Note: Many of the links are to the Amity Arena Library, a website devoted to the game which includes tracking the history of it through patchnotes and a running history of what cards entered and left the meta. Their website was a valuable resource for this post.

Mobile gaming has taken off like a wildfire since the advent of the smartphone boosted the average processing power a phone could carry. Initially it took the form of crossing over older, more easily runnable games onto the mobile market to... mixed success, but in recent years we've seen both the West and East use mobile gaming to replace the old fashioned movie tie in game. It's easily accessable, has a much wider reach than consoles or PC, you can take it on the go and standards are inherently lower for mobile games than they are a full 60 dollar game.
Since the 2010s, mobile gaming has shifted to what's called the "Freemium" module. The game itself is free to download and start playing, but is insideously designed with obnoxious paywalls or artificial limiters put in place to limit how much you can play each day. If the game is part of a pre-existing franchise, additional money can be made through a premium currency or a chance to obtain high-powered units by rolling a slot machine random chance mechanic. And thus, gacha gaming was born. This sub has had several threads in the past on high profile gacha games, such as the monolithic Fate Grand/Order, Pokemon Go or Genshin Impact. One of the more popular things to roll for in gachas as a consequence is wallpapers for your homescreen, especially for high-grade units as they're usually animated to move a little bit on the homescreen. Today we're looking a low to mid-tier gacha game that rose and fell with the advent of one catgirl. Let's talk RWBY.
RWBY is an online web anime made by Rooster Teeth focusing on four prospective monster hunters who get embroiled in a world-spanning shadow war. It's of debatable quality in matters of animation, combat, voice acting, story, worldbuilding, romance, and it's kind of a little racist if I'm being honest, but one of the major positives of RWBY is that the series tends to have good character design. Series creator Monty Oum set in the guidelines for the show while making it that most if not every design should be made to be cosplay friendly, hence why most of the outfits have things most costume designers haven't heard of like... pockets. And Rooster Teeth, above all else, likes making money. So they know people like RWBY's character designs, enough so that in 2017 plans were made to release a gacha game themed around RWBY called Amity Arena, which would be developed by Korean company NHN Entertainment.
Amity Arena is a PvP tower defense game. Each player controls two turrets and a tower and has three minutes to use units themed from the show to destroy the other player's structures. Whoever took out more wins, destroying a tower is an instant victory. When the game launched, it had three tiers for units- Common (generally held for mooks or low-tier characters in the show), Rare (roughly protagonist-level or elite mooks go here) and Epic (High tier characters usually with an active ability that did lots of damage or stopped enemies in their tracks). The game launched in October 2018 to generally positive reviews from both mobile game players and RWBY fans alike. Fans were happy to get a lot of new official art for the characters in the game and the base gameplay loop was fun. Criticism at the time was largely themed around the lack of content besides PVP matches and some issues with the meta but overall, the launch went well. Each month, the developers would add new units, including popular characters like Neopolitian, Cinder Fall, Zwei the dog, and more.
But everything changed with February 20th 2019, which introduced Neon Katt, the titular catgirl (RWBY characters are themed around fairytales, except for Neon, who is themed around Nyan Cat, and her partner Flynt Coal, who is themed off a potentially racist joke made by Rooster Teeth).
Neon is a character from RWBY Volume 3 who's part of a team that RWBY face during a tournament arc. Her partner, Flynt Coal, was part of the game at launch, and Neon would join him a few months later. Neon in the show is a cocky fighter who taunts the heroes and zips around on rollarskates, which in-game is represented by Neon skating towards the nearest enemy structure to her and hitting it, while all units within a radius of Neon are taunted and provoked into attacking her above all other targets unless they-selves are coded to hit structures. On its own, not a bad idea for a unit, but Neon came with four big caveats:

• Neon was the fourth corner of the square that became known as the Artillery Arena meta, which saw Neon, Cinder (who had an AOE ability she could use which was wide enough to hit a turret and tower and single-handedly killed the entire launch meta of using fragile swarm units), Zwei (an on-summon high damage AOE on any part of the map) and Penny (another AOE ability that instead did chip damage and locked a location down) turn the game's meta into a chip game. Every player ran at least one of the above cards, if only to counter the others. Neon was the universal counter in being anti-swarm and the hardest to stop, especially at launch where her taunt range was so large, it could grab units from the other lane.
  
• Neon launched with a unit weight of "Heavy", which meant that if she was behind a unit she could push it on her way to the turret. This launched a sub-meta where Neon was placed behind a larger unit such as the Ursa (which like Neon was a unit that focused on structures but was made slow to cover its tankiness), to push them towards the turret faster. This was called Disco Bear. They eventually patched this so Neon phased through units by making her a lightweight.
  
• Neon couldn't die. She was invincible until she hit a structure, which combined with her taunt meant that Neon was very annoying to fight and could lock down an entire lane of the battlefield by being placed well and taunting enemies to let you prepare a counter.
  
• Neon was a very cheap unit to summon. Amity Arena uses a mechanic called "Aura" where all units cost a certain amount and it recharges over the match- for instance, protagonist Ruby Rose has a Rare card that costs four Aura to summon, while Weiss Schnee has two rares that cost three and five. Neo only cost two Aura, which made her one of the cheapest units of the game and thus disproportionately powerful for her cost and easy to cycle through your deck so you could spam her.
  

From the word go, Neon is an unpopular unit; she's clearly overbalanced and elements such as the Disco Bear glitch have players thinking she'll have to get knocked down in a nerf- she'll either be made slower, more expensive, or able to die pre-hitting a structure, right?
Neon doesn't show up in the next patch. Instead, before she's fixed, an entire new class of units called Legendaries are introduced, and this is where the game goes full gacha. Legendaries were meant to represent the highest tier characters in the game, the ones who were either the most popular characters or the highest-tier fighters in the show. Or in some cases, the popular ships such as combo cards for White Rose (Ruby/Weiss), Bumblebee (Blake/Yang) and Flower Power (Ren/Nora). Legendaries, representing their value, were impossibly rare and had an infinitely small chance of actually appearing (The most reliable method was to buy the premium chests and hope you'd roll a Legendary, which often cost tons of money), and if you did get one, there was no way to guess which Legendary you'd actually get. Some such as White Rose and Adam were high tier units, others like Hazel or Checkmate were... kinda broken at launch. The playerbase isn't happy at this, especially as free to play players are left out in the cold and reliant on the game giving them high tier units effectively out of pity.
Neon would get a small nerf in the April patch which lessened her taunt range and killed the Disco Bear meta, but her invincibility would be left untouched, even as players submitted feedback regarding how to make it more efficient. The official Amity Arena discord has a weekly feedback section on Tuesdays where players could submit up to four suggestions on how to nerf/buff units and general requests for quality of life such as "Can this character get a new skin from this part of the show," or "Can we have an option to lower music volume that's not just muting all music?" (they never did add that second request) Neon would then remain in this state until the November patch, despite constant weekly requests for a Neon rework, and all it would do is make Neon functionally mortal, in that she had a flat shield bar of 20 that would be lowered by one for each attack before the next hit would kill her. Neon could now die... but your chances of actually doing enough damage to stop her were slim, and regardless, you were now at a serious Aura defecit.
It took seven months for this one unit to get a substantial nerf, all while the game added new units every week and the number of units being affected by patches each month began to gradually sink. To round up some of the major issues people had with Amity that developed throughout 2019 alongside Neon's general existance making life hell:

• Common units were meant to be chump fodder, but could level up the most amount of times with a level cap at 13. This meant longer-term units that had a long time to level such as the Xiong Family card, the AK-130s the Beowolf Pack, or the White Fang gunners, could become shockingly strong if players grinded the money up to reach max level.
  
