Big changes are coming to the way Destiny 2 armor mods work next season

Players will be able to change elemental affinity without having to re-grind armor, and use seasonal mods in almost any gear.

Destiny 2's Armor 2.0 system, introduced to the game last year in the Shadowkeep expansion, made some big and mostly positive changes to the game's handling of armor, particularly with regard to customization—the most important part of the game, as any serious Destiny player will tell you. One aspect of it that fell short, however, was elemental affinities—arc, void, or rolar—which affects what mods can be placed on armor. Under the current rules, if you don't like the affinity of a particular piece of armor, your only option is to re-grind and hope for the best, which is not ideal. In the next season, however, that will change.

"You’ll soon be able to change the Elemental Affinity on any piece of armor to either of the other two Affinity types directly from the item’s inspection screen by hovering your cursor over the armor's energy icon. This is intended to mitigate the experience of getting an armor drop with a stat roll you want, but the wrong Elemental Affinity," Bungie explained in today's This Week at Bungie update.

"Changing an armor Affinity type will cost 1 Upgrade Module. If your armor is already upgraded to a higher energy level, the cost will be the total upgrade materials necessary to reach that energy value plus 1 Upgrade Module."

The next season will also see a major change to seasonal mods: The seasonal armor mod socket will be now house mods released during the seasons before and after the armor piece was released: Armor with a mod socket from Season of Dawn will be able to equip mods from Season of Dawn, the preceding Season of the Undying, and whatever mods are released in the following season. 

Only those seasons, however: Bungie community manager Cozmo23 clarified on Reddit that armor will be able to use three seasons of mods—current, preceding, and subsequent—in its seasonal socket. Our resident Destiny 2 survivor Tim Clark explains: "The community has been getting increasingly annoyed at creating a perfect gear set only to need to replace it every three months. This will help substantially with that, particularly as the current mods from Season of Dawn are actually really good." So good that we'll actually have a guide up on how to get the most from them tomorrow.

The next season of Destiny 2 hasn't been officially announced yet, but current rumors indicate that it will be called Season of the Worthy, it will begin on March 9, and it will bring back the Trials of Osiris PvP mode. Assuming that's at all close to the mark, we should be getting official word on what's coming very soon.