Gamr Drivl: Destiny 2 - The Archives & Armory

Those who frequent my blog here are probably aware by now that I'm a big fan of Destiny, Bungie's MMO looter-shooter. I've written a number of shorts set in the Destiny universe (recently collected under the House of Dregs and Wahei Transcripts tags) and also wrote a Gamr Drivl piece suggesting a way to make a Battle Royale game mode work.

In November 2020, Destiny 2 brought us its latest expansion, Beyond Light, which also saw some major changes in the world. Several destinations in the setting were removed, and a lot of loot (weapons and armor) was "sunset," meaning they could no longer be upgraded to remain viable equipment to use in current content. When this was announced, it prompted a lot of complaints. (Bungie has since walked this back, and will be further working to maintain balance and shift the "meta" of loadouts to keep things fresh.) The removal of so much content-- explained as a necessity to keep the game a manageable size for ease of patching-- also meant that some lore in the game was rendered unobtainable.   

Additionally, one of the biggest complaints with Beyond Light was that the loot pool was suddenly far too small. With so many weapons and armors sunset, the newer weapons weren't enough to satisfy players. Bungie later rectified this slightly by adding several more recent sets back into the game, but it still left a bad taste in players' mouths.

What I propose in this Gamr Drivl is a means to make the missing lore books obtainable (though not for triumph score or seals) and make lore more accessible for the average player. And likewise a way to make it possible for players to "farm" for rolls they want on their weapons.

Destiny 2 - Exotic Auto Rifle Concept - Malleus Luminarum

 With all the Destiny writing I've been doing over the past year, and my frequent activity on the r/DestinyJournals subreddit, I've seen a few people posting their own concepts for exotic weapons or armors, complete with lore entries. I previously wrote about Dredgen Bog's custom linear fusion rifle, and prototype Weapon of Sorrow (read: evil weapon), the Huntsman Longbore, and then filled in some details about all of the Shadows of Salvation, including their own respective Weapons of Sorrow.

Whereas the Longbore was basically an exotic linear fusion rifle with a damage-over-time effect, I decided to actually put some new mechanics into the other Shadows' weapons, like Dredgen Vergift's Hanlon's Inverse (someone on r/DestinyJournals accurately described it as an "inverse Well of Radiance"), but when I sat down to think about Dredgen Ruin's auto rifle, I decided to do something else, taking an anti-champion mod and making it intrinsic to the weapon...

Destiny 2 - Exotic Sword Concept - Hanlon's Inverse

With all the Destiny writing I've been doing over the past year, and my frequent activity on the r/DestinyJournals subreddit, I've seen a few people posting their own concepts for exotic weapons or armors, complete with lore entries. I previously wrote about Dredgen Bog's custom linear fusion rifle, and prototype Weapon of Sorrow (read: evil weapon), the Huntsman Longbore, and then filled in some details about all of the Shadows of Salvation, including their own respective Weapons of Sorrow. So now here comes a description of Magda-9's sword...