Bungie's Star Wars-themed expansion arrives December 2, 2025. It brings a complete overhaul to how players earn rewards, a generous incentive package for lapsed Guardians, and balance changes hitting 20 exotic weapons.
What's Coming in Renegades
Destiny 2: Renegades is the franchise's first fully licensed crossover with Lucasfilm's Star Wars universe. The expansion adds the Lawless Frontier activity, the Tharsis Outpost social hub, and Star Wars-inspired weaponry including the Praxic Blade (Destiny's version of the Lightsaber).
The bigger story is what's changing under the hood. Bungie is replacing the entire bounty system with a new feature called Orders, while also pushing out substantial weapon balance adjustments across exotic and legendary gear.
This expansion follows months of course correction. Leading up to Renegades, Bungie removed the unpopular Unstable Cores infusion currency, eliminated seasonal Power resets between expansions, and reworked multiple Edge of Fate systems after community pushback.
Orders System Replaces Bounties
No More Vendor Runs
Orders fix longstanding frustrations with the bounty grind. Instead of visiting vendors, manually picking up tasks, and constantly swapping loadouts, players receive Orders automatically when they log in.
The system adapts to playstyle. Most Common Orders match whatever weapon type or subclass is currently equipped. Running a hand cannon with a Solar build? The game generates Orders that fit that loadout. Bungie says this cuts down on the loadout swapping and activity hopping that plagued the old system.
Orders appear on the Portal main screen and in the new Overview tab within the Seasonal Hub. The Overview tab also displays daily and weekly objectives alongside weekly rewards.
Three Tiers of Orders
Orders come in three tiers with escalating rewards:
Common Orders are the baseline. These objectives appear most frequently and adapt to current gameplay.
Legendary Orders offer better rewards than Common tier.
Exotic Orders deliver the best loot plus Bright Dust bonuses.
Completing an Order grants another Order and a matching reward called a Payout. There's also a progression mechanic where finishing an Order can upgrade it to a higher tier. The Overview page displays an upgrade meter tracking these chances.
Rerolling and Fireteam Progress
Players can spend Glimmer to reroll unwanted Orders for a random replacement of the same tier. The reroll cost increases with each use but drops back toward the base amount as Common Orders get completed.
Fireteam play gets a nice benefit here. Progress on most Common Orders is shared across the squad, so teammates aren't competing for kills or objectives anymore. In Crucible, matches automatically complete several Orders at the end of each game regardless of specific kill conditions.
Bright Dust Changes
Orders become a primary source of Bright Dust, replacing the old Seasonal Challenges method. Weekly and seasonal caps are:
- Weekly: Up to 1,000 Bright Dust
- Seasonal: Up to 6,000 Bright Dust
Payouts by tier:
| Payout Tier | Category | Bright Dust (Under Limit) | Bright Dust (Over Limit) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common | Weekly | 10 | 0 |
| Legendary | Weekly | 100 | 10 |
| Exotic | Seasonal | 200 | 30 |
Bounties Aren't Completely Gone
Most vendors stop offering bounties after Renegades launches. Banshee, Failsafe, and Devrim are done with the bounty business. Petra Venj and Variks still provide daily and weekly bounties tied to their specific activities.
Returning Player Bonuses
Bungie is rolling out substantial incentives for lapsed players jumping back in with Renegades.
Who Qualifies
Players are automatically flagged as Returners when the expansion launches if they either didn't sign in during Season 27 (Edge of Fate) or didn't earn 30 ranks that season. No action required. The game handles it automatically.
Returner's Boon
Qualifying players receive Returner's Boon, which includes:
Six-Month XP Boost: Bonus XP across all activities for six months.
Returner's Gift Packages: Completing Orders grants Returner's Gift rewards (up to 10 per week, 30 total). The reward pool contains 30 unique items including enhancement materials, Tier 3 and Tier 4 gear, Exotic Engrams, 1,000 Bright Dust, an Iridescent Engram that rolls a random Eververse item not already owned, and the Tower Pamphlet emblem.
Benefits for Active Players
Players who didn't take a break can still cash in. Partying up with a Returner who has the Boon active grants Returner's Blessing for that session. This temporary buff provides bonus XP, a chance for Bonus Portal Engram drops, a chance for an exclusive emblem drop, and auto-completion progress on Common Orders.
