This week was the beginning of season 11, Season of Arrivals. This season seems to be preparing us for the new expansion in September, by delving deeper into the arrival of the darkness.
New Story Quest Line
I am not going to spoil the story line nor the quests in this post. I’ll only state that it has new locations, my girl Eris, and kicks off a much larger story than it seems from first glance. I recommend wearing your headphones and listening to all the dialog very closely.
New Weapons and Armor
Not only did we get new mods, cosmetics, weapons, and armor, but some old ones have been refreshed for the this season. The list is longer than I expected, but a lot of folks are not happy with what is being left out of the light level bumps. I highly recommend checking out the listings from light.gg. I would not take the current reviews too seriously though. For some reason people love reviewing things before they get them.
New Armor: https://www.light.gg/db/new-items/season/11/new-armor/
New Weapons: https://www.light.gg/db/new-items/season/11/new-weapons/
I’ve had a lot of fun with the new legendary weapons. I’ve done well with them in both PvE and PvP. The Witherhoard exotic grenade launcher definitely has its place in the current sandbox, so you’ll see it in almost every event. One of the refreshed weapons that I’m excited about getting is the The Fool’s Remedy, which is a reboot of the Iron Banner weapon of the same name. This is the first time that I’ve been looking forward to the Iron Banner since its inception, even though I’ve spent a lot of time grinding in it.
New Event
The new event called Contact has made a huge splash on IO this week. If you love chaos, uncomplicated mechanics, and depositing motes for The Drifter, then this is the event for you. The mechanics are simple, you kill enemies to generate dark motes to drop in the bank. If you collect the maximum you can carry before depositing, you will spawn a power ammo chest next to the bank after depositing those motes. At different intervals of the event, the pyramid ship with shine a beam of light somewhere on the terrain where mini-bosses will spawn. Kill those enemies and their champion friend, and you can collect an orb that can be deposited, which greatly helps the progression towards making the event heroic. Once heroic, kill the big bad monster and profit.
Throughout the event there is entertaining dialog, and a mixture of enemy races and types. You’ll earn Umbral Engrams and you’ll probably be breathing heavy when it’s over. Even when I’ve walked up to the event trigger all alone, more people would quickly swarm to help, shortly after it kicked off. So, even if no one is around, it may be worth your while to start it anyway. So far, folks seem to enjoy it.
New Dungeon
The new dungeon named Prophecy was released and it looks wild. I have not yet completed the dungeon, but I have spent a fair amount of time exploring it. The dungeon has some interesting mechanics, and can even be solo’d for a triumph. The entrance is accessible from the map of The Tower. Don’t be afraid to click into this one, even if you’re by yourself.
Closing Thoughts
In addition to the above, we got some interesting new mods, and we can now see the max light level for each of our weapons and armor. Just by inspecting our gear, we can calculate when an item is expected to no longer level with us. I’m still working on quests for weapons whose light levels cap at 1060, and that is a real bummer. However, these are weapons others have been using over a year or two, so my procrastination is going to bite me on this one.
I’m really enjoying this season. The story, the events, the weapons, the dungeon, and the new mods are making the game more exciting to me. I hope this sets a new bar for future seasons. — Xordar