Destiny 2's huge free Into the Light update is live, here's the roadmap and patch notes

What you need to know

• Following a gameplay showcase for Destiny 2's upcoming The Final Shape expansion, developer Bungie has released a huge new Destiny 2 update called Into the Light.
• Into the Light is free-to-play, and includes a new wave defense PvE mode called Onslaught where players can earn 12 returning fan-favorite weapons (6 now, with 2 more added every week until April 30). The Whisper Exotic mission is back too, and the Zero Hour one is coming May 14. These missions give players access to craftable versions of Whisper of the Worm and Outbreak Perfected.
• On April 30, we're also getting a raid boss gauntlet called Pantheon, and a PvP map pack that includes 3 maps is slated to drop on May 7 as well.
• The complete roadmap and patch notes for Into the Light can be found in the text below. Note that all of this content is here to stay even after The Final Shape's June 4 launch, so don't worry about missing out on it if you can't play Destiny right now.

Following quite an impressive livestream showcase for the upcoming Destiny 2: The Final Shape expansion — it revealed that the DLC is bringing a special Prismatic multi-classing subclass to the game, along with Exotic class items for it that drop with combinations of Exotic armor perks and a new Tormentor-inspired enemy faction called the Dread — the huge and free Into the Light update for Destiny 2 has gone live. You can download and install the ~4GB patch now, and to everyone's surprise, the game's servers actually seem to be holding up despite all the players flooding into the game.

To coincide with Into the Light's launch, developer Bungie has also published a roadmap for it, which you'll find in the image below. Today, a new wave defense PvE activity called Onslaught has arrived alongside the return of six fan-favorite weapons (Elsie's Rifle, Falling Guillotine, Edge Transit, The Recluse, Hung Jury SR4, Succession) you can get by playing it, complete with new perk options and special "BRAVE" skins exclusive to players who earn them before The Final Shape's June 4 launch; every week until April 30, two new BRAVE weapons will be made available from Onslaught.

The beloved timed Exotic mission The Whisper has also returned to the game today, with Zero Hour coming on May 14; these will give players access to craftable versions of the Whisper of the Worm sniper rifle and Outbreak Perfected, respectively. On April 30, we'll get a special raid boss gauntlet called Pantheon, too, and there's even a PvP map pack that includes three new maps coming on May 7.

Overall, this completely free-to-play update is massive, and if you ask me, it's honestly more exciting than any of the paid seasonal releases we've had during the Lightfall era. Note that the patch notes for it have also been published, which you'll find in the section below. They're mostly just bug fixes, but there is some notable stuff like PvE weapon buffs in there.

It's important to note that all this content is here to stay, too, so don't worry about missing out on it in the long term if you're not able to play Destiny right now. The only thing that's going away when The Final Shape launches are the unique appearances for the BRAVE weapons, but you'll still be able to hunt down the weapons themselves and grind for the perk rolls you're after.

Destiny 2 Into the Light: Patch notes

Here are the patch notes for Destiny 2: Into the Light, taken directly from Bungie's website.

ACTIVITIES

CRUCIBLE

• Updated the playlist tooltips to correctly display which matchmaking style is used for each mode.
• Fixed an issue where the Special ammo crate location was incorrectly displayed in the announcement when picked up on Vostok.
• Added the Hardware modifier to Crucible Labs for testing.
• Added a sound effect for the "Special ammo incoming" announcement when a Special ammo crate is about to spawn.

Competitive

• Removed Survival and Countdown Rush from the Competitive playlist and replaced with 3v3 Clash and Collision.
• Collision
  • Updated the zone placements for Vostok and Dead Cliffs.
  • Updated several Special ammo crate placements on Altar of Flame, Anomaly, Endless Value, Eternity, and Multiplex.
• Clash
  • Replaced the Special ammo meter system with Special ammo crates for 3v3 Clash.
• Enabled a unified Competitive ruleset for Collision and Clash.
  • Game Length: 10 minutes.
  • Respawns: 7 seconds.
  • Revives: Enabled.
  • Special ammo spawns: 4 crates, 60 seconds, shared.
  • Heavy ammo spawns: Single crate, 120 seconds, not shared.
• Expanded the Not Swap modifier to cover changing ammo types in either your Kinetic or Energy slot mid-life.
• Reduced variation in Competitive rank adjustment on match completion.

Trials

• Post-game weapon drops will now reward the weekly weapon.
• For the first two weeks, Special ammo crate variants will be tested in Trials, alongside the Not Swap modifier.

