Destiny 2 community event completed in just over a day due to exploit

It’s the last two weeks of Destiny 2Bungie and Season of Plunder got their fans something special: A community event. This event was supposed to run until December 6, when the unnamed Season 19 launch. The event was abandoned by players on Wednesday, 25 hours after Bungie had launched it.

For context, this community event was to improve the Eliksni Quarter in the Tower — a special social space inside Destiny’s Normal A social space which houses Fallen refugees within an old raiding arena. The Tower Courtyard had a strange donation box that beckoned players. It allowed them to find Captain Coins, as well other resources and give them to the cause. As players reach certain donations thresholds, various parts of the Quarter will grow and improve. The Quarter would offer kickbacks to players for their donations. It’s the kind of charity where everybody benefits.

Players eventually gained the ability to give other Season of Plunder currencies. For example, the Treasure Coordinates that can be earned from completing playlist activities. Destiny 2. It’s here that Bungie ran into a bit of trouble. There’s an exploit in the game where players can generate unlimited Treasure Coordinates as long as they have a few to begin with already.

For some reason, when swapping an expensive Treasure Map (which costs Treasure Coordinates) out for a special free one, the game accidentally refunds a few too many Treasure Coordinates — like getting an extra nickel back with your change. It’s not much, but if you do the exploit over and over and over again in quick succession, you can cap your Treasure Coordinates and then dump them into the donation box. Players that had access to the Treasure Map and enough resources to purchase the more expensive versions could accumulate hundreds of extra Treasure Coordinates each minute.

Players can unlock all of their individual rewards — including a cute Exotic Ghost — by donating 2400 Coins (or in this case, Coordinates). The exploit took only 10 to 15 minutes for players. That’s not a big deal if just a few people were doing it to get the Ghost, but when thousands of players were doing it simultaneously, the donations really started coming in quick.

Bungie had set the goal of 400,000,000 Coins being donated by the whole community. That’s a lofty goal without the exploit, and would require about 167,000 Guardians to donate at least 2400 Coins — a tall order for an event that’s essentially “play a bunch of the stuff you’ve already been playing for three months.” It’s not unreasonable to think that players might have needed the full holiday weekend, as well as additional playtime next week, to generate those Coins, had the exploit not been discovered. If interest really dwindled and players got bored, it’s possible the Eliksni could’ve gone into next season with a half-built home.

Alas, Eliksni have all been moved into new homes before Thanksgiving in America. The Fallen and Guardians of the game are grateful for exploits this year.