Destiny fashionistas, it's safe to stop hoarding looks for transmog

Fashionistas of The Last City, you may breath a sigh of relief and begin clearing out your wardrobe: Bungie have confirmed that Destiny 2's upcoming transmogrification won't require us to hold the original item. The workings of the transmog system are still largely unknown but game director Luke Smith did say last night that yes, if we want to duplicate a garment's look and apply it to another, it is enough to have the original in our Collections. I've been saving every swish item for months, my Vault now overflowed into my inbox, and am so very glad to hear this.

Bungie announced transmog in May, saying that at some point in Year 4 of Destiny we'd get the ability to copy an item's look into a Universal Ornament we can apply to other gear, making it much easier to have good-looking outfits with decent stats. They said the a process would require either "in-game effort" or paying the premium microtransaction currency, Silver, but were vague beyond that. Oh how I've pleaded for specifics. Luke Smith finally revealed one crucial detail during a stream yesterday:

"What we're doing with transmog is you're not gonna have to have the copy in your inventory," he said. "You can just delete all that shit. We're gonna scrape your account data and the things that are eligible for transmog will be things that you've collected across your journey. It's not gonna be what you have at that moment. As you're getting ready for Beyond Light, if you wanna delete a bunch of old shit that you were keeping because you wanted to look sweet - this old Ego Talon IV Warlock helmet, still probably my favourite Warlock helmet in the game - I can delete that, I don't need to keep that around."

A Bungie community manager explained it more simply: "You don't need to have armor pieces in your vault when Transmog goes live for them to be eligible. Collections based."

Allowing transmog from Collections would have been the obvious best way to do it. Would've been the obvious kindest way. Would've been weird to do it any other way. But I wasn't willing to take a leap of faith that Bungie would do the obvious kind thing. Which is why my Vault has been full to 499/500 for months. I've been deleting guns to make room for jackets. I've been filling my pockets with trousers. I've been letting clothes stack up in my postbox. I had no more room for clothes, but by god I'd make room every time something good dropped.

Transmog isn't coming at the start of Year 4 with Season Of The Hunt, mind, rather in some later season.

In another Bungieblast, last night they announced more changes coming with the launch of the Beyond Light expansion on November 10th. The important ones from this latest trickle of info:

1. All Sparrows will summon instantly. Thus ends the ubiquity of Transmat Preloader or Speed Demon perks.
2. The amount of Bright Dust given away on the season pass track is going up, which is good, but the BD rewards from weekly bounties are going down. If you grind those weeklies on three characters, yeah, you'll earn a lot less across the season now. Boo.
3. Trade in all your planetary currencies from destinations getting Vaulted now, because they'll only be useful for a bit of Glimmer from Spider. Best to cash 'em in now and dismantle the trash rewards for Legendary Shards.
4. Loads of knick-knacks and soon-to-be-obsolete doohickeys, like Expired Ramen Coupons and BrayTech Schematics, will be removed. Sadly, they're also taking the cool Obsidian Radiance effect off Black Armory weapons.
5. All of everyone's gear will be bumped up to at least 1050 Power when the new season starts, so players returning after a break won't need to grind to reach the starting line (for the next grind).
6. And some other stuff about Power levels and the new Hard Cap of 1250 and Pinnacle cap of 1260, and grinding, you can see for yourself.

AND hey look it's the Beyond Light launch trailer: