Destiny 2: Season of the Witch patch notes

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Here are the patch notes for Destiny 2’s 22nd season

At the 2023 Destiny Showcase on Tuesday, Bungie announced (and launched) a brand new season of the game.

Season of the Witch sees the return of Savathun, the big bad from 2021’s The Witch Queen expansion. Guardians will need to resurrect her with the help of her Ghost, Immaru, before they’re able to travel inside the Traveler in The Final Shape on Feb. 27, 2024.

Here’s the complete list of patch notes for the new Destiny season, as well as a breakdown of all the biggest additions coming to the game in season 22.

As with each season, Season of the Witch brings a host of new activities and weapons to Destiny 2. Players can jump into new story missions (which should help prep them ahead of The Final Shape) and earn some sweet loot in the process.

Bungie does seem to be mixing things up this season as well, allowing players to collect cards that change how they play the seasonal activities. This seems like a big leap away from the cookie-cutter seasonal model players have been dealing with since back in 2019.

Crota’s End, the second raid added to the original Destiny, is finally headed to Destiny 2 as this year’s free-to-play reprised raid. Game director Joe Blackburn also spoke about wanting to make the day-one experience for Crota players “brutal” in anticipation of The Final Shape’s raid.

Crota’s End will come to Destiny 2 on Sept. 1.

Hand cannons have been in bad shape for a few years in Destiny 2 — at least in PvE content — but Bungie has finally done something about them in Season of the Witch. Hand cannons now do more damage to red bar enemies, which is great, and they do even more damage to high-tier enemies like those with orange health bars.

This change helps differentiate hand cannons from other weapon types, making them quality tools for dealing with difficult enemies in difficult activities, rather than just clearing fodder foes.

As with the Quicksilver Storm Exotic from Lightfall, those who pre-order The Final Shape’s Annual Pass will get a new Exotic starting in Season of the Witch.

The Exotic is called Tessellation, and is a fusion rifle that sits in the Energy slot and uses Special ammo. However, it doesn’t have an associated element with it, as it always matches the element of the user’s subclass. This is a unique perk and allows for some potentially very powerful builds, like an all-Strand loadout.

Unfortunately, you’ll need to wait until well after The Final Shape releases in order to earn it — unless you feel like gambling $100 on the next year of Destiny content.

One of the cooler under-the-radar additions in Season of the Witch is the Exotic mission rotator, which brings some of Destiny 2’s best missions back to the game. By playing these rotator missions, players can unlock crafting patterns for Exotics like Dead Man’s Tale and Dead Messenger — as well as some Legendary weapon patterns for certain seasonal guns.

Currently, the rotator only offers Presage (Dead Man’s Tale), Vox Obscura (Dead Messenger), and Operation: Seraph Station (Revision Zero). However, Bungie promised that more missions will come to the rotator next year. Hopefully that means we’ll get craftable versions of Whisper of the Worm and Outbreak Perfect in 2024.

As usual, there are tons of changes in these patch notes — way more than we can convey with a list like we have above. Below, we’ve posted the complete list of Bungie patch notes straight from the source.

General Crucible

Competitive

Rift

Scorched

Zone Control

Iron Banner

Rumble

Iron Banner Fortress

Loose SBMM (Skill-Based Matchmaking)

Lobby Balancing

Clash and Control

Ghosts of the Deep

Root of Nightmares

Timeline

Featured Quests

Titan

Hunter

Hunter

Titan

Warlock

Titan

Titan

Warlock

Hunter

Warlock

Hand Cannons

Bows

Swords

Verglas Curve

Le Monarque

Vex Mythoclast

Touch of Malice

Wicked Implement

Centrifuse

Envious Assassin

Under-Over

Shoot to Loot

Chill Clip

Fixed a number of other issues:

We’ve reworked a number of catalyst objectives in an effort to standardize the behavior of unlocking these perks.

Fighting Lion

Rat King

Leviathan’s Breath

Other Crafting Changes

Loadout improvements

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