• A pre-existing divide between free players and players willing to burn money IRL to get access to premium currencies led to a huge disparity in play. Free players have long complained about how hard it is to scrounge money together to level up units at higher costs as even the basic currency of Lien is hard to get large quantities of (you get a certain amount every match win but otherwise you need to burn the Schnee Premium Dust currency for the highest payouts, but SPD is also needed for shop resets, buying crates or unlocking cosmetics). The developers used to do frequent double weekends where all gains were doubled for a weekend, but these became less and less frequent as time went on. Legendaries only added to the divide, as their rarity was bad enough for players willing to spend money (one player, known as one of the largest whales in the community, in trying to get Sienna Khan, reported burning nearly nine hundred dollars on her, while taking nearly six hundred to get the Ice Flower card).
  
• One actual counter was born to fight Neon in the Argus Shield, a stationary unit that existed solely to stall units and take damage. At 2 Aura, it was the first structure to counter Neon, which allevated one of the primary problems with Neon in that no way to counter her was cost-efficient for an enemy player. They buffed the Wall to 3 Aura eventually which killed that hope, and all this happened before Neon's November nerf.
  
• The Summer of 2019 saw a large number of defensive units released; alongside the Argus Shield, several different units were released themed around turrets for the technological kingdom of Atlas, such as the Beam Turret. The Atlesian Burrow Gun was the straw that broke the camel's back and made for a miserable meta as the Burrow Gun would only appear (and be available to take damage) when a unit entered its range. These three units together were all very overpowered on launch and led to a large exodus of players sick of defensive and chip-based metas, especially as what few offensive units that were good enough to counter these metas (such as Professor Port and Adam Taurus) were often nerfed into the ground within a month of release.
  
• Also around this time it became apparent that the developers were unable to meet the quotas that Rooster Teeth was forcing on them. The social media team admitted that a certain number of units needed to be in the game in time for Winter 2019 when Volume 7 was set to start, and as the year went on more and more game-breaking bugs were being found in units, or they were at best horrifically undertuned or overpowered. The Apathy was perhaps the largest case of this, as an unfound bug pre-release meant that the Apathy (who have a passive ability that let them self-duplicate) had no cap on their power, meaning that they could immediately overwhelm defenses and in the case of some phones, be such a resource hog the phone would crash. Many Legendary units were especially guilty of being under-tuned due to low Legendary availability meaning they were simply weren't powerful enough to compare with high-levelled units. Checkmate's ability simply didn't work at launch, and Neon made several more such as Hazel Rainart a joke. May Marigold's invisibility bubble would have been an interesting game changer... were it not for a bug that made it that units placed in the bubble still played their sound lines, meaning players knew what to expect. Things were so bad that when Flower Power launched and wasn't broken or needed an emergency patch, the playerbase were shocked.
  

Unfortunately, the Novemember patch did little to stop the problems with Neon, and a new problem would rear its head for Christmas: Jinn. This unit embodied many of the problems players had: She was a Legendary so it would be hard for free players to get her, and only added to the sheer number of Legendaries that were out there. She was another structure card, and she was horrifically broken. Stopping time for seven seconds in an area around any friendly units, Jinn broke the game overnight, with players horrified at how little playtesting she'd clearly had. Most chip units now couldn't damage structures as Jinn simply could stop time and freeze the turret for the duration of the attack. And to make matters worse? She cost two Aura, meaning it was very easy to cycle a deck and start Jinn spamming.
And yet at two aura she was still one of the only cost-efficient Neon counters... until they patched her to be worth three Aura instead. Talking of the feline menace, January saw Neon get a HP nerf that set her shield at 14. Finally, Neon could be realistically be taken out, still at an Aura defecit but at least it can be countered and now they just have to raise her Aura- why are you buffing her game?
Less than a month later, Neon got, of all things, a buff. Her HP shield was set at 20, and her attacks now did double damage. This is around the point where a lot of players begin to suspect the developers aren't listening to feedback and more long-term players dip out or drop the game. Neon got touched one more time in April, which slowed her down (which itself was a problem as Neon's lessened speed on spawn simply made her better at generating aggro), she dealt 10% less damage and made it somewhat easier to hit her enough to kill her, but a new problem was on the horizon. Because Neon was now no longer the game's White Whale for patches.
Meet the White Fang Gunner Barracks. Added in September 2019, the Barracks fell under many player's radar simply because they were horrifically undertuned. Their gimmick was that every few seconds, a White Fang Gunner would spawn, with three spawning on death. In April, as Neon got her last appearance in the patches, the Barracks got a huge buff and became the centerpiece of the meta; they now spawned two Gunners, which made them immensely valuable for just five Aura. You could overwhelm many anti-swarm units before they had a chance, and shred your way through turrets.
The Barracks would then go six months before this overtuning was rectified, barring one nerf in August that lowered their health to try and stem the tide of units. To sum up every other thing that went wrong during the year meta-wise:

• The playercount was getting so low that players were able to make lists of the AI bots the developers had in place so lower-level players had a challenge (Amity breaks up players by a trophy system where you gain trophies with every win, and by this point most of the active players were in the 2500 to 3500 range. This also meant new players steamrolled through the lower levels only to hit a brick wall in the 3000 range, with the only reliable solution being to willingly lose matches until you were in your optimal range and grind victories until you reached a certain level.
  
• The patches became more and more threadbare, going from 8+ units getting changed each month in early 2019 to three units at most getting changed in 2020 patches outside of the anniversary patch going back to the golden days of eight. The only area where they didn't get more threadbare was in the cosmetics and emotes that the developers were cranking out, all of which were only available through hours of grinding or premium currencies. This was despite the fact that the units were being released slower, going from once a week to once a fortnite.
  
• The majority of units added in 2020 were Epic or Legendary tier, which were the hardest to get for free players unless they got lucky and they were added to the store (and if they had the lien as a Legendary in the store costs a flat 40,000 Lien). One Common and four Epics were released compared to twelve Epics and seven Legendaries. The release of Moonslice Adam especially was annoying for this regard, as Adam already had a Legendary released (at least for Team RWBY, each of them headlined a Legendary when it came to the team attack cards), and this was clearly done to pander to Adam's fans again as his first unit saw a spike in interest in the game. The math was done and showed how artifically scarce Legendaries were made.
  
• The undeovertuning was still in play. Colossus is seen as one of the worst cards in the entire game because of its gimmick. I have literally never seen anyone play it. Flynt became overtuned and now he's a staple thanks to his trumpet's AOE attack being able to hurt turrets and shred most units. Launcher Nora was an especially overtuned unit thanks to her high-damage constant AOE barrage and long range meaning she could annhilate most anything if given enough cover. Even after patches she's still dangerous. September saw the White Fang Dropship Formation added, which was widely seen as a terrible unit and done as an emergency addition because the planned unit for September in the Grimm Seer had to be cut last minute for technical reasons.
  
• The game has barely had significant content added since launch, with the primary gameplay still just being PVP. Barring Battle of Beacon (a mode where you can play as Ruby and Weiss and fend off Grimm which most players just use to grind chests, and no, they still haven't added Blake or Yang) and Plaza (a lobby where you can dress up as a character and run around Beacon), the game has added no new features and quality of life content players have requested since launch (rerolling in the shop, Superior Crates having guaranteed Legendary spawn rates) have been released at a snail's pace (you still can't reroll Legendaries if you're looking for a specific unit). Academies where players can unite to trade units and chat still lacks features that have been requested for years such as the ability to delete messages. And Plaza immediately went to hell because players were doing erotic role play in the chats and after people came forward with proof that minors were being sexually harassed in the Plaza or being coerced into side-channels, the dev response was to... just turn off the chat entirely instead of banning the accounts or implementing moderation. This also removed the chatlog which deleted a lot of the evidence of said harassment.
  

