Don't buy seasons

[Space-Knight Errant]

If you are like me, and don't have the time to play Destiny 2 for 10's of ours per day, but still wanted access to the Season Pass content, such as Season of the Seraph and so on, and you paid the 100$ entry fee to get all seasons and the Witch Queen, but find yourself never being able to complete them, then I am sure you are wondering if you can access previous seasonal content to catch up. The simple answer...

You can't.

The Seasons and season passes are premium live services that appear once, and then are gone forever. If you are new, DO NOT buy the seasons if you do not have the time to put into them. You will literally not get your money's worth. Just by the DLC's standalone. The game cost's enough to buy into already, and as a live service, is rather anti-consumer with such practices, mainly because they can resell seasons later, and pray on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

So I warn you, DO NOT BUY SEASONS IF YOU DO NOT HAVE CONSTANT TIME FOR DESTINY, OR WISH TO DO OTHER ACTIVITIES BESIDES IT.

[headloser]

FOMO i like that spelling out, the fear of missing out. Perfect.

[Kommissar K]

I mean, you can engage in the seasonal content at about 2-5 hours a week for about 6-8 weeks each season. Its not that hard.

[Zaburo]

Or you'r inefficient in taking advantage of everything the game offers in order to advance as much as possible in the season. With barely minimum time investment day/week-ends you can complete a season with no issues.

[Gubtubus Webble]

Originally posted by Nuron, Servant of the Maw:

If you are like me, and don't have the time to play Destiny 2 for 10's of ours per day, but still wanted access to the Season Pass content, such as Season of the Seraph and so on, and you paid the 100$ entry fee to get all seasons and the Witch Queen, but find yourself never being able to complete them, then I am sure you are wondering if you can access previous seasonal content to catch up. The simple answer...

You can't.

The Seasons and season passes are premium live services that appear once, and then are gone forever. If you are new, DO NOT buy the seasons if you do not have the time to put into them. You will literally not get your money's worth. Just by the DLC's standalone. The game cost's enough to buy into already, and as a live service, is rather anti-consumer with such practices, mainly because they can resell seasons later, and pray on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

So I warn you, DO NOT BUY SEASONS IF YOU DO NOT HAVE CONSTANT TIME FOR DESTINY, OR WISH TO DO OTHER ACTIVITIES BESIDES IT.

Imagine not learning this is how destiny has been for 2 years now.

[Nakos]

It's Seasonal Content. Other games use seasonal content too.

Seasonal content typically includes:

• A Vendor (and Bounty provider) in the H.E.L.M.
  
• A short, time gated story, nominally linked to the main campaign story.
  
• One or more (usually more) specialized activities.
  
• Access to the Season Pass holder rewards track on the Season Pass.
  
• A series of time-limited challenges, quests, and triumphs.

You do NOT need to play 10 hours a day to gain benefit from a Season Pass, but you will need some time over a three month period. Depending on your personal abilities, allowing 20+ hours over the course of a 3 month period would probably be wise.

Functionally, a Season Pass basically counts as your Subscription cost.

If you play only sporadically, then no, it might not be a good investment. But if you play even somewhat regularly, then it'll provide some additional activities and rewards for something you were likely to be doing anyway.

Most importantly: Following it's introduction any given Season remains available for play up until the end of a content year, provided you own the Annual pass. This means that S20 content will available for 12 months, S21 for 9 months, S22 for 6 months, and S23 for 3 months. Yes, year end seasons tend to be a bit more streamlined (in the case of S19, or extended in the case of S15 (which lasted 6 months)).

[Lurakin]

Originally posted by DickPays:

Originally posted by Nuron, Servant of the Maw:

If you are like me, and don't have the time to play Destiny 2 for 10's of ours per day, but still wanted access to the Season Pass content, such as Season of the Seraph and so on, and you paid the 100$ entry fee to get all seasons and the Witch Queen, but find yourself never being able to complete them, then I am sure you are wondering if you can access previous seasonal content to catch up. The simple answer...

You can't.

The Seasons and season passes are premium live services that appear once, and then are gone forever. If you are new, DO NOT buy the seasons if you do not have the time to put into them. You will literally not get your money's worth. Just by the DLC's standalone. The game cost's enough to buy into already, and as a live service, is rather anti-consumer with such practices, mainly because they can resell seasons later, and pray on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

So I warn you, DO NOT BUY SEASONS IF YOU DO NOT HAVE CONSTANT TIME FOR DESTINY, OR WISH TO DO OTHER ACTIVITIES BESIDES IT.

