Exotic focusing was a system introduced to Destiny 2 with the release of season 21 to offer players a new avenue for chasing down better rolls of specific Exotic armor pieces. It’s a huge quality-of-life upgrade in theory, but in practice, Bungie admitted the system’s steep prices were turning away a lot of players from interacting with it to any major degree. That’s why a huge change is on the way.
In a This Week in Destiny blog post released today, Bungie’s Economy team announced they will make Exotic focusing a lot cheaper in an update going live on Oct. 17. These cutbacks in cost include a complete elimination of the need to spend Exotic Ciphers for tier two focusing, as well as a reduction in the amount of Ascendant materials players will have to use across the board.
“To make a long story short, we saw that, except for folks who play Destiny 2 a whole heck of a lot, most weeks you all weren’t earning more than a few Ascendant Shards a week, with players who only have a few hours to play maybe earning one,” the economy team admitted in the post. As of right now, tier two Exotic focusing requires three Ascendant Shards per armor piece, which by Bungie’s own calculations, prices out the majority of players from interacting with the system at all on a weekly basis.
To remedy this, Bungie is instituting a three-pronged approach to updating the prices. First is the aforementioned removal of Exotic Ciphers as part of the cost for tier two focusing. As the team put it, the “slow rate” with which players can earn Exotic Ciphers actively works against the system’s goal of being an easily accessible reward for players who “put in the work.”
Next on the chopping block is the Ascendant Shards. Tier two focusing will now only put players back two Ascendant Shards, and the tier one focusing option is removing its Ascendant Shard cost entirely based on player feedback. “In all that data about materials, we also realized that players don’t have enough places to spend Enhancement Prisms in a meaningful way, so we changed the cost from one Shard to ten Prisms,” they explained. “On the surface, the price hasn’t changed much—50,000 Glimmer—but now, for less than it costs to get a Shard, you can get a semi-targeted Exotic roll.”
This will be the price of Exotic focusing from now on once the update goes live:
- Tier one focus
- Old price: 30,000 Glimmer and one Ascendant Shard
- New price: 30,000 Glimmer and 10 Enhancement Prisms
- Tier two focus
- Old price: 60,000 Glimmer, three Ascendant Shards and one Exotic Cipher
- New price: 60,000 Glimmer and two Ascendant Shards
Both of these changes drastically improve the system, making it far more accessible for the majority of Destiny 2 players. While the tier two focusing—which allows players to decrypt Exotic Engrams into the exact armor piece they want—will still put you back significantly, the price is a much more realistic one if the end goal is to have Guardians using this decryption process on a regular basis.
This update will be implemented into Destiny 2 on Oct. 17, most likely slated for a release alongside the mid-season update expected to drop later this month.
