it felt hidden and obscure, and very little ever seemed to be at stake other than the thought you may not win a match in the Crucible or unlock the gear you were looking for. The world was cold, sterile and opaque for most players.

The Taken King changes that, and it happens in the first moments of the game.

There’s a flurry of discussion every Friday morning when the weekend merchant Xur arrives, with players debating the value of what he’s selling this time. A lot of the exotic game in the first year of Destiny depended on chance; I’m still missing so many exotic weapons, like Hawkmoon, Suros Regime and Thunderlord, that never dropped for me in a raid or elsewhere.

“As we get into Year Two, we’re going to look at ways to breathe more life into the exotic game moving forward,” said Luke Smith, creative director on The Taken King, in an interview with Polygon during a recent preview event at Bungie. “Whether it’s new quest lines, whether it’s opportunities to acquire some of these old classics, we’re going to keep supporting the game through the course of the year.”

This is made possible by the kiosks in the Hall of Guardians for exotic weapons and armor, stations that debuted a week ago in Destiny 2.0. The screens contain blueprints for all the exotic gear you’ve unlocked, and they offer glimpses of the Year Two upgrades for Year One items. You can use a blueprint to forge a fresh copy of any exotic gear you’ve discovered for the price of 2,500 glimmer and one Exotic Shard.

Not so fast, gunslinger — Bungie has been saying for a while now that it won’t be carrying forward all of the Year One exotics into Year Two. In fact, the the studio is leaving behind the majority of the exotic weapon arsenal, at least for now: At the launch of The Taken King today, Year Two versions are available for just 10 of the current exotic weapons. As for exotic armor, the expansion offers Year Two versions of six pieces of armor for each of the three classes.

“I felt like the story and the writing and the characterful nature of the game was an area that we had a lot of potential that we could capitalize on,” he told me during a preview event at Bungie two weeks ago. Destiny has found a large, dedicated and vocal audience, with many players returning after last week’s extensive version 2.0 patch, but the game’s story remained one of its weakest aspects. Bungie went out of its way to bring more personality and fun to Destiny with The Taken King.

“I hope that when people get into some of the interactions between Eris and Cayde, they, like, smile! I fucking want people to smile when they play the game,” Smith told me, taking note of my own chuckle while continuing his response. “Like, I love those two characters, I think that they play off of each other really well, and I think that we really, yeah, we really tried to improve those interactions. And just even mentioning that and seeing you smile, truthfully, it does warm my heart.”

The 60-second TV spot features “Black Dog,” just like The Taken King’s launch gameplay trailer did last week. Directed by Joseph Kosinski (Oblivion, Tron: Legacy), the commercial stars a cocky Titan who heads to Destiny’s newest destination — the Dreadnought, a massive spaceship floating in Saturn’s rings — and doesn’t feel threatened by the thought of the vessel’s commander, the Hive god Oryx.

The Titan is eventually joined by his fellow guardians, a Warlock and Hunter; all three are playing as the new subclasses debuting in Destiny with The Taken King: Sunbreaker, Stormcaller and Nightstalker, respectively. Then, Oryx crashes the party.

The required v2.0 update is a colossal one, weighing in at 18 GB on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and 10 GB on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Players on PS3 will need closer to 20 GB of free hard drive space for the patch, since the console has to have enough space to extract the download package before it can install the content.

Aside from replacing Peter Dinklage’s performance as Ghost with a re-recording by Nolan North, update 2.0 won’t provide new content to Destiny players — they’ll have to buy The Taken King to get new missions, strikes, weapons, armor and more. But people will be able to sample The Taken King’s new Crucible maps and modes free for the next week.

After that, the objective is to grab the spark and carry it into the opposing team’s home base, which is called the “rift.” Doing so is known as “igniting the rift,” and the subsequent explosion will kill everyone in the area who’s playing for that rift’s home team. Igniting the rift awards you 1,500 points, and you’ll get a style bonus if you walk into the goal backward, which triggers a backflip.