As OctobeNovember comes in, the players are getting more and more furious. The weekly feedback includes a near constant demand for an acknowledgement from the developers given how often it feels like the feedback is being ignored. The social media team get caught several times hyping up how the coming patch would address player concerns, only for said patch to lack those units. The meta has been locked down to the Xiong Family, Flynt, Launcher Nora, Spider-Mines and the hell-cat herself in Neon. Everyone runs at least one of these, people run meta decks not because they want to, but because it's the only way to have a chance of victory.
And then in December, things implode. The patch for the month was set to launch on December 10th with the monthly event missions. But when the clock rolls around, the event missions (which usually take about two weeks to do if you're doing as many as you can a day)... has a six day timer. And the update doesn't come out. The art team doesn't release new unit art. The shop has no special timed bundles. There's no patch notes. And then the Twitter team who've been hard carrying the game through... actually talking to the players and acknowledging the grievances they have... admitted that they don't know what's going on either. The best guess is that the devs have come down with Covid, but no statements to confirm or deny this leave it as guesswork. The timer eventually got reset and people could do the event, but then on Christmas itself, another issue.
Ruby has appeared in the plaza on Halloween (her canonical birthday) and Christmas, and if you go talk to her you get free stuff. But on Christmas people, people discovered that Ruby was talking as if you'd already talked to her. Because they hadn't updated Ruby yet for 2020. She still thought it was 2019 so if you'd talked to her then for goodies, she had none now. They patched it eventually but a lot of people didn't see this fix before the timer ran out to get the free stuff.
Some have resorted to memes to cope with the fact that the game just seems to have died out of the blue. Others have been trying to desperately rally the players and find a way to save it. Some resorted to friendly mockery of the whales who'd spent thousands on a game that seems to be dying (seriously though gacha games need to curb this shit but they won't because whales are godsends for their bank balances).
If the game doesn't get an update in January then two months without new content will mark the end, and the already significant playercount drops will only increase. And it's hard to say if any one thing could have turned Amity Arena's fate around beyond just "Have a better balancing team who can respond better to feedback." Neon began the time of death, but by the time December rolled around the meta was in a horrifically toxic place where if you wanted to make any progession, you had to get down and dirty with the pigs. The team just constantly failed to balance problem units outside of their emergency hotfixes of Jinn, and more often then not they went after units and buffed or nerfed them at random going off playcounts to determine what needed fixing instead of the actual written feedback they were getting. It's clear from the references to the show and some of the attempts to reach out to the community that at least one person in the team genuinely wanted to make the good appealing to RWBY fans, but somewhere during the game's lifespan, they lost their way. Less focus needed to be put on how to milk the players, and instead focusing on making a game sustainable and enjoyable enough to warrant the cosmetics and emotes. The game's failure ultimately isn't on the playerbase. It's on the people who were actually making the game who chose to slack off because they thought it acceptable to do so.
Thanks for reading.
EDIT: HOT OFF THE PRESSES, I JUMPED THE GUN
Had I waited one more day, my story would have had a far more sudden ending, as the game just announced its shutdown for January.
RIP.

TL:DR

• This is Part 1 of my two part deep dive on DraftKings (Ticker: DKNG, I will refer to the company as “DK”)
• This first part introduces you to (1) me, (2) the company, (3) my thesis on the company, and (4) digs into how they make money.
• The second part (already released, you can read it here - but get through part 1 first :) ) will go in depth to explore the question “Can we 10x from here?”
• DK is an exciting, disruptive company working to change how we experience watching sports and make it better.
• I am not a financial advisor and this is not investment advice. These are just my opinions to help facilitate learning and discussion.

Hello, welcome to my first deep dive write up.
My name’s Mark and I’m an accountant with a passion for investing. About two years ago, I used to work as an auditor at a public accounting firm and have been behind the scenes at many different publicly traded and privately held companies in the U.S. My goal is to bring my unique perspective from that past experience, my current experience working in a new role at a large corporation, and my understanding of accounting to help break down some of the most exciting growth stocks on the market today.
I’m a long-term investor. I am focused on finding great companies and holding them for a long time. I’m willing to endure volatility, crazy price drops, and everything that comes with this approach as long as the facts that led me to originally invest and believe in that company have not changed. If you want to learn more about this approach. I recommend reading the book “100 Baggers” by Chris Mayer.
Introduction
I think it’s fitting that my first stock pick has to do with sports. Sports has been a part of my life since I could walk at the age of 2. First with baseball and soccer, and then later in my childhood with golf. I’ve always played American football and basketball for fun as well and have always been an avid fan of all the major sports in the US.
I started playing fantasy sports (mostly just fantasy football) about 6 years ago and have always enjoyed it. Traditionally, with fantasy football you draft a team at the beginning of the year and those are your players for the rest of the season. If you have a bad draft, oh well. You can try to improve your team with trades and free agent additions but it is tough. Leagues usually consist of 10-14 teams (each managed by an individual) and there’s obviously only one winner at the end of the season (about 4 months after the draft). This can lead to the managers of the lower performing teams losing interest as the season wanes on. I believe DraftKings’ (DK) founders saw this issue and saw an opportunity. Enter, daily fantasy sports. Now, with the DK platform you can draft a new team every week. Or if you want, every day. This allows fans of fantasy sports to engage at whichever point of the season they want and at varying financial stakes.
The Thesis Statement
For every stock pick I make, I want to provide a quick thesis statement that can serve as a reminder for why I’m buying and holding that stock for the long term. I’ll always aim to make it just a few sentences long so it can easily be remembered and internalized. This helps during times when the price may sporadically drop and you need to remember why you’re holding this position.
The thesis statement I have come up with for DK is as follows:
“DraftKings: The leader in allowing fans to engage financially with their favorite sports, teams, and players. Having money at stake makes the game a lot more interesting to watch. The era of daily fantasy sports games, online sports betting, and online betting (outside of sports), is just getting started and DK is as well positioned (or better positioned) than anyone to capitalize off of this trend.”
Notice how I said “allowing fans to engage financially” as the first sentence and not necessarily “allowing fans to gamble”. There’s a reason for that. According to US Federal Law, Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) contests have specifically been exempted from the prohibitions of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). DK has always been, and I believe will continue to be DFS contests 1st, sports betting 2nd, and other forms of gambling/entertainment 3rd. It is noteworthy that states at an individual level can still deem DFS contests illegal if they so wish, but as of this writing (11/26/20), 43 of the 50 US States allow DFS contests and DK, accordingly, is offering DFS contests in all 43 of those US States.
I’ll try to clarify the difference between DFS contests and sports betting real quick:
DFS Contest – Pay a pre-set entry fee to enter a contest. All entry fees go towards “The Pot”. “Draft” 9 players to be on your “Team” for 1 week. Enter your “Roster” into a contest with other players (could range from 1 other person to 1,000s of people, the DK user can choose). Whichever “Roster” amasses the most points for that week out of all contestants wins. The winner will get the highest payout, and depending on the nature of the contest, other top finishers will receive smaller payouts as well.
Sports Gambling – Team A is considered a 10 point favorite to defeat Team B. This means that Team A is expected, by the professional gambling line setters, to outscore Team B by 10 points. This is known as a point spread. You can bet on the underdog or the favorite. If you bet on the favorite, they have to win by more than 10 points for you to win the bet. If you bet on the underdog, you will win the bet as long as the underdog keeps the game within less than a 10 point defeat.
These are just a couple simple examples to help you see the difference. Sports Gambling (the 2nd priority of DK) is a very lucrative market just as the DFS contests are. However, in the US, Federal Laws and regulations are a lot stricter on Sports Gambling than they are on DFS. As of this writing (11/27/20), 22 states (including the District of Columbia) out of 51 possible allow sports gambling.
DK is still in the infancy stages of getting their sports gambling business going. In the 22 states where they could potentially operate, they currently have a sports gambling offering in 11 of those states. The sports gambling business model for DK can be broken into two main offerings – mobile sports betting, and retail sports betting. Mobile sports betting means you can place a sports bet online from the comfort of your own home, while retail sports betting means you must go to a casino and place a bet with the sportsbook in person. I personally believe mobile sports betting is the real potential cash cow for DK out of the two types of sports betting offerings due to the convenience and ease of access. DK is currently working on and encouraging customers to lobby their state lawmakers to legalize sports gambling in more states.
How DK makes money
At the very least, before you invest in a company, you better understand how they make money. In Chris Mayers’ excellent book, 100 Baggers, that I mentioned above, he continually references top line revenue growth as one of the main common indicators of a possible 100 Bagger. This isn’t to tell you that any stock I pick will be a 100 Bagger just because it has great top line revenue growth, but if I am looking at a growth stock to hold for the long term, revenue growth is one of the first things I look at.
For DK, their means of making money is quite simple. I already went into detail above about DFS Contests and Sports Gambling. In DK’s latest 10-Q filing with the SEC (filed 11/13/20), revenue is broken out into two main streams: Online Gaming and Gaming Software.
Online Gaming (82% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
Online gaming is the true core business of DK and includes the aforementioned DFS Contests, Sports Gambling and additional gambling (non-sports) opportunities. DK refers to their additional gambling (non-sports) as “iGaming” or “online casino”.
For the 9 months ended 9/30/20, Online Gaming revenue totaled $239M, up 30% YoY from $184M in the same prior year period. Keep in mind, that this is an increase that happened during a COVID-19 global pandemic that delayed and shortened many professional sports seasons.
Online gaming revenue is earned in a few ways that are slightly different, but very similar overall. In order to enter a DFS contest, a customer must pay an entry fee. DFS revenue is generated from these entry fees collected, net of prize payouts and customer incentives awarded to users. In order to place a sports bet (sports gambling), a customer places a wager with a DK Sportsbook. The DK Sportsbook sets odds for each wager that builds in a theoretical margin allowing DK to profit. Sports gambling revenue is generated from wagers collected from customers, net of payouts and incentives awarded to winning customers. The last form of online gaming revenue is earned in similar fashion to a land-based casino, offering online versions of casino games such as blackjack, roulette, and slot machines.
Gaming Software (18% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
While the Online Gaming revenue stream mentioned above is a Business to Consumer (B2C) model, the Gaming Software revenue stream is a Business to Business (B2B) model. The Gaming Software side of the business was born out of the acquisition of SBTech, a company from the Isle of Man (near the UK) founded in 2007 that has 12+ years of experience providing online sports betting platforms to clients all over the world. The acquisition occurred as part of the SPAC driven IPO in April of 2020 that combined “the old DK company” with SBTech so that they now are “the new DK company” listed as DKNG on the NASDAQ. SBTech is a far more important part of the story than just being 18% of today’s revenue. The reason for this is because DK will eventually (planned mid-late 2021) be migrating all of their DFS and gambling offerings onto SBTech’s online platforms. Currently, for DFS, DK uses their own proprietary platform but that will move to SBTech with the migration. Currently, for online gambling, DK uses Kambi, the same online gambling platform that services Penn Gaming (PENN), a DK rival. But that’s enough about the software migration for now, back to the Gaming Software revenue.
The Gaming Software revenue stream for DK is essentially a continuation of SBTechs’ B2B business model. DK contracts with business customers to provide sports and casino betting software solutions. DK typically enters two different type of arrangements with B2B customers when selling the gaming software:

