One of Destiny 2‘s newest long-term activities, Onslaught, will see a new version, new maps, and a few updates when the game’s next content episode, Revenant, launches on October 8.
Bungie gave a look at the next major content drop coming to the game during a developer livestream, showing off gameplay of a new version of Onslaught called Onslaught: Salvation. It brings three new maps to the mode–including Widow’s Court, a multiplayer map set on Earth–as well as new batches of enemies and new defenses.
The new Onslaught is a version of the activity centered on the episode’s story, which concerns the Scorn–the undead alien enemies created by the Darkness back in the Forsaken expansion in 2018. The story carries forward the thread started at the end of Destiny 2’s latest expansion, The Final Shape, and covered in the last episode, Echoes. The defeat of the Witness created powerful artifacts called Echoes, one of which was grabbed by Maya Sundaresh in the last episode and used to empower and uplift the Vex. In Revenant, another Echo falls into the hands of the Fanatic, the Scorn’s leader from Forsaken, and he’s using it to evolve the Scorn in new ways.
In practical terms, that means Onslaught: Salvation will see you fighting Scorn enemies, alongside their tenuous allies, the Darkness-aligned Cabal Shadow Legion. The Fanatic is trying to grow his undead army throughout the story, which means he’ll need more bodies of Eliksni, the aliens otherwise known as the Fallen. In Onslaught: Salvation, you’ll not only battle through waves of enemies like in the original version of the mode, you’ll also take on new objectives that have you defeating Scorn bosses and freeing captured Eliksni–but what exactly the Fanatic is capturing them for, we don’t know yet.
Like the original mode, Onslaught: Salvation will feature a 10-wave playlist version, a 50-wave full version, and a 50-wave Expert-difficulty version. You can expect it to be a little more difficult than the original Onslaught mode, too–Salvation is Power level-enabled, meaning the stats on your weapons and armor count toward how powerful and effective you are. That means the mode will be tougher at the start of the season as players work to level up into the new Power cap, which is 10 levels higher than the current ones.
Revenant features a new version of Onslaught called Onslaught: Salvation, with three new maps.
The mode will feature additional and updated defenses to help you deal with the difficulty, though. These include a manual turret players can use that hasn’t been seen in the game since the moon in Destiny 1, an air strike you can call in on enemies that’s activated when they walk over and trigger it, and updated trip mines that will now create Stasis fields, and when upgraded, Stasis crystals.
This could be a fairly emotional season, since the Scorn are the somewhat-inadvertent creation of Uldren Sov, who is now the Guardian Crow. As Destiny logic goes, when someone is resurrected as a Guardian, they lose the memories of their former life, but because of previous plot machinations, Crow has all of Uldren’s memories, and he feels a deep responsibility to the Scorn and the awful stuff they’re doing. It sounds like Crow will be a major presence in this episode because of all that story baggage.
Also showing up quite a bit in Revenant are our major Eliksni characters, Mithrax and his daughter Eido. You can probably expect Eido to be this episode’s main vendor, much like Failsafe was in Echoes. The main new mechanical element of Revenant is crafting “tonics” with Eido that have specific effects.
The tonics break down into two categories: combat and rewards. On the combat side, the tonics you make will boost the bonuses you get from this episode’s Artifact mods. The more rare the components you use to make a tonic, the more mods you might be able to boost at once, making it worth chasing better materials and paying attention to what you’re making.
The Tonic system lets you boost your combat abilities or focus your rewards.
The rewards tonics, meanwhile, will work similarly to weapon attunement in Into the Light. Using a reward tonic for a specific weapon will increase its drops, and at higher rarities, you might be able to get enhanced perks on those weapons. As in Into the Light, these attunements won’t guarantee you’ll get the weapon to drop every time, but they’ll increase the likelihood of favorable random drops as you play. Notably, though, the weapons in this episode are not craftable, so you’ll need tonics to help you chase specific rolls.
As for the rewards in Revenant, expect a lot of weapons focusing on Stasis and synergy with Stasis builds. The livestream showed off the episode’s Season Pass Exotic weapon, a Stasis breech-loading grenade launcher, which is only the second primary ammo grenade launcher in the game, after Fighting Lion. Its a powerful launcher in its own right from seeing it in use on the stream, but its support features might be even more interesting. Racking up kills with the launcher generates floating “remnant” items you can pick up, much like with the Exotic hand cannon Thorn, which charges up the weapon’s Exotic perk. At 50% charge, you can use the weapon’s alternate reload feature to generate a brick of special ammo for your teammates; at 100% charge, the gun generates heavy ammo.
Expect Stasis and grenade launchers to be a big focus for the episode. Bungie showed off a little bit of what can be found on Revenant Act 1’s Artifact, and several of the bonuses will boost your Stasis builds and grenade launchers. One notable bonus is a revamped version of the fan-favorite perk Breach and Clear, now called Concussive Reload, which causes your grenade launchers to inflict the weaken debuff on enemies.
Bungie also discussed Ice Breaker, a powerful Destiny 1 Exotic sniper rifle that’s finally making its way to Destiny 2. In its original version, Ice Breaker would regenerate ammo over time but couldn’t be reloaded, which was a bit messy for Destiny’s ammo economy. The reprised version of the weapon looks to maintain the highlight of having a weapon with unlimited up-time, but without breaking the game. According to Bungie, the new Ice Breaker gains ammo when you get kills and assists with other weapons, so expect it to be a weapon you can use against a boss for serious damage for an extended period of time, which you then generate ammo for by helping your opponents slay enemies in between damage phases.
The Xurfboard
Bungie previously mentioned that Revenant will see the addition of a revised Crucible map to the PvP rotation, and on the stream, developers noted a Strike is returning to the game as well: the Inverted Spire on Nessus. The Strike has seen its encounters adjusted and revamped, and apparently, the addition of a lot more lasers to kill players.
Finally, we got a quick look at one additional element: a new skimmer board players can earn in-game. Skimmers are hoverboards that replace your Sparrow as your personal ground vehicle, but they’re few and far between; the last time you could earn one in-game was during the Guardian Games back in March. The new skimmer, dubbed The Xurfboard, will be purchasable from Xur for 97 Strange Coins when the episode launches, so you might want to start saving.
You can watch Bungie’s full developer livestream, and see Onslaught: Salvation and other aspects of Revenant in action, right here. Meanwhile, Revenant launches on October 8, so if there’s anything you still need to earn from Episode: Echoes, you only have a week to do so.
