Destiny 2Season 11 Umbral and Prismatic Recaster Engrams are back in Season 13, Bungie announced in this week’s blog post. That’s great news, considering it was one of the best loot grinds in the game’s recent past.
Unlike most legendary engrams in Destiny 2, which they decipher in a random gear over which you have no control, Umbral Engrams can be “reoriented” in the Prismatic Recaster (a strange barrel of space magic like soup) on specific pieces of equipment most likely to have certain advantages or Statistics. There is still some RNG involved, but it is far from the driving force behind the grind. In addition, the weapons the Umbral Engrams could decipher were all very good. The entire progression system was so popular that Bungie now plans to bring it back, but with additional resources.
“The Prismatic Recaster returns as a kiosk with the ability to transform Umbrella Engrams into Focused Umbrella Engrams, which contain a smaller draft table,” writes the studio. “As the Umbral Engrams are here to stay, the new Recaster will have different pages for each season, and you’ll be able to focus engrams for the season of your choice.”
This is part of Bungie’s new commitment to reducing the seasonal “FOMO” (fear of losing) and ensuring that the new missions and activities added every few months remain throughout the year, rather than disappearing when the new season begins. For example, Season of the Hunt Wrathborn fighters and corresponding story missions will continue until the end of the most recent game Beyond the light expansion. In the meantime, the Engrams and the Recaster threshold will provide a new way to obtain targeted withdrawals from previous seasons without being completely at the mercy of RNG. It’s really cool to see.
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At the same time, like all things in Destiny 2, this news reaches several senses. Am I excited for the return of one of the best loot mechanics in the game? Sure. Do I want to work on the Recaster update all over again to have a better chance of unlocking the exact equipment I want? Not God. It remains to be seen what Loot Engrams Umbral will contain next season, and what will be involved in retrofitting the new Recaster, but I am skeptical that I will not feel that I am repeating tasks that I have already completed. And of course, hovering over all this is the spectrum of the sunset, which gives all the loot you can get Destiny 2 an expiration date.
The other big news this week is that Bungie is adding a new layer of titles to the game that will effectively allow players to remake and “honor” the main titles – Flawless, Conqueror, Uninterrupted, Dredgen – that they have already completed. This will add a golden border. At the end of the season, however, those boundaries will disappear, encouraging players to complete new challenges to reach super cool status again the following season. I have never invested much in titles and triumphs, but I have always admired those who did, and the little emblems that appear on the screen when you are inspecting the construction of a player who has one.
However, it is permanence that makes them so special, and adding a golden achievement that restarts every two months seems more like a symptom of Destiny 2 becoming very seasonally focused. Like the content input and output cycle and the looting of the sunset, some aspects of the game are starting to feel more like a rat race than ever, and I’m not here for that. But at least the Umbrals Engrams are back.