1. Direct Customer Contract Revenue: In this type of transaction, the software is sold directly to a business (casino for example) that wants to use the software for their own gambling operations. This revenue is generally calculated as a percentage of the wagering revenue generated by the business customer using DK’s software and is recognized in the periods in which those wagering and related activities conclude.
2. Reseller Arrangement Revenue: In this type of transaction, DK provides distributors with the right to resell DK’s software-as-a-service offering to their clients, using their own infrastructure. In reseller arrangements, revenue is generally calculated via a fixed monthly fee and an additional monthly fee which varies based on the number of gaming operators to whom each reseller sub-licenses DK’s software.

As mentioned above, SBTech was an international company based in the Isle of Man before being acquired by DK. Thus, the majority of their business in their first 12 years of operating independently has always been international and outside of the United States. This has helped DK, which has historically been US focused, expand it’s international reach.
A perfect example of expanding this international reach occurred recently during October (technically Q4) in which DK’s B2B technology (powered by SBTech) helped enable the launch of “PalaceBet”, a new mobile and online sportsbook offering from Peermont, a South Africa based resort and casino company. The deal was headed by DK’s new Chief International Officer, Shay Berka, who previously spent 10 years working for SBTech as CFO and General Manager. Mr. Berka took on the role of DK’s Chief International Officer upon the merger in April earlier this year. I think this deal shows that DK has integrated SBTech and it’s business very well into the larger business as a whole. They are not wasting any time using their newly acquired resources to expand their reach and bring in new sources of revenue.
This is the end of my first article about DK. My goal is to drop Part 2 later this week. The focus of Part 2 will be an in depth answer of the question – “Can we 10x from here?”
Disclosure: I am/we are long DKNG. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

TL:DR

• This is Part 1 of my two part deep dive on DraftKings (Ticker: DKNG, I will refer to the company as “DK”)
• This first part introduces you to (1) me, (2) the company, (3) my thesis on the company, and (4) digs into how they make money.
• The second part (to be released later this week) will go in depth to explore the question “Can we 10x from here?”
• DK is an exciting, disruptive company working to change how we experience watching sports and make it better.
• I am not a financial advisor and this is not investment advice. These are just my opinions to help facilitate learning and discussion.