RAIDS AND DUNGEONS

• Crota’s End
  • Fixed an issue where all players could die and wipe at the same time that Crota is defeated, awarding loot but not awarding completion of the encounter.
• Deep Stone Crypt
  • Fixed an issue where shooting the Atraks replication attached to a player would cause ammo to spawn.
• Warlord’s Ruin
  • Fixed an issue in the jail puzzle where Glaive projectiles and Bow arrows could not hit targets consistently.
  • Fixed an issue in the Ogre encounter where the Warden Knight on the right side of the stage wouldn't spawn totems consistently.
  • Improved respawn placement in the room with the giant Taken orb and flying debris hazards.
• Vow of the Disciple
  • Adjusted some visual effects in the final encounter to mitigate some photosensitivity concerns.

FREE ROAM

• Fixed an issue that could cause players to crash after The Arsenal Walker public event.
• Fixed an issue where a loud volume spike could occur when exiting the Fynch vendor screen on Throne World.

UI/UX

GENERAL

• Fixed an issue where players had to spam click to give commendations to other players that left their activity.
• Fixed an issue where direct launching a quest from the Quest Details screen wouldn't always launch players to the landing zone closest to the objective.
• Fixed an issue where the Dawning emblem icon displayed no background.
• Fixed an issue where the Legacy button on the Character Select screen was not working.
• Fixed an issue where Iron Banner Legacy ornaments were missing a reward acquire sound.
• Fixed an issue where the Stasis subclass category icons at the Exo Stranger/Elsie vendor were using Void iconography.
• Fixed an issue where the icons for the Trials Auto Rifle, Strike Grenade Launcher, and dungeon Pulse Rifle Relentless were facing the incorrect way.
• Fixed an issue where the icon for the Warlock Guardian Games class item was not accurately representing the armor art.

FIRETEAM FINDER

• Reduced the size of the Fireteam Finder banner in the Roster screen.
• Added an animation to a Listing when successfully submitting an application.
• Improved notifications for applications and join requests to Roster contacts when the players don’t own the required game content.
• Players will now be able to see all players that are included in an application to help make a more informed decision on applying or joining Listings.
• Improved the way Listing Settings and Filters are stored for quicker Listing creation.
• Fixed an issue where pressing Reset in the Join Settings Filter screen did not reset options.
• Fixed an issue where a random Select button appeared in the Fireteam Finder application screen.
• Fixed an issue where spamming buttons could load an empty Activity screen.
• Fixed an issue where the wrong selection screen appeared in Fireteam Finder when using the Activity Launch screen while already in a Fireteam.
• Fixed an issue where the Accept Application pop up would shift when attempting to Accept Applications.

LOCALIZATION

• Fixed issues with text overlaps and alignment for various languages in The Guardian Oath screen.
• Fixed font issues for some languages in the Summon Fireteam button.

GAMEPLAY AND INVESTMENT

ARMOR

• Extended the handling bonus granted by Lucky Pant's Illegally Modded Holster buff by 2 seconds so that it lasts until the Out of Luck debuff is activated.
• Fixed an issue where a visual bump would occur when Overload Artifact perks were triggered.
• Fixed an issue where weapons that can change their element type were benefitting from multiple surge bonuses at once.
• Fixed an issue where the intrinsic perk Warlord's Sigil used an incorrect term for Freeze.

WEAPON ARCHETYPES

• Auto Rifles
  • Precisions
    • Reduced base damage by 5%.
• Hand Cannons
  • Precisions
    • Increased base damage by 6%.
  • Adaptives
    • Increased body shot damage by 1% and critical hit damage by 4%.
    • Improved the stats of Luna's Howl and Midnight Coup.
• Pulse Rifles
  • Rapid-Fires
    • Increased body shot damage by 3.5% and critical hit damage by 1%.
  • Lightweights
    • Increased body shot damage by 6% and critical hit damage by 3%.
  • Adaptives
    • Increased body shot damage by 5% and critical hit damage by 2%.
  • Aggressives
    • Improved the stats of Blast Furnace.
• Scout Rifles
  • Rapid-Fires
    • Increased base damage by 2%.
• Submachine Guns
  • Lightweights
    • Improved the stats of Recluse.
• Bows
  • Lightweights
    • Increased base damage by 6%.
      • Le Monarque and Wish-Ender are not affected in this change.
• Shotguns
  • Precisions
    • Corrected a rounding issue that was causing Precision Shotguns to require one extra pellet to kill max-resilience Guardians.
• Breech Grenade Launchers
  • Increased direct impact damage by 40%.
    • This works out to be roughly a 15% overall damage buff, though total damage varies depending on the blast radius stat.
  • Reduced Disorienting Grenade radius for both damage and the disorientation effect by 15%.
  • Increased The Mountaintop's PvE damage to make it competitive with other Breech-Loaded Grenade Launchers.
  • Reverted a change from Season 12 that made The Mountaintop less accurate while airborne.
• Heavy Grenade Launchers
  • Increased the stats of Edge Transit.

