Wow what a reveal! Today Bungie Community Manager Deej along with Creative Director Christopher Barrett and community guest Gothalion unveiled the first walk through of Destiny’s next expansion pack, The House of Wolves, on Twitch. The live stream revealed more details on the new social space, vendors, and how to upgrade weapons.
No longer are Guardians limited to just the Tower since the Queen opened up a new section for players to socialize in called The Vestian Outpost. The new space has a notably different look from the clean “pristine” Tower players are used to compared to the Outpost which has a much darker presence. Along with the social space comes new vendors and factions for players to choose from. Petra Venj one of the major story characters in the Reef, gives you rewards for hunting down members of The House of Wolves. The Prison of Elders vendor, Variks, is a member of the Fallen loyal to the Queen and the last of The House of Judgment. Brother Vance was the last vendor to be introduced and will be essential for the new gaming mode, Trials of Osiris. There will be at least one familiar face to The Queen’s Bay, The Bounty Tracker Bot, who will be have crucible and vanguard bounties available. Just like The Dark Below, The House of Wolves will bring a variety of new gear, ships and shaders. Personally I want one of the Reef ships that is available with Petra Venj.
Now the most crucial question, for myself and presumably most Destiny fans, was finally answered regarding weapon and armor upgrade. Instead of having to level up all new gear, we now have a way to instantly upgrade our current maxed out gear with new materials called Etheric Light and Etheric Shards. These can be obtained by doing the Weekly Nightfalls, Raids, Iron Banner, the Prison of Elders, and Trials of Osiris. So any maxed out Legendary (purple engram) or Exotic (yellow engram) gear and weapons can now reach a max level of 34 or 365 attack. Also you will be able to reforge new weapons at the Gunsmith, which was previously only available during Iron Banner.
Heading back over to The Tower, The Speaker will now be holding all exchange materials including motes of light, ascendant shards, ascendant energy, radiant shards, radiant energy, and up to 250 glimmer. So don’t ditch the Tower completely because now you have one more place to get all your materials. There was a brief mention of the possibility of Xur making his way to the Reef with Deej’s response of “he can go anywhere he wants and you can choose to purchase whatever he sells.” Which leads me to believe he will be available at the Reef or perhaps he will be available at the two locations on separate days, but this is just speculation.
Expect a more detailed account of today’s walk through tomorrow on the weekly update. Bungie will reveal more about The House of Wolves every Wednesday until May 19th, so stay tuned for more updates.