Imagine not learning this is how destiny has been for 2 years now.

It's almost as if the game does a poor job at explaining any of this. Literally the only people who know how Destiny does everything are the people that keep up with it. Anyone who's new or takes a break from it has to go through constant googling trying to figure out which content is available and which vendor has stuff you can actually still earn.

[Lurakin]

Originally posted by Nakos:

It's Seasonal Content. Other games use seasonal content too.

Seasonal content typically includes:

• A Vendor (and Bounty provider) in the H.E.L.M.
  
• A short, time gated story, nominally linked to the main campaign story.
  
• One or more (usually more) specialized activities.
  
• Access to the Season Pass holder rewards track on the Season Pass.
  
• A series of time-limited challenges, quests, and triumphs.

You do NOT need to play 10 hours a day to gain benefit from a Season Pass, but you will need some time over a three month period. Depending on your personal abilities, allowing 20+ hours over the course of a 3 month period would probably be wise.

Functionally, a Season Pass basically counts as your Subscription cost.

If you play only sporadically, then no, it might not be a good investment. But if you play even somewhat regularly, then it'll provide some additional activities and rewards for something you were likely to be doing anyway.

Most importantly: Following it's introduction any given Season remains available for play up until the end of a content year, provided you own the Annual pass. This means that S20 content will available for 12 months, S21 for 9 months, S22 for 6 months, and S23 for 3 months. Yes, year end seasons tend to be a bit more streamlined (in the case of S19, or extended in the case of S15 (which lasted 6 months)).

Correct if I'm wrong, but if I understand this right, owning past seasons still let's you access them as long as they are part of the current content year? Because I did own all of the Witch Queen seasons but could not for the life of me figure out how to do activities from season of plunder for example. So really all I got out of owning that season was the vendor ... who I couldn't get anything from, since I couldn't figure out whether I can still do the activities or not (despite repeated googling)

[BloodyDancer]

Originally posted by Lurakin:

Correct if I'm wrong, but if I understand this right, owning past seasons still let's you access them as long as they are part of the current content year? Because I did own all of the Witch Queen seasons but could not for the life of me figure out how to do activities from season of plunder for example. So really all I got out of owning that season was the vendor ... who I couldn't get anything from, since I couldn't figure out whether I can still do the activities or not (despite repeated googling)

Yes, you could play it. It was in HELM. Every season has a seasonal quest. For past seasons it's renamed to "Legacy". You have to pick it up from that seasons vendor and if you want/need to click on it in the quests screen - this will mark it and spawn a green arrow in the Director over the next destination/activity needed to progress it.

[Lurakin]

Originally posted by BloodyDancer:

Originally posted by Lurakin:

Correct if I'm wrong, but if I understand this right, owning past seasons still let's you access them as long as they are part of the current content year? Because I did own all of the Witch Queen seasons but could not for the life of me figure out how to do activities from season of plunder for example. So really all I got out of owning that season was the vendor ... who I couldn't get anything from, since I couldn't figure out whether I can still do the activities or not (despite repeated googling)

Yes, you could play it. It was in HELM. Every season has a seasonal quest. For past seasons it's renamed to "Legacy". You have to pick it up from that seasons vendor and if you want/need to click on it in the quests screen - this will mark it and spawn a green arrow in the Director over the next destination/activity needed to progress it.

That's the thing - I read that online but interacting with the vendor gave me no such quest, and it wasn't in my inventory either. That's why I was so confused, because every info I could find said I could in fact still do the activities.

[jvjd]

It depends on what the seasons offer for me to make a purchase. I am not going to miss something that I feel is trash

[Black Hammer]

I basically skipped one and a half of the seasons this past year (Risen and Seraph) but still managed to clear all the quests, the Seraph season pass (as well as the other two), and get all the craftable weapons (though that partly due to the daily red borders for the last few weeks).

You don't need to no-life it for a full year.

[THE GARY(The Free K!ll)]

Originally posted by Nuron, Servant of the Maw:

If you are like me, and don't have the time to play Destiny 2 for 10's of ours per day, but still wanted access to the Season Pass content, such as Season of the Seraph and so on, and you paid the 100$ entry fee to get all seasons and the Witch Queen, but find yourself never being able to complete them, then I am sure you are wondering if you can access previous seasonal content to catch up. The simple answer...

You can't.

