Destiny 2 isn’t coming until 2017 and that means there will likely be one more big update to Destiny this fall. This will likely be bigger than what we saw in the April update, including a new massive story or two coming to the game. Of course, this hasn’t been confirmed just yet so take this information with a grain of salt.

However a couple of Redditors might have cracked that code. One particular Redditor was quick to post a walkthrough of the key missions in this update and then abruptly disappeared. The user, who took on the persona of Rezzyl Azzir posted the walk through and then deleted his account, but not before posting a rather cryptic message in Latin.

The message read, “Vegisima die mensis noni. ILLUD est venturus. Per Audacia ad astra.” When translated to English, the message reads, “The twentieth day of the ninth month. IT is coming. Forward, to the stars.” While Bungie has not said when it will be releasing the expansion, it has said it’s coming this fall. If the message can be believed, we should be looking at the next Destiny expansion to land on September 20. Stay tuned.

Destiny‘s April Update arrived last week and while of us have mixed opinions about the whole ordeal, the community as a whole seems to be enjoying. It has had its issues however, including a bug where players didn’t receive a Sterling Treasure – the new loot drop system which offers a guaranteed gear piece – on logging in. The Postmaster’s Sterling Treasure is supposed to be guaranteed each week so this is a problem.

Bungie has said it will address the same and it’s pushing a patch out later today to ensure as much. Over on Twitter, the developer said, “At 10AM PST on Monday April 18th, Destiny players may be asked to login again upon returning to orbit to download a patch.”

That means you can look forward to your Sterling Treasure from the Postmaster tomorrow, right in time for the weekly reset. What are your thoughts on the fix? Let us know in the comments below and stay tuned for more information.

So is Destiny‘s April Update worth stepping back into the far-flung, poorly explained universe again? There are pros, there are cons but in the end, it’s still par for the course for Bungie.

Good: It’s Free

This is a free update. Keep aside that nonsense about “You can’t complain because it’s free” or  “It’s not free, we paid for it with microtransactions”. All new gear, a new Strike, a “revamped” Prison of Elders and so on…and it’s free. Bungie didn’t have to offer this but it did. Yes, it’s arguably all in the name of pushing even more stupid microtransactions and shady gear acquiring but many MMOs have that. It’s still free and you can earn everything without paying a dime.

Good: Cool Looking New Gear

I have to be honest – the new Spektar and Desolate gear sets are perhaps Bungie’s best yet. They’re distinct and sync incredibly well with the new Chroma. If you’re not exactly Hell-bent on the new Legendaries and Exotics, then there are a bunch of new Rare weapons and gear that have also been added. They’re reskins but it all feeds the purpose of actually progressing you to the new Light level cap.

Good: Multiple Ways to Light Level 335

Unlike The Taken King and the King’s Fall raid, max Light level cap no longer feels like RNG’s dream and your worst nightmare. It’s entirely possible to find high Light level weapons and gear by doing Prison of Elders, Challenge of Elders, engaging in Court of Oryx and so on. Heck, even Strike-specific loot drops at a Light level closer to your own. Infusion now takes a lesser Light level item to the greater Light item’s level immediately. No more segmented gains. It all feels much better paced and the Sterling Treasures’ guaranteed gear is also a plus. Playing Prison of Elders for guaranteed weapons and gear? A major plus. And with Iron Banner and Trials of Osiris also dropping max Light level gear, there are plenty of ways to hit that cap.

Good: Returning Year One Legendaries

Love Bungie’s reskins or hate them – the fact is that a lot of beloved weapons and Exotics have made a return. And while I personally feel no such emotion for, say, Shadow Price or Dreg’s Promise, I’ll always appreciate more options. It’s also good to see such a wide number of returning items as opposed to just a few. Because in a game with as repetitive gameplay and objectives as Destiny, anything that can shake up that status quo, even if it has been nerfed, is appreciated.

Good: They Tried

This update doesn’t come from the entirety of Bungie. Rather, it’s the product of the Live Team which was small to begin with. Honestly, they tried to make us care. The new quest line has adequate voice acting and an interesting, if completely insignificant, new foe. Winter’s Run is now a Taken-ified Strike. They tried to add interesting new spins to Prison of Elders without making it overwhelmingly difficult or favourable for hardcore players alone.

Good: It’s Almost As Long as House of Wolves

For a free update, it’s kind of nice to get a good amount of content that’s comparable to the House of Wolves expansion. This is pretty much where the positives end so get out while you can.

Bad: It Pretty Much is House of F**king Wolves

Not enough story missions? Check. Lackluster story overall? Check. Prison of Elders? Check. Content that essentially recycles the same friggin’ enemies, bosses and mechanics you’ve been dealing with till now? Check. Somehow, Bungie looked at House of Wolves‘ model of making things nice for fans and emulated it. That doesn’t change the fact that House of Wolves was a mediocre expansion for its price. This being a free update doesn’t change the fact that it’s the same shit all over again, just with Taken and the new Supers.

