Destiny 2 Into The Light To Add Raid Boss-Rush Mode, Skippable New-Player Onboarding

Destiny 2‘s upcoming Into the Light free content drop is getting another new activity for players to take on with their teams: a boss-rush mode called Pantheon.

Bungie revealed a few details about the new mode, along with information about returning Exotic missions, during its final livestream detailing what to expect from Into the Light, which releases on April 9. In Pantheon you’ll “face grueling raid bosses in a weekly challenge escalating difficulty and rewards,” according to Bungie. That sounds like it’ll include a rotating list of bosses, and you’ll be able to take them on either with a team you form or one you get from Destiny 2’s looking for group feature, Fireteam Finder. That last bit suggests that, like raids, you won’t be able to publicly matchmake into Pantheon, likely because it’ll be too tough with random teammates.

What isn’t clear, at least right now, is where those bosses will be sourced from–whether they’ll be bosses from currently available raids or include those we’ve seen in raids that are no longer in the game, like Leviathan, Scourge of the Past, or Crown of Sorrow. GameSpot has reached out to Bungie for clarification and will update this story when we have more information.

As for rewards, the livestream suggested you’ll be able to pull some high-quality and even extremely rare items from Pantheon, including rewards you might have missed in the past. Bungie mentioned Exotics, adept weapons, and “emblems you might not have gotten your hands on,” which makes it sound like you’ll have access to raid-specific rewards. That could also include rewards from old raids, giving players a chance to get some weapons and emblems that haven’t been available since before the release of the Beyond Light expansion in 2020.

Bungie said it’ll release more information about Pantheon in an upcoming This Week at Destiny blog post, which is likely to answer these lingering questions, but we don’t know exactly when those answers will come. We do know that the Pantheon activity will be available on April 30, three weeks after the launch of Into the Light–so you’ll have some time to gear up for it.

Into the Light is also bringing a few other changes to how Destiny 2 works, which Bungie announced alongside the Pantheon mode details. A big one for players joining the game for Into the Light ahead of Destiny 2’s next big expansion, The Final Shape, is a change to the new-player onboarding process, known as New Light.

Currently, new players can work through the New Light storyline in order to learn the ropes of Destiny 2 and unlock character subclasses and a few Exotic weapons and armor. Into the Light will give you the option to skip New Light when you join the game, and instead go directly to the “front lines.”

When you choose to skip New Light, you’ll be able to unlock a character subclass and go directly to Into the Light’s new social space, the Hall of Heroes, where you can pick up the Gift of the Thunder Gods, a chest full of high-level armor and the Exotic machine gun Thunderlord, which will instantly bring your character up to the soft level cap. At that point, you’ll be in fighting shape for most of the new Into the Light content.

With Pantheon releasing a few weeks later, it seems likely the level for that content will be closer to the hard level cap, so new players will still need to grind Pinnacle rewards in order to boost their strength to take on the new high-level activity.

Finally, Bungie announced that Into the Light is getting its own Triumph seal, which players can earn ahead of the release of The Final Shape. Earning all of the seal’s Triumphs will get you a new title: Brave.

Bungie might be done with Into the Light livestreams, but there’s one more stream coming soon, which will cover gameplay in The Final Shape. That stream is slated for 9:30 AM PT / 12:30 PM ET on April 7 on Bungie’s Twitch channel and on YouTube.