A key difference between Rift and traditional CTF modes is that the spark holder will score some points if they make some progress toward the enemy rift: 100 points for every 25 percent of the run. So there’s some incentive to pick up the spark even if you’re unsure of your ability to make it all the way (or of your teammates’ ability to shepherd you there). Note that the spark carrier can’t just hide in a corner until the coast is clear; if they hold on to the spark for more than 75 seconds, it’ll explode and kill them.

Bungie will introduce a new “Mercy Rule” in Crucible matches as of Sept. 8. The rule is designed to quickly end matches in which the score difference between the winning team and losing team is so great that there’s no hope of winning, where the losing team might be suffering so badly that the game’s no longer fun. Bungie hopes the rule will end bad matches as quickly as possible, discourage quitting and prevent players from joining in-progress blowouts.

“When the Mercy Rule hits, Shaxx will call out the end of the match,” Destiny senior designer Andrew Weldon wrote on Bungie’s website. “We immediately disable join in progress to prevent any additional players from joining the game (if anyone has dropped already) and reset the game clock to :10 seconds. After those 10 seconds, the match will end normally. All players will receive their end of match rewards and return to matchmaking.”

The Taken King includes a wealth of additions to Destiny’s Crucible. The expansion comes with eight maps (with one of them available exclusively on PlayStation), and brings in two entirely new modes, Rift and Mayhem. In addition, Bungie is making the Elimination gametype from Trials of Osiris available in its own playlist, even when Trials is offline.

Bungie will update Destiny to version 2.0 next Tuesday, Sept. 8, one week prior to the Sept. 15 launch of The Taken King. When the 2.0 update goes live, all Destiny players will have the opportunity to try The Taken King’s new Crucible maps and modes for seven days.

GameStop is offering a $20 credit toward the purchase of the Legendary Edition to customers who trade in a copy of Destiny. That cuts the price of the Legendary Edition to $39.99, which means that trade-in customers can get the game and all three of its expansions for the price of The Taken King alone.

The deal is valid from Sept. 12 through Sept. 21. Since The Taken King launches Sept. 15, interested parties can take advantage of GameStop’s offer during its first three days to pre-order the expansion and receive two pre-order bonuses: the Suros Arsenal Pack and the Weapons Pack.

Unlike other public events in Destiny, which typically spawn randomly in the game world, Court of Oryx’s events are player-initiated; they’ll need to present a consumable item called a rune, which will drop in the Dreadnaught, to one of the statues just outside the gameplay area in order to spawn challenges in the Court of Oryx.

Game designer Ben Wommack said that the use of statues for Court of Oryx was somewhat inspired by PlayStation 2 game Shadow of the Colossus.

Destiny players will want to make their Guardians as strong as possible before they tackle King’s Fall. The Taken King raises the game’s level cap from 34 to 40. But Bungie is divorcing your level from your Light in the expansion; your Light value will be a simple average of all of your weapons, armor and gear. So you’ll need strong weapons and armor to kill Oryx.

Destiny: The Taken King launches Sept. 15. For more, check out our everything-you-need-to-know StoryStream.

The Taken King seems to really improve the design of Destiny in multiple ways, and those systems will be coming to everyone who owns the game, even if they’ve never purchased an expansion or The Taken King. The new strikes, in particular, seem like they’re going to be much more enjoyable. We’ll have plenty of coverage once the content launches to test it all out.

This isn’t going to turn off anyone who was already going to buy the game, but I’m not sure it convinced anyone who is on the fence.

James Tsai, design lead for strikes, appeared on the livestream with Bungie community manager David “DeeJ” Dague to provide commentary on the Shield Brothers playthrough. The strike takes place in the heart of the Dreadnaught, the Hive ship that will be a new destination in Destiny, and focuses on a Cabal invasion of the giant spacecraft. The Guardians’ ultimate objective is to take out two Cabal commanders, Valus Mau’ual and Valus Tlu’urn.

Shield Brothers includes some encounters that won’t be the same every time, a common complaint from Destiny players about the game’s existing strikes. “We wanted to make that experience less static,” said Tsai, noting that players repeat strikes over and over again. “All the strikes now have several combat setups” that can have different enemies, different dialogue and alternate enemy spawn locations.

