‘House of Wolves’ Detailed: Legendary And Exotic Gear Upgrades, Weapon Reforging, New NPCs, Level Caps And More

With the May 19 release date of the next major “Destiny” expansion, “House of Wolves,” Bungie has begun rolling out information on what gamers should expect. Its first livestream broadcast gave fans a tour of the new Reef social space and showed off new features and changes that will benefit those who plan to pick up “House of Wolves” as well as those sticking with the base the game.

The livestream, hosted on the Bungie Twitch channel, opened the floodgates for a ton of news regarding the new expansion. The most notable piece of news to come from the livestream is the fact that gamers, including those who don’t purchase “House of Wolves,” will now be able to upgrade their current legendary and exotic gear, a major improvement over “The Dark Below,” which largely saw these items go to waste.

Naturally, this means that gamers won’t need to actually purchase “House of Wolves” to access the new Vestian Outpost in the Reef. However, only owners of the new DLC will be able to access story content and take on quests. The ability to reforge weapons, however, will be exclusive to the new legendary weapons, which will be introduced in “House of Wolves.” Weapon reforging will be handled by the Gunsmith, making him relevant again. On the subject of levels, the footage shown during the livestream indicates that “House of Wolves” will support light levels of up at least level 34, though it’s not known if this is the actual cap.

In addition to the introduction of new faction vendors with new gear and weapon sets, there’s also a new ship called the Ceres Galliot, which is available from a new NPC vendor called Petra Venj. Petra is also the main outlet for the new story-based missions in “House of Wolves,” while Variks and Vance will handle the raid replacements: “Prison of Elders” and “Trials of Osiris.”

Veteran Guardians will find material exchanges very useful, and Bungie has decided that this will be handled via the Speaker, located in the Tower, which means gamers still have a good reason to visit the old social hub. Exchanges are valued at 1:1 and with the speaker charging 50 Glimmer per trade.

The Bungie blog notes that there are still a couple of week’s worth of new content to divulge in before “House of Wolves” is released on May 19. The studio is planning a live gameplay reveal of “Trials of Osiris” on April 29, and it will reveal the collection of end-game gear Guardians can get their hands on. After that, the studio will reveal the controversial “Prison of the Elders” multiplayer mode on May 6.