Bungie’s Destiny has a significant new update with the April Update but there’s more on the way. We already know that a paid expansion will be coming this Fall. However, in its latest weekly news update, community manager David “DeeJ” Dague said details would be coming this Summer. E3 2016 sounds just about right for a reveal.

“The next point on the horizon is an update we’re cooking up for the Fall. I’ve seen it. I’m excited about it. I will say no more…For now.

“Hopefully, the ramp up to the April Update served up some proof that we love speaking at length about new Destiny content, once it arrives at its final form. Later on this Summer, we’ll show you the scope, scale, and flavor for the next challenge you’ll face.”

Dague also noted some of the bugs that came with update 1.1 including a Ghosts dropping from the Nightfall at lower than expected Light level, Cryptarch packages giving Year One engrams, and much more. These will be fixed in a future patch so stay tuned for more information.

Now that Destiny‘s April update has officially landed, there’s plenty of things for players to check out. Among those things are a swatch of new and updated weapons. As is the case when these new weapons tend to land in the game, there’s talk about some of the weapons being overpowered. David “DeeJ” Dague recently sat down with GameReactor in order to talk about the rumors of overpowering weapons.

“I think the weapons designers would certainly regard a word like overpowered as a dirty word. That is definitely something they would want to iterate upon. There isn’t a strategy by which they would say ‘let’s make this weapon overpowered.’ Their goal is always to provide a wealth of options that they can embrace and still feel powerful.” Dague said.

When it come to these weapons, the community manager said the company takes a ton of feedback from the community into account when it comes to tweaking weapons. Those tweaks are always done in order to try and make Crucible matches as competitive as possible.

Bungie’s April Update for Destiny is finally live, bringing “new” gear, loot, Reputation gains, a revamped Prison of Elders along with a Challenge of the Elders mode and Crucible changes to the mix.

You can check out the patch notes for the free update (for those who bought The Taken King, that is) here. A few things mentioned that Bungie didn’t announce prior include increased tracking for Nothing Manacles, which had been over-nerfed upon arriving in Year Two, and the ability to point and emote at a fallen Guardian’s Ghost.

The April Update brings a new Strike, some new story quests, Sterling Treasures which reward guaranteed items, the return of Year One Legendaries and Exotics, new Chroma to highlight your armour in tacky colours and an increased Light level cap of 335. It also fixes Infusion to allow for the maximum Light offered by the item being infused.

What are your thoughts on it thus far? Let us know in the comments below.

Today is the day that Bungie’s Destiny receives its first major content update since the release of The Taken King in September. The April Update will be going live at 10 AM to noon PST according to Bungie.

This translates to 6 PM to 8 PM UK time and 7 PM to 9 PM CET. The developer also confirmed download sizes for the various platforms – it will be roughly 1.7 GB on Xbox One and PS4 while the PS3 version is 1040 MB and the Xbox 360 version is 793 MB.

Along with introducing new gear and a new max Light level cap of 335, the April Update will also see the return of many Year One Legendaries and Exotics, a new Challenge of the Elders mode for Prison of Elders, a new Strike and story quests, and a revamped version of the Winter’s Run Strike for the Vanguard Heroic Playlist.

What are your thoughts on the April Update? Let us know in the comments below.

Weapon Balance

The April Update ensures one thing – your favourite weapons are becoming even weaker than before. Bonus damage with The Last Word while hip firing? Gone. High caliber rounds to stagger fools with MIDA Multi-Tool? Gone. Maybe you liked carrying enough Special Ammo to successfully complete phases of the King’s Fall raid (which pretty much makes sniper rifles mandatory). Gone, gone, gone. SUROS Regime will probably be better but that just puts us right back at the beginning before this whole nerfing frenzy. Even Thorn wasn’t as underpowered then as it is now. The worst part is that Bungie’s desire to balance in PvP is adversely affecting PvE.

That makes it hard to really work towards any of the new gear and Exotics, especially when they’ll probably just going to be nerfed in the future anyway. Then again…

What New Gear?

Bungie is often accused of recycling old gear and equipment on a fairly regular basis. That’s because it does precisely that, all the time, in Destiny. If you played close attention between expansions, you would see vendors recycling old Dark Below gear as new in House of Wolves. In The Taken King, each faction’s new “gear” was essentially a retread of gear from the past. Though the April Update will sport two new gear sets with Spektar and Desolate…welllll, the latter is pretty much Prison of Elders gear with a new Taken paint of coat.