The Seasons and season passes are premium live services that appear once, and then are gone forever. If you are new, DO NOT buy the seasons if you do not have the time to put into them. You will literally not get your money's worth. Just by the DLC's standalone. The game cost's enough to buy into already, and as a live service, is rather anti-consumer with such practices, mainly because they can resell seasons later, and pray on FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

So I warn you, DO NOT BUY SEASONS IF YOU DO NOT HAVE CONSTANT TIME FOR DESTINY, OR WISH TO DO OTHER ACTIVITIES BESIDES IT.

You dont need 10 hours aday, 2 at most. hell, season 17 and 18 i only played on a sunday an got what i needed done

[Nakos]

Originally posted by Lurakin:

Correct if I'm wrong, but if I understand this right, owning past seasons still let's you access them as long as they are part of the current content year?

Nominally, yes. However, I don't know for sure if the ala carte purchases of the season passes remain available.

They DO remain available if you own the Annual pass.

So, S20, S21, S22 and S23 will all remain available for play up until the end of Year Six (following their introduction during the year), or when The Final Shape is released (which will nominally be March 2024).

Originally posted by Lurakin:

Because I did own all of the Witch Queen seasons but could not for the life of me figure out how to do activities from season of plunder for example. So really all I got out of owning that season was the vendor ... who I couldn't get anything from, since I couldn't figure out whether I can still do the activities or not (despite repeated googling)

Okay, the way those work:

At the start of the Season, there's an intro mission, it's available to everyone. It should start automatically. The reason it starts automatically is because it's also the source of the Seasonal Artifact (which in turn is the source of the anti-champion (and meta) mods for the season). Everyone needs that, so everyone gets it. Usually the intro mission includes one round of the most basic Seasonal activity (in the case of S18, that was Ketchcrash).

If you are on the Destinations screen, right in the center is the big white globe of the Traveler. This will allow you to access the social hub: The Tower. Right above that is a smaller icon with the Vanguard symbol. That's the H.E.L.M. Seasonal Content is accessed via the H.E.L.M. (Or was during Witch Queen and Beyond Light, I don't know if it's going to change during Lightfall).

In your Quests log (over on the left) S18 included two "quests". The one that was actually a quest was Sails of the Shipstealer. That was an actual quest you could progress which ran somewhere between 50 to 70 quests (typically).

The second "quest" was a Captain's Atlas. That was NOT really a quest, instead it was a quest item. You needed to click on it, and equip a map. Everyone started with a default item, but there were more specialized ones available as you progressed the season.

On the H.E.L.M. screen:

https://assets.reedpopcdn.com/destiny_2_sails_of_the_shipstealer_week_1_9.jpg/BROK/resize/1200x1200%3E/format/jpg/quality/70/destiny_2_sails_of_the_shipstealer_week_1_9.jpg

There were various icons off to the left. The first gave you access to the Eliksni Quarter of the Last City (on Earth), this was where you could go to see cut scenes and interact with NPCs specific to the story (Spider, Misraaks, Eido mostly).

The next icon to the left was the Ketchcrash Activity icon. This icon allowed you to do the Ketchcrash activity. This was a 6 person, PvE activity with automatic matchmaking. It was a series of rotating challenges culminating in a boss fight on the enemy Ketch. This gave you various basic materials (map fragments, treasure maps, etc) and a chance at the Seasonal loot. This activity was intended to be run quite frequently during the Season.

The next icon to the left was the Expedition Activity icon. This allowed you to do the Expedition, three person, PvE, matchmade activity. You needed to have a Treasure Map Selected in your Captain's Atlas (quest item) in order to get full benefit. This activity involved grabbing treasure at several locations while fighting off bad guys. It also gave you access to a secondary chest at the end with extra loot. And finally, it set up the third and final activity: Plunder.

The icon on the top of the others was the Plunder activity, this was (nominally) a solo mission to recover a key story item (mcguffin), it involved a brief run through a special zone about the size of a lost sector, with a boss fight at the end.

S18 was a bit tricky, because you couldn't interact with the activities unless you had the quest item (the Captain's Atlas) properly set up in your Quest log.

Most Seasonal activities are accessed via the H.E.L.M. screen.

If you're ever having trouble with one, you should come here (or the Bungie forums) and ask.

Note also, S17 was a bit different, because the seasonal activities for that were interacted with on the Moon screen, including: Castellum, Containment, and Sever. All of which (nominally) took place on Calus' ship (the Leviathan).

S16 activities involved the War Table.
S19 activities involved the Seraph Exo (on the right side of the H.E.L.M.)

