Destiny 2's Armor System is Getting a Bit More Forgiving

From the outside, the most consequential changes that last year's release of Destiny 2: Shadowkeep brought to players were big: the Moon made a return, the base game went free-to-play, and Bungie embarked on a new approach to seasonal content. To many hardcore players, though, the biggest shake-up came with Destiny 2's armor system, and today Bungie has announced that it's making Armor 2.0 a little less restrictive than before.

No, the issue with Armor 2.0 wasn't that Guardians had too little room to breathe under their cloaks and breastplates—it's that for all the system's new customizability, the way it intersects with Destiny's element system makes it a bit of a pain to build the ideal set of armor.

With Armor 2.0, armor still drops with base stat rolls, but randomized perks were replaced with swappable armor mods. On the surface, that's a more flexible system, but as Bungie notes in today's weekly update, Armor 2.0 introduced a new thorn in players' sides: getting an armor drop with a great stat roll, but the wrong elemental affinity.

Since Armor 2.0's mod system is governed by the element of the armor in question—i.e., you can only apply a sword-buffing mod on Arc-type armor—you could get a drop that was great in every respect save for the element, which couldn't be changed. Soon, Bungie says, an update will add the option of changing an armor piece's element for one Upgrade Module.

Shadowkeep also introduced the concept of seasonal armor mods alongside Armor 2.0, and Bungie plans to eliminate some of the restrictions on those. Right now, you can't equip a mod from the Season of Dawn on armor with a socket tied to last fall's Season of the Undying. In the future, armor with a season-specific mod socket will be able to equip a mod from any season past or present.

These changes should come as welcome news to Destiny 2 players who treat their Guardian loadouts like high performance tuner cars, and they arrive at a good time—earlier this week, Bungie apologized for its second-ever character rollback in Destiny 2 history, just weeks after the first. For players who've been dutifully farming Fractaline and trying to scrape together the Valentine's hearts for a cute pair of Sparrows, hearing that Armor 2.0's loosening up a bit should lift the spirits of folks on the grind.