Destiny 2
In the last day, 63% of all activities completed in Destiny 2 have been Forges.
And people sure ain’t running them for Ada-1 frames.
Rather, word has spread like wildfire about a new exploit that allows you farm Umbral Engrams by AFKing in Forges. Some are doing this by lowering their light level so they match only with other AFK farmers, but others aren’t bothering to do that and are sabotaging those who are genuinely trying to run Forges as actual content. Not great.
Well, the party is going to be over at some point. Bungie is (obviously) aware of the exploit and is working on a fix, according to a new DMG tweet:
In my piece yesterday I said that two things are true: that I can’t blame people for using the exploit if it exists, even if I personally feel like it would ruin the actual content of the season if overused, but also it should be patched out and not left as a permanent “easy” button.
The main focus of the AFK Umbral farm seems to be about power level. Players, tired of the 50 power grind and hearing that the new high power level dungeon is at least temporarily going away at the end of the season, are AFK farming to get their power up through Umbrals, which have a chance to be powerful drops when decrypted.
Destiny 2
But the true power of this farm is a lot more than that once you start realizing just how much you can get through the Umbral system alone.
- Yes, you can get the Umbrals themselves, which will rocket your power level up with the farm giving you a dozen drops or more when you wake up in the morning after a night of AFK farming.
- You also get Altered Element, the currency to focus them, making them even more valuable, and then you can start hunting god rolls on seasonal weapons.
- If you unlock Umbral Mastery 1 in the first row, you start getting Twisted Energy to rank up the decoder from every Umbral you decrpyt. While it’s not that much (can’t be more than 2%) you can start ranking up the decoder through sheer volume of Umbrals from your AFK farm, which gives out dozens.
- Umbral Enhancement II in the second row gives you a chance to get exotics from decrypting unfocused Umbral engrams, and it’s a pretty decent chance, maybe 1 in 10, from what I’ve seen. I just got some sick Stompees from doing that last night (not AFK farming, fyi), meaning this is also an exotic farm.
- But wait, there’s still more! If you get enough Twisted Energy to get all the way to the third row of upgrades you unlock Umbral Enhancement III which then gives you a chance at focused, high stat armor drops. So then this also becomes a potential high stat legendary armor farm.
Destiny 2
All in all, you can see why this is more than about just power level. It’s letting players farm an enormous amount of stuff in the game, including some of the most valuable things you can find like exotics and high stat armor, in addition to god roll new weapons.
The bad news is this is why this absolutely, 100% needs to be patched.
The good news is that even without this exploit, Bungie has designed a really fun, rewarding system with Umbrals and one of the best farms the game has seen in a while. It’s not even the end of week one, and over the course of the season, players should be able to farm a ton of Umbrals the “normal” way. I recommend the actual new public event Contact, which is pretty much 1 guaranteed drop per heroic run, or speed running Nightmare hunts which can’t be considered an exploit.
So sure, do the AFK farm for now if you want. I get that it’s tempting and time is limited for players who don’t do this for a living. But understand why yes, it does need to be patched and can’t be left open for the entire season. There’s just too many rewards that can be gotten too quickly, as this is an issue that extend beyond just fast power gains.
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