Welcome back to another installment of Destiny news. This time we’re talking about festivities. That’s right it’s the Halloween season and Bungie has rolled out the red carpet for Festival of the Lost. I’m going to be running over the main information you need to know before jumping in and grabbing all that cool gear. To get started visit Eva Levante in the tower near the emblem/shader kiosks to begin your quests.

First off we’re going to talk about quests, because that’s where the event kicks off from. There are multiple quests varying from going into the crucible, taking on the Taken in the Court of Oryx, to running a heroic strike as the speaker. I had a lot of fun performing the various deeds along the way. There is also a special quest involving Eris Morn’s raisins this time around. You can find the details here as well as more courtesy of Reddit.

Now let’s dive into what makes Festival of the Lost, well festive. All three social spaces, Tower, Reef, and Felwinter’s peak have been decorated to celebrate this event. There are candy bags that you can fill by wearing a paper mask and killing enemies, or guardians in the crucible. There are special shaders and emblems that have come with Festival of the Lost to really get your guardian in the festive mood. I found one called Candlelight from opening a Skeleton Hoard chest at the end of a strike. After looking around for verification, you can get this one from any strike hoard chest as all you will need is a skeleton key to open it. There are plenty of masks to be had and worn throughout this event as well as some new weapon skins for the exotic weapon Bad Juju, which look pretty awesome.

Which brings me to my next point, while I have no issues with micro-transactions and vanity items, I do have an issue with locking the majority of it behind pay schemes. As of Rise of Iron’s debut, micro-transactions have been a hot topic and a target of Bungie’s most loyal fan base. Many players have no issue paying for new emotes, special sparrows, even weapon skins, but people do have issue when these micro-transactions begin to invade the regular game where you need a new currency “silver dust” which is locked behind premium loot boxes to purchase things in the game. Many of the cooler masks and new skins for your ghost are locked behind pay walls to acquire and you only get three premium loot boxes (one per character). Not that bad as they are all vanity items, but I wish there were more ways for people to acquire them WITHOUT paying money and hoping RNG (random number generator) gives them what they want.

I cannot say this was a success in my opinion. This Festival of the Lost was a massive step backward to me. Keeping the majority of masks locked behind pay walls is ridiculous and insulting. There should be more avenues to acquire items without paying for it. The only reason I can run around in my cooler masks is because I had them from last year. There are 6 new masks, 2 new ghost shells, one premium mask, and a sparrow (Which is another trick sparrow not an over-boost. Come on Bungie!). Sure I have fun with the festivities, but once I was done with the quests, I couldn’t find the drive to keep going like I did last year. The grind made it fun to get rare masks and materials to make your favorite ones permanent, but this year Bungie replaced the grind with micro-transactions. Yes, there should be some premium content locked behind pay walls, but not the majority. There should be ways for the casual gamer without disposable income to acquire the collectibles. Nothing should be free or simply given, but fair avenues for all to gain.

So while I had fun running around performing tasks and filling my candy satchel, I did not have fun overall. I had more fun just shooting the breeze with some random guys in Archon’s forge with various masks we had on us talking about our favorites and acting out the characters. So personally I cannot say this was successful, despite my earlier comments. These micro-transactions are slowly taking away from the meat of the game and I feel Bungie is in store for a rude awakening when the player base finally says enough is enough. If you have the money and don’t mind spending it, that is ultimately your choice as a consumer. Either way, have fun your way, that’s the whole point of playing games.