• They're giving us this teaser picture for Season of the Deep:

• Hunter Aspect Threaded Specter
  • Activate your class ability to leave behind a decoy woven from Strand matter that draws the attention of nearby combatants.
  • After taking significant damage or when combatants approach, the decoy detonates, dealing damage and releasing two Threadlings
• Titan Aspect Flechette Storm
  • While sliding, activate your charged melee ability to leap into the air, knocking nearby targets away and dealing damage. While airborne, activate your charged melee again to launch a cluster of damaging, unraveling projectiles. Repeatedly activating melee will chain additional throws.
• Warlock Aspect The Wanderer
  • Tangles you throw attach to enemies and detonate into a suspending burst. Threadling final blows create a Tangle.

• Standard decryption (the way that exotics auto-decrypt now) will work the same and still be free via Rahool.
• Tier 1 Focusing
  • Focus into a group of exotics, broken up by expansion (each expansion includes the armor released in its associated seasons). Red War is further broken up by slot. The Lightfall group will be added in a future season.
  • You must have already acquired all the armor in the group to focus it, and must own that expansion as well.
  • Costs 1 Exotic engram, 30,000 glimmer, and 1 Ascendant Shard.
• Tier 2 Focusing
  • Can focus any individual armor you like, as long as you own the associated expansion, and have acquired the armor before.
  • Costs 1 Exotic engram, 60,000 glimmer, 3 Ascendant Shards, and 1 Exotic Cipher.
• They've also taken a pass at Exotic armor stats, so Exotics should consistently roll higher stats and with more frequent individual stat spikes in Season 21. The average stats should be mid-60s.
• In Season 21, because of the lack of cap raises, they are changing the rewards for the basic "complete activities" challenges from a pinnacle drop to a focusable Powerful Exotic engram, giving players 3-9 (depending on how many characters they actively play) engrams a week for focusing.
• Other sources of focusable Exotic engrams include random world drops, the Season Pass, and Vendor reputation rewards (with more coming in future seasons)

• To perform a Deepsight activation on a weapon, it will cost 1 Deepsight Harmonizer currency. Raid weapons will additionally cost 15 spoils.
• The Deepsight Harmonizer is obtained from the Season Pass, 3 from the free track, and 3 from the paid. Only one harmonizer can be stored in inventory at a time.
• You can't use deepsight activation on weapons with its pattern unlocked already, weapons that have already had deepsight, and weapons purchased from raid vendors (however, purchases from Xur and the Gunsmith will be supported).
• Additionally, in Season 21, Legendary Shards will be removed from all crafting costs. Glimmer and Enhancement cores are remaining.
  • Enhanced weapon costs are based on weapon Masterwork costs, and thus will still require Legendary Shards.

• They are going to be adding rewards to existing raid triumphs that buff the raid exotic drop rate, like Root of Nightmares and the most recent dungeons. These rewards are retroactive for people who have earned the triumphs already of course.
• NOTE: It's not really clear what the "+X" values actually translate to, but it does show relative bonuses vs other triumphs.
• Last Wish
  • Petra's Run (flawless) +3
  • The New Meta (same-class clear) +2
  • Habitual Wisher (use 10 wishes) +1
  • All the same-element clear triumphs give +1 (3 total)
  • All the challenge triumphs give +1 (5 total)
• Deepstone Crypt
  • Survival of the Fittest (flawless) +3
  • Freezing Point (stasis clear) +1
  • Control Group (same-class clear) +2
  • All challenge triumphs give +1 (4 total)
  • All "complication" (similar to challenges, but can be done at any time) triumphs give +1 (4 total)
• Vow of the Disciple
  • Risen from the Deep (flawless) +3
  • Master Difficulty "Vow of the Disciple" +2
  • Together in the Deep (same-class clear) +1
  • All challenge triumphs +1 (4 total)
  • All complication triumphs +1 (4 total)
• Vault of Glass
  • Flawless Vault of Glass +3
  • Master Glasser (Master clear) +1
  • All challenge triumphs +1 (5 total)
  • All complication triumphs +1 (5 total)
• Kingsfall
  • Cruz of the King (flawless) +3
  • One True King (master clear) +1
  • All challenge triumphs +1 (5 total)
  • All complication triumphs +1 (5 total)

• Daily bounties requiring you to get a specific type of kill (grenade, headshot, or any of the special/heavy weapons) now require twice as many kills but can be done anywhere in the game, with increased progress in Vanguard Ops and Nightfalls. If you only plan to do these in Vanguard activities, they should be exactly the same.
• They've added a number of new daily bounties:
  • Killing elites, mini-bosses, and champions
  • Kills with elemental abilities, with bonuses for killing with a subclass verb
  • Complete 2 Vanguard activities
• All enemy-type kill repeatable bounties have significantly increased requirements, but can be advanced by killing any combatants in Vanguard activities, with significantly increased progress for killing the correct type of combatant.
• They added one new repeatable bounty for getting fireteam kills in a vanguard activity

• Beginning with Season of the Deep, purchasing a season pass with silver (e.g. not getting it through the deluxe edition) will cost 200 more silver (1000 -> 1200), and the same for the bundle that includes 10 ranks (2000 -> 2200).
  • They claim they will be "evaluating new approaches to post-launch content in the year of The Final Shape"
• Finest Matterweave and Rainmaker are being deprecated, and can be dismantled for 1 core and 3000 glimmer each, respectively.
• Archie (the robo dog) is returning in Season 21 with a permanent home in the tower.
  • The Good Boy Protocol stat tracker will be reintroduced and moved to the Account/Career category. Any previous progress on the stat tracker will be carried over.

