Earlier this week, Bungie said it would be revealing some major reworks its is implementing for Destiny 2’s Faction Rally event, and now the studio has made good on that promise. When Faction Rallies return, they will have a much bigger impact on players who choose to participate, and will also have some suitably epic rewards to earn as well.
According to the latest ‘This Week at Bungie’ blog post, there will be three week-long Faction Rallies in total during the course of Destiny 2’s third content season, with the first rally set to begin next Tuesday, June 5. One of the biggest changes that players will notice is that they can now only pledge to a single faction per account as opposed to per character, which means they won’t be able to cheese the system by pledging a single character to each of the three factions and guaranteeing themselves a winning faction reward.
Bungie is implementing the one-faction-per-account change to make a player’s chosen faction feel more meaningful, and that same philosophy extends to how players earn rewards once they have chosen the faction they want to pledge to. Each faction will also have its own rank-based reputation rewards system, with unique weapons, armor, and cosmetic items available by turning in tokens and ranking up (reputation progress will carry over for all Faction Rallies in a season). There will also be a unique armor ornament and Exotic weapon catalyst available to each faction, and players will be able to switch factions at any time without losing their reputation rank progress. The unique catalysts and ornaments are as follows:
- Eye of Another World ornament and Graviton Lance catalyst for Dead Orbit
- Crest of Alpha Lupi ornament and Sweet Business catalyst for New Monarchy
- Knucklehead Radar ornament and Sunshot catalyst for Future War Cult
The reworked Faction Rallies will also be bolstered by a new ‘Renown’ system. Players earn Renown by completing public events and patrols, and by defeating high-value targets. For each “stack” of renown a player has (up to a maximum of five), their health regeneration and damage dealt are lowered while they also take more damage from enemies. However, increased stacks also cause enemies to drop health orbs, and looting a Lost Sector with Renown grants a massive bonus to the amount of tokens earned. Renown is lost on death though, creating a sort of risk/reward mechanic for players who want to go for the really big payouts.
Lastly, the same winning faction rewards from previous Faction Rallies will return, with the faction that redeems the most reward packages being declared the winner. For the June 5 rally, Dead Orbit will be offering a unique Legendary shotgun, New Monarchy a rocket launcher, and Future War Cult a sidearm. However, instead of simply buying the winning faction’s weapon once the rally is over, instead the weapon will be added to its associated faction’s reputation reward pool during the next Faction Rally event.
By the looks of things, it would seem that Destiny 2’s Faction Rallies will be much more lucrative for players who are willing to put the time in, and this coupled with the recent changes to heroic strike reward scaling should make the entire endgame experience a little easier to bear for more casual players.