Several warnings about Destiny 2’s new exotic encore quest before you play

Yesterday, Destiny 2 launched one of the biggest exotic quests of all time, “Encore,” in which players traverse the core of Nessus to obtain the exotic “Choir of One” assault rifle with special ammunition.

It’s a pretty solid mission, but marred by some major issues, and in some cases, you shouldn’t play the mission at all. Over time, three clear problems emerged:

• You will not receive any mission rewards unless you complete the entire 1st and 2nd Acts. – The Encore mission is integrated into the seasonal storyline, but what is not clear is that even though you may Start the mission if you haven’t completed all of the Act 1 and 2 story content. You won’t get the reward for completing it. Either it wouldn’t have been able to start if you hadn’t done that, or you should get the exotic anyway (preferably this one). Bungie has warned players about this, but there’s no fix or change yet, and I imagine this will frustrate players who wanted to play the mission but didn’t want to go through six weeks of story stuff.
• The final boss can easily get out – This has happened to me and I know it has happened to others too. There is a circumstance where if you don’t reach the first half of the boss’s health bar in the first damage phase, the immune shield will return. However, there is then no way to hit a switch to break the boss’s shield again, meaning he will always stay in his bubble shield no matter what platforms you spawn on or what circles you stand in. The only way to fix this is to start the fight over and do enough damage in the first phase.
• Secret chests sometimes do not count towards the catalyst quest – I’m not sure how widespread this is, but I’ve seen people find multiple secret chests and it doesn’t advance the quest to find them. I don’t know what triggers this or not.

So it’s… not ideal. I’m not even sure the first one is necessarily a mistake, but it was at least the wrong decision to make the mission launchable without explaining that you won’t get rewards if you haven’t completed the story. It actually feels on some level like it was probably an accident.

The boss thing? Considering how many people have experienced it, it seems like it would have been difficult not to notice it before launch. But former community manager Liana Ruppert reminded everyone when it happened:

“Please be patient with Bungie’s social and community teams as they gather all information on everything related to the game. The Player Support team was severely decimated in both layoffs, as were the CM and QA teams. These folks are doing everything in their power to help you, I promise.”

It is part of the narrative that Bungie will be bursting at the seams given the recent layoffs and which Departments Layoffs like those at QA have been made. The remaining staff are doing their best, but it is a huge task.

Anyway, these are your warnings. For some of you it might be too late, I’m sorry.

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