Bungie details the very many things being vaulted in Destiny 2 this November

Back in June, Bungie announced it would be retiring older, less actively played content from Destiny 2's live game into a new Destiny Content Vault (DCV) when its Beyond Light expansion launches this November, and now, the developer has revealed exactly what's getting the chop.

As part of its original announcement, Bungie explained it had made the decision to vault less popular content for a number of reasons. After three years of development, it said, Destiny 2 had amassed "nine destinations, 40 story missions, 54 adventures, 42 Lost Sectors, 17 strikes, 31 PvP maps, 12 one-off special activities... seven raids, six Gambit arenas, three dungeons, many, many quests, patrols, public events, and of course thousands of associated rewards. All of that, plus hundreds of game systems which layer on top of that content".

That had lead to an install size of 115GB and growing, which "not only [stresses] harddrive capacity but also push the limits of patching capability [making] the time to generate a stable update for the game after all content is finalised, tested, and ready to go balloon to literal days instead of hours". It also noted some of Destiny 2's content simply "isn't relevant anymore" for many players, citing the fact Warmind's campaign represents only 0.3 per cent of all time played.

Ultimately, it said, the "crushing complexity of our scale" meant the studio faced delays in addressing community feedback, had experienced quality control issues with release builds, and found itself regularly hindered when "trying to make cool new stuff". As such, it had made the decision to begin vaulting older content - starting with destinations Io, Titan, Mars, Mercury, and Leviathan - as part of Beyond Light's launch on 10th November.

Skip ahead to this week, and Bungie has finally detailed exactly what Destiny 2 will look like in November, and the sheer scale of its changes might take some by surprise. The developer says its rule of thumb is "when a destination goes into the DCV, so too do its PvE activities and associated rewards", but expands on that further, noting Destiny 2 will initially lose seven strikes, 11 Crucible maps, seven PvP modes and more.

Here's everything being vaulted in more detail:

Strikes

• The Pyramidion (Io)
• The Festering Core (Io)
• Savathûn's Song  (Titan)
• Strange Terrain (Mars)
• Will of the Thousands (Mars)
• Tree of Probabilities (Mercury)
• A Garden World (Mercury)

Gambit maps

• Cathedral of Scars (Dreaming City)
• Kell's Grave (Tangled Shore)

Crucible maps

• Meltdown
• Solitude
• Retribution
  
• The Citadel
  
• Emperor's Respite
• Equinox
  
• Eternity
 
• Firebase Echo
 
• Gambler's Ruin
  
• Legion's Gulch
 
• Vostok
  

Crucible PvP modes

• Supremacy
  
• Countdown
  
• Lockdown
  
• Breakthrough
  
• Doubles
  
• Momentum Control (returning during Year 4)
• Scorched (returning during Year 4)

Raids

• Leviathan
• Eater of Worlds (Leviathan)
• Spire of Stars (Leviathan)
• Scourge of the Past (Last City)
• Crown of Sorrows (Leviathan)

It's well worth having a read of Bungie's full post, which offers more rationale for its decisions, as well as answering some more specific questions Destiny fans might want to ask ahead of Beyond Light's arrival on 10th November. It's worth noting this looks like a particularly bad deal for those interested in the free-to-play version of Destiny 2, dubbed New Light. Because some of the core Year 1 destinations are entering the Vault, the Red War, Curse of Osiris, and Warmind campaigns will no longer be playable. Those campaigns are seen as crucial onboarding experiences for new Destiny 2 players - and of course are just fun story content. But they're all going away this November.

"We are building a new, expanded Guardian origin story on the Cosmodrome that will launch alongside Year 4 and will be available to all Guardians to play," Bungie said in response. "It is designed to introduce you to the world and mechanics of Destiny and prepare you to play the action MMO game we all enjoy. The Forsaken and Shadowkeep story campaigns will still be playable in Year 4 for owners of those expansions."

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