Destiny 2 has started Season Of The Worthy

A new season has started in Destiny 2 today, bringing a new existential threat to the human race and new weapons to beat it back. This time, baddies riled that we broke their star-destroying superweapon are retaliating by straight-up crashing the miles-long spaceship into Earth. Rude. So here we are in Season Of The Worthy, powering up the defences of an ancient AI named Rasputin and nabbing new guns of our own. Ye olde supersweaty PvP mode Trials Of Osiris is returning too. As is the way, some parts of the season are free to all players but some require buying a pass.

So, with miles of gun on a collision course, we're sent to help Rasputin bring his old defences online and build new ones. One part of this is Seraph Tower public events in certain zones, where we defend towers from baddies until they spit out energy orbs, use those orbs to power up an even bigger orb, and so on. It's a bit like Escalation Protocol from the Warmind expansion but more involved, with a real need to keep enemies out of Tower zones at key times. On launch day, this is a minor nightmare with uncoordinated randos. We can also feed Rasputin new seasonal resources to power him up and unlock bonuses in certain areas and modes, like calling in powerful robots to help with the new Legendary Lost Sectors.

Basically, once again, we're feeding resources into something to power it up to unlock more weapon rewards and bonuses and things. I've not had a chance to play much yet but I do at least like that Seraph Towers are public events. I'm a sucker for dramatic things happening in open-world zones.

A new battle pass is in too, with new perks and gear unlocked as we level it. As before, all players get some stuff on a basic track and passholders get way more.

Trials Of Osiris, a mode from the first Destiny, will debut in Destiny 2 this weekend. The 3v3 mode will challenge players to hit big winstreaks, with the goal of winning seven in a row to get the best rewards. It's going to be so dreadfully sweaty. Bungie had initially planned for Power level differences to be enabled then changed their minds - but not soon enough. Power difference will be enabled for this first weekend, then Bungie will disable it for future Trials and Iron Banner times.

And scattered across this is loads of new guns and armour and that, obvs.

See Bungie's Season Of The Worthy page for more on everything in the season, including what's free and what's not. It's 1000 Silver (£8.49) for the pass, and folks who bought Shadowkeep's Deluxe Edition already have this. Here's the season calendar:

A fairly hefty update hit to start the season. It fiddles with balance a lot, in ways that serious players will likely want to scrutinise, but here are some tidy little bits that caught my eye:

• Legendary armour is now more likely to have a good stat roll. Gear from Prime Engrams is more even likely to roll high, and with spikier stat distribution. I've already had some rolls better than any I got all last season.
• The old Faction armour sets and some rare world armours are now in the general Legendary engram pool. Very important for fashionistas.
• And the seasonal armour mod slot can now hold mods from their current, previous, and next season, so you won't have to bin this and start over all next season.
• You can change armour's elemental affinity too, though it's expensive.
• Stat trackers have been removed from all emblems, and I'm so happy to roll out pretty emblems which tracked pointless stats. But you can choose from some generic-y trackers if you want 'em. Sucks if you were proud of a niche stat on an emblem.
• Swords all now have cleaving attacks that hit multiple enemies. They've been reworked in general.
• Loading into the Tower doesn't take ages anymore. A bug last season meant it was waiting for EVERYONE in the queue to load.
• Loading while alt-tabbed shouldn't be slower either.
• A few much-needed performance optimisations.

There is so, so much more than this but I want to see the consequences of all the rebalancing before I go on too much. See the update 2.8.0 patch notes for more.