Destiny’s Age of Triumph update will revive every raid in the game

Destiny’s next major content update, Age of Triumph, will offer something that players have wanted for a long time: a reason to revisit the Vault of Glass — and in fact, all of the game’s raids. The update will be released Tuesday, March 28.

“All of the raids are coming up to Light level,” said Joe Blackburn, senior designer at Bungie, during the studio’s reveal livestream for Age of Triumph today. The Light cap will remain at 400 in Age of Triumph, and all four raids will now offer “rituals” to help players reach that limit. The updated raids will be 390 Light activities.

Since its debut the week after Destiny’s release, the Vault of Glass has remained a level 26 raid — level 30 if you’re playing on hard mode — even as Bungie has refreshed other old activities like strikes. And the studio has spiced up existing raids like King’s Fall, the one from Destiny: The Taken King, with challenges that put a new spin on the exercise. But now, Bungie will bring make every raid current and worthwhile.

Players who already have Guardians at 400 Light may feel frustrated that there isn’t a Light increase in Age of Triumph. But because the new raids have such a high recommended Light, they’ll offer commensurate rewards.

“The thrill is getting these rewards and having them be 400 right away,” said Blackburn, singling out weapons like Vex Mythoclast, a Vault of Glass reward.

Bungie will guide players through the four updated raids with Destiny’s biggest Record Book yet, numbering 13 pages. “This is your ‘moments of triumph’ for all of Destiny, as it were,” said lead designer Ryan Paradis.

Longtime Destiny players will find plenty of Record Book nodes already filled in, since they’ll get credit for milestones achieved in the past. For example, the “From the Beginning” node will apply to anyone who played Destiny in its launch window, before the launch of its first expansion (December 2014’s The Dark Below). However, Paradis noted that “you will be less than halfway done with the book” even if you’ve been playing Destiny since launch and have done everything there is to do.

Activities in the Record Book will offer experience points toward filling up the book, and many of them will provide rewards such as emblems. Each page has its own theme, like story, raids, strikes and Crucible; there are also pages for each of Destiny’s three classes, and one for the Trials of Osiris specifically. Everything in the Record Book is tallied across your entire Destiny account, so as long as you’ve done something on any of your active characters, it will count.

Bungie noted that players won’t need to complete every single activity in the Record Book in order to get all the rewards available for making their way through the book. In fact, said Paradis, players will only need to finish “roughly three-quarters of the Record Book” to receive the full list of rewards. Those who hit rank 7 in the Record Book will have the opportunity to buy a unique item from the Bungie Store: a blue T-shirt with the Age of Triumph crest on it, and your PlayStation Network ID or Xbox Live gamertag on the sleeve.

After going through the Record Book, Bungie announced a new element of the Director in Destiny: a weekly featured raid. Every week, Bungie will toss up a level 42 raid at 390 Light — with all of its challenges active at the same time. The raids will also offer new elements, like collectibles that didn’t originally exist. However, the fundamental nature of the raids will stay the same; unlike the refreshed strikes, the raids won’t be updated with, say, Taken or SIVA enemies.

That doesn’t mean nothing notable about the raids will change. Bungie is making tweaks in an effort to polish up the play experience, like cutting down the length of the interminable Oracles section of the Vault of Glass. Blackburn explained the philosophy this way: “What’s a little thing that we think would make this a little enjoyable, or where did we misstep a little bit?”

The first week of Age of Triumph will send players to the Moon for Crota’s End, while Vault of Glass fans will have to wait until week two. King’s Fall will be featured third, followed by Wrath of the Machine. As each 390 Light version goes live, it will remain playable (without challenges) even when it’s not the weekly featured raid. Every raid will now offer armor with an ornament slot; the gear from Wrath of the Machine, which already had one slot, will now have two.

Age of Triumph will be the last big drop of new content for Destiny before the expected arrival of the game’s sequel this fall. Bungie announced last week that while Destiny players will be able to maintain their Guardians’ physical appearance, anything they have earned or purchased — Light level, weapons, armor and Eververse Trading Company items — will not carry over to Destiny 2.

David “DeeJ” Dague, community manager at Bungie, noted that the studio won’t simply retire Destiny when the sequel launches.

“Destiny 1 is not going away,” said Dague. “Destiny 1 is a game that we fully intend to keep online for the foreseeable future.”

As with every live update for Destiny, players must own the game’s most recent paid expansion — Rise of Iron, in this case — in order to have access to the new content.