Exotic Weapon Changes
Renegades includes balance adjustments to 20 exotics. Most changes favor PvE performance.
Primary Exotics
Ace of Spades gets a significant PvE buff. Memento Mori's damage bonus jumps from 18% to 30%. Firefly's maximum damage increases from 65 to 100 (minimum goes from 0 to 20), the area of effect expands from 6m to 7.5m, and damage falloff now starts at 50% of the AoE size instead of 30%.
Hawkmoon now gains a PvE damage bonus per stack of Paracausal Charge, maxing out at 70% at 8 stacks. This doesn't apply to the final Paracausal Shot.
Osteo Striga becomes more aggressive with the poison burst cooldown on final blows dropping from 4 seconds to 2.
Suros Regime gets a major quality-of-life change. Special reload now lets players swap between Spinning Up and Dual-Speed Receiver at will. New hip-fire reticle elements indicate the active mode. Spinning Up kills grant bonus Special ammo progress while Dual-Speed Receiver kills while ADS grant bonus Heavy ammo progress.
Revision Zero's Hunter's Trace rounds now create a small damaging shockwave on impact and apply the Exhaust debuff.
Touch of Malice becomes more sustainable with increased healing from the intrinsic perk, fewer kills needed to trigger healing in PvE, and Charged with Blight now fires the healing impulse.
Collective Obligation gains passive debuff application. A slow leech effect applies debuffs off unaffected targets (approximately one full mag of hits per debuff) in order: Volatile, Weaken, then Suppression. Leech mode charges at the same rate.
Symmetry receives multiple improvements. It now builds Bolt Charge with more than 1 stack of Dynamic Charge in alt fire mode, grants more stacks above 10x Dynamic Charge, can spend Bolt Charge with more than 1 stack in alt fire, and gets a 20-point base reload stat increase.
Special Exotics
Still Hunt gives Hunters a big damage buff: Golden Gun damage increases 40% when using Celestial Nighthawk, and Sniper's Meditation can now buff Golden Gun shots.
Witherhoard's Silent Alarm auto-load time drops from 3.5 seconds to 2.
Duality receives a 6% reduction to hip fire spread.
The Chaperone now uses the Rapid-Fire Slug frame damage and rate of fire profile.
Ruinous Effigy's catalyst now grants a 30% damage buff to the Trace Rifle (15% in PvP) when killing anything with the Transmutation Orb or damaging a miniboss/boss/Champion with one.
Izanagi's Burden has Special Reload scaling with reload speed stat again.
Tessellation gets extensive changes. Property: Undecidable now grants 2.5% light and dark Transcendence energy on final blows plus bonus Transcendence time. Property: Irreducible gives special reload shots 25% more damage during Transcendence, special reload now pulls from reserves, and players can special reload at zero ammo. The catalyst boosts applied Scorch stacks from 15(+5) to 70(+10) and Slow stacks from 30 to 80, with near-immediate subclass keyword application.
Heavy Exotics
Deathbringer gets tighter secondary cluster munition spread.
Black Talon's heavy attack now suppresses targets on hit. If the target is already suppressed, the effect spreads to nearby enemies. The catalyst grants 10% damage boost per void debuff on target for 2 seconds, reduces heavy attack cost from 4 to 3 ammo, adds Duelist's Trance, and increases max reserve ammo.
Deterministic Chaos gains a new effect: releasing the trigger after a Vexadecimal projectile pulls 12 rounds into the magazine from reserves.
Worldline Zero receives major fixes and buffs. Tesseract was only hitting one damage instance instead of five (now fixed). Damage instances increase from 5 to 7 (roughly 40% more damage), time between instances drops from 0.66s to 0.44s, and chained Tesseract blinks now cost 10% Sword energy instead of 20%.
Wolfsbane gets across-the-board improvements: light attack damage up 8.5%, nano assault duration extended from 10s to 12s, Swarm-nado damage up roughly 20%, Axe Handle damage resistance up about 5% per handle with linger time extended from 3s to 5s, and Subroutine: Recursion's extra nanites cooldown reduced from 5s to 2s.