As announced earlier this year, Bungie is introducing one new subclass for each of Destiny’s three classes: the Sunbreaker (Titan), Stormcaller (Warlock) and Nightstalker (Hunter). Today’s livestream consists of a playthrough of Shield Brothers, a strike that’s set on Oryx’s Dreadnaught ship. The three players went through the skill trees for their respective subclasses, and you can see that in the video above.

Destiny: The Taken King launches Sept. 15 on PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. For more, check out last week’s livestream below.

If this tease is any indication, we can expect to learn more about the game’s exotics in tomorrow’s livestream, which will also show off the new voice of Ghost, as well as a new location, the Dreadnaught. Bungie’s livestream will kick off at 11 a.m. PT tomorrow, Aug. 26, on the studio’s Twitch channel. Check out Bungie’s full livestream schedule for more information, and see our Taken King StoryStream for everything you need to know about the expansion.

My will is not my own, Guardian. The Nine have commanded me to reveal Exotic treasures you may discover in your future. I will speak with you tomorrow. - Xûr, Agent of the Nine

North, the veteran voice actor renowned for such roles as Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, is taking over for Peter Dinklage as Ghost. When The Taken King launches three weeks from today, Bungie will replace Dinklage’s entire performance — in all of Destiny, not just the expansion — with a re-recording by North. In the brief bit of footage in the teaser, North’s take on the character comes in a higher-pitched, somewhat nasally voice that instantly expresses more emotion than Dinklage usually did in the role.

Tomorrow’s Taken King livestream will also showcase a new strike, Shield Brothers, that takes place on the Dreadnaught. Located among the rings of Saturn, the Dreadnaught is the massive vessel that Oryx, the god at the center of The Taken King’s story, calls home. Aside from the Reef in the asteroid belt and The Lighthouse on Mercury, the Dreadnaught will be the first new playable area in Destiny, complete with its own patrol missions, since the game’s launch last September.

First and foremost, your vault space has been doubled. You have 72 slots for weapons and 72 slots for armor — other equipment will receive their own new forms of storage (more on that later).

Ghost Shells — a previously aesthetic customization option — will also play a larger role in your Guardian’s build in The Taken King. Shells will come equipped with their own stat modifiers and perks; a few demonstrated during the stream allowed players to track planetary resources on their minimap, and some allow you to earn more Glimmer for killing certain enemies. Shells will factor into their Light level average, as well. Players will be able to purchase Ghost Shells from the Speaker in the Tower, and can earn legendary shells from the Crucible Vanguard.

As of The Taken King, you’ll progress in Destiny simply by earning experience, just as you did for the first 20 levels. As Bungie’s Tyson Green explained, “Anything that’s earning you XP is going to bring your level up,” so anyone can reach the new level cap of 40 just by playing Destiny. Light will now be an average of the attack and defense attributes for all your gear. That includes two new slots: Ghost Shell and class item.

The inventory screen has been improved to provide more information about your gear. Instead of nebulous percentages for the Strength, Intellect and Discipline attributes, you’ll be able to see the exact length of your abilities’ cooldowns (and see them decrease as those attributes go up). And Bungie has expanded the vault space: You’ll now have 72 slots each for weapons and armor. The number of general slots is staying at 36, but the new “collections” feature for emblems will reduce the number of general slots you’ll be using.

Game Informer reports that The Taken King will raise Destiny’s level cap to 40, and that the expansion will restructure the entire progression system as well. Leveling will no longer be tied to Light; instead, you’ll simply reach new levels by earning experience all the way from the beginning of the game to level 40. As you rank up, you’ll unlock the ability to use new weapons and armor, which will still provide power gains. In addition, Destiny developer Bungie is tweaking the game’s loot algorithm to take your existing gear into account, so you’ll receive fewer duplicate items and more gear that’s better than what you have.

The Taken King will recast Destiny’s Ghost, replacing the much-maligned Peter Dinklage with veteran voice actor Nolan North, according to Game Informer. North plays the role of Ghost in The Taken King’s missions, and Bungie had him re-record all of Dinklage’s existing dialogue, too — the expansion completely replaces Dinklage’s performance with North’s, eliminating the Game of Thrones star from Destiny entirely.