The first stream has just concluded and Bungie announced several things, most notable of which is a Raid Lair. A Raid Lair is a new type of Raid which is smaller and that takes place in the same Raid location, Leviathan in this case, but has several new rooms to explore, all new encounters, boss fights and loot.

You can play both regular Leviathan and the new Raid Lair in the upcoming expansion as they are both brought up in level to the new max. The second DLC will add another Raid Lair. The first one launches a few days after the DLC is released. The claim was made that it is completely different from the Raid we've played before.

They also showed the new location, Mercury. Apparently it has the largest Public Event to date. Also, the Infinite Forrest is there which sounds like repeatable content (confirmed to be hand-crafted and not procedurally generated as rumors suggested, thank the Traveler) that allows you to 'forge' new weapons (it doesn't sound like infinite forging, more like a certain set of weapons you can create). On top of this, Heroic Strikes are returning as well, finally.

I appeared to be one of the few on these boards that was still happy with D2. I am curious to hear if any of the drop outs are optimistic after this reveal.

This all sounds exciting to me!

I'm playing the hell out of it and I'm having a blast. I'm really looking forward to the new location, especially.

Was this actually confirmed to be the raid or simply a new feature? How I read it they were simply takingexisting raids and adding this "raid lair" feature as part of them, basically old content with new twists. I fully expected a real, full raid to be announced but maybe I misread the announcement.

I really want something of substance in the game to keep me coming back. After, quickly, getting the platinum in D2 and literally doing everything I didn't see any reason to keep playing.

@sammo21: They're completely new areas with a new boss at the end. The stream even shows the entrance to the start of the new area (which is completely separate from the Underbelly).

They revealed a lot about the expansion. I'm especially interested in seeing how the All Mighty is on the director screen. Hopefully it's a location for a future raid or at least some strikes?

From what I've heard from Destiny vets, it'll probably be next year when we get a full new raid.

@sammo21: I'm not sure how to explain it better. The Raid select screen basically now shows the main Raid (Calus) and then there are two Raid Lairs, smaller icons. You can launch any of the three (although the second Lair is released with the second DLC) and then you do that particular Raid. They are all unique activities, but they all take place on Leviathan. Leviathan has more area's than we've seen, so this first Lair takes us there.

You don't do Gauntlet, Baths, Pleasure Gardens or Calus in the new Lair. Every single encounter is new, with new mechanics and new bossfights. The loot pool is new and separate from the main Calus Raid. Lairs are shorter than full Raids, but they are claimed to pose just as much challenge and sophistication in their encounter design as their larger counterparts.

Both the main Raid and the Lair will be at max level so you can run both every week for loot, though the loot pool in the main Raid remains the same. As for a brand new full Raid, I don't think that was ever going to happen for DLC of this scale. I think this news is as good as we could have gotten it.

I for one was both extremely surprised and excited after rewatching the Raid Lair section a second time (some jerk customer kept calling so I didn't quite understand everything at first). I honestly didn't know what they were going to do, and I'm actually kind of thrilled with this. It sounds like it's basically the same amount of Encounters roughly with a similar scope Boss at the end. My assumption is they are removing all of the fluff like the need to use the Underbelly to skip Castelium or just redo Castelium every single time. That adds a lot of unnecessary time to a Raid. It's also nice for Bungie since they only need to really create the Encounter Rooms rather than the entire space all over again. What is kind of blowing my mind is that come next September, we will have 7-9 Encounters, 3 Boss Fights, a Prestige Mode for each, and likely 10-12 difference Challenge Modes. That's insane if you just compare it to either what they did in Y2 or Y3 with just King's Fall and Wrath of the Machine, and I love Wrath. But the scope of Leviathan when all is said and done will be amazing. I kind of love that.

http://www.pcgamer.com/destiny-2s-first-dlc-is-great-fan-service-but-cant-be-expected-to-fix-the-endgame-single-handed/

I also found this a great read today. Aside from the fact that they talked about bringing back Heroic Strikes, apparently as a part of the new 8 Campaign Missions, 2 of those will be the Curse of Osiris Strikes actually, so that they align better with the overall Story of Osiris and all players get to play them. I really love this idea. Sounds like it may just be how Strikes work from now on, longer more complicated Story Missions but still with the Scope of Current Strikes, and then thrown into the Strike Playlist with the others. The normal Destiny 2 Strikes kind of feel disjointed currently, so I really like this approach.