Weapon Archetype Changes
Several weapon categories receive tuning adjustments.
Sidearms
Bungie altered firing animations for certain long-barreled Sidearms to reduce reticle hiding duration. Affected weapons include Heliocentric, Faustus Decline, Compact Defender, and older Sidearms with silencers or extended barrels.
Submachine Guns
Stability increases 10% on controller. Lightweight frame ADS Damage Falloff Scalar goes from 1.4 to 1.45.
Pulse Rifles
Rapid-Fire frame base damage increases from 15 to 15.5, crit damage from 27.75 to 27.9.
Bows
Recurve Bows get faster draw times: base drops from 580 to 567, High Tension String from 620 to 600. Compound Bows see similar adjustments: base from 684 to 667, High Tension String from 720 to 700, Elastic String from 612 to 600.
Fusion Rifles
Charge times are rescaled across all frames. Rapid-Fire goes from 500 to 533, Adaptive and Aggressive from 660 to 667, Precision from 780 to 800, High-Impact from 960 to 967. PvE damage bonuses increase significantly: Precision/Adaptive/Aggressive jump from 2.5% to 6.7%, High-Impact from 6.7% to 15%.
Shotguns
Rapid-Fire frame adds a 2.5% PvE damage bonus and increased ammo per brick (3 to 4 base, 6 to 8 enhanced). Lightweight frame damage per pellet increases from 22 to 23 with PvE bonus going from 12.5% to 15%. Precision Pellet PvE bonus rises from 12.5% to 15%. Aggressive frame damage per pellet increases from 26.7 to 28 with PvE bonus jumping from 12.5% to 20%.
Slug Shotguns
Aim Assist cone size is reduced 1% at low stat values and 3% at high values. RPM displays are corrected (visual only). Rapid-Fire Slugs get PvE bonus increased from 8.3% to 11% with an Assault Mag RPM bug fixed. Pinpoint Slugs take a 6% PvP damage decrease but gain ADS Damage Falloff Scalar increase from 1.2 to 1.25. Heavy Burst Slugs get ADS Damage Falloff Scalar up to 1.3 and major ammo economy buffs (3 to 6 base, 6 to 12 enhanced per brick).
Sniper Rifles
Flinch received from players drops 40%.
Rocket Pulse Rifles
Base reserve ammo reduced from 18 to 14. Enhanced ammo per brick in PvE reduced from 6 to 5.
Swords
Empty Sword swing damage is reduced and no longer scales with melee buffs. Bungie also fixed an issue where Ascension was activating Sword perks.
Weapon Perk Changes
Rangefinder now also provides +10 range while ADS.
Rampage only loses one stack when the timer expires instead of all stacks. This includes Huckleberry.
Box Breathing now provides a flat 40% precision damage buff for existing weapon types (30% for new Heavy Snipers). This works out to roughly 10% more for existing Snipers and LFRs, with Scout Rifles taking a small nerf.
Shot Swap gets major improvements. Ready speed multiplier improves from 0.75 to 0.7 (0.70 to 0.65 enhanced), stow speed from 0.90 to 0.7 (0.85 to 0.65 enhanced). Players now only lose one charge on stow instead of two per swap cycle. Max charges drop from 8 to 6, but this is effectively a buff: 6 swaps at 6 charges versus the old 4 swaps at 8 charges. The Sturm catalyst receives matching adjustments.
Sleight of Hand duration increases to 7 seconds (7.5 enhanced). The buff no longer requires swapping within 5 seconds of a kill. Instead it activates on the next swap regardless of time elapsed. A timer now appears on the HUD buff.
Bray Legacy gains from rocket launchers increase from 10% to 17% per rocket. Explosions from perks and Gjallarhorn micro-missiles no longer trigger it.
Veist Stinger now works on Veist Fusion Rifles and Shotguns (previously bugged).
Bewildering Burst Disorient duration against players increases from 0.5s to 1.0s (0.7s to 1.25s enhanced).
Shield Disorient, Photoinhibition, Disorienting Grenades, and Concussion Grenades now properly apply Disorient to bosses.
Launch Details
Destiny 2: Renegades launches December 2, 2025. The Orders system, returning player incentives, and all weapon balance changes go live with the expansion.
