
How To Take Advantage Of Destiny 2’s New Activity Customization System
By
Alex Newhouse
on
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Destiny 2‘s newest expansion, The Edge of Fate, presents a novel approach to selecting and personalizing activities. The Portal, as it is known, serves as an interface to better highlight the most suitable activities for various play styles and numbers of participants.
The Portal allows you to choose from a range of events classified as Solo Ops (for lone players), Fireteam Ops (Strikes and other brief activities tailored for three players), Pinnacle Ops (more intricate and lengthier tasks like Exotic missions), and Crucible Ops (PvP playlists).
Alongside a new organizational framework, the Portal also alters how rewards and drops are distributed, with daily bonuses allocated on a rotational schedule, linked to specific missions. Moreover, the Portal features a customization system that grants players direct influence over the difficulty of their activities and, in turn, the rewards they can anticipate. It is reminiscent of the classic Skull modifiers from the Halo series, providing a delightful twist to enhance mission replay value.
In this guide, we will navigate how this customization system functions. The image above illustrates how activities are displayed in the Portal. The chosen Fireteam Ops mission, The Glassway, has a daily “Bonus Focus” assigned to it, offering a sidearm for finishing at a B grade. Completing it also rewards three bonus drops for the next completion, along with its base reward (the “completion reward”) provided every time.
Customizing your activity score
Once you have selected a mission to engage in but prior to initiating it, you are presented with the choice to customize the activity. Here, we have accessed the customization screen for the Inverted Spire, another Fireteam Ops activity.
You can observe that on the Normal setting, our character (power level 101) significantly surpasses the power level of the adversaries (10). This leads to the mission’s difficulty being rated Easy (top right). No modifiers have been selected yet, resulting in a projected mission grade of B, which would yield a completion reward of 105 power, two bonus drops, and a bonus focus gauntlet.
There are numerous different options available for enhancing this score, so let’s explore what is feasible.
Increasing Mission Difficulty Via Challenge Modifiers
On this screen, we’ve opted for Advanced difficulty, resulting in the enemy power being raised to 110. Without altering anything else, this has elevated our projected mission grade to A, increasing the anticipated power level of our drops to 106 (up from 104 on the Normal setting).
The predicted grade is determined by your character’s power level relative to the enemy’s, meaning it would be lower than A here if the character was at a higher level. We can further adjust the mission difficulty by activating Challenge Modifiers. These introduce adjustments to enemy behaviors or environmental attributes aimed at enhancing gameplay difficulty.
Each base difficulty level (Normal, Advanced, Expert, etc.) introduces additional slots for enabling modifiers. Higher mission difficulty levels are unlocked by achieving higher power levels.
What challenge modifiers do
Here, we showcase one of the challenge modifiers that players can access early on. When activated, Caltrops generates enemies that perish and drop pools inflicting elemental damage.
Challenge modifiers enhance enemy power levels and, as a result, the challenge multiplier. Consequently, the anticipated score for the mission has surged significantly (from 17,500 to over 28,000).
You can activate multiple challenge modifiers (one per slot, allowing four in the configuration presented here) to amplify your score even further.
Mission boons
In addition to challenge modifiers, you can also activate a collection of mission boons. These are modifiers that enhance your strength or weaken enemies, thereby increasing your capacity in the mission.
On Normal difficulty, these boons elevate your mission score; on Advanced, they do not influence the score. At higher difficulties, these boons reduce your mission score.
This particular one, referred to as Brawler, boosts the power and decreases the recharge rate of melee abilities.
Rule modifiers
You can also modify the rule configurations of specific activities. These modifiers are locked initially in the Edge of Fate and become available once you attain sufficient power and complete the “Training” path in the Portal.
The option displayed here indicates that various types of scoring may be chosen to further personalize how activities are executed.
Player stakes
An additional type of option that is restricted until reaching a high power level is Player Stakes. These options enable you to modify aspects such as how Time Bonus is assigned.
We will enhance this gallery with further information on rule modifiers and Player Stakes as we progress our characters and unlock these choices.
Raking in your drops
Upon completing an activity, you are presented with a scoreboard showcasing your performance. In this Solo Ops activity depicted here, we achieved an A grade by completing within a time limit, utilizing challenge modifier multipliers, and eliminating numerous foes. This resulted in the end-mission chest containing more powerful items than if we had secured a B.