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"We have made deliberate choices related to cosmetic items and not having them come from gameplay. Gameplay rewards are where you get items, power, mods, perk combinations, stats, triumphs, and titles." -- Luke Smith
Hey everyone,
Recently I made a few posts detailing items that will be made available through Eververse for both Silver and Bright Dust. Generally, I tend to be pretty neutral on how I feel about the store but I've been looking through some of the items a bit more and wanted to make a post that adds a little bit more to the store and how it operates.
The Pattern
Inside the Bungie API you can view all the data about the game, and this includes Tess. Her stock, for some reason, is also included in this API. HERE
Because Tess's whole inventory is available to us we can build a list of ALL new items, then remove any items in the Bright Dust slots. This gives up two new lists: Silver Only and Bright Dust. You can double check all of this through data.destinysets.com in the Categories section for Tess. Unless Bungie changes the items we know what will sell and about when it will sell which gives us some incite into how Eververse works.
Bright Dust Myth
I see a lot of comments about Eververse and how if you see an item you like for Silver then you can just wait until it rolls around for Bright Dust later in the Season. THIS IS NOT TRUE. The game doesn't work this way and hasn't even since Season 1
This page even mentions that "many items from a previous Seasonal Bright Engram will NOT be carried forward into the new Season’s Eververse offerings and may not be available again." and these items are never communicated in game so for you as the player it could be any item. Better buy it now. This is known as the Fear of Missing Out or FOMO and it's used heavily within the store. By not telling the player what is limited, Bungie creates a mystic about all items being limited. And thanks to this rumor, you're more likely to miss out on items because you think they will roll around for Bright Dust later in the season. And when you do miss out on an item (like the Void Ghost Shell from last season) you won't want to miss out again which helps motivate you to buy the next item right away.
Bungie could easily fix this by: Telling the players which items are limited time and for how long, selling all items for Silver and Bright Dust at all times during a season, letting the players know which items are Silver only, or even making a guarantee publicly that ALL items will sell for Bright Dust some point during a season. All of these options would make the store better but they also remove FOMO from your buying decisions.
Silver Only
A LARGE chunk of the new seasonal items are Silver Only items. This is a huge change from last season. You can see the difference HERE
All the remaining items that will sell for Dust (seen HERE
Week 1 we see the Lander Shell and Blood Runner. Week 2 we see Fireteam Fire Up, Great White, Invasive Species, and Lunar Shell. Week 3 we see Refashioned Shapes. That's 7 of the 17 Bright Dust items selling for Silver. Next week Ninja Vanish, Jotuneer, and Ophiuchus Shell get added to that list.
Tons of people bought the Lunar Shell for Silver because it's got great perks and because they didn't know if it would come around again. Same with the other items listed. But the Dust versions come well after the 7 day return on an item (assuming you don't open it right away and use it). Lunar Shell is set up to go on sale 10/22 a full week past the return window if you bought it for Silver in Week 2. Almost all the Bright Dust items work like this!
I believe this adds to the myth stated above when you start to see items that sold for Silver at the beginning of the season come back around for Dust.
Class Specifics
A new change this season is a "smart" store that will only display items that you can use. This means that if you log into the store on your Titan, you will only see Titan Ornaments. This change also propagates to Bright Dust. So during Week 2 when the new Boots where on sale you would only see the Boots for the current class you were on. This was never communicated as a change made to the store (that I could find) and it lead to a situation where tons of players assumed it worked the same was as last season and you could get armor items throughout the season one at a time.
I made a thread about it HERE and you can see there's a lot of comments about players who almost missed out on getting items they want because of this change. But don't worry, Bungie added a handy new "feature" to the store where you can buy Armor at a discount if you already own pieces of it. This, to me, reads as Bungie banking on lots of players missing the first few items, not knowing about the new changes, and buying the rest of the set near the end of the season. A clever little trick where you don't feel so bad spending money because you aren't paying FULL price.
Week 3
In a recent TWAB, Cozmo wrote that "New Eververse items for Season of the Undying will become available for Bright Dust two weeks into the Season". We are currently on Week 3 and the store is no different that is has been in the two weeks prior. So what exactly does this comment mean?
Originally, I thought it would mean that there would be no new items in the Eververse store until Week 3. However, new items sold last week in the Bright Dust Tab
If we take a look at the last three weeks of the Featured Tab we can see something interesting:
The Bright Dust items on the Feature Tab were all old Eververse items for the first two weeks, and on the third week they shifted to all new items. I believe this is what the comment in the TWAB post meant by "New Eververse items for Season of the Undying will become available for Bright Dust two weeks into the Season". The wording is super vague on purpose so that it's still technically correct. But it's pretty scummy.
Duplicates
Every week on Monday I've been going though the Bungie API and compiling what the next weeks Eververse store will be. You can see Week 3 HERE. I usually get pretty close, but this season the items have been jumbled up. Last season they were in order but that changed this time around. With that being said, I compiled the store for Week 4 and it doesn't look so great to me. You can see that HERE
Assuming it's accurate, several items sell for Dust on both the Featured and Bright Dust tab. The Chitin Slate shader, the Shattered Shrieker Transmat Effect, and the Blood Runner Sparrow. Added to this we see the Jungle Viper shader again (it is on sale Week 3). With such a large portion of this seasons items locked behind Silver it's a real slap in the face to see multiple duplicates and repeat items week to week.
Halloween
While digging around in the files I found some Armor Sets
I reached out to some people in the know with the Hash values of some of the Classified bundles in the Bungie API to get more information. THIS
This seems to be why all the armor in the game isn't a Universal Ornament. So Bungie can resell it to you.
For Wei
All Eververse items have a property called "highResIcon" in the Bungie API. This is a link to an image that is used for an item when it is on sale for Silver in the Eververse store. The "For Wei" Ornament, the reward for hitting Season Rank 100, has one of these. You can see it HERE
This is also true of They Had Build
Don't Trust Dataminers
A worry of mine is that this kind of post is going to mean that Tess won't have this data attached to her in future Season, so knowing what is Silver only and what items you can get from Bright Dust will be impossible. Having said that, I feel that Eververse is way more scummy then it needs to be and if that does happen it kind of shows the path Bungie will travel.
DMG has posted that you should not trust datamining. While all the data here is available for you to go through and confirm yourself, there's still doubt on if any of this is true, since Bungie can just go in and change these items whenever they want to. It would be nice to hear from Bungie about Eververse. What items are Silver only? Which items are limited and won't return? The player base would always welcome transparency.
TL;DR
Bungie is intentionally being vague about Eververse to get as much money out of you as possible.
Sources
- Bungie API
- data.destinysets.com
- My Twitter
- Silver Only Items
- Bright Dust Items
- Fall Eververse Changes
- Director's Cut - Part 1
- This Week At Bungie - 9/26/2019