Destiny's April update introduces glowing gear and brings back more Year One favorites

Destiny's April update will allow Guardians to customize their gear in a new way, and it will also revive a whole bunch of deprecated Year One weapons and armor, developer Bungie announced today during a Twitch livestream.

The patch will introduce a new customization system called Chroma for both armor and weapons. Chroma is available in four different colors: white, red, yellow and "blue" (it's really more of a teal). It works through a new material called Chroma that players apply to their gear. Chroma can be applied to individual armor pieces, so a Guardian can wear a glowing white helmet and a glowing red chest piece, and the system functions separately from armor shaders. Unlike armor, weapons can only glow in one color.

Destiny's spring update will bring in new gear to earn along with the Chroma system. That includes two new sets of armor: Desolate and Spektar. The Desolate armor is Taken-themed, and earning the full set is the only way to unlock the terrifying "Shiver" emote.

The new Chroma material and the Desolate armor will drop randomly in Sterling Treasure. That's a new mystery box that you can obtain three times a week by playing Destiny: one from the Postmaster, one from completing a level 41 Prison of Elders activity, and one from the weekly Crucible playlist. You can also buy Sterling Treasure from the Eververse Trading Company, along with any of the new emotes contained in the April update.

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Destiny's April update detailed with 335 Light, high-level Prison of Elders and more

You'll be able to preview the contents of a Sterling Treasure before buying. It looks like all of the gear drops at a measly 3 defense, but with the April update's revised Infusion system, it won't be too much trouble to bring it up to snuff. You'll also be able to obtain Chroma by dismantling armor that you've already customized with a color.

Once you've added Chroma to a weapon or piece of armor, you can change the color (randomly) just by spending 100 Glimmer, although you'll lose the existing Chroma material and will have to put more Chroma into the item. "We don't want you to throw away a helmet you like in order to customize it," said David "DeeJ" Dague, community manager at Bungie.

Next, Bungie showed off some of the Year One weapons that it's bringing up to 330 attack in the April update. The studio is adding a third page to each tab in the vault, so it will be able to hold as many as 108 weapons. Here are some of the revived guns: Shadow Price, Badger CCL, Lord High Fixer, Grim Citizen III, The Saterienne Rapier, The Devil You Know, The Swarm, Zombie Apocalypse WF47, LDR 5001, Y-09 Longbow Synthesis, Two to the Morgue and The Comedian.

As for exotics, Bungie is slowly revealing the Year Two versions of gear such as Lucky Raspberry (Hunter chest), Universal Remote (shotgun) and Eternal Warrior (Titan helm) on Destiny's Instagram page.

Since the new Light cap in the April update is 335, it will be possible to see gear drop at that level. Bungie said 335 Light items can drop in the following activities: Iron Banner, Trials of Osiris, the hard version of King's Fall, the Court of Oryx (artifacts only) and Challenge of the Elders. In addition, certain strikes will offer unique rewards that can drop at 335, and exotic engrams can decrypt to gear at that level too.

Destiny's April update, which requires ownership of The Taken King, will be released April 12. For more details on the Chroma system, check out the relevant excerpt from today's livestream below.

Correction: The spring update introduces two new armor sets, not three. We've edited the article to reflect this.