How Power works in Destiny 2: The Final Shape

It should come as no big surprise that Destiny 2: The Final Shape is shifting the game’s whole Power Level system around by a fair margin. Broadly, The Final Shape represents a streamlining of Destiny‘s core Power system to make things easier to understand, and it’s extremely promising stuff.

Bungie’s goal for The Final Shape has been to simplify Destiny 2‘s Power system and make it way more flexible than it’s ever been before. Players should therefore find it much easier to keep up with the game without excessive farming, all the while still enjoying the classic Destiny Power grind if they choose to do so. Here’s how it all works!

Destiny 2: The Final Shape’s Power Level explained

“In The Final Shape, playing with friends will be easier than ever, no matter if you play every day, haven’t played in years, or are trying Destiny 2 for the first time,” Bungie promised in a recent blog post. The whole Guardian fireteam will be assigned a Power delta relative to the squad’s Power Leader (i.e. the Guardian with the highest Power level), which will then affect activity difficulty. The given activity’s rewards, on the other hand, will be handed out based on your Guardian’s actual, personal Power level.

Right off the bat, this ensures a level playing field across the board that still allows for personal Power progression for each player. There are many other fascinating tidbits to take into account, however!

On top of using the new Fireteam Power level to dictate a given activity’s difficulty, the new system also means that our old, previously sunset gear and weapons are relevant once again. This is, in all likelihood, the biggest boon for veteran Guardians, though it’s also obviously a point of contention for those of us who might’ve deleted sunset items in the past.

Power Enabled/Power Disabled activities

All the Destiny 2 activities present in The Final Shape will be either Power Enabled or Power Disabled, too. This means that Disabled activities will be freely accessible without any need for targeted Power grinding: “Increasing your Power won’t change the difficulty you experience, and you can’t over-level the enemies in these activities,” Bungie explained.

On the other hand, Enabled activities will come with the usual suite of Power caps allowing Guardians to improve their effectiveness in them through long-term Power grinding: “Enemies will have a set feel for how tough they are even at the cap, but you will notice yourself getting stronger as your Power level grows.”

Here’s the list of new Power-enabled difficulties as of The Final Shape‘s release:

• Standard – 1945 (Vanguard Ops, seasonal activities, Exotic missions, Raids, Dungeons)
• Advanced (Hero) – 1995 (Nightfalls)
• Expert (Legend) – 2005 (Nightfalls, Lost Sectors, seasonal activities, Exotic missions)
• Master – 2010 (Nightfalls, Lost Sectors, Raids, Dungeons)
• Grandmaster – 2020 (Nightfalls)
• Contest Mode – 1965 (Raids)

Auxiliary Power levels in Destiny 2: The Final Shape

As always, Guardians will also have the opportunity to further increase their Power level through auxiliary features, such as the Artifact level. This will remain the same as it’s ever been, from the looks of it, but as Destiny 2‘s seasonal model is changing to accomodate longer seasons and progression systems, so too will the whole thing be slightly slowed down, judging by what Bungie’s said on the matter: “Our goals for the rebalance were that actively engaged players could attain similar Artifact levels achieved by the end of an Episode and that Artifact Power remains a rewarding pursuit throughout,” Bungie explained.

Note, too, that Bungie is introducing the account-wide Power level with The Final Shape, which is essentially a baseline Power level that is applied across all of your different Guardian characters. This makes switching between Guardians way more easy and user-friendly, making cross-character progression that much more valuable for experienced players.

New Power bands for Destiny 2: The Final Shape

On top of all of the exciting changes outlined above, we are still getting a fairly significant Power band boost to bring everyone up to the same competitive level across the board. Here’s the full array of all of The Final Shape‘s Power bands, as announced by Bungie itself:

• Baseline Power floor – 1900
• Soft Power cap – 1940
• Powerful cap – 1990
• Pinnacle cap – 2000

Nice and round numbers there. Provided, of course, you can reach the Pinnacle cap in the first place. The good news in that regard is that the Legendary Mode campaign of The Final Shape should set us up with a full 1960-tier set of gear, thus shortening the grind by a fair margin. Again, though, you gotta be able to wrap up the Legendary Mode campaign in the first place!