Destiny 2: Festival of the Lost Week 3, Sandbox changes, and RIP Master Ives, we hardly knew ye

Poor old Master Ives. He was the dour, dull yin to Master Rahool’s dour, dull yang, Cryptarch of the Reef and one-time System-Wide Elvis Impersonator Champion. Okay, I made that last bit up but it’s hard enough to make anyone care about Ives as it is. We haven’t seen the baldy mood-killer since Destiny 1, and now he’s dead.

Luckily for us mercenary bastards, though, his death forms the catalyst for a quest that brings back one of the best guns in Destiny history: the Thunderlord Heavy Machine Gun. Having HMGs return is pretty exciting, as the closest we’ve got currently is the Exotic Auto-Rifle, Sweet Business. You can pick up the quest from Amanda Holliday, and the first step is to collect ten missing pages from Ives’ diary. They are hidden inside Legendary and Exotic engrams, or can drop from high-level Fallen enemies in the EDZ. The easiest way to grab them is to simply throw 250 Legendary Shards at Rahool and decrypt 10 of his engrams, but what’s the fun in that?

Anyway, I’m sure it will be worth doing, as the Thunderlord was a beast in days of old, spitting out lightning and thunder and decimating whole fields of enemies. Be aware that this is only the first step, and step two won’t unlock until next week’s reset (with the final part unlocking the week after). I will say, though, that if we’ve got Thunderlord back I also want Zombie Apocalypse FTW to return. I loved that monstrosity.

Master Ives’ passing also marks the final week of the Festival of the Lost, so this is your last chance to earn enough Fragmented Souls to claim the 600-Power AR “Horror Story” from Holliday, and your last chance to grind the Haunted Forest. The event has been a lot of fun this year, and I hope Bungie put similar effort into 2018’s Dawning (which is Christmas in Destiny Land). Of course, we’ve got the Black Armory expansion between now and then, and this might be the first time a new expansion launches before I’m bored of the last one, so kudos to Bungie for that.

They’re also still tweaking the sandbox. This week’s 2.0.5 patch brought a handful of seemingly small yet actually massive changes. First of all, you can now hand in Gunsmith Materials to Banshee-44 in stacks of 25, not 10. This is huge, people, and means I won’t have to avoid visiting the addled old tin-can as much. Elsewhere Masterwork Cores are now “Enhancement Cores” and drop much more often when dismantling Legendary gear. You can also earn them in Spider’s Tier-2 Wanted Bounties and Scrapper Bounties, so yay.

While we’re still waiting for the return of Faction Rallies, there’s good news for Gambit fans as Infamy is currently paying out double and will do until 2nd November. If you’re close to hitting prestige and you’re feeling the pressure of the steadily encroaching Season 5, now’s the time to grab your gun and go look ’em in the eye.

This week’s Nightfall is Hollowed Lair, so jump in with your Clan to make the most of the improved rewards system which will increase your chance of Nightfall-exclusive loot for every run until you get some. Alternatively, the Ascendant Challenge this week is the Shattered Ruins, which is essentially a jumping puzzle through sniper alley. It’s one of the more frustrating ones, but straightforward enough in theory.

And that about does it. There have been some buffs applied to the Malfeasance Exotic handcannon to make it more worthy of the grind to earn it, while Swords will now do more damage in PvE and pick up 12 rounds per brick as opposed to six. Bad news for Sleeper Simulant users though, as the Fusion Rifle so often seen pwning noobs in Gambit now only picks up 2 rounds at a time instead of 4. It still wrecks me more often than not, though. Wait, does that make me a pwned noob!?

Anyway, that’s all for now. Until next week – eyes up, Guardians.