Destiny 2’s Newest Raid Is Not Everything Guardians Hoped

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Just like other DLC for Destiny 2, the release of Edge of Fate introduced a new raid a week later, named Desert Perpetual, which is themed around Prophecy and serves as an additional challenge for Guardians once they finish the main story. However, on the first day, many experienced raiders found this new challenge overwhelming due to the seemingly heavier damage scaling than expected, combined with changes in Light level that left some Guardians puzzled by the complex DPS checks during each encounter. To top it off, numerous game-breaking bugs surfaced, causing frustration among players, leading them to express dissatisfaction with Bungie.

Desert Perpetual’s Numerous and Devastating Bugs

During the Raid Race, Bungie’s developers admitted that there was an anomaly in the power scaling for Contest Mode, which should have been set at [POWER], appeared to be significantly greater. Players reported encountering enemies with a skull icon instead of a sword, suggesting they were stronger than advertised. The developers promised to look into the problem, but no changes were made during the race itself.

In simpler terms, if any player in a team encountered bugs that necessitated a reset, the entire team would have to restart the activity from scratch, losing all previously achieved checkpoints and progress. Due to race rules for raids, a run was invalid for competition if a player left or the game crashed, often due to poor optimization or a bug. If a player’s PC or the game itself crashed, the team had to start the activity again from the very beginning.

Beyond complaints, players mentioned issues with rally banners not functioning properly – sometimes partially and other times not at all. Since these banners are crucial for starting a raid encounter with maximum resources, their malfunction caused many teams to halt. The problem was that when the banners didn’t dispense ammo, abilities, or even supers, players found themselves without the necessary resources to meet the tough challenge presented by each encounter. Not only were these bugs aggravating, but dealing with three bosses that required high DPS (Damage Per Second) made the raid a laborious task, despite its intriguing, non-linear layout.

Leviathan-Inspired, Non-Linear Encounters

In the game ‘Edge of Fate’, certain missions and additional tasks (side quests) can be tackled in any sequence you prefer, not necessarily in a predetermined order. There are three such encounters in Desert Perpetual apart from the final one, and players have the freedom to decide which ones they want to tackle first. This design is reminiscent of the original Leviathan raid introduced in 2017, allowing players to experience a fresh approach each time they enter the activity, as they can play through it differently every time they load into the game.

Regrettably, it doesn’t matter which sequence you pick as both options yield identical results. While the ability to decide the order is intriguing, it’s purely cosmetic at its best. The encounters are engaging, but they don’t quite match up to the exceptional quality of Salvation’s Edge encounters. When paired with the difficulty of Contest Mode, this interesting choice becomes underwhelming.

Raid Race Encounter and Mechanic Design Was Less Than Inspired

Following the successful Salvation’s Edge raid, which set a high bar for design, Desert Perpetual had significant expectations to meet. Regrettably, in the eyes of many players, it did not deliver. While the encounters themselves aren’t particularly awkward, the major source of player frustration lies in the high damage-per-second (DPS) checks that determine boss health. This issue isn’t new, but it stands out more prominently with Armor 3.0 and the power overhaul.

In earlier raids and dungeons, bosses had health levels in the millions, whereas Desert Perpetual bosses have health in the hundreds of thousands instead. This significant reduction in health also means that player damage figures are lower. However, with Contest Mode’s power balance possibly being overtuned, it became extremely challenging for players to meet DPS requirements without first accumulating a substantial amount of ammunition during each farming phase before the actual DPS phase.

In Destiny, DPS checks in raids have long been a source of frustration for players, and it’s disheartening to observe Bungie developers resorting to them as a means to increase the difficulty of Contest Mode raids. Instead, players would rather encounter complexity in the mechanics that make the raid challenging, rather than having the challenge increased by simply raising a number. Unfortunately, with the issues inherent in the Edge of Fate DLC and the bugs specific to this raid, Desert Perpetual stands out as one of Bungie’s more recent significant failures in Destiny 2.

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2025-07-22 01:40