The first pack of the Destiny 2: Forsaken Annual Pass releases tomorrow. I haven't seen much talk about it on here, so I figured I'd make sure everyone had the low down on it. The Annual Pass DLC packs WILL NOT be sold separably from each other. Players either need to have purchased the $70 Forsaken + Annual Pass bundle, or purchase the Annual Pass separately for $35. It includes Black Armory (releases starting tomorrow 12/4/18), Joker's Wild (releasing in March), and Penumbra (releasing in June). Each drop will increase Power Levels by 50, or 650 for Black Armory, 700 for Joker's Wild, and 750 for Penumbra. These Power Level changes are for all Forsaken players regardless of Annual Pass ownership. Below is the vidoc released by Bungie outlining their Annual Pass plans, and the bullet points of what is included with each as listed here by Bungie.

Black Armory: Season of the Forge (Dec. 4th, Season 5 starts Nov. 27th)

• Dec. 4th - Volundr Forge
• Dec. 7th - Gofannon Forge
• Dec. 7th - Scourge of the Past Raid
• Dec. 11th - The Dawning Event (free to all players)
• Dec. 18th - Izanami Forge
• Jan. 8th - Niobe Labs
• Jan. 29th - Exotic Quest (The Draw)
• Feb. 5th - Crimson Days Event (free to all players)

Joker's Wild: Season of the Drifter (March)

• New Gambit Experience
• Gambit Private Matches/New Maps (free to all players)
• Xur Bounties
• New Activity Experience
• Weekly Joker's Wild Quest
• 2 Exotic Quests (the first of which is free for all players)
• Spring Event (free for all players)

Penumbra: Season of the ... (June)

• New 6 Player Activity with Matchmaking
• New Raid
• Exotic Quest (free for all players)
• Solstice of Heroes (free for all players)
• Several Redacted Events/Activities they don't want to talk about yet due to Spoilers.

As far as Black Armory specifics go, what we have learned so far is this. Forges are 3 player only, automatically matchmade (if fireteam smaller than 3) Activities similar to Escalation Protocol/Blind Well, but appear more akin to D1's Prison of Elders. They will have their own dedicated loot pools, and each allow you to forge an ultimate Exotic Weapon. This list of Exotic Weapons will include the Exotic Weapons shown below: Izanagi's Burden Sniper, Le Monarque Bow, Anarchy Grenade Launcher, and the Jotunn Fusion Rifle. A big returning fan favorite comes to Destiny 2 in Machine Guns (Thunderlord was already released as a part of the Ives Quest that concluded last week), which Bungie has already confirmed Armor perks will start to drop new perks for (they are already dropping for players on the new Black Armory gear under certain circumstances). And lastly, on Jan. 29th, the infamous Last Word makes it return to Destiny 2.

There are several other big things of note, one which hasn't been confirmed by Bungie, but a recent leak from the 2.1.0 update saw an unreleased cutscene that has major ramification on the Destiny story going forward. Beware, it's a major story spoiler, so while I won't link it here, it's very easy to search for. This does however bring a bit of doubt to the theory that Black Armory would not have Story content and Cutscenes. Something that already seems obviously incorrect based on our new Weapon Vendor, Ada-1, who very much appears to be seen in some light cutscenes. While we don't expect Black Armory to have very deep story content, based on that leak, what is there appears to be much more significant than what players were expecting. Speaking of Ada-1, as a Vendor she is confirmed to be selling Weapon Parts for Mod Components at a 25 to 1 ratio, a great QoL improvement, especially considering all the new soon to release Weapon Mods like Dragonfly Spec and Rampage Spec (these only work when these Perks are on Weapons, but increase the vitality or timer on those perks). Another big change from player expectations is the fact that Scourge of the Past (set to release at reset Dec. 7th at 640 PL) is an actual full Raid, rather than a smaller Raid Lair like last years Eater of World's and Spire of Stars. SotP will be set in the Last City. In the vidoc above Bungie even showed off a much anticipated Sparrow section (this has been a community request since Vault of Glass in Y1) to the Raid. Personally, the most exciting part about SotP is Bungie's comparisons, for size/scope/direction, have been to Destiny: Rise of Iron's Wrath of the Machine, which is still my favorite of all Destiny franchise Raids. In addition to everything that releases tomorrow, Season of the Forge actually already started last week with the 2.1.0 update that cleared Infamy/Valor/Glory progress, but also released 3 new Pinnacle rewards. For Gambit, we have the Breakneck Auto Rifle which has a new perk called Onslaught that allows the fire rate to increase from 450 up to 720 as you stack higher Rampage stacks (it also decreases reload speed while Rampage is active). Vanguard Strikes also now have a reward in the form of the Loaded Question Fusion Rifle which lets out a massive explosion on it's first charge of the magazine. As no surprise, Competitive Crucible has the most grind worthy addition in the form of The Mountaintop Grenade Launcher that explodes on contact and has drastically increased projectile speed. All of these are worthy additions to your arsenal and will require a significant amount of time to unlock (Breakneck appears to be my favorite, but I'll update once I pick them all up which I hope to do over the next few weeks). Both tomorrow's update and last weeks 2.1.0 update included a lot of nitty gritty changes to bugs/glitches and updates to under-performing weapons, so I highly suggest checking out Bungie.net if that type of info interests you.

