Destiny 2 Renegades Releases Major New Update for December 9

Bungie released Update 9.5.0.1 for Destiny 2 and its Renegades expansion, addressing current issues and bugs, while also making a number of gear adjustments and adding a requested feature from the community. The Star Wars-inspired expansion for Destiny 2 has seemingly been a hit with players, though it doesn’t seem to have moved the needle as much as Bungie likely hoped in terms of bringing back a healthy population of players to the game.

While Edge of Fate seemingly left the Destiny 2 community feeling frustrated and disappointed, Renegades seems to have restored the hope of players for the future of the series. While not perfect, the latest expansion has been received positively thanks to its Star Wars influences, interesting new weapons and armor, as well as the new Lawless Frontier gameplay, which seems to take a bit of inspiration from games like Helldivers 2. Bungie continues to tweak the experience for fans, introducing its latest major update on December 9.

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Thanks to patch notes, players can now see all the details Bungie is adding to Destiny 2 with its latest update. For many, the biggest piece of this patch is the Vanguard Alerts system for Destiny 2, which is intended to bring back the feeling of the weekly Nightfall missions. Instead of scrolling through the Portal, players can go to Vanguard Alerts in the Seasonal Hub to see weekly rotating quickplay missions for a variety of activities like Crucible, Grandmaster, Fireteam Ops, Arena, as well as endgame activities like the Desert Perpetual Raid and upcoming Equilibrium Dungeon.

Outside of that, the update is making a handful of big changes to Destiny 2‘s Lawless Frontier activity and the Invasion mechanic. Similar to Gambit’s invasion, 1 player can drop in on others during a Lawless Frontier mission to try and eliminate them and potentially earn the red Praxic Blade crystal. However, invaders have found that the Imperium Behemoth made these encounters far too easy to win, so this update has made them a bit more squishy by about 35% against enemy player supers, with Stasis and Strand doing a bit more.

Following the massive Destiny 2 class buffs in the Renegades launch update, Bungie is using this patch to make a few additional adjustments. Specifically, Sentinel Shield’s Banner shield will now correctly reload player weapons when standing behind it. A strange audio bug has also been fixed, allowing players to correctly hear the detonation sound effect when the shield is thrown. For stasis hunters, Shatterdive will now grant Frost Armor, even if the player accidentally hits an object during the dive.

Image via Bungie

While the changes should please many players, the community seems to be a bit frustrated at some of the bigger changes that Renegades introduced. The Pathfinder and weekly challenge system offered players a hefty sum of XP and Bright Dust to help boost their Season Pass progression, including those that opted to join in later. That system has been replaced by the new Orders system, which Destiny 2 fans aren’t pleased with as it offers less XP and Bright Dust to earn per week, making the season pass progression much slower than before. It’s unknown if Bungie plans to make adjustments or if the studio is generally happy with how it is currently implemented.

Destiny 2 Update 9.5.0.1 Patch Notes

Renegades

• Fixed an issue where players could get blocked from launching into the Welcome to the Frontier mission.
• Fixed an issue in the Welcome to the Frontier mission where players could get soft locked by progressing into the Piker Crew encounter too quickly.
• Fixed an issue in the Imperium mission where players could become soft locked in the trash compactor by destroying the jammers too quickly.
• Fixed an issue where the Glory Beyond mission would auto-launch into Normal difficulty even when the player has been progressing on Legendary difficulty.
• Fixed an issue where the Info Broker was not informing players what collectibles they were still missing.

Lawless Frontier

Renegade Abilities

• The coinflip animation can now be interrupted by the coin throw once the coin lands back in your hand.
• Updated some description strings to more accurately reflect ability functionality.
• Imperium Behemoth
  • Invader Behemoths now have ~35% damage resistance versus enemy Supers.
    • Note: We plan to also add this damage resistance to non-invader Behemoths in a future update.
  • Stasis Freeze and Strand Suspend now deal increased damage to player-controlled Behemoths.
• Vex Stun Field
  • Now deals constant damage to enemy vehicles.
• Imperium Drop Pod
  • Fixed an issue where Imperium Drop Pod wasn’t granting the proper number of bonus ammo bricks to allies at higher levels of the ability.
• Recon Shank
  • Now only scans invaders every other pulse.
  • Will now correctly waypoint ambient chests.
  • Fixed an issue where higher level scans were sometimes not pinging Invaders.
  • Fixed a visual issue where Tier 5 and 6 scans incorrectly stated that they only had three charges.
    • They now correctly state they have four charges.

General

• Fixed an issue where players could duplicate dunk objects in some Lawless Frontier activities.
• Fixed an issue where Invader teleport points would not consistently grab players as expected.
• Fixed an issue where Invaders were not being sent back to their ready room if they were traveling quickly on a vehicle as the final time-out occurred.
• Fixed an issue where some supply cache reward chests were floating above the ground.
• Fixed an issue where players could see the priority contracts held by their other characters.
• Fixed an issue where players could not damage jammer panels with anti-barrier weapons.
• Fixed an issue where Invaders who died as they are getting teleported back could experience rapid teleport VFX.
• Fixed an issue where there was a placeholder icon present when flying to Tharsis Outpost from other destinations.
• Updated Scatter Grenades to be more effective against Ablative armor.

