Destiny 2's Season of the Haunted launched alongside a new patrol zone in the form of the derelict Leviathan, Calus' ship where vanilla Raids used to take place before they became part of the Destiny Content Vault. This time, the Leviathan is located on the Moon because Calus wants to merge his consciousness with the Pyramid ship found deep within the depths of the Earth's satellite, which is causing mayhem due to the Nightmares' presence being reinforced. In this context, Bungie released the new Duality Dungeon as part of Destiny 2's The Witch Queen Deluxe Edition, with the expressed intent of players being able to study Calus' mind and steal his thoughts, getting a better understanding of his plans.
Both narratively and from a gameplay standpoint, Duality is likely one of the best Dungeons Destiny 2 has ever seen to date. However, the Dungeon falls short due to a specific issue with loot not being rewarded based on players' time investment, as the loot pool comprises a mix of weapons and armor pieces with the latter seemingly weighted more heavily. This can easily cause players to get no weapons, or even just one out of every run, especially considering how the loot pool is divided and how many encounters there are. This farming system is unfortunately reminiscent of the situation around Destiny's Lost Sectors.
Why Destiny 2's Duality Loot System is Flawed
Because Destiny 2 players only get one item per-encounter and two items on the final boss, a lot of Duality runs can end up in frustration over the loot being mainly armor pieces, which are seemingly favored. Some of the best new weapons from Duality are also gated behind different encounters, which makes target-farming them via checkpoints less effective unless the encounter is the final one, where two items drop at random from the whole pool of possibilities.
The fact that armor piece drops seem to be more common is just the icing on the cake when it comes to Season of the Haunted's craftable weapons, as two of them come from Duality and require five Deepsight patterns each to unlock. These guns are The Epicurean and Fixed Odds, which are part of the set of six Opulent weapons reissued for Season of the Haunted. However, these two are not available from Nightmare Containment runs or from Opulent Chests, and they cannot be focused at the H.E.L.M. for Opulent Umbral Energy. This means players who want to get all five Deepsight patterns for each of these weapons need to constantly and consistently farm Duality in the hope that these very rare patterns drop when weapons themselves are quite rare.
These layers of RNG are heavily reminiscent of Destiny 2's Lost Sectors, which are supposed to drop an Exotic item at a 25 percent chance for Legend runs and 50 percent for Master runs. However, it's possible that players go multiple runs in a row with no Exotic drop, and when they do drop there is twofold RNG for the item to be the one that players need, and for the stat distribution to be at least decent. Similarly, obtaining just good weapons - or even something worse like Deepsight patterns for The Epicurean and Fixed Odds specifically - can be quite a slog and take the fun away from running Duality.
Destiny 2 is available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
