Destiny 2: The Witch Queen patch notes are live

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen is live, and so too is the new seasonal storyline, Season of the Risen, which runs until May 24 and sees the stalwart Guardians teaming up with their former foes in the Cabal to fight off Savathûn's Hive, which now wields the power of the Light.

I'm honestly not sure what the Cabal brings to the party, given what squishy punching bags they were in the original Destiny 2. How they came to be viewed as some kind of intergalactic Immortals is beyond me: I butchered thousands of them before I got tired (and, frankly, started to feel a little bad about the whole thing) and gave up. But here they are, here we are, and it's time to throw down with a new(ish) foe.

For those who prefer a more granular look at what's happening, Bungie has dropped the full update 4.0.0.1 patch notes, detailing a range of changes, fixes, and adjustments to activities, weapons, armor, classes, the UI, and more. Season pass rewards have been changed up, the physics knockback from boss stomps has been toned down (a change that will make our global brand manager Tim Clark happy), Tangled Shore and the Forsaken campaign have been vaulted, and windowed HDR is now supported on Windows 10 and beyond. 

The only real surprise in that patch notes, at least for those who've been following the pre-release hype train avidly, is a previously unannounced nerf to the Protective Light mod, which will now only grant 10% damage reduction. Bungie explained that being able to previously mitigate so much danger had led to the mod becoming ubiquitous, which usually means a rebalance. As an alternative, the damage reduction from the Well of Tenacity mod has been bumped to 50%. Sees a fair trade given that it's harder to proc and lasts less time.

At this point, the launch of The Witch Queen seems to be going very smoothly as far as these things go. Players are in and playing, and even the third party gear managing tools like Destiny Item Manager are back online. I don't want to tempt fate, but… it's almost too smooth.

The full list of changes in the new Destiny 2 patch is way to massive to post here—head over to bungie.net for the whole thing.