Season 17 of Destiny 2 has been officially revealed as Season of the Haunted with a new trailer ahead of a big reveal on May 24. We’ve learned a lot about the mechanics’ updates in the new season, including changes to Exotics, primary weapons, Glaives, heavy weapons, the loot pool, and more. We knew next to nothing about the story, activities, cosmetics, weapons, or subclass updates.
That’s all changed. We have plenty of new information to check between the trailer and the official Season of the Haunted page on Bungie’s website.
The Leviathan, Nightmares, and Calus
Destiny 2 players who weren’t around before the Beyond Light expansion will be unfamiliar with the Leviathan, the location of the first three Raids Destiny 2 received. The Leviathan was a planet-devouring ship, and its owner Calus was the exiled Emperor of the Cabal and our ally Empress Caiatl’s father. Calus long held that he held the key to greater power in knowledge beyond Guardian Light, which we would take for ourselves in Stasis during Beyond Light.
Now the vast ship, once a place of excess and debauchery, has returned, likely to feast on the energy of the Pyramid ship buried on the Moon introduced in the Shadowkeep expansion. Now further corrupted, Guardians will return to the Leviathan to hunt the nightmares of our past.
Activities: Nightmare Containment and Sever
The Leviathan is at the core of everything in Season of the Haunted. We’ll be navigating through the corrupted areas of the Leviathan, and there are plenty of callbacks to the vanilla D2 activities between the Calus robot remains, the other raid encounter areas, and the Underbelly space. The two activities players enjoy seem to follow a similar structure to Season of the Splicer.
Nightmare Containment appears to be a freeroam activity akin to the Escalation Protocol event from the Warmind expansion in Year 1 of Destiny 2. It’s a scaling, multiple-person activity where we’ll fight against Scorn and Cabal Loyalists who continue to serve Calus. In the trailer, Eris Morn says we are to become “eaters of fear,” so expect collecting energy, motes, or other materials and dunking them. Expect most of the seasonal weapons to come from this activity, with additional craftable arms also available. Some of Destiny 2’s most storied options are coming back as well, including the Sniper Rifle that forced Bungie to rework scope mechanics: the Beloved.
Sever is a weekly mission like Expunge from Splicer. We’ll likely learn more about where Calus has been, what the Witness saw in him, and probably plenty about the backstories of Eris, Zavala, and Crow, all of whom feature prominently in the trailer.
Subclass Update: Solar 3.0
Long-awaited and even longer-speculated players will finally be able to try out an entirely reworked Solar subclass. We see a few options available in the trailer, including a new grenade type, a melee update to all classes, and some additional changes to Supers.
- The Warlock melee has a stylish cast animation, with the user snapping their fingers to create multiple Solar energy bolts that explode on contact with enemies. The Titan melee now returns to them, and they can catch it out of the air, likely for a buff. The Hunter thrown knife now is more casual and appears to explode on a precision hit.
- The Titan Super, previously in the middle tree, now sends out three waves instead of just one.
- A new grenade can be shot out of the air, raining fire on a localized area.
- The Hunter can now stab the ground with a Solar knife in what looks like a small healing AoE.
We’ll need to wait and see how the Aspects and Fragments change the Solar options further, but we know Solar is all about healing, burn damage, and mobility, so those are probably good expectations.
Rewards: Trespasser Sidearm, classic Leviathan weapons, new options
As we reported a few weeks ago, there were signs the Trespasser Sidearm from Destiny 1 would be making a return. That’s confirmed now, and if it’s anything like its original counterpart, players will be seeing a lot of it in Crucible and mid-tier difficulty activities. Empowering the weapon with Arc damage and causing chain lightning explosions will be fun.
Weapons native to the Season of Opulence, considered one of if not the best Season Destiny 2 ever saw, are also making their return. Beyond Beloved mentioned above, the Austringer Sidearm (a revised Destiny 1 Eyasluna before Eyasluna came back in Beyond Light), and the Leviathan versions of Mida Mini-Tool and Drang are also returning.
New weapons include a spooky and edgy-looking Glaive, Pulse Rifle, Rocket Launcher, and Trace Rifle. The free Season Pass cosmetics are a callback to Destiny 1-style fashion, but the premium Universal Ornaments are all skulls, spikes, and blood-crimson accents. The Eververse armor hypes up Solar 3.0, so save as much Bright Dust as you can if you don’t want to spend real money.