Hello, welcome to my first deep dive write up.
My name’s Mark and I’m an accountant with a passion for investing. About two years ago, I used to work as an auditor at a public accounting firm and have been behind the scenes at many different publicly traded and privately held companies in the U.S. My goal is to bring my unique perspective from that past experience, my current experience working in a new role at a large corporation, and my understanding of accounting to help break down some of the most exciting growth stocks on the market today.
I’m a long-term investor. I am focused on finding great companies and holding them for a long time. I’m willing to endure volatility, crazy price drops, and everything that comes with this approach as long as the facts that led me to originally invest and believe in that company have not changed. If you want to learn more about this approach. I recommend reading the book “100 Baggers” by Chris Mayer.
Introduction
I think it’s fitting that my first stock pick has to do with sports. Sports has been a part of my life since I could walk at the age of 2. First with baseball and soccer, and then later in my childhood with golf. I’ve always played American football and basketball for fun as well and have always been an avid fan of all the major sports in the US.
I started playing fantasy sports (mostly just fantasy football) about 6 years ago and have always enjoyed it. Traditionally, with fantasy football you draft a team at the beginning of the year and those are your players for the rest of the season. If you have a bad draft, oh well. You can try to improve your team with trades and free agent additions but it is tough. Leagues usually consist of 10-14 teams (each managed by an individual) and there’s obviously only one winner at the end of the season (about 4 months after the draft). This can lead to the managers of the lower performing teams losing interest as the season wanes on. I believe DraftKings’ (DK) founders saw this issue and saw an opportunity. Enter, daily fantasy sports. Now, with the DK platform you can draft a new team every week. Or if you want, every day. This allows fans of fantasy sports to engage at whichever point of the season they want and at varying financial stakes.
The Thesis Statement
For every stock pick I make, I want to provide a quick thesis statement that can serve as a reminder for why I’m buying and holding that stock for the long term. I’ll always aim to make it just a few sentences long so it can easily be remembered and internalized. This helps during times when the price may sporadically drop and you need to remember why you’re holding this position.
The thesis statement I have come up with for DK is as follows:
“DraftKings: The leader in allowing fans to engage financially with their favorite sports, teams, and players. Having money at stake makes the game a lot more interesting to watch. The era of daily fantasy sports games, online sports betting, and online betting (outside of sports), is just getting started and DK is as well positioned (or better positioned) than anyone to capitalize off of this trend.”
Notice how I said “allowing fans to engage financially” as the first sentence and not necessarily “allowing fans to gamble”. There’s a reason for that. According to US Federal Law, Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) contests have specifically been exempted from the prohibitions of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA). DK has always been, and I believe will continue to be DFS contests 1st, sports betting 2nd, and other forms of gambling/entertainment 3rd. It is noteworthy that states at an individual level can still deem DFS contests illegal if they so wish, but as of this writing (11/26/20), 43 of the 50 US States allow DFS contests and DK, accordingly, is offering DFS contests in all 43 of those US States.
I’ll try to clarify the difference between DFS contests and sports betting real quick:
DFS Contest – Pay a pre-set entry fee to enter a contest. All entry fees go towards “The Pot”. “Draft” 9 players to be on your “Team” for 1 week. Enter your “Roster” into a contest with other players (could range from 1 other person to 1,000s of people, the DK user can choose). Whichever “Roster” amasses the most points for that week out of all contestants wins. The winner will get the highest payout, and depending on the nature of the contest, other top finishers will receive smaller payouts as well.
Sports Gambling – Team A is considered a 10 point favorite to defeat Team B. This means that Team A is expected, by the professional gambling line setters, to outscore Team B by 10 points. This is known as a point spread. You can bet on the underdog or the favorite. If you bet on the favorite, they have to win by more than 10 points for you to win the bet. If you bet on the underdog, you will win the bet as long as the underdog keeps the game within less than a 10 point defeat.
These are just a couple simple examples to help you see the difference. Sports Gambling (the 2nd priority of DK) is a very lucrative market just as the DFS contests are. However, in the US, Federal Laws and regulations are a lot stricter on Sports Gambling than they are on DFS. As of this writing (11/27/20), 22 states (including the District of Columbia) out of 51 possible allow sports gambling.
DK is still in the infancy stages of getting their sports gambling business going. In the 22 states where they could potentially operate, they currently have a sports gambling offering in 11 of those states. The sports gambling business model for DK can be broken into two main offerings – mobile sports betting, and retail sports betting. Mobile sports betting means you can place a sports bet online from the comfort of your own home, while retail sports betting means you must go to a casino and place a bet with the sportsbook in person. I personally believe mobile sports betting is the real potential cash cow for DK out of the two types of sports betting offerings due to the convenience and ease of access. DK is currently working on and encouraging customers to lobby their state lawmakers to legalize sports gambling in more states.
How DK makes money
At the very least, before you invest in a company, you better understand how they make money. In Chris Mayers’ excellent book, 100 Baggers, that I mentioned above, he continually references top line revenue growth as one of the main common indicators of a possible 100 Bagger. This isn’t to tell you that any stock I pick will be a 100 Bagger just because it has great top line revenue growth, but if I am looking at a growth stock to hold for the long term, revenue growth is one of the first things I look at.
For DK, their means of making money is quite simple. I already went into detail above about DFS Contests and Sports Gambling. In DK’s latest 10-Q filing with the SEC (filed 11/13/20), revenue is broken out into two main streams: Online Gaming and Gaming Software.
Online Gaming (82% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
Online gaming is the true core business of DK and includes the aforementioned DFS Contests, Sports Gambling and additional gambling (non-sports) opportunities. DK refers to their additional gambling (non-sports) as “iGaming” or “online casino”.
For the 9 months ended 9/30/20, Online Gaming revenue totaled $239M, up 30% YoY from $184M in the same prior year period. Keep in mind, that this is an increase that happened during a COVID-19 global pandemic that delayed and shortened many professional sports seasons.
Online gaming revenue is earned in a few ways that are slightly different, but very similar overall. In order to enter a DFS contest, a customer must pay an entry fee. DFS revenue is generated from these entry fees collected, net of prize payouts and customer incentives awarded to users. In order to place a sports bet (sports gambling), a customer places a wager with a DK Sportsbook. The DK Sportsbook sets odds for each wager that builds in a theoretical margin allowing DK to profit. Sports gambling revenue is generated from wagers collected from customers, net of payouts and incentives awarded to winning customers. The last form of online gaming revenue is earned in similar fashion to a land-based casino, offering online versions of casino games such as blackjack, roulette, and slot machines.
Gaming Software (18% of Total Revenue for 9 months ended 9/30/20):
While the Online Gaming revenue stream mentioned above is a Business to Consumer (B2C) model, the Gaming Software revenue stream is a Business to Business (B2B) model. The Gaming Software side of the business was born out of the acquisition of SBTech, a company from the Isle of Man (near the UK) founded in 2007 that has 12+ years of experience providing online sports betting platforms to clients all over the world. The acquisition occurred as part of the SPAC driven IPO in April of 2020 that combined “the old DK company” with SBTech so that they now are “the new DK company” listed as DKNG on the NASDAQ. SBTech is a far more important part of the story than just being 18% of today’s revenue. The reason for this is because DK will eventually (planned mid-late 2021) be migrating all of their DFS and gambling offerings onto SBTech’s online platforms. Currently, for DFS, DK uses their own proprietary platform but that will move to SBTech with the migration. Currently, for online gambling, DK uses Kambi, the same online gambling platform that services Penn Gaming (PENN), a DK rival. But that’s enough about the software migration for now, back to the Gaming Software revenue.
The Gaming Software revenue stream for DK is essentially a continuation of SBTechs’ B2B business model. DK contracts with business customers to provide sports and casino betting software solutions. DK typically enters two different type of arrangements with B2B customers when selling the gaming software:
​

1. Direct Customer Contract Revenue: In this type of transaction, the software is sold directly to a business (casino for example) that wants to use the software for their own gambling operations. This revenue is generally calculated as a percentage of the wagering revenue generated by the business customer using DK’s software and is recognized in the periods in which those wagering and related activities conclude.
2. Reseller Arrangement Revenue: In this type of transaction, DK provides distributors with the right to resell DK’s software-as-a-service offering to their clients, using their own infrastructure. In reseller arrangements, revenue is generally calculated via a fixed monthly fee and an additional monthly fee which varies based on the number of gaming operators to whom each reseller sub-licenses DK’s software.

As mentioned above, SBTech was an international company based in the Isle of Man before being acquired by DK. Thus, the majority of their business in their first 12 years of operating independently has always been international and outside of the United States. This has helped DK, which has historically been US focused, expand it’s international reach.
A perfect example of expanding this international reach occurred recently during October (technically Q4) in which DK’s B2B technology (powered by SBTech) helped enable the launch of “PalaceBet”, a new mobile and online sportsbook offering from Peermont, a South Africa based resort and casino company. The deal was headed by DK’s new Chief International Officer, Shay Berka, who previously spent 10 years working for SBTech as CFO and General Manager. Mr. Berka took on the role of DK’s Chief International Officer upon the merger in April earlier this year. I think this deal shows that DK has integrated SBTech and it’s business very well into the larger business as a whole. They are not wasting any time using their newly acquired resources to expand their reach and bring in new sources of revenue.
This is the end of my first article about DK. My goal is to drop Part 2 later this week. The focus of Part 2 will be an in depth answer of the question – “Can we 10x from here?”
Disclosure: I am/we are long DKNG. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

The Baby Step Series Part 2: The Next Step - Fresh Level 65 T5 Assault Cruiser Free DPS

Build Info

"Hi, and welcome to part 2 of the Baby Step Series!
Before I get started I just wanted to give shout out to Eph289 for previewing and helping me edit these posts. You a STO saint, dude!
This post is the next step after the Level 40 T5 Assault Cruiser post found here: https://www.reddit.com/stobuilds/comments/k88fel/the_baby_step_series_part_1_the_first_step_level/
Here's Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/stobuilds/comments/k9jct6/the_baby_step_series_part_3_the_last_step_level/
This ship build continues evolving the last one using generally easy-to-get mission rewards and low tier reputation gear. It is basically something that a new player wants to work up to on the way from level 40ish to 65+. It should be able to clear normal difficulty content like a boss, be able to do advanced level content without too much trouble, and allow you to start really grinding the reputation marks, fleet marks, and dilithium you'll need to begin building a max level ship for elite content. Where and how to get gear is mentioned, along with which ones should be prioritized, as well as gear they'll replace on the previous leveling build.
Let's go to school!"