[Lurakin]

Originally posted by Nakos:

Originally posted by Lurakin:

Correct if I'm wrong, but if I understand this right, owning past seasons still let's you access them as long as they are part of the current content year?

Nominally, yes. However, I don't know for sure if the ala carte purchases of the season passes remain available.

They DO remain available if you own the Annual pass.

So, S20, S21, S22 and S23 will all remain available for play up until the end of Year Six (following their introduction during the year), or when The Final Shape is released (which will nominally be March 2024).

Originally posted by Lurakin:

Because I did own all of the Witch Queen seasons but could not for the life of me figure out how to do activities from season of plunder for example. So really all I got out of owning that season was the vendor ... who I couldn't get anything from, since I couldn't figure out whether I can still do the activities or not (despite repeated googling)

Okay, the way those work:

At the start of the Season, there's an intro mission, it's available to everyone. It should start automatically. The reason it starts automatically is because it's also the source of the Seasonal Artifact (which in turn is the source of the anti-champion (and meta) mods for the season). Everyone needs that, so everyone gets it. Usually the intro mission includes one round of the most basic Seasonal activity (in the case of S18, that was Ketchcrash).

If you are on the Destinations screen, right in the center is the big white globe of the Traveler. This will allow you to access the social hub: The Tower. Right above that is a smaller icon with the Vanguard symbol. That's the H.E.L.M. Seasonal Content is accessed via the H.E.L.M. (Or was during Witch Queen and Beyond Light, I don't know if it's going to change during Lightfall).

In your Quests log (over on the left) S18 included two "quests". The one that was actually a quest was Sails of the Shipstealer. That was an actual quest you could progress which ran somewhere between 50 to 70 quests (typically).

The second "quest" was a Captain's Atlas. That was NOT really a quest, instead it was a quest item. You needed to click on it, and equip a map. Everyone started with a default item, but there were more specialized ones available as you progressed the season.

On the H.E.L.M. screen:

https://assets.reedpopcdn.com/destiny_2_sails_of_the_shipstealer_week_1_9.jpg/BROK/resize/1200x1200%3E/format/jpg/quality/70/destiny_2_sails_of_the_shipstealer_week_1_9.jpg

There were various icons off to the left. The first gave you access to the Eliksni Quarter of the Last City (on Earth), this was where you could go to see cut scenes and interact with NPCs specific to the story (Spider, Misraaks, Eido mostly).

The next icon to the left was the Ketchcrash Activity icon. This icon allowed you to do the Ketchcrash activity. This was a 6 person, PvE activity with automatic matchmaking. It was a series of rotating challenges culminating in a boss fight on the enemy Ketch. This gave you various basic materials (map fragments, treasure maps, etc) and a chance at the Seasonal loot. This activity was intended to be run quite frequently during the Season.

The next icon to the left was the Expedition Activity icon. This allowed you to do the Expedition, three person, PvE, matchmade activity. You needed to have a Treasure Map Selected in your Captain's Atlas (quest item) in order to get full benefit. This activity involved grabbing treasure at several locations while fighting off bad guys. It also gave you access to a secondary chest at the end with extra loot. And finally, it set up the third and final activity: Plunder.

The icon on the top of the others was the Plunder activity, this was (nominally) a solo mission to recover a key story item (mcguffin), it involved a brief run through a special zone about the size of a lost sector, with a boss fight at the end.

S18 was a bit tricky, because you couldn't interact with the activities unless you had the quest item (the Captain's Atlas) properly set up in your Quest log.

Most Seasonal activities are accessed via the H.E.L.M. screen.

If you're ever having trouble with one, you should come here (or the Bungie forums) and ask.

Thank you for the detailed response. I should have added I was trying to do this over the last few days. My friend gifted me the deluxe edition of Witch Queen which included the season passes, but I couldn't get the intro quest for Plunder.

[Nakos]

Originally posted by Lurakin:

Thank you for the detailed response. I should have added I was trying to do this over the last few days. My friend gifted me the deluxe edition of Witch Queen which included the season passes, but I couldn't get the intro quest for Plunder.

Hmm... well, it's always a bit difficult to do those in a short period of time.

Normally, they're time-gated during the first half of the season, but then are unlocked during the second half.

But S18 was a bit more intricate than the others and required doing the activities in a series. Nominally, one to 3 Ketchcrashes, then one or two Expeditions, then a Plunder.

And as I say, you needed to have the quest item properly equipped with a map (and a key NPC as your first mate). The interface for the quest item (I'm sorry to say) is NOT the most intuitive, player-friendly interaction. I'm sorry you had trouble with it.