Bungie has made it abundantly clear that Destiny 2’s upcoming expansion, The Final Shape, is a pretty big deal. It’s not only ending the 10-year story that began with Destiny in 2014, but it’s ushering in a new era of the game, dramatically changing how classes and perks will work, introducing a new content model, reversing past controversial choices, and upending a number of systems that have piled up over the years. Now, Bungie’s announced that Destiny 2’s bounty system is the latest part of the game that’ll be receiving a huge overhaul when The Final Shape launches next month.
Per a series of tweets from the Destiny 2 team account, bounties tied to ritual activities (i.e Crucible, Vanguard, and Gambit playlists) are going to be replaced by a rewards system the devs are calling the Ritual Pathfinder. These bounties are delivered by a slew of characters around the game’s main hub, the Tower, and feed into weekly challenges that typically reward powerful gear upon completion. All of these features will now apparently be wrapped up into a single system, and presumably a single vendor. Vendors and challenges that are not directly affiliated with the outlined ritual activities will be unaffected by these changes, such as Banshee-44 and their weapon-centric challenges.
Upon the launch of The Final Shape, all ritual bounties will be automatically abandoned, which is a blow to Destiny 2’s bounty preppers. You see, in preparation for new seasons, and especially new expansions, Destiny 2 players often complete an excessive amount of bounties and sit on them rather than cash them in. Bounties tend to carry over between these releases, meaning that cashing them in at the beginning of a new expansion or season is a way to quickly level up through battle passes or new level caps and get ahead of the game.
It seems like Bungie, knowing Destiny 2 players were beginning to hoard their bounties ahead of The Final Shape’s launch, decided to get ahead of the full unveiling of the Ritual Pathfinder in order to save its community some time. Now that they know not to grind away at ritual activity bounties in the lead-up to June 4, players can prioritize other in-game matters and activities, such as grinding for holographic versions of the BRAVE arsenal in Destiny 2’s new horde mode.