EXOTICS

• Updated perk descriptions to include subclass verbs for the following weapons (these weapons already had this functionality, but it just wasn’t explained in the perk descriptions):
  • Sunshot, Polaris Lance, One Thousand Voices, and Leviathan's Breath.
• Whisper of the Worm
  • Increased total ammunition from 18 to 24 (before reserves mods).
• One Thousand Voices
  • Increased total ammunition from 7 to 11 (before reserves mods).
• Quicksilver Storm
  • Increased the shots needed to trigger rockets by 50%.
  • Reduced grenade area-of-effect damage vs. combatants by 37.5%.
• The Last Word
  • Increased base damage by 6%.
• Forerunner
  • Increased base damage by 6%.

PERKS

• Reintroducing Dares of Eternity weapon perks that were previously removed. These can now roll on new drops or be added to shaped versions of the weapon.
• Master of Arms
  • Reduced damage bonus from 20% to 15%.
• Magnificent Howl
  • Precision final blows grant stacks, and reloading converts the stacks into Magnificent Howl rounds that deal greatly increased damage and have additional range. Getting a precision kill with a Magnificent Howl active converts an additional round.
• Micro-Missile
  • Redesigned this perk to be a weapon intrinsic. It’s rebuilt to do less direct damage vs. players, but with dramatically more self-physics impulse.
  • Retuned its PvE damage to be competitive with other Breech-Loaded Grenade Launchers.
  • Increased its reload speed slightly.
  • Since this is now an intrinsic on The Mountaintop, Micro-Missile has been replaced with Rampage in the first trait slot on old versions of the weapon.
• Permeability
  • Fixed an issue where this perk was causing the The Slammer Sword to get stuck on the Strand damage type.
• Omolon
  • Fixed an issue where overflowing the magazine could break the Omolon origin perk.
• Deconstruct
  • Deconstruct will no longer activate on Scorch, Threadling, Stasis Shatter, and Jolt damage.
• Slice
  • Fixed an issue that could cause Slice to lose stacks when shooting an enemy with a weapon that has a rapid rate of fire.
• Headstone
  • Fixed an issue where Headstone's cooldown was using the wrong icon. Headstone now uses the standard cooldown icon instead of a Stasis buff icon.

CRUCIBLE ONLY CHANGES

• Reduced flinch taken by all Primary weapons by 15%.
• Sunshot
  • Increased precision damage by 11%.
• Wish-Ender
  • Reduced base damage by 5%.
• Forerunner
  • Removed the critical hit damage bonus that was supposed to be just for Primary ammo sidearms, and replaced that with the 6% global base damage bonus.
• Corrected several weapons getting the wrong ammo amounts from either the Special ammo crates or meter systems, including Buried Bloodlines and some Fusion Rifles.

OTHER FIXES

• Fixed an issue where reprised Dreaming City weapons could not obtain the Rare shader Burnished Dreams or the Legendary shader Blueshift Dreams.
• Improved the chance a player will obtain the Burnished Dreams shader when dismantling a weapon with the shader.
• Improved the likelihood of Blueshift Dreams appearing on Dreaming City weapons.
• Fixed an issue where the Last Rite Scout Rifle had an incorrect appearance.
• Fixed an issue where the Xenology quest incorrectly stated that having an Exotic cipher would prevent rewarding another, despite the player being eligible.
• Fixed an issue where Word of Crota was using the incorrect stat group.
• Fixed a photosensitivity issue with Outbreak Perfected.
• Fixed an issue where Mountaintop and Jotuun's hip-fire reticles were not centered.
• Fixed an issue with Vengeful Whisper where an arrow was visible when holstered and stored on the players back.
• Fixed an issue where the updated Dreaming City weapons were not appearing in Collections.
•  Fixed an issue where notifications specific to The Coil could appear in Riven's Lair.

ABILITIES

• Reduced the cost of Strand fragments at the Pouka Pond from 200 Strand Meditations to 100 Strand Meditations.
•  Fixed an issue where Overload or Antibarrier capabilities granted through artifact mods or subclass keywords could reduce ignition damage created by some weapons.

BOUNTIES AND PURSUITS

• Fixed an issue where completing the 2023 Moments of Triumph title did not count towards the appropriate Guardian Rank objectives.

GENERAL

• Fixed an issue where Dares and Wellspring Fireteam Finders would try to launch the Salvage activity.
• Fixed a visual issue causing the Chill Out finisher effects to persist after the finisher ends.
• Fixed an issue that was causing the Ascendant Realm sky to block out the Dreaming City skybox in certain areas.
• Fixed an issue where players could regenerate Skimmer energy in midair by re-summoning their Skimmer.

Destiny 2 is one of the best Xbox games and best PC games for fans of multiplayer and looter shooters, and The Final Shape — the final expansion in the Light and Darkness Saga — looks to be the biggest DLC that Bungie's popular live service game has ever gotten.