Bungie will soon reduce material costs for Exotic engram focusing, thereby acknowledging that Destiny 2's current Exotic engram focusing costs are too expensive for the average player. According to the TWID, Tier 2 Precision Decryption focusing will cost two Ascendant Shards (down from three) and 60,000 Glimmer, while Tier 1 Advanced Decryption focusing will cost 10 Enhancement Prisms instead of one Ascendant Shard and 10,000 Glimmer. Additionally, players will no longer have to use Exotic Ciphers when focusing Exotic engrams.
In the TWID, Bungie's economy team said most players weren't earning more than a few Ascendant Shards per week, with casual players earning only one. This made it challenging for many to take advantage of the benefits of Exotic engram focusing since they could not obtain enough Ascendant Shards to focus these engrams regularly. Therefore, the developers plan to lower the Ascendant Shard cost for Tier 2 focusing and remove the Ascendant Shard requirement entirely for Tier 1 focusing. Additionally, Bungie removed the Exotic Cipher requirement for Tier 2 focusing after the team found the currency prevented players from picking what they wanted due to the slow rate at which Guardians earn such Ciphers.
Further, the team opted to change the material requirement for Tier 1 focusing to 10 Enhancement Prisms after hearing feedback that players couldn’t spend them in a meaningful way. The forthcoming change means Guardians will soon be able to get a semi-targeted Exotic engram roll for less than the cost of an Ascendant Shard, which presently costs 10 Enhancement Prisms and 50,000 Glimmer when purchased from Rahool in the Tower.
Bungie says its goal in making these changes is to ensure most regular players will have the opportunity to get a few extra targeted rolls for buildcrafting each week. Guardians can look forward to these economy updates with the weekly reset on October 17.