• New cosmetics to earn from the Lighthouse chest
• The shader will be unlocked the first time a player opens the Lighthouse chest in Season 21 (the others will be random drops)
• Additionally, in future seasons, older trials shaders previously exclusive to adept weapons will be returning as rewards for completing the your first flawless ticket in that season.
  • Glorious Patina in Season 21
  • Bloodline Feud in Season 22
  • Vizier Regalia in Season 23
• Also next season, the following weapons will be added to the loot pool
  • The Messenger High-Impact Kinetic Pulse Rifle
  • Unexpected Resurgence Adaptive Arc Glaive
• The adept version of Unexpected Resurgence ill be first available on the weekend of June 9, while the adept messenger will be available on the weekend of June 16.
• In Season 21, The Inquisitor Shotgun and Whistler's Whim Bow will be removed from the loot pool.

• Overall, the new matchmaking system worked as intended, but they did discover an issue with lobby balancing which caused high-skill solo players to often feel like the matches were stacked against them.
• They had enabled skill tracking in the new trials matchmaking, not to factor it into matchmaking or lobby balancing, but for analytics purposes. However, in enabling this, the lobby balancer accidentally factored in skill in the team balancing.
• The intent is for matchmaking and lobby balancing to not be based on skill at all, so they've implemented a fix for the issue in Season 21. Unfortunately, the issue will still be present in the Week 11 Trials Labs
• They also did not communicate that the ability to grind for adepts on any 7-win card (even a flawed one) was enabled at Sunday reset in the last labs. This feature will be enabled immediately in the Week 11 labs, so you can grind adepts on a 7-win card all weekend.
  • This means that players who have already been flawless do not need to reset their card to play with a friend who has not, having a 7-win card does not influence matchmaking at all with the removal of card-based matchmaking.
• They feel that the two soft-pools system worked well, connection quality stayed high and matchmaking times were fast, and farming/stomp protections worked as designed in the Practice pool. For the Labs, they set the farming protection values aggressively, to make sure they worked and aggressively prevent anyone attempting to farm from causing any issues.
• In Season 21, they will be pulling these back, so normal players are far less likely to be caught up in the farming protection (about 1% of the Trials population will be able to trigger it in Season 21, down from 5% in the labs).

• Currently, the trials intro quest requires 50 Crucible kills, raising your power level, and resetting your valor rank once. They feel that the last step is too much of a barrier, so they're making the following changes:
  • New Trials intro quest step 1:
    • Complete your Competitive placement matches (helps introduce players to 3v3 and revive game modes in fairer matches)
    • Get 50 kills in Competitive
    • Raise your Power level
  • Step 2:
    • Pick up a Trials Passage
    • Play a game of Trials
    • Win 1 round of Trials
    • Get 1 elimenation in Trials
  • Reward: a roll of the Astral Horizon shotgun.
• Trials Passage Changes
  • Passage of Wealth will now grant +75 trials rep for every win, along with an additional bonus for your current major rake in Trials, up to +150 total.
    • This is to align this passage better with the system that encourages players to farm at 7 wins.
  • Passage of Mercy will now forgive 2 losses if you haven't been Flawless for the week, will revert back to 1 after going flawless and resetting your card.
• The exclusive trials mode will become dominion (zone control) going forward. They have the following reasons:
  • It offers a choice between playing Elimination and playing an objective
  • On average, games are 15% faster in Dominion than in Elimination
  • Objectives promote more varied engagements on the maps, as the zones direct players around the map and establish multiple defined fronts.
  • Promotes a healthier dansbox variety in both weapons and subclasses
  • Provides us with more balancing levers to change the gameplay experience
  • NOTE: There are more justifications in their blog post itself that you can see if you're interested, but this summary is long enough already.
• In Season 21, gilding flawless will have new requirements:
  • Get 500 kills
  • Reset your trials rank once
  • Go flawless and get 50 kills with one of the seasonal exotic weapons equipped (the kills do not need to be with the exotic itself)
  • While on a ticket with 0 losses, and wearing the Light of the Lost emblem:
    • Win 20 games
    • Earn the following medals: 10 Double Kells, 5 Skull Breakers (deal the most total damage to opponents in a match), and 5 The Beginnings (land the first elim in a match
  • While on a ticket with 0 losses with the Flawless Empyrean emblem eqiupped
    • Win 20 games
    • Earn the following medals: 10 Flight of the Pigeons (win a match without ever being down in points), 10 Paradoxically Perfect (as a team, win a round in which each player eliminates a different opponent, and no opponent is revived), and 5 Time Trials (win a round within 20 seconds).
• They're adding a new emblem for players to earn if they can open the Flawless chest without ever trailing in points in any of their matches.

• Rusted lands won the trials map vote
• New prime gaming cosmetics for May:
• They include several Guardian Games wallpapers in the blog post.
• Players who have purchased the event card should make sure they have opened the Guardian Games Event Pack bundle, located in their consumables inventory. This must be done prior to the end of Guardian Games.

Did we miss anything? Let us known on Twitter or in the #tips channel on our Discord.

Sources:

• This Week At Bungie - 05/04/2023