21 Destiny Bounties We’d Love To Play

As I discussed in this accompanying article, Destiny is at increasing risk for alienating its solo players, who desire more activities to engage in at or near level-cap. One possible solution is for Bungie to more fully embrace its existing bounty system, providing new storytelling and gameplay for both solo and group players, but without having to invent an entirely new mechanic. Bounties are flexible tools for getting players to engage with the game in novel ways, and additional bounty options would provide activities for those who, for whatever reason, might not want or be able to play new activities like Prison of Elders or Trials of Osiris. To illustrate the potential, we’ve pulled together 21 new (and totally fanciful) bounties we’d be excited to see implemented in the game.

My suggested bounties ignore dilemmas like memory requirements on last-gen systems. That’s the convenient part about getting to recklessly suggest ideas rather than tackling the wildly challenging work of making it function in the game. Nonetheless, I’ve geared these suggested quests to showcase the opportunity for new activities across Destiny’s play space, in most cases repackaging existing activities with renewed focus on story and novel approaches to the content. Many of these suggestions would allow for solo or group completion, plug holes in existing game economy or storage issues, or allow for alternate (but not necessarily faster or easier) paths to level cap. 

Faction Warfare

Each of the three factions (Dead Orbit, Future War Cult, and New Monarchy) are actively competing, and the de facto battlefield is the Crucible. Players can take a bounty from any one of the three faction chiefs, and by wearing that faction’s class items during PvP matches, their victories contribute to a running weekly total. If your faction wins at the end of the week, you are given a buff to your Crucible XP in the following week.

Platforming For The Cryptarch

The Cryptarch desires scans of various pre-Collapse artifacts that are too large to bring back to the Tower. The bounty sends you to multiple remote and challenging-to-reach locations throughout the solar system, some of which require careful platforming skills to ascend. In return, the Cryptarch will exchange any one blue engram for a purple of the same item type. This quest encourages exploration-oriented players to indulge in challenging jumps and climbs, and provides a path for a player to acquire a legendary item in a much needed slot.

Tales of the Exotics

In addition to his selection of exotic items, Xur provides new bounties that offer additional narrative detail about individual exotic weapons already in your inventory. For instance, one bounty might task you with completing several Hive missions using Bad Juju to kill specific targets, in order to learn more about its original owner, the warlock named Toland. Complete the bounty, and not only are you provided with some new Toland-specific narrations that trigger as you complete bounty steps, but upon completion, Xur gives you a free exotic shard, which can be used to ascend Bad Juju or any other exotic. 

Comprehensive Crucible Warrior

The Crucible Handler wants you to prove yourself as a well-rounded warrior. This bounty demands you play and win battles in all of the different Crucible game types. Win 10 matches of each, and you get an exclusive Crucible class item.

[Next Page: The return of the Stranger, and the introduction of time trials]

Return of the Stranger

Your Guardian receives a new piece of mail from the Postmaster, and it’s from the enigmatic Stranger we met during the base game story. The Stranger (who has been strongly hinted to be a time traveler) is worried that the Vex are manipulating the time stream again, giving renewed strength to the enemies we’ve fought before. You must fight back through the game’s original story missions, this time at a higher level and with the Heroic modifier and other conditional modifiers active. Succeed, and gain a legendary version of the Stranger’s Rifle. 

The Gunsmith’s Solo Challenge

The Gunsmith (Banshee-44) wants your Guardian to prove their ability to stand alone against the Darkness. Each week he offers a new bounty to tackle a solo run at that week’s nightfall strike. Success provides a particular legendary elemental weapon that matches up to that week’s designated burn (arc, solar, or void). 

History of the Orders

The Speaker wishes to teach Guardians about the history of the Warlock, Titan, and Hunter orders. Each class can take a bounty from him that requires engaging in battle or visiting important sites in the order’s history, from PvP battles at Twilight Gap in the Crucible, to descending into the Hellmouth on the moon. Complete the bounty to get an exclusive class item, and learn more about your class’ history.

Time Trials

The Bounty Tracker robot offers new time trial bounties for individual missions or strikes. Your XP reward is based on how fast you complete the mission. For instance, perhaps a 20-minute completion gets you 3000 XP, but a 7-minute completion provides 10,000 XP. 

Class Action

From time to time, The Dark Below’s Eris Morn provides bounties for specific classes, like requiring a Titan to kill a Hive Wizard with a shoulder charge. In a set of new bounties that expands upon that idea, each week the three class vanguard mentors provide their own series of class-specific action bounties to undertake. Complete them all in a given week, and you get one piece of new legendary armor without the need to spend Marks, or get the chance to ascend one already purchased class armor piece to level cap, much like if you used an etheric light.  

Extreme Sparrow 

Xur is inexplicably fascinated by your Sparrow and the tricks it can do. In addition to selling exotic items on the weekend, he also offers bounties for completing a series of tricks with your sparrow. Complete all the tricks, and you get a new exclusive item that can give the abilities of the Tumbler sparrow to any other sparrow.

[Next Page: New shaders and ships, and the legend of the Reef Wars]

The Ongoing Dead Ghost Hunt

Tess, the special orders broker, is willing to provide access to several newly colored ghost shells, but players must first track down and scan a new batch of dead ghosts hidden around the world. Different sets of dead ghosts lead to different new ghost skins. 