Dude this post was so nice to read. You made me more excited and i was already liking destiny 2. *fistbumb

Haven't watched the stream been working but the raid stuff seems neat completely unexpected to have all new encounters for an existing raid is a terrific idea wonder if it'll be the new format going forward, its a shame the strikes/missions weren't created the same way.

How many vanilla Destiny characters are left without a backstory, Osiris is the last right?

@hestilllives19 Don't get your hopes up that high, they seemed to really emphasize that this is definitely a shorter Raid than the main one. Underbelly literally takes around 5-10 minutes in a full Raid. They wouldn't hammer that point home if it wasn't significant. I tentatively expect only 2 or 3 new rooms, perhaps with multiple encounters in each room ala vanilla Destiny Raids and duration very similar to Crota's End.

Calus takes around 60 minutes if done right. I bet we can best the first Lair in 20-30 minutes after mastering it.

... all of them? They really haven't touched or concluded any stories besides Eris' and Saladin's. Them being dead or not doesn't matter as their quests have left tremendous questions behind to explore. If they are doing 'just' the main characters from the lore then after Osiris they still need to do:

• Saint-14
• Dredgen Yor
• Shin Malphur
• Kabr (sort of)
• Ouros
• The Speaker
• Toland
• Thalor
• Vance (touching upon this in next DLC)

That is not mentioning the lesser known ones that I don't know without looking them up, but they are also interesting.

@zevvion: lol I don't recognize half the names on the list I've just been shooting aliens, well ment any left that would be in future DLC? Thinking of Eris that was a pretty big cliff-hanger do you think it'll be concluded/tied up at some point?

@thepanzini: Almost all of Eris' lore was about facing Crota. Since we killed him, they don't have anything left to tell unless they want to add to it.

But yeah, Destiny does an amazing job at having more obscure lore than Dark Souls. Which isn't a good thing.

Wow. As someone who hasn't played Destiny 2, this sounds like the laziest, hacked together bullshit they could come up with on the fly. After watching the gb crew finish the raid (which im sure isn't the best metric), I don't see how anyone would want to revisit this raid, let alone play what is esentially the same thing but remixed. It's fucking Activision though so I'm not surprised this was their "solution" to the lack of endgame content. But if people are enjoying it than whatever. To each their own I guess.

@zevvion: I'm going to assume Saint-14 is touched on more with Osiris DLC (this may include speaker stuff). The 2nd DLC is almost decidedly about the company and person described in the special room found in the top of the hanger area in the tower and Warminds (specifically Rasputin).

But mainly you should expect these DLCs to begin the march towards invasion by the Darkness (pyramid ships in final cutscene).

@zevvion: About the Eris stuff, yes and kinda no. When they brought her back in the Taken King, her ending there, seemingly talking to Mara Sov after she "died" and picking up something of substance from Oryx that has never been explained... That particularly seemed rather open ended, and I think they will once again return to a story about her and Mara Sov not having died but being hidden away after an injury somehow, the next time we have a Hive focused DLC or Content Launch.

As far as the Raid Lair is concerned, here is what I'm expecting, 2 (possibly, hopefully 3) Encounters, similar in scope to Royal Pools/Pleasure Gardens/Gauntlet. Then a culminating Boss fight similar to Calus that has a DPS focus. But I expect a quick jaunt to each encounter. They claimed their goal for Leviathan was a 3 hour experience, and I think they are thinking about a 1 hour to 90 min experience for these. I think cutting out everything but the actual Encounters does that for them, at least in their mind, though them may also cut out an Encounter or simply put 2 Encounters in the same "Arena" similar to Templar/Atheon/Oryx/Aksis rooms which housed multiple Encounters within them. So maybe we only get two new Rooms, each with two Encounters and the 2nd of those being the Boss Fight. I'd be totally fine with that. I mean, that's exactly how Vault of Glass was setup. We really only had Templar Well and Glass Room, and then puzzles and cheap encounters between (which is the fluff I don't think will exist here). But I still love this concept of an Expanded Raid.