Player Information

Player Info	--------------
Captain Name	All da capitans ;)
Captain Faction	All, though KDF and Rommys will be a bit different as this is focused on a FED ship and phasers.
Captain Race	Doesn't matter. Alien if you want that 10th personal trait.
Captain Profession	All. Captain career has nothing to do with ship choice or build. Stop the lies!
Primary Specialization	None yet as you should be leveling Strategist first from level 50-65, though this will eventually be Intelligence.
Secondary Specialization	Strategist. At level 50 this should be the first specialization you level. Read below for how and why to spend your first specialization points.
Intended Role	To not suck between levels 40ish-65 and be able to keep up at level 65 and beyond.

Skill Tree

		Engineering		Science		Tactical
Lieutenant		Hull Restoration	Hull Capacity	Shield Restoration	Shield Capacity	Advanced Energy Weapon Training	Advanced Projectile Weapon Training
Lieutenant Commander		Improved EPS Flow	Improved Impulse Expertise	Control Expertise	Drain Expertise	Improved Targeting Expertise	Improved Defensive Manuvering
5 Points
Commander		Hull Plating		Shield Regeneration	Shield Hardness	Advanced Weapon Amplification	Advanced Weapon specialization'
15 Points
Captain					Advanced Long Range Targeting	Advanced Hull Penetration	Advanced Shield Penetration
25 Points
Admiral		Warp Core Potential	Engineering Readiness		Scientific Readiness	Coordination Protocols	Tactical Readiness
35 Points						Defensive Coordination
		Warp Core Efficency				Offensive Coordination
Total of 46 of 46 Points		Engineering Points:	10	Science Points:	10	Tactical Points:	26

Skill Tree Unlocks

Points to unlock	Engineering Unlocks	Science Unlocks	Tactical Unlocks
Unlocks After 2	Training Manual:	Training Manual:	Training Manual:
Unlocks After 5	Battery Expertise	Sector Space Travel Speed	Threat Control
Unlocks After 7	Training Manual:	Training Manual:	Training Manual:
Unlocks After 10	Maximum Hull Capacity	Maximum Shield Capacity	Projectile Critical Chance
Unlocks After 12
Unlocks After 15			Energy Critical Chance
Unlocks After 17			Training Manual:
Unlocks After 20			Defense
--------------	--------------	--------------	--------------
Unlocks After 24 (Ultimate)			Focused Frenzy
Unlocks After 25 (Ultimate)			Frenzied Assault
Unlocks After 26 (Ultimate)			Team Frenzy
Unlocks After 27 (Ultimate)

Skill Tree Information

The same skill tree from my "First Step" post. To read more about it, visit the link above.

Build Description

"This build continues to increase performance on the back of the T5 Assault Cruiser received at level 40. One thing some might notice is a focus on things like damage and crit chance/damage. This is because the best performance in STO combat comes from these things. The faster you kill your enemies, the less chance they have of hurting you. Having heals and resistances are good, just not the most important part of a build. Focusing too much on these things means becoming a turtle, all shell and no bite.
Still pretty FED focused I know, sorry klinky and rommy friends. The build can still be adapted more to your requirements, just have to replace things with disruptor and plasma stuff :)
All gear, especially weapons and tac consoles, should be mark 12+ at this point. Quality is still less of a concern though very rare and beyond should be something you're shooting for.
At level 51 you will get your first specialization point. You'll get 1 point for each level from 51-65 for a total of 15. Spend all of these points in the Strategist secondary spec for two reasons. One, Strategist is the go-to secondary because when using it while the captain ability Threatening Stance is off (which is what most players do) you get boosts to Crit Chance when using heals, damage boosts depending on how many foes you're hitting, and a utility clicky that placates enemies, reduces threat, and ups damage. Two, after spending 15 points in it you unlock the Unconventional Tactics starship trait, which gives the captain ability Brace for Impact a 15% Bonus All Damage boost.
Next, at level 65+ you'll get a spec point every time you fill the leveling bar at the top of the screen, the best ways of doing this being Fed Admiralty (for the high xp payouts and 2 spec points after every 10th tour), spec point boxes from personal/universal endeavors and events, and just playing the game. After completing Strategist spend your next 15 points in Intelligence, focusing on the space side and set it to primary. Intel is the go-to primary for energy builds mainly due to the tier 3 flanking bonuses to crits and damage. Also, after spending 15 points in it will unlock the Predictive Algorithms starship trait, which adds a debuff removal every time a firing mode is used and adds a little accuracy.
Then, spend 15 points in Command (do not not set this to primary, it's mostly useless) to unlock the starship trait Command Frequency, which allows you to use the captain ability Fleet Support at any hull value. After that, finish off Intel spec to unlock the Intelligence Fleet clicky that gives a 15% boost to armoshield penetration for 30 seconds, and changes Predictive Algorithms to the Improved version. If you're having serious survivability issues, instead of Intel you could build up Miracle Worker in its place as it's great for that.
So, after spending your first 60 spec points as mentioned, you can then choose where you want to put them after that, such as finishing off Command (for the Improved version of the trait) or focusing on Commando for your ground game. Temporal primary is fantastic for most science ship builds, Pilot is a great primary or secondary, just overshadowed by Intel/Strat from a DPS perspective, and Constable is good for hardened targets like bosses but mostly useless for everything else.
Subsystem power will change to something like this: Weapons 100 / Shields 15-20 / Engines 15-20 / Auxiliary 60-70. This is because of two specific things found on the build: the Temporal Disentanglement Suite science console and the Nukara rep trait Auxiliary Power Configuration - Offense, that both increase their damage potential scaled off of how high your aux power is. High aux will also juice the boff abilities Hazard Emitters 1, Auxiliary to Structural Integrity 1, and Auxiliary to Inertial Dampeners 1.
To customize your subsystem power levels click the button with the 3 little boxes in it in the top right corner of the Subsystem power UI box. It will give you a 1, 2, 3, click 3 to give you a set of sliders. Weapon power should already be set to 100, click the lock above it to... lock it. Then, raise the aux slider up to 60-70. This will automatically set shields and engines to 15-20. Lock the aux slider, adjust engines/shields if you need to, then click the little 'save disk' in the top left, and to return to the numbers click the little 3 boxes button and hit 1.
The boff layout is the same as the leveling build since it's purdy gud already but is being enhanced by a couple of additions: the Emergency Conn Hologram from the Phoenix box and the Temporal reputation trait Chronocapacitor Array (read more below).
Personal traits haven't changed much since the leveling build except for three new additions: Beam Barrage from Beam R&D level 15, Point Blank Shot from mission House Pegh, and Thrill Seeker. All the reputation traits are fairly easy to get as 3 of them are found at T2, while the Nukara rep trait will take a little longer to get at T4. The starship traits are all the best free ones available, three of which are had through the specializations as mentioned above, with the fourth being a mission reward."