Eva’s New Colors

Guardian Outfitter Eva Levante is looking to experiment with some new shader colors, but needs quantities of Sapphire Wire, Hadronic Essence, and Plasteel Plating (the three class upgrade materials) to complete her work, along with several special objects gained by killing various enemies in the field, from Vex Goblins to Cabal Legionaries. By providing these materials to her, Guardians have a place to funnel their excess class upgrade materials (for some players, they now have hundreds of extras). In return for quest completion, the Guardian gets one of several new exclusive shaders. 

Jumpship Construction

Shipwright Amanda Holliday would like to build you a new ship, but she needs pieces from other rare or better ships to complete the project, along with challenging, close-up ghost scans of alien vehicles, like a scan of a functioning Fallen tank, or the weapons on a Cabal Harvester drop ship as they fire. Turn in scans along with two rare or legendary ships to Amanda to acquire the new ship. This bounty provides something useful for players to do with repeat ships acquired during play, rather than simply dismantling them without any reward.

The Legend of the Reef Wars

In addition to Fallen target bounties, Petra Venj wishes to share the history of the Reef Wars between the Awoken and Fallen forces. This quest line tasks the guardian with taking out large numbers of specific Fallen enemies with particular kill methods (dregs with grenades, vandals with headshots, etc.). Complete the full series to learn more about the Reef’s history, and to gain an etheric light. 

Missing Osiris

Brother Vance wants to share more information about his order’s founder, Osiris. But first he must learn to trust you. Defeat guardians in the Crucible while wearing a new Oriris-themed class item that he provides, and in return he tells you more about Osiris, and also provides either an etheric light, or a new exclusive Trials supply item that can be used to clear an existing loss from your one of your Trials passages. Repeatable weekly.

Elemental Vanguard

The Vanguard Quartermaster needs more materials to provide to other Guardians. Use one of the vanguard primary weapons (like Shadow Price or One/One Synesthete) to kill 1000 enemy targets. Then return the gun along with 50 pieces of Spinmetal, Helium Filaments, Spirit Bloom, and Relic Iron, and he will transform the weapon to provide an elemental property (instead of kinetic damage). This bounty serves as an outlet for players overwhelmed by vast quantities of unneeded resources, and also offers guardians a path to elemental primaries other than raids, Trials, or Prison of Elders.

[Next Page: An expansion for your glimmer and vault space, and a new exotic weapon bounty]

Oryx and Glimmer

While we don’t know for sure when Oryx will become a more important part of the story, the game contains plenty of hints that he’s still out there somewhere. Eris Morn could help us learn more about the Hive god through a new quest line that involves repeating some of the Oryx-related quests (and perhaps the Crota’s End raid) with new conditional modifiers applied to the missions, like Void Burn or Lightswitch active. Completion of the multi-step bounty would offer more story details about Oryx, and in thanks for hearing her story, Eris would gift the Guardian with a higher glimmer carry capacity – a desperately requested feature by many players.

Triple Guardian Exotic

Master Ives, the Reef Cryptarch, requires telemetry on how different guardians use his decoded engrams. This new exotic weapon bounty (which only unlocks if you’re at rank 15 with the cryptarchs or higher) provides you a new legendary weapon that has different perks depending on which Guardian class is using it, and must be used to kill a large number of specific enemies using your different guardians. The weapon (and bounty) can be placed in your vault, and passed to a second and third guardian on your account to complete. When all your guardians have used the weapon to kill the requisite number of enemies, the guardian who turns it in gets a new upgraded exotic that locks the perks specific to their class. The bounty is available even to players who have three of the same class guardians, but is likely more interesting to players who have all three distinct classes. 

Saladin’s Tutelage

The Iron Banner’s Lord Saladin hopes to mentor you as he once tutored Lord Shaxx (the Crucible Handler) and Commander Zavala (the Titan Vanguard). During Iron Banner events, he challenges you to defeat a certain number of your opponents using each of the different weapon types, such as pulse rifles, rocket launchers, and hand cannons. Complete the mission before Iron Banner ends, and you are given a special item that allows you to lock any one perk when reforging an Iron Banner weapon, thus greatly increasing your chance to get the weapon you want. 

Variks’ Plan

Variks requires enormous amounts of special weapon research and ammo synthesis for a nefarious reason he refuses to divulge. After a bounty run demands that you kill a large number of enemies using special ammo, return to Variks and turn in a full 100 stack of special ammo syntheses, and he will provide a treasure key for the Prison of Elders. For anyone who has farmed for keys from Ether chests knows, treasure keys are few and far between, but there’s no end of special ammo synthesis. With this week’s patch, treasure keys should be easier to attain, but this bounty provides a clear outlet to clear some of those special ammo syntheses out of your inventory, as well as an additional guaranteed path to treasure keys for persistent guardians. This bounty is locked to once weekly, to prevent glimmer/ammo synthesis farming exploits.

The Nine Make Contact

A new message arrives for you via the Postmaster, and it is from Xur’s mysterious masters, the Nine. They have taken an interest in your heroics, and wish to aid you for their own enigmatic reasons. They provide a new bounty that requires the collecting of extensive resource materials, undecrypted legendary engrams, and strange coins. Combine them all and feed them into a locked pocket dimension item to awaken the device. Henceforth, that item acts like a bag of holding, allowing players to place 10 items inside, which in turn can be placed inside your own Vault, effectively expanding your vault storage space, even though the pocket dimension only takes up a single space in your Vault.

Several of the above bounties and quest ideas would involve major revisions and additions to existing mechanics, but hopefully they at least illustrate that bounties and quest lines have enormous potential to provide additional in-game activities and more narrative context to the Destiny world. What bounties would you add to Destiny? Share your thoughts in the comments below.