As a side note, as far as I'm concerned right now, Curse of Osiris itself is very much worth the asking price (even though I already paid for the expansion pass at launch) so I'm very happy with 8 Campaign Missions (2 of which are the Strikes), 12 Post Campaign Quests (to obtain and forge the Osiris Weapons), a Raid Lair, and a new Public Space of Mercury with it's own connected Social Space (of which I thought The Lighthouse looked pretty cool and varied enough to warrant it's inclusion). If it is truly the largest Public Space to date (so larger than EDZ) I'll be surprised though. It didn't look that big honestly, and I'm actually fine with that. I think they have to be including all the incantations of The Infinite Forrest in that of Past/Present/Future otherwise that claim doesn't make much sense. I am a bit worried that they need to use older spaces from D2, especially with this new Public Space though for the DLC for the Campaign Content, seems like there is plenty of places to make use of for just 8 Missions, though New Pacific Arcology and The Pyramidion are easily the best two locations in all of Destiny 2, so I guess returning to The Pyramidion isn't the worst thing. I think my biggest concern right now is what the Live Team is going to put into their Season 2 Update. I feel like those QoL improvements are honestly a much bigger deal for the overall health of Destiny 2 going forward, and it will be interesting to see what they come out with. If they do that entire laundry list they claimed or at least most of it, I think most fans will be much happier. Hopefully they throw in a couple surprises and Jon Weisnewski is up to more than just Nerf Pulse Grenades, 450 Auto Rifles, and High Caliber Rounds. If that is what we get for Class/Weapon Balance I will honestly be very pissed off. PvP is in an awful place, and it has far more to do with than those 3 things being actually Powerful or at least perceived to be.

@hestilllives19: I am very excited for the DLC as a whole and can't be anything but happy about the Lair, but I really do not think we're going to get something similar to Vault of Glass in terms of length. I think Bungie is trying to be honest with us, and they wouldn't tell us that it is shorter than a full-sized Raid three times if it was 'almost' as long as one. Which means it has to be at least a third shorter, though I expect it to be around half or so.

I didn't hear them say they wanted Leviathan to be around a 3 hour experience, but if that is what they said, we clear it around an hour which is three times as short. Which means if they are aiming for 1,5 hours for the Lair, it will take good groups around 30 minutes regardless.

To be clear, none of that is criticism. If it is a few hours first run and slowly ticks down to a 30 minute experience, I am totally on board with that. I loved Crota's End, or well... I loved running it. There are perks to being a short Raid.

This is super true. Glass was a slog especially with all the gorgon garbage and jumping nonsense. Crota's End felt fun to run weekly alongside the nightfalls and didn't eat my entire evening. Something to be said for raid content that can be digested in smaller sessions.

@zevvion: That's exactly what I'm saying too. If you strip away the fluff from Vault of Glass (Entrance, trek to Templar Well, trek to Gorgons, Gorgons, jumping puzzle to Atheon), and remove the artificial length of Oracles like they did with Age of Triumph, Vault of Glass is also a short 30 minute experience just like Crota's End was, Vault just had more Fluff than Crota did. That is what I'm expecting. The Encounters without all of the other stuff, you know, the stuff that kind of just gets in the way. That also seemed to be the way they described it, they described multiple (2 or more) Encounters culminating in a Boss Fight. I'm not expecting a full Raid like Leviathan was. Maybe 2-3 Encounters, a Boss Fight, a Prestige, and Challenge Modes for each Encounter/Boss (and maybe they give us more Chest Keys for the Underbelly, as in Keys to the existing Chests, so by the next DLC, you will be able to Open all 9 Underbelly Chests each week, which actually makes a lot of sense). At this point, I think all of those things are expected and provide rather easy content for Bungie to push out both now and in future micro DLC's. I think both of our expectations are at the same level honestly. I don't honestly even expect this to be Crota's End length, just that maybe those Encounters are more complicated than the ones from Crota's End were, even though I love the changes they made for Age of Triumph to Crota's End, I kinda felt like it was the worst Raid until those changes, and as it currently stands, I kind of now think that goes to King's Fall, just because it's so massive and monotonous. I wouldn't be upset if I never ran King's Fall ever again.