Vanguard Alerts

• Added a new Vanguard Alerts page to the Seasonal Hub with the following alerts:
  • Fireteam Ops Quickplay
  • Arena Ops Quickplay
  • Crucible Ops
  • Grandmaster Vanguard Alert
  • The Desert Perpetual Raid and Equilibrium Dungeon (once it unlocks)
• All alerts are also available from their normal Portal nodes.
  • The Grandmaster Alert node is available at the top of the Fireteam Ops node, next to Quickplay.
• The three Quickplay Portal alerts have three stages of challenge, each asking you to complete the three relevant Portal activities.
  • The first challenge stage each week drops a special version of the weekly weapon and a piece of gear from the relevant loot pool. This special version of the weapon will come with a unique origin trait and will be pre-Masterworked.
  • The second and third challenge stages drop two pieces of gear each, resulting in four additional engrams.
  • All of these drops come at a higher power than you can get from playing activities, as well as at a higher tier.
  • The unique weekly weapon with the special origin trait can drop from any loot source from that pool at a very low rate.
• Grandmaster Alerts have a rotating weekly weapon from the Pinnacle Pool and completing the Grandmaster Alert with a B grade or higher will award the weekly weapon at Tier 5.
• The first time you complete the Grandmaster Alert each week, the weapon drops pre-Masterworked with the unique origin trait.
  • Further drops will have a low chance of dropping with the unique origin trait.
• Grandmaster Alerts also drop two Fireteam Ops engrams based on your grade, as well as other relevant Portal loot.

Portal

• Adjusted Quickplay scoring so that a 550 Power player should be able to earn a B grade with the Season Pass bonus.
  • This will apply to all Quickplay nodes, including Vanguard Alert Quickplays.
• Arena Ops now has a Quickplay Node, which rotates between Astral Alignment, Ketchcrash, and Nightmare Containment.
• Lootstream objects for Reallocated Bonus Focus now stack, showing players how many are being reallocated.
• Fixed an issue where the Portal version of the Derealize Exotic Mission was not awarding Barrow-Dyad or its related intrinsics and catalysts.
  • Weapon, intrinsic 1+2, and catalyst 1 will be awarded on first completion on any difficulty.
  • Intrinsics 3, 4, and 5 will be awarded sequentially on activity complete on any difficulty.
  • Catalyst 2, 3, and 4 will be awarded sequentially on activity complete in Master difficulty or higher.
• Matchmade Grandmaster and Ultimate activities will now have No Radar enabled by default.
• Fixed an issue in the Astral Alignment Arena Ops activity where the suppressor buff was not stunning abominations.

Crucible

• Removed Avant-Garde modifier (new gear loadout restriction) from rotator playlists.

Raid and Dungeon

• Fixed an issue where The Desert Perpetual vendor was checking for space in the kinetic slot inventory instead of the energy slot when players attempted to purchase the epic raid version of Cusp Sempiternal.
• Fixed an issue where players who earned the epic raid version of Cusp Sempiternal were unable to purchase higher-tier versions from the raid vendor.
  • Edit: Players will need to earn a new drop before being able to purchase the weapon, as the highest-recorded tier earned needs to be re-established on the vendor after this fix has gone live.

General

• Fixed an issue where players were crashing during the final battle in the Iconoclasm mission from The Final Shape.

Gameplay and Investment

Titan

Praxic Vestment

• Fixed an issue where players could use this Exotic to rapidly throw Hammer of Sol.
• Fixed an issue where this Exotic could allow players to fly infinitely.

Weapons

Heavy Ammo Grenade Launchers

• Fixed an issue where players could not pick up enhanced Heavy ammo bricks while this weapon type is equipped.

Exotic Weapons

Barrow-Dyad

• Fixed an issue where Barrow-Dyad wasn’t gaining seekers when reloading it with Marksman’s Dodge.

New Malpais

• Fixed an issue where this weapon’s Exotic catalyst was not progressing from weapon kills.

Weapon perks

Kinetic Rupture

• Fixed an issue where Kinetic Rupture would not activate while the player was standing in a Well of Radiance.

Abilities

Titan

Sentinel Shield

• Banner Shield now reloads player weapons while they’re standing behind the shield.
• Fixed an issue where the charged shield throw didn’t have detonation audio.

Hunter

Shatterdive

• Fixed an issue where Shatterdive would sometimes not grant Frost Armor if you collided with an object while diving.

Artifact

• Updated audio for the Sword Storm artifact mod.
• Fixed an issue where the Microcosm Exotic was not activating the Kinetic Synthesis ammo generation.
• Fixed an issue with the Kinetic Synthesis artifact mod would not activate while standing in a Warlock rift or Well of Radiance.

Localization

• Fixed issues affecting subtitles not matching dialogue audio in some languages in Renegades.

General

• Fixed an issue where some loadouts created prior to the launch of Renegades would cause players to experience WEASEL errors.
• Fixed an issue where Xbox players would crash when launching Destiny 2 while their game language was set to Traditional Chinese.
• Fixed an issue where some legacy emotes were priced incorrectly in the Eververse store.
• Fixed an issue where the Without Ceremony ornament for Ice Breaker was using incorrect visuals.
• Fixed an issue where buying certain items from Xûr were not contributing correct amounts to the weekly Strange Coin bonus purchase.
• Fixed an issue where Zavala’s Vanguard Arsenal weapons would reset at unexpected times.

Released

August 28, 2017

ESRB

T For TEEN for Blood, Language, and Violence