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Bungie had its first livestream for Destiny: The Taken King yesterday, and we’ve detailed everything that was revealed for the huge expansion.
Let’s start off with what was already known: gone is your character’s light level in lieu of XP. Your light level will now be your character level, with the cap increased to 40. Intellect, Discipline and Strength remain, and are now more visible in the character menu, with cooldown times visible.
The new experience point-based system will take into account all the items in your inventory and vault to determine your level, so don’t be dismantling everything you find. Speaking of, players will now have double the space in their vault to store their loot.
Bounties can now be claimed anywhere, rather than having to go back to the Tower to get your reward. You can now also carry more (up to 16) and you can track which ones you’re currently hunting. New bounties will be introduced which will take less time to complete. You can also hold up to 32 quests, giving yourself plenty to do week-to-week and plenty of experience to earn in the new system.
In the Tower, you will also be able to choose a gun you want to display on your character and show off to other Guardians (most likely Gjallarhorn).
Everyone who picks up The Taken King will receive one ‘Spark Of Light’, which will allow you to immediately level a character up to 25, the level required to access The Taken King’s content.
You can now buy new Ghosts via The Speaker. Each Ghost has its own stats and perks, for example guiding you towards resources in the environment (hopefully they have different voices, too).
There’s a new weapon type, swords, which will be placed in the heavy weapon slot in your inventory.
From now on you must pledge allegiance to one specific Faction, and can only switch alliances once per week. Any Vanguard or Crucible rep earned will also go towards this Faction. You can now exchange materials for reputation in Factions, too. Plus, packages from Factions are guaranteed to include Legendary gear.
Any exotic weapons earned in year one, players will have the same “upgraded” year two weapon awaiting them in the ‘Exotic Collection’ machine. However, the upgrade costs Legendary marks.
Crucible rep and rank carry over into year two.
New Exotic Blueprints allow players to replace weapons and armour they may have lost. Every time you find an exotic, the game adds its blueprint to your collection. If you somehow lose this item, you can get another from the vault. These blueprints are tied to your account. We assumed Bungie has a way of stopping players from endlessly dismantling and replacing Exotics for resources.
New Field Test Weapons allow you to hire them from the Cryptarch for free. You can use these weapons to complete bounties and earn rep with the Gunsmith.
You can watch an archive of the livestream below:
