In the final This Week at Bungie of Season 16, we did not learn what Season 17 is or which subclass is getting the 3.0 treatment, though there will be a new trailer early Tuesday morning. Instead, Bungie let the community in on how they’re updating the various events we see every four months or so. They also extended a small olive branch to the community by raising the amount of vault space from 500 spaces to 600. Not the significant increase many players may have wanted, but an extra 100 slots for god rolls that might be useful one day is welcome.
The primary change to events is in their reward structure. Where before almost all the rewards were gated behind the Eververse real-money store, now there’s something called an Event Card with event-specific challenges that, once completed, award Exotic Emotes, Sparrows, Ships, and Legendary gear. Bungie is also introducing event-specific Seals much like the Seasonal and activity Seals we’ve had. We can even gild any event Seal acquired by completing an additional Triumph. There’s a multi-event Seal for those players who really get into the seasonal and holiday activities.
Solstice (no more Heroes) is also seeing some updates to the European Aerial Zone (EAZ) activity, where players will start and stoke what Bungie calls “paracausal bonfires” and keep the various enemy factions from putting them out. There’s good news on that front for those sick of the horrid grind of previous Solstice events. We only have to upgrade a single set of armor rather than the two or three stages we’re used to. Once upgraded, we’ll be able to reroll armor stats as we like and farm for specific stat ranges.
The Season 17 Dungeon activity opens on May 27 and comes with a large suite of potential rewards. Beyond that, we know nothing about the activity itself — less than the rest of the Season, in fact. Accessing the two Dungeons we’ll see before Lightfall requires the Witch Queen Deluxe Edition, or both can be purchased directly for 2000 Silver.
Trials of Osiris returns on June 10 and adds a Sidearm and Fusion Rifle to the loot pool, replacing the Messenger Pulse Rifle and Shyura’s Wrath SMG. There’s also a new Exotic Trials Sparrow to chase and a set of shiny new golden armor for each class. Trials will be the only PvP activity where Power levels are enabled starting in Season 17.