Note: Unlike how many websites reported, players are NOT able to increase their Power Level until 12/4 when Black Armory actually launches.

I am two Gambit matches away from the Breakneck, so I should have that tonight. I'll report back if it's what it's cracked up to be.

I'll be honest; a lot of what they showed and talked about in the video does not excite me. A one-shot body hit sniper rifle sounds truly awful from a PVP standpoint. I can't wait for guys to camp on the whole other side of the map aiming down the longest corridors with that to where you can't even do anything but avoid that area. Boy, that sounds fun. The same goes for the tracking fusion rifle fireball. It's like their goal is to fuck up the balance. Nerfs to come after a period of everyone complaining about them to where the guns will suck just about the time I get them or I'll refuse to use them on principle. Yay.

I also really could have done without the youtube streamer shit within that video. That was approaching Ubisoft levels of "contrived multiplayer fun" footage. Fucking ugh. That the forge stuff sounds like it's structured around merely spamming enemies at you ain't great. Annoying hordes <> challenging/fun. I will say that the weapon mod expansion is a plus. Also, the city as a location sounds cool, as do some of the new historical region guns. Still, it's inherently depressing that arguably the biggest draw here is simply raising the carrot a bit to 650. I'm currently sitting at 550, FWIW. I guess we'll see how it is tomorrow.

Breakneck seems good, but for specific uses. It has very little recoil and what's there climbs vertically/predictably. The problem is that it has a relatively slow rate of fire when not in Rampage mode where it ramps up, which makes it not that great for PVP. It was still adequate enough in some Crucible last night based on the fact that I was able to consistently get multiple mid-range headshots due to the lacking recoil. However, it fires too slow to use in close combat, and it doesn't have enough range to win firefights against scout/sniper rifles. The 40 magazine seems a little low as well.

That said, it should be a PVE beast and be a solid choice in Gambit where you've got throngs of enemies to deal with. From what it sounds like the Forge stuff is going to be, it looks highly useful there as well. It honestly wasn't hard to get; just time-consuming. The challenges are all easy enough to complete in the 40 matches it requires. As Gambit might be the best part of Destiny anyway, I'd say the Breakneck quest is certainly worth doing. I guess I'll see what the Forge is all about tonight.

@notnert427: From everything I hear (most notably from Azetecross's detailed testing on Wednesday), it's the best primary for PvE out there right now. It is however annoying that they pre-nerfed it from what it should be based on the description. It's Rampage stacks aren't the same as all other weapons (PvP - 10%/20%/32% and PvE - 20%/41%/65.5%), and Onslaught doesn't tick up on every stack like it should. It makes it much less useful in PvP, because from what I've seen 1 Rampage = 600 RPM, but gets an 8% nerf to damage output. 2 Rampage = Still 600 RPM but now a 4% increase in damage from it's OG value (or a 12% increase from what it was doing). Finally, 3 Rampage = 720 RPM with zero damage increase. Now, the TTK goes as follows: 0.933s, 1 = 0.7s, 2 = 0.7s (easier to obtain a kill with more bodyshots), and 3 = 0.58s. There is no doubt it gets better, but it's sad the gun doesn't function as advertised. I understand, because boy would it be OP if it did, but it's still annoying to have perks that don't work as described. For PvE, it fares much better at x3 Rampage. I've seen conflicting reports, some say it's hitting 51% at x3, and others say it's actually hitting it's 65%, but I haven't seen solid evidence either way that wasn't tainted by other buffs or the shooting of different enemies which have different damage values. I hope it's working as intended at 65.5%, but I don't know one way or the other.

