When guardians set foot in Destiny 2‘s Neomuna, they can expect a bigger challenge from the Lightfall destination than from other patrol areas. Bungie has taken some learnings from The Witch Queen to make Neomuna feel like the stage of actual battles, game director Joe Blackburn shared ahead of Lightfall.
The stage of the Lightfall campaign is the next destination to join Destiny 2, following Savathûn’s Throne World in February 2022 and the Derelict Leviathan in the following May. These two locations could hardly be more different as patrol spaces: the Throne World may require you to walk good distances before finding mobs while exploring the Derelict Leviathan outside of Containment meant near-constant firefights and engagements. For Neomuna, fans can expect more of the hectic action from the Derelict Leviathan—with the destination itself serving as an example.
The team wanted to make sure Neomuna felt “like a destination under siege” and the enemies roaming the patrol area “were a real threat,” according to Blackburn. To create that feel of actual danger, spawns in Neomuna will fill back quickly, and the team gave a “big buff to the strength of the combatants” in the destination. This makes for more enemies with more health and lethality—and that’s even before one of Calus’ tanks shows up. “In our playing around Neomuna, I think we find a lot more often that you can’t put your controller down,” Blackburn said.
Stronger enemies and harder activities aren’t just tied to Neomuna, however. Bungie aims to “bring challenge back to Destiny” by raising the difficulty floor of Destiny 2. Between the 3.0 subclasses and new weapons and abilities (before even taking into account the upcoming Strand subclasses), “we feel like the baseline challenge in most of our content is just too low,” Blackburn wrote in a blog post. Players will see global changes to abilities and cooldowns, and the overhauled buildcrafting system will also shake up the meta builds and mods.
Players can dive into Neomuna when Lightfall launches on Feb. 28.