Basic Information	Data
Ship Name	USS Isa Gud Girl ;)
Ship Class	T5 Assault Cruiser

Basic Information	Component	Notes
Fore Weapons: 4	Prolonged Engagement Phaser Array MK XII+	Available from the Phoenix box very rare reward, usually pretty easy to get once you have some dilithium to buy Phoenix boxes. Applies stacks of Amplified Relays. Per stack, this weapon deals 1% increased damage, deals 90% to 115% of the normal damage of a Phaser Beam Array. Every 5 stacks of Amplified Relays, gain 20% Firing Cycle Haste for this Weapon for 8 secs. Haste is one of the best things for damage as it acts like a final damage modifier. One of the best phaser beam arrays in the game. Comes at Ultra Rare. At Epic it gets the Ac/Dm mod which should be re-engineered to Crtd/Dm. Medium priority.
	Phaser Beam Array MK XII+	Comes from mission drops, rewards, crafting, and the exchange. At this point it's time to start thinking about re-engineering mods to all Crtd, all Dmg, or a mix of both.
	Phaser Beam Array MK XII+
	Quantum Phase Torpedo Launcher MK XII+	From the mission Sunrise. Upon impact drains shields from target and any other enemies within 2 km of the target. Helps to form the 2pc set bonus of the Quantum Phase Catalysts (with the console) giving 15% accuracy and making the drain proc on the torp a little better. Still just here to help with weapon power drain and add a little extra spike damage here and there, the shield drain is pretty decent too. Cannot be re-engineered. Medium-high priority.
--------------	--------------	--------------
Aft Weapons: 4	Omni-Directional Phaser Beam Array MK XII+	Crafted at Beam R&D level 15 or bought on the exchange. More time on target equals more overall damage dealt. Re-engineer mods to all Crtd, all Dmg, or a mix of both. High Priority.
	Trilithium Enhanced Omni-Directional Phaser Beam Array MK XII+	From mission Beyond the Nexus. Like the crafted omni above, more time on target equals more overall damage dealt. Forms a 2pc with console Reinforced Armaments for 5% firing cycle haste. Haste is one of the best things for damage as it acts like a final damage modifier. Cannot be re-engineered. High priority.
	Phaser Beam Array MK XII+	See above.
	Phaser Beam Array MK XII+
--------------	--------------	--------------
Deflector	Quantum Phase Deflector Array MK XII+	From mission Stormfront. IMHO the best mission set in the game allowing one to start building up the resources for better fleet and rep gear. High priority for the whole set.
Impulse Engines	Quantum Phase Combat Impulse Engines MK XII+	By themselves these set pieces are nothing special but together they're pretty good as they add some survivability, the 2pc makes the shields a little better, and the 3pc gives a little damage clicky.
Warp Core	Deuterium-Stabilized Warp Core MK XII+	Core hasn't changed from the leveling build as it's pretty useful. From mission drops, crafting, and the exchange. Probably best to try and buy one from the exchange. Take for the very nice -15% reduction in weapon power drain.
Shields	Quantum Phase Resilient Shield Array MK XII+	And the shield is Resilient which is what we're usually looking for ;) Alternatives to the Quantum Phase set are the Sol Defense set from mission Midnight and the Kobali Regenerative Circuitry set from mission Dust to Dust. Both provide decent stats for survivability as well as in their 2-3pc bonuses. There is also the Bajor Defense set from mission Scylla and Charybdis which has a 2pc bonus of 17.8% Cat1 PhaseDisruptoPlasma damage. You could use the deflectoeng plus the deuterium core and a resilient shield.
Devices	Subspace Field Modulator	From mission Skirmish in the Devidian story arc found in the "Available" missions tab. Taken for the added damage resistance and defense. A decent free 'Oh Shit!' button. Don't worry, nothing really uses proton damage so don't worry about the -400 proton damage resistance thing, it's moot. Low priority.
	Energy Amplifer	Crafted in Beam R&D at level 10. Gives 20% bonus energy damage for up to 20 seconds if the Battery Expertise unlock is taken in the skill tree. High priority.
	Deuterium Surplus	Play the Alhena system daily mission in the beta quad and get it at the end, then craft in Eng R&D. Consuamble mini-Evasive Maneuvers that helps to keep you fast. Low-medium priority.
	Reactive Armor Catalyst	Play mission Broken Circle and choose the reward, then Craft in Eng R&D. Increases hull cap and gives a sizable heal-over-time when Battery Expertise is taken. Low-medium priority.
	Reinforcement Beacons	There are two more free reinforcement beacons like the Nimbus Pirate Distress Call mentioned in the leveling build. These are the Delta Alliance Reinforcements Beacon from mission Broken Circle and the Phased-Waveform Beacon from the mission Home. Like the Nimbus beacon they do not need to be slotted in your devices and can be used from your inventory.
--------------	--------------	--------------
Engineering Consoles: 4	Reinforced Armaments MK XII+	From mission Beyond the Nexus. 53.3% EPS power transfer rate, +20 to hull restoration and cap skills at mark 12 VR. Forms 2pc with omni phaser BA (or turret) for extra 5% weapon haste. Remember haste is big when it comes to damage. High priority. Will replace the EPS Flow Regulator.
	Ordnance Accelerator MK XII+	From Gamma rep T2. Gives 20% phaser and 20% projectile damage at mark 12 VR. Med-high priority. Will replace a RCS Accelerator.
	Assimilated Module MK XII+	From Omega rep T1. 0.92% Critical Chance, 9.2% Critical Severity, +5 Weapon Power Setting, +5.1 Starship Hull Regeneration, +22.9 Starship Control Expertise at mark 12 VR. The original DPS console. Taken mostly for the added crit chance and crit damage. High priority. Will replace a RCS Accelerator.
	Zero Point Energy Conduit MK XII+	From Romulan rep T1. 1.8% Critical Chance, 19.7 DrainX, +1.8 power to all subsystems at mark 12 VR. Taken for the crit chance. Medium priority. Will replace the Neutronium Alloy Armor. If having survivability issues the Trellium-D Armor from mission Ragnarok and/or the House Martok Defensive Configuration from mission Brushfire could also go here.
--------------	--------------	--------------
Science Consoles: 2	Temporal Disentanglement Suite MK XII+	From mission Butterfly. +4 aux power, 20% maximum shield cap, +3% shield resistance, aux scaling 0-2.5% crit chance and 0-10% crit damage at mark 12 VR. Taken for the crits. High priority.
	Quantum Phase Converter MK XII+	From mission Sunrise. 20% phaser damage, +3 aux power, +30 DrainX at mark 12 VR. Forms 2pc with the torpedo. Taken for the increase to phaser damage. High priority.
--------------	--------------	--------------
Tactical Consoles: 3	Phaser Relay MK XII+	These haven't changed from the leveling build. Always stack consoles here that increase the damage of your chosen energy flavor. Phasers = Phaser Relays / Disruptor = Disruptor Induction Coils / Plasma = Plasma Infusers / etc. These can be difficult to get early on in the game as mission rewards or drops. You can check the exchange for cheap commons or try crafting your own.
	Phaser Relay MK XII+
	Phaser Relay MK XII+

