Destiny 2‘s first Iron Banner since the release of The Final Shape expansion kicks off on July 2, and it’ll see some significant changes from the PvP event’s past iterations. The biggest is that, for the first time ever, Iron Banner will last two weeks, instead of the typical one.
Bungie detailed the Iron Banner changes in its latest This Week in Destiny blog post. In the past, Iron Banner has come with a specific game mode for its week-long tenure; it used to be Control, but Bungie has been changing that up lately for some more dynamic, objective-based modes like Rift and Eruption. With the new two-week-long event, each week will feature a particular mode. For the first week, you’ll play the king of the hill-like Control; in the second week, it’ll be Tribute mode, which is similar to Supremacy, where you pick up crests dropped by players when they’re killed.
Extending Iron Banner to two weeks should change some elements of it–namely, the grind should be a lot easier to rank up the event’s reputation, gild its Triumph Seal, and earn its specific rewards. The week duration of past Iron Banners has meant that, if you really want to make the most of it, you have to play a lot. This longer version of the event should make it a little less of a pain for players who want to grab its special guns.
Speaking of guns, the upcoming Iron Banner will add two guns to the event’s loot pool. The first is an updated version of Cimril’s Dagger, a Kinetic hand cannon, which Bungie says has received a small boost to its stats and comes with a new pool of available perks. The second is Claws of the Wolf, the rapid-fire Void pulse rifle that has appeared in the event many times before. Claws can also roll with some of the new perks that have been added to the game in The Final Shape.
Alongside more time to earn those guns, Bungie has also made the grind to unlock them a little easier. First, you need to rank up your reputation with Iron Banner vendor Lord Saladin by playing in the event, hitting Rank 4 for Cimril’s Dagger and Rank 7 for Claws of the Wolf. Once that’s done, you’ll be able to focus Iron Banner engrams you earn from playing into whichever weapon you want. You’ll also receive more rewards just for playing matches, Bungie wrote. “Wins now guarantee a random Iron Banner weapon while also having a very high chance to award an Iron Banner engram on top of that. As for defeats, both weapon drops and engrams have a higher drop rate, too.”
As in the past, you’ll get a reputation boost for wearing Iron Banner armor, equipping Iron Banner emblems, and using Iron Banner weapons while playing matches in the event. That should make grinding out those new gun rolls less arduous than they have been in the past, but we’ll have to see how the changes actually feel in practice when Iron Banner returns next week.
