[GameSpot] - Bungie Previews Destiny 2 Update 3.3.1, Which Tweaks Grandmaster Nightfalls And Cross-Play UI

[343iBot]

Destiny 2's next seasonal event, Festival of the Lost, is coming next week, and a new patch is launching alongside it. In its weekly update, Bungie gave a preview of Update 3.3.1, which includes some tweaks and improvements to Grandmaster Nightfalls, The Corrupted Strike, and the cross-play user experience.

First up, Platinum Grandmaster Nightfalls are getting guaranteed Adept Nightfall weapon drops. This means that, if you and your fireteam can make it through these extremely challenging Strikes, you are certain to earn one of the special weapon variants that come with a special look and stats. Bungie notes that this does not guarantee the best stat combo, though, so true min/max players may still have to run the Strikes multiple times to get their preferred rolls.

The Corrupted Strike is also receiving some improvements to tone down certain overly punishing encounters. The Sedia's Durance modifier has, in the past, caused a lot of frustration, as it boosts incoming damage and knockback from Arc sources. Following this update, it'll get reduced from +40% knockback to +20%. In addition, the patch fixes an issue where an Unstoppable Champion could spawn in a location that was easily missable, potentially ruining Platinum Grandmaster runs. Bungie will remove this champion altogether.

Finally, Bungie continues to improve the cross-play experience, adding in an array of bug fixes as well as some UI tweaks to make the process of navigating cross-platform interactions smoother. You can see the list of changes that Bungie has previewed below; the full patch notes will be published on Tuesday.

In other Destiny 2 news, Bungie announced that it is moving some Destiny 2: Forsaken content to the Content Vault when the next expansion, The Witch Queen, launches next year. Ahead of its deprecation, though, all players will be able to grab the Forsaken DLC for free starting on December 7, giving you a few months to finish it up before it's put into the Vault.

Update 3.3.1 Preview

Grandmaster Nightfalls

• Increased drop chance for an Adept Nightfall weapon from a Platinum Grandmaster Nightfall to 100%.
  • While this will not guarantee perfect perk combinations on every drop, players may now expect to receive an Adept reward when overcoming the challenge of Grandmasters, even on the hardest of weeks.

The Corrupted

• Reduced the knockback buff from the "Sedia's Durance" activity modifier on Nightfall difficulty from +40% knockback to +20% knockback, which may help a few of you complete Grandmaster difficulty.
• Removed an Unstoppable Phalanx Champion from the Ransack Ogre encounter.
  • During the Ransack Ogre encounter, an Unstoppable Phalanx Champion would spawn in the Ascendant Plane when the Ogre boss reached 50% health.
  • That Champion was easy to miss, and you couldn't backtrack there to defeat it once you killed the Ogre.
  • After this Champion ruined hundreds of Platinum completion attempts, we’ve snapped it out of existence.
  • It’s gone.
  • Dust.
  • Destroyed.
  • It will never see the light of day again.
  • That’s what it deserves.
• Fixed an issue that blocked completion of The Corrupted Nightfall scoring Triumph.

Cross Play UI

• Updated the sign-on experience to show a single toast after character select if you have one or more pending Bungie Friend requests instead of a unique toast for every pending request.
  • The experience when receiving a new Bungie Friend request while playing the game has not changed.
  • Known Issue: This notification toast may appear blank for some players, but no invites are affected. This issue is already being investigated.
• Player search UI now has audio feedback.
• Fixed a bug where the text chat auto-hide setting could revert to the Season 15 default value of "off" under various conditions.
• Fixed a bug where booting a fireteam member sometimes left a blank entry in the roster or fireteam UI.
• Fixed a bug where online roster contacts were not sorting alphabetically for friends and clanmates.
• Fixed a bug where blocking a player through a fireteam invite did not hide interaction options that are expected to fail when interacting with a blocked player.

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