As far as a one shot bodyshot Sniper in Crucible, I am right there with you. I really hope it requires a full mag to do that not just shove your 2 rounds in. Sniping is a bit of an art in Destiny 2, and one of the few things that actually requires a skill to master, so just dumping shots into the body have never been how I want them to work. The reminder of D1 Final Round Snipers in Trials comes to mind, and that was an awful thing to try to fight against. Honestly, Jotunn doesn't look all that amazing, but Anarchy looks real interesting for PvP. Seems like a good gun to get your kills for Mountaintop done.

I'm not going to lie, I was very disappointed after watching this Bungie footage of what seems like the Volundr Forge. I talked about it a bit last night on Discord, but it just seems like such a barebones go kill HVT, throw ball at Forge, over and over for 10 minutes to spawn an uninteresting big baddie type Activity. If that's all these are, they are by far the worst Horde Mode style Activities Bungie has ever created. I've rather enjoyed Prison of Elders, Court of Oryx, Archon's Forge, Escalation Protocol (this being the best to date), and Blind Well for what they are, but this doesn't seem to even remotely be on par with those Activities, which is sad, because that was my hope that we would get 4 smaller Blind Well type Activities with differing minor mechanics like that has. More like a Tier 3 + 4 Blind Well round, and this is not that.

However, I do think that if Scourge of the Past is as good as they are hyping it to be, that in and of itself will earn the $10 I spent on the Black Armory portion of the Annual Pass. I also think, if datamined Cutscenes are legit (obviously they were real, but they may not be for Black Armory), the story content, while short, may indeed surprise players in some great ways. I'm also very excited for The Draw Quest to reobtain the Last Word handcannon. That's my baby for PvP. I do think the success or failure of Black Armory resides on two things though: How good Scourge of the Past is, and if there are any hidden release secret Activity/Quests. If we get another sudden drop of a Dungeon like Shattered Throne or a hidden Exotic like Whisper, I think that most would consider Black Armory a huge success, because those Events are the very best of what Destiny has to offer.

I didn't quite get to the Volundr Forge last night. The "kill powerful enemies with your heavy" portion of the quest to get there proved annoying. I decided to do the vanguard strikes for the week, and I found myself trying to fight my teammates to get the final shots for the kill on the powerful enemies, and that was when I even had ammo for my heavy, which was another annoying roadblock. I even put on gear with heavy ammo finder perks to try to help there. There's probably a better way to do this whole thing by just running through public events or something, but I got too tired/annoyed to get that quest step done last night. Maybe tonight.

@notnert427: I'd go to the first Leviathan raid. There's like 10 Elites right there you can kill and then reload the area until you get it.

That and the step after it took me maybe 10 minutes.

Good call. Thanks, duder.

@notnert427: Even better, just go to the entrance of Blind Well in The Dreaming City and get The Taken to attack The Skorn. After a minute or two you will have as many Orange and Yellow Bars as you can possibly kill. Me and a clanmate did this together, and there were enough for both of us to not only get our kills done, but collect the 20 parts afterwards too.

If they aren't warring, you aren't killing them quickly enough. Just kill them over and over until they start spawning in quickly, and then kill some more saving Heavy until those Orange Bars show up.

So Black Armory has been out almost a week, and I just wanted to give everyone a heads up on what's going on with it, how I feel about it, and some recommendations of if/when to purchase the Annual Pass. First and foremost, if you don't already own the Annual Pass, and are not at least 600 Power Level, DO NOT buy the Annual Pass, at least not yet. Black Armory, and likely by extension all of the Annual Pass Updates, are considered End Game content. This means to get your money's worth out of them, you will need to be at the previous contents Max Power at launch. That means 600 now, 650 in March, and 700 in June. Onto the news about Black Armory.

