In Bungie’s weekly blog post, the studio previewed two new features for Destiny 2 13th season, coming early next month. Players will be able to earn more Umbral Engrams — a well-liked feature from Season of Arrivals — and they’ll get a new feature called “gilding,” which will allow dedicated players to re-earn in-game titles to make them even more special.
Destiny 2’s Season of Arrivals introduced the Umbral Engram, a special item that dropped off of enemies and certain activities. Players could just open their new Engrams to get items from Season of Arrivals, but the loot pool was pretty big — making it unlikely that they’d get exactly what they wanted. So instead of opening it right away, players could take these Umbral Engrams to a station in the Tower called the Prismatic Recaster. There, they could spend some currency to focus their Umbral Engrams, limiting the number of items it could become.
Instead of being a piece of armor or weapons, players could focus their Umbral Engram to just be weapons. Or, after upgrading the system, they could focus their default Umbral Engram into one that could only drop a sword or bow. It essentially became a way for dedicated players to remove some randomness in their pursuit for the perfect weapon.
This system will return in Season 13 — the theme of which Bungie hasn’t divulged yet. Players can get Umbral Engrams from:
- Patrols
- Strikes
- Crucible
- Gambit
- Nightfall: The Ordeal
- Public Events
- Blind Well
- Nightmare Hunts
- Exo Challenges
- Empire Hunts
- The new seasonal activity
- Enemy kills
While there are a lot of ways to get Umbral Engrams, Bungie promises they won’t be as plentiful as Season of Arrivals. Starting in season 13, players can take these Umbral Engrams to a new Prismatic Caster — which requires a one-time quest to teach players how to use it — to decode them into new weapons from that season. The stated goal here is to give players a shot at picking up new weapons no matter what game type they’re playing.
But Umbral Engrams and the new Prismatic Caster won’t just exist as part of season 13. Bungie plans on updating the system throughout Year 4, even adding new pages for each season, so players can grab new rewards whenever they want. There will also be a new currency called the Prismatic Lense, which will allow players to further focus their Umbral Engrams.
:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/22251083/Gilded_EN.png "Destiny 2 getting ‘title gilding,’ Umbral Engrams next season (1)")
Aside from Umbral Engrams, players will finally get a chance to “gild” their Title Seals. In Destiny 2: Forsaken, Bungie added Seals and Titles to the game. After players complete a set of objectives, they unlock a Seal, which offers players a Title that displays under their username in-game. These Titles are currently a one-time reward — once you have it, you have it. But starting next season, players can improve certain Seals to really show off.
For the four Seals that tie into Destiny 2’s main activity offerings — Unbroken, Dredgen, Conqueror, and Flawless — players can complete new Triumphs each season, gilding that Seal. Gilding a Seal adds a new border around it in the UI, tracks how many times you’ve gilded the Seal in a previous seasons, and changes the Title color in-game.
In the blog, Bungie used Flawless as an example — the Trials of Osiris Title. In the future, players who finish Flawless can complete new or repeat Triumphs to gild Flawless, offering all the rewards we mentioned above. Some of these Triumphs are identical to the base Seal, while others ask you to get a certain number of rewards from Saint-14 before the end of the season. Players will have until the end of each season to gild their favorite Title. At season’s end, the gilding progress resets and the new Title color will fade back to purple.
Both the new Umbral Engram system and Title Seal gilding will appear in season 13, which should go live Feb. 9, according to the in-game clock.
