January 24, 2023

PCGames Interviews Bungie on Destiny 2 Buildcrafting: Reduced Armor Mod Costs, Resilience Tuning, and More

Recently, PC Gamer sat down with Bungie to discuss Destiny 2’s buildcrafting. Two design leads, Rodney Thompson and Xavier Durand-Hollis, along with the creative director Tyson Green answered questions regarding the game’s Resilience and Intelligence mods. They also provided deeper insight into the upcoming changes in the Lightfall expansion. We have summarized the most significant highlights from the conversation for you here.

The costs of average armor mods are reduced. All non-stat-modifying mods cost between one and three energy.
The damage resistance scale for Resilience has been tuned. At tier 10, it provides a 30% damage reduction instead of 40%.
You no longer need to reach the max tier for benefits, as lower ones now also give valuable advantages.
There are leg armor mods that increase weapon damage of a specific type when you have stacks of Armor Charge. The base bonus is 10%, similar to the High Energy Fire mod. You can earn up to a 22% bonus by stacking three mod copies.
Unlike the Font of Might mod, you can choose which damage type the bonus applies to. It doesn’t have to match your subclass. Additionally, you can mix and match different damage types to fit your loadout.

“You can mix and match—say, two mods that grant bonuses to your Solar weapons, and one mod that grants a bonus to your Kinetic weapons”

—Rodney Thompson, design lead

There are several ways to obtain stacks of Armor Charge. These include picking up Orbs of Power in the game or through artifact perks when you pick up a Fire sprite. Certain mods will give you other ways of getting Armor Charge.
The rate at which Armor Charge stacks decay is the same regardless of the mod. Having multiple grant passive benefits does not affect the decay rate. Each stack of Armor Charge will lose one every 10 seconds. If you equip the Time Dilation, the timer will be prolonged.

The amount of ability energy granted by Firesprite, Ionic Traces, Void Breeches, and similar items are not the same. Each one is specially calibrated for the corresponding damage type.
Weapons that already trigger elemental effects, such as Ager’s Scepter and DARCI, are confirmed to be able to stun corresponding champions.
Weapon perk choices can be saved using Loadouts.
Loadouts currently do not include the ability to save ships, ghosts, emblems, and other similar items. However, players can expect this feature to come in the future.
There are 10 loadout slots per guardian for now. They may expand the amount in the future.
Players can unlock Loadout slots by progressing through Guardian Ranks. Characters who have completed the New Light experience will have most slots unlocked right away. New players will gain access to the slots as they climb up the ranks. The higher Ranks they are, the more will be opened.
When questioned about removing the Match Game modifier from high-difficulty activities, Green stated that the modifier may appear in special activities in the future when the company wants to intentionally change the gameplay in an unanticipated way. But at the moment, there are no specific plans to do so.