A little background on this past week... The Volundr Forge was the only thing that really launched last Tuesday. Included with it was a smallish Quest of extremely grindy steps, a fetch Quest more or less. This led to the a Weapon Frame and the Volundr Forge itself. The Forge Activities were set at 615 Power Level, and the final Boss scaled to 630. If you know much about Destiny scaling you know that even for a 600 Power player 15 PL's is a tough order, and much more than that is pretty impossible unless you are a top 1% player. Sidenote: Damage scaling in Destiny is as follows: +25 PL's above gets a 12% damage reduction, -10 PL's deals 23% less damage and receives 37% more damage, -15 PL's deals 29% less damage and receives 78% more damage, and -30 PL's deals 42% less damage and receives 175% increased damage. So doing the Forge at all on Tuesday without grinding out all of your Weekly Powerful Gear drops was an impossibility. I actually still found it rather difficult dealing with a -20 Delta after getting to around 610 on my Hunter on Tuesday, so I actually switched to my Titan to start grinding for Wednesday to do the Forge late Tuesday night since my Weapons were around 610-613 so it boosted that character up. On Wednesday, Bungie heeded the outcries of the vast majority of the community in the early afternoon, which can be found here. In a matter of seconds, they flipped a server side switch that lowered the Volundr Forge from 615-630 down to 610-625. This was actually a drastic improvement for those of us playing who at around 610, could now actually complete the Volundr Forge activity and see the rewards located within. Due to this change and the Powerful Gear located within plus playing on a 2nd character I was able to boost my 2nd character to around 621 by Friday when the Gofannon Forge launched. The Quest steps included with the launch of the Gofannon Forge were actually rather lengthy, and represent the first actual "Missions" of the Black Armory, though they were rather bland and frustrating, so I wouldn't get too excited about it. More than anything it just represented another really long fetch quest. Another big thing of note, is that due to a current bug, you do not want to complete anything on the Gofannon Quest if you haven't finished the Weekly Volundr Forge stuff, because holding any two Weapon Frames will wipe the other once you obtain one by completing it. So complete Volundr stuff first before Gofannon. After finishing the Gofannon Weapon Frame, there hasn't been anything else to do this week besides the launch of the Scourge of the Past Raid.

A few things on Scourge of the Past. I have yet to complete this Raid, so I cannot give first hand comments on it. But I did glance at some of the Livestreams for Worlds First and talked to many who have completed it. It both appears to and many have commented, including Bungie themselves who said they designed it to be like Wrath of the Machine from Rise of Iron. While it may not be one of the largest Raids they've ever created (that goes to Last Wish and then King's Fall), it's spaces are not only larger than Raid spaces, they are very likely larger than any single Patrol Zones on any Planet Bungie has ever created for Destiny. I'm trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible, but the entire Raid (as far as I can tell) not only allows you to pull out your Sparrow to traverse it, but encourages it to quickly get from one objective to the other. I will also say that the Raid Boss and the way in which you are able to fight him is truly unexpected, unusual/refreshing for Destiny, and looks like an absolute blast. I am extremely excited to try this Raid next week. My third and final character is almost ready, as I now sit at 626 and still able to do Last Wish if I can find a group tonight. I should be able to get close to 640+ on all my characters by next week, which is the recommended PL for Scourge, of which enemies scale between 640-650 within.

All of this to say, for the $30-35 (depending on how you bought it) asking price for the Annual Pass, IMO, at the moment unless you are interested in Scourge of the Past and grinding up to 640ish Power Level, I do not recommend purchasing it. Even then, the asking price is rather high, so I'd wait until you are in the 620's since the PL increase is free. I'd wait for Jan. 9th to see what Niobe Labs is all about. There has been a lot of talk that Niobe is the Bubble Location (Smaller but a Patrol Zone like EDZ, Mars, Mercury, Dreaming City, etc) Bungie talked about pre-launch and some PC players have uncovered files hinting that it will include another Dungeon similar to Shattered Thone, which was one of the best new Activities that launched with Forsaken. All of this is speculation however, so the proof will be on launch in January. I, and many others, have been a bit surprised at how little content Black Armory has launched with, as the vast majority of it was due to the free Season update available to all players, but I do think that Scourge of the Past comes close to earning my $10-11.67 I paid for the Black Armory portion of the Annual Pass. It is a bit mind blowing that with 3 separate studios, and 1000+ employee's this is all Bungie can come up with, but we are very early into this thing, so here's hoping that for some insane reason Bungie is holding back the meat of Black Armory for Niobe Labs on Jan. 9th like many are speculating. Until then, I'd hold onto your money unless you are a very dedicated Destiny player and Raid enthusiast like myself.

Edit: Datto, well respected PvE oriented streamer put out his thoughts on Black Armory and boy do they more or less directly reflect my own. Give it a watch if you don't feel like reading through mine and watching a video is easier. He's pretty spot on with his take.

Yeah, I'm extremely annoyed that at 561, it's basically pointless for me to even attempt the Volundr Forge and likely won't be something I can do for a while. Supposedly they're increasing the ramp up for sub-600 players today, which is a welcome development, but a much better idea would have been to either have that be the case last week, or better yet, launch this expansion with way more stuff for the players who weren't at max light at launch to do, as I knocked out the pre-forge quests in no time and then had literally nothing to do in the DLC.

Nevertheless, I went back to doing the same old shit and hammered basically everything I could have last week (leveling up my existing gear as much as possible in the process if the new acquisitions weren't something I'd use), and only gained 11 light, which wasn't overly encouraging since that equates to me being able to attempt the first fucking thing from this in late January. We'll see how much the ramp up changes that pace, but the fact that I'll at least spend several weeks grinding old shit while getting virtually nothing out of the actual DLC is some real fucking bullshit.