As for the weapons and gear, it’s practically nothing you haven’t seen before. Bungie did put new perks on weapons like Shadow Price and The Devil You Know, so forget about them being as glorious as they once were. The kicker is these Year One weapons were left behind when The Taken King came out – not to mention going out of circulation with vendors, making it impossible for players to buy them – and now Bungie is just giving them back to players? Did we mention there are very few weapons or gear that’s actually new? Have fun with Lord of Wolves for another four months. There is the Zen Meteor but surprise, exclusive to PS3 and PS4.

Prison of Elders

Remember Prison of Elders? The one piece of content that literally no one was asking to be brought into Year Two? So that’s coming back but Bungie has taken to “revamping” it with “new” Taken enemies and a score system to grade your performance. Aside from the fact that the levels themselves have seen next to no changes, the bosses are nothing spectacular either. You can now fight a large Taken Knight as opposed to a large Hive Knight. Sick.

But that’s not even the biggest issue with Prison of Elders. The problem is the mode itself and how it’s a poor excuse for Firefight. There is no true randomness…except for what Bungie allows on a week to week basis (and as its recent track record shows, it’s nothing you haven’t done in Year One). Prison of Elders could be a good excuse for fun now that getting gear is easier – the Challenge of the Elders has guaranteed rewards after all – but there’s still no matchmaking for random players. On top of that, you’re still fighting through the same waves of repetitive enemies.

Is There Anything New?

Destiny is an interesting game in that it can do so much with so little. And no, that’s not a clever barb at the game’s lack of content – it’s amazing how some of its changes manage to mix things up significantly for the player base. Adjust a weapon here and nerf a weapon there and suddenly you have a new meta. The new revive and overshield rules will make a pretty significant impact on Trials of Osiris, for instance.

But in terms of actual content, what’s new? A new Strike has been added, one that seemingly takes place in the Shrine of Oryx (an age-old location at this point). There’s one new baddie to fight. Maybe there are a few new missions which will take you to other older locations before the confrontation with the big bad. Then there’s Winter’s Run, reimagined in Taken form. Awesome. For as much as we hate on the recycled gear and the “meh” Chroma, at least there’s a lot to collect. In terms of content, especially for PvE, there isn’t a whole to get you interested in. And even if there was…

Where’s the Story?

Malok is your brand new threat for the April Update, attempting to usurp Oryx’s kingdom. Let’s leave aside the fact that the Taken are still alive since Oryx is the only one who possesses that power or that something else can control them. Our attempt to stop Malok will be concluded in one Strike. Remember that epic quest to defeat Oryx? Now reduce that by about…90 percent. Don’t expect any story in the Prison either.

And that’s one of the greater failings with Destiny. When you see its worlds and experience its gunplay, you think back to the game that was hyped up in 2013. A world where limitless stories could take place. The only thing really limitless now is the extent to which Bungie and Activision will exploit the game for that sweet micro-transaction cash. It’s a shame that with all these months to work on such a large update, we couldn’t have had a large story quest to complete (and no, Petra’s PlayStation-exclusive nonsense doesn’t count).

Bungie has finally released full patch notes for weapon balancing in Destiny‘s April Update, allowing you to delve into greater detail into changes the studio is making for different weapon classes. Senior Designer Jon Weisnewski breaks down the changes made to Exotics like Thorn, Icebreaker, etc. as well.

The short version of it is that high rate of fire auto rifles would have their base damage reduced by 2.5 percent while low rate of fire ARs saw a 2.3 percent increase in damage. Some weapons like SUROS Regime have had perks like Spinning Up changed to balance them out, though Focused Fire on the gun now allows for max range.

Hand cannons have only seen an increase to inventory for PvE while Sniper Rifles have received a slightly higher readying time, closer zoom with all scopes and changes to special ammo during rounds. It was also noted that 1000 Yard State, the bane of many a Guardian’s existence, has had its overall ammo inventory reduced.

Check out everything else in the above link including changes to Warlocks, the death of the Last Word and much more. The April Update arrives on the 12th.

Bungie’s Destiny is undergoing planned maintenance today, starting at 8 AM PST/11 AM ET/4 PM UK time. Signing in to Bungie.net and Companion App services will be restricted and you won’t be able to play at all during the downtime.

The servers are expected to be up again in five hours, so earmark 1 PM PST/4 PM ET/9 PM UK time for when you can get back online. Check the Bungie Twitter though to be absolutely sure when you can start playing the game again.

The reason for the maintenance is obvious – the developer’s biggest update since the release of The Taken King will be going live Tuesday with the April Update. It adds some new Year Two versions of Year One Legendary Weapons and Exotics, a revamped Prison of Elders and Challenge of the Elders mode, new gear to earn with new Chroma highlights, Sterling Treasures and much more. It deploys on April 12th so stay tuned for more information.