Bungie hit a rough patch lately with Destiny 2. After a successful launch where the game was praised as an improvement over the original in many areas, the endgame was found lacking. Then a plethora of controversies ensued as well as a disappointing first expansion, Curse of Osiris.

　　In this week's development update, Bungie shared a huge amount of information on upcoming changes to the game, from the introduction of Masterwork armor and new Raid rewards to Iron Banner changes. Let's begin with those.

　　Iron Banner

　　First, we are adding new items to the engrams you will find waiting for you when you visit Lord Saladin. There will definitely be Season 2 weapons in the Iron Banner Engram and we will be adding more in the next event.

　　If you are missing items from last season, they will still drop as possible rewards from the engram. There is also a new emblem that tracks how many lifetime rank ups for Iron Banner you have earned in Destiny 2. You can earn it by completing the Iron Banner Milestone.

　　We've received a lot of feedback from previous Iron Banner events that players preferred a way to directly acquire items. We have added the ability to obtain armor and three different weapons from Lord Saladin during each event.

　　The final way to earn rewards is by completing challenges. Ornaments are available for all your Iron Banner gear and you can unlock them by completing various objectives for Lord Saladin.

　　Season 2 Ornaments

　　There are no limits to how many engrams you can acquire or how many tokens you can earn. Get as much playtime as you can during the week. It will always move you a little closer to opening another engram, earning an ornament, or purchasing a piece of gear from Lord Saladin. Go nuts!

　　Masters of the Armor

　　Many of you have already been discovering Masterwork weapons and adding them to your collection. Next week, we are adding Armor Masterworks to the mix. All Legendary armor now has a chance to drop as a Masterwork. The same rules apply as with the weapons, you will have a higher chance of getting Armor Masterwork from Trials of the Nine and Raid activities. But you might get lucky with an engram from Lord Shaxx or any other vendor who offers engrams.

　　The Benefits

　　Each armor piece grants 3% damage resistance while using a SuperThis stacks for a 15% damage reduction if you have a full set of Masterwork ArmorMasterworks armor can be reworked to a different stat package (Heavy, Light, or Restorative) for one Masterwork core and 10 Legendary Shards

　　You can now rework stats on your armor. The results will still be stat packages that are found on other pieces. There is a UI bug right now where if you try to quickly rework Armor sets it will appear to rework to the same stats. It doesn’t actually perform the rework function or use your materials, but can be quite scary, so we wanted to give you a heads up.

　　This is just the first version of Armor Masterworks. We are planning to continue updating this system and adding additional benefits.

　　Raid Reward Renewal

　　Raiding is one of Destiny 2’s ultimate endgame experiences. So far, you have explored the mysteries of the Leviathan and dove even deeper into its first Lair, the Eater of Worlds. We’ve received feedback that, while the experiences were epic, the rewards could use some more love. We invited Senior Designer Daniel Auchenpaugh to tell you more about what we’re changing with rewards starting with next week’s Raids.

　　Daniel Auchenpaugh: With the upcoming January patch, we're making a number of changes to the way Raid rewards work. We've been hearing that the current system doesn't feel exciting when you kill bosses, that tokens aren't interesting enough, and that you want more deep-chase items to hunt down. This is our first swing at tackling some of those, and we hope you'll jump in and play with these changes a bit and then let us know how you feel. For now, let's dive in to the changes and talk a bit about our goals and thinking with them.

　　Raid Armor: Now With Raid Perks!

　　Raid armor now drops with perks that function on the Leviathan; these appear on mods that are selectable on both new drops and existing Raid armor pieces you may alread have in your inventory. Additionally, these mods are reusable: if you swap to another one these will always be in the list to swap back to on your Raid armor for the low, low price of 1 Calus Token. Since no one wants to take a -5 Power penalty if they remove their Legendary mods while in the Raid, all the Raid mods are Legendary by default. This should also be extra icing on the cake for players who can’t seem to get that last mod they need to max their gear out.

　　The goal for these perks was to elevate the power of Guardians in the Raid, and we aimed to build things that were useful in every encounter. As a result, we avoided things that relied on specific mechanics to be useful and moved to broadly useful perks like "Recharge your grenade when you activate your Super" and "Deal 20% extra damage after getting a melee kill" as opposed to things tied to specific mechanics.

　　Double Drops

　　Clearing Prestige now gives you Prestige and normal drops. If you have the prowess to clear Prestige, then you've proven yourself enough that we don't need to force you to go back and do Normal as well.

　　Raid Encounters Always Drop a Raid Piece

　　We didn't want players to have that "dead encounter" feeling anymore, where they had already received all the rewards for that encounter and were just waiting on a later encounter. Or, even worse, the disappointed feeling where no one in your raid group gets something, which could happen under rare circumstances in the old system. So we've unified the drop tables for the encounters so that raid gear isn't tied to a specific encounter anymore (with an exception I'll get in to down below...) so no matter what encounter you clear, you can get raid loot. Oh, and every encounter has a chance to drop an exotic. Not an engram that you have to take back to Rahool for decryption, but an item you could equip and start using immediately if you want. This list of possible exotic drops is comprised of all non-quest exotics, with armor and weapons weighted equally, and is restricted to things your class can equip.

　　Raid Vendor Sells a Rotating Selection of Raid Gear

　　If you just can't get that last piece to drop for you, we want to give you some agency with your tokens. For a cost of Legendary Shards and some Calus Tokens, you can purchase these pieces if you have completed that raid for the week. For instance, if you want to buy the Prestige Chest armor, you need to complete Prestige mode that week before you can do so. This is so people can't save up tokens by sticking to normal mode and still wear the Prestige gear; we wanted to give people agency to fill in those few slots they're missing, not negate the need to progress further in the raid. Ole Benedict will change up what pieces they have available for purchase each week.

　　New Item: Exotic Raid Ghost "Contender's Shell"

　　While not quite at the grind level of the legendary Nanophoenix, we felt like we needed to add a chase item to the Raid pool to make coming back still have reward potential each week. Enter the Contender’s Shell. This Ghost can drop from the final encounter in either Leviathan or Eater of Worlds. We also included some bad luck protection to avoid the previously mentioned "Nanophoenix Problem" so that dedicated raiders can rest assured they'll get their hands on it eventually, even if it takes several weeks.

　　The Contender's Shell comes with some brand new perks that we're hoping helps reward players that keep clearing the Raid even after they've gotten their Ghost. Both active only on the Leviathan, and its lair, they aim to make Leviathan encounter rewards stay awesome. First, Seeker of Brilliance enables the chance for encounters to drop Bright Engrams from their loot pools. Every time one doesn't drop a Bright Engram, we increase the chance for the next. Remember those Exotics that can drop from encounters I was talking about earlier? Well, Seeker of Opulence means those exotics have a 50% chance to pull from a list of Exotics you haven't collected yet instead of the standard list. Lastly, to top off this already pretty rad Ghost, we threw on Seeker of Glory, which provides a tracker for the number of encounters you have defeated on the Leviathan.