Frankly, if I don't start seeing some better drops soon, I might fall off this DLC (and possibly D2 itself) pretty quick. I'm aware that the entire game is based around the concept of grinding and never reaching the carrot, but Bungie basically flipping the bird at everyone who wasn't max light when this launched is fucked. As of now, there is little to no value for the DLC for me at 561 and I also 100% cannot recommend it to anyone who isn't already at 600. I'm not sure how much patience I have to grind outside of the DLC when I could be playing HITMAN 2, Battlefield V, RDR2, et al. instead. I'll play tonight and see how things go, but shit needs to change in a hurry.

@notnert427: The biggest suggestion I can make is to make sure you are doing things you weren't able to do before this ramp up and the Season changes. I would highly recommend trying to get into some of the early week Last Wish runs on Discord that will be happening since a lot of us are trying to use that to level up and still pick up 1k Voices still, especially if you haven't been able to do Last Wish yet. Next week you should be in striking distance of running Shattered Throne and I highly recommend doing that while it's up as well, those are the 2 best Activities that launched with Forsaken, bar none, and if you haven't experienced them now will be a great time because a lot of players will be running both of those for the Powerful Rewards. All of the grouping Activities from Forsaken are in a really good place right now due to the increased activity from 100k Nightfalls (especially since 110 Handicap is busted), to Tier 4 Blind Well, to Ascendant Challenges, etc. It is also a great time to grind some of your Gambit matches for Breakneck because not only is that a Powerful Reward but it's one of the best PvE Weapons in the game. There is still a lot to do, especially for players who haven't done much group activities with Forsaken, but again I understand where you are coming from. But just be aware that what is here for Black Armory besides the new Scourge of the Past Raid is extremely slim, so if you need to take a break or only grind X amount of easy Activities per week to slowly get up into the 600's before Niobe Labs launches in January, you have time. The Forges seriously are not that significant of content, so you aren't missing out on much at all until then.

I already have Breakneck, but appreciate the other suggestions.

Well, last night was both good and bad Destiny for me. I am pleased to report that the ramp up does seem to be there. I gained (potentially) 4 light levels yesterday, which is already way better than last week's pace. The most encouraging thing was that a 574 item dropped when I was at 564, as opposed to the typical shit that's generally within 1-3 of your current gear.

The cookie-baking thing is...okay. As far as holiday-themed gimmicks go, they could have done worse, although I had the cynical thought that it could be a subtle fuck you from Bungie to the community's complaints. "What, do they want a cookie or something? Ha, we should make cookies the holiday thing." (high-fives) I will admit that the wintery tower with snowballs and chinese lanterns is at least a little charming and fun. I ended up buying the snowball ghost for the 10% extra XP.

However, Tess Everis gave me some unbelievable trash last night despite six different engrams. It was a small gift of bright dust, a dumb emote, a shader, a useless ghost, and two ships I already had that were lame re-skins of already lame ships that have been in the game forever (BTW, tacking a different name on an old ship with a different paint scheme as if it's "new' is the laziest fucking thing imaginable). I hate Tess with a fiery passion.

Moreover, the reason I only potentially gained 4 light yesterday was because I was all set to infuse a craptastic but 568 Translation Theory into my 563 Misfit, but didn't have enough Microphasic Datalattice. Sigh. So I had to remember where that was, and apparently it's on Nessus, which makes sense to explain my lack of it, because Failsafe's "humor" makes me want to break things. I don't even need that much of it, but I really didn't have it in me to go farm it late last night.

So, yeah. What joy I got from the holiday stuff and actually getting some higher level gear was kinda nullified by typical Tess bullshit and hitting an annoying-ass "uh oh, looks like you need to go grind this entirely unnecessary currency" roadblock in attempting to level up my trusty Misfit. A +10 item drop occurring last night is about the only thing keeping me going. That will need to continue to get me up to 600 soon, or this game's gonna lose me.

@notnert427: Just as an update, this weeks TWAB just dropped and this was one of the points for next weeks update.

• Players under 600 Power will begin to receive higher-powered rewards when completing Director Challenges
  
  • Developer commentary: This change is being made to build upon changes in Update 2.1.2, where we increased Power rewards from Prime Engrams.

Hopefully this change will help players still under 600 more quickly get up to that level and able to experience Black Armory. I would expect to see all Powerfuls go up to +5 or more due to this change which should help dramatically.