Officers and Crew

Bridge Officer Information	Power	Notes
Officer 1: Commander ( Engineering )	Emergency Power to Engines 1	Plus 40 flight speed, +2 turn rate, +20 engine power. Procs the Conn Officer doff that effectively resets Evasive Maneuvers. Keeps you fast.
	Auxiliary Power to the Structural Integrity Field 1	Auxiliary scaling heal and added damage resistance rating. Short cooldown and one of the better boff heals in the game.
	Emergency Power to Weapons 3	Plus 40 weapon power and 16.6% all energy damage. At any rank a must for energy weapon builds. Can be purchased off the exchange, a training manual can be made for it out of a boff candidate that already has it, or it can be crafted by engineering captains.
	Reverse Shield Polarity 3	Converts incoming energy damage to shields, lasts 20 seconds. Basically makes you invulernable while it's up, though things like kinetic and physical damage will still hurt you. Works great against Vaadwaur Polaron Barrages. Can be used with a special and expensive Fabrication Engineer doff from the exchange to increase uptime. Must be purchased off the exchange or a training manual can be made for it out of a boff candidate that already has it.
Officer 2: Lt. Commander ( Engineering )	Engineering Team 1	Small hull heal, repairs offline subsystems and can clear some other debuffs like movement ones from the Voth and Mokai.
	Auxiliary Power to Inertial Dampeners 1	Auxiliary scaling kinetic damage resistance, +50%flight speed, +100% turn rate for 15 seconds. Shares a cooldown with A2Sif above. Mostly a filler ability.
	Directed Energy Modulation 2	7.5% energy weapon shield penetration and 7.5 to Armor penetration for 30 seconds. Not super-great but decent filler ability.
Officer 3: Lieutenant ( Tactical )	Tactical Team 1	Distributes shield strength to shields receiving damage (why its used), +18 to both Weapon and Projectile training for 10 seconds. Clear hostile boarding parties and tactical debuffs. Vets will forgo this ability for something that gives more damage but Tac Team is a must for new players. It really helps with survivability. Never have to use higher than rank 1. The butter...
	Attack Pattern Beta 1	-20 all damage resistance to target. The bread...
Officer 4: Ensign ( Tactical )	Beam Overload or Beam Fire at Will 1	Beam Overload 1 will increase damage 3x and decreases firing rate by half. Beam Fire at Will 1 hits all available targets within a beam array's arc but each beam only does 80% of its base damage and has its accuarcy skill decreased by 50. Both are viable, just your choice between being single or multi target focused. BFAW is great for clearing multiple targets at once and drawing threat as a tank. Because it draws a lot of threat, it can get you killed if you don't know how to manage a lot of incoming damage FYI. For most if not all builds, it's important to take the highest rank of these abilities. In this case, because we want to use APB1 in the LT spot, the beams' main firing mode is relegated to rank 1 for now. The meat...
Officer 5: Lieutenant ( Science )	Hazard Emitters 1	Aux scaling heal-over-time, adds all damage resistance, clears plasma fires and other hazard debuffs.
	Photonic Officer 1	Super-Important Part of the Build Reduces recharge times of bridge officers by 2% each second for 20 sec. Used in conjuction with a point each in the readiness skills, as well as the Temporal reputation's Chronocapacitor Array trait, will keep your boff abilities' cooldowns at or close to their minimums, resulting in their use more often.

Duty Officer Information	Power	Notes
Emergency Conn Hologram	Using Emergency Power to Engines effectively resets Evasive Maneuvers' cooldown.	From the Phoenix box rare rewards. Relatively easy to get once you have some dilithium to spend. Keeps you fast. Low-med priority.
Projectile Weapons Officer	Chance to reduce the time for torpedos to recharge after use. 20% chance: Improve recharge time by 5 sec	Law from the mission A Fistful of Gorn. You can stack up to three PWOs to increase your chance at reducing the torp's cooldown. Cheap filler doff to help the Quantum Phase torp firing a little more often. Low priority.

Character, Reputation, and Starship Traits

Personal Space Traits	Description	Notes
Accurate	+10% Accuracy
Beam Barrage	On activation of Beam ability to self: +2% All Beam Damage Bonus for 30 sec (Stacks up to 3 times)	From Beam R&D Level 15. Replacing Innocuous. Medium priority.
Beam Training	+5% Beam Weapon Damage
Elusive	+10% Defense
Fleet Coordinator	+2% All Damage per Team member (Self included), up to 10%
Operative	+1% Critical Chance, +2% Critical Severity
Point Blank Shot	to self: +0-10% Bonus Energy Weapon Damage, based on Distance to Target. Maximum bonus when less than 2km, no effect beyond 6km	From mission House Pegh. Replacing Projectile Training. Med-high priority.
Techie	+20 Hull Restoration (Improves Hull Healing) +20 Hull Regeneration (Improves Passive Hull Regeneration)
Thrill-seeker	+15% Flight and Full Impulse Speed	Replacing Warp Theorist.

Space Reputation Traits	Description	Obtained from
Advanced Targeting Systems	+16% Critical Severity	T2 Dyson, high priority.
Auxiliary Power Configuration - Offense	+5% (at 100 Aux) Bonus All Damage, +5 Accuracy (at 100 Aux)	T4 Nukara, med-high priority.
Precision	+4% Critical Hit Chance	T2 Romulan, high priority.
Chrono-Capacitor Array	+7.5% Bridge Officer Ability Recharge Speed	T2 Temporal, medium priority.

Starship Traits	Description	Notes
Unconventional Tactics	Brace for Impact grants 15% Bonus All Damage Buff	From completing Strategist spec. The best free starship trait.
The Best Defense	Attack Patterns grant Hull Healing Buff to Self	From mission House Pegh. APB will be up most of the time in combat making this a nice ultility.
Command Frequency	Able to use captain ability Fleet Support at any hull percentage.	From spending 15 points in Command spec. Nice support, even better with the improved version.
Predictive Algorithms	Activating any Weapon Enhancement Ability removes 1 Debuff effect and grants +2.5 Accuracy Rating for 30 sec from weapon enhancing abilities (stacks up to 4 times)	From spending 15 points in Intelligence spec. Getting rid of debuffs is nice and the added accuracy doesn't hurt either (especially when using BFAW).

Concluding Remarks

"Just like the leveling build, this one can be adapted to a number of other cruisers and escorts. This is not for science ships. If adapting this for an escort it's possible to swap out the weapons for DCs/DHCs and turrets, take a cannon firing mode like Cannon: Scatter Volley (CSV) or Cannon: Rapid Fire (CRF), and change the boff layout to something with more tac abilities. You can even adapt this build to a different energy type by swapping the weapons and phaser boosting consoles, with ones that boost your chosen energy type using a console guide like this one: https://www.reddit.com/stobuilds/comments/i8v5iw/ogsmustachios_guide_to_dew_consoles_in_2020/
Aaannnddd... that's it! I hope this build can make your life in STO a little easier without too much trouble. If you found this post helpful, bookmark it and link it to your friends or those in need. Stay tuned tomorrow for part 3 of the Baby Step Series entitled: The Last Step - Level 65 High-End Fleet T6X Archon Intel Assault Cruiser, where I'll show you how to evolve this build using the T6X fleet Sovereign with the most expensive, sought-after geatraits, in order to build a max-performance ship!
Stay safe and have fun out there kiddos ;)
Did I leave anything out? Feel free to leave constructive comments on free/cheap DPS builds below. Thanks for reading!"

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Source: https://www.bungie.net/en/News/Article/48973
This week at Bungie, the Guardian Games have begun.

Hunters, Titans, and that floaty class are facing off against each other in a friendly competition. We kicked off the event with a dev insight showing some of us at Bungie sharing our thoughts on who is going to win.
Video Link
Sure, there’s some light-hearted ribbing going on, but at the end of the day we’re all Guardians. Still though, the winners get to flex their class item in everyone’s faces, so get out there and represent your team.
Hunters won the first day, but Titans rose to the occasion to claim day two. It’s still far from over. One thing we haven’t told you yet is that during the final week of the event, every day’s victory will count for double points. So if any class is holding a fairly significant lead and thinks they can sit back and relax, they better keep on pushing or another class could pull off a comeback.
Before we move on to the rest of the TWAB, Production Director Justin Truman would like to speak on the current state of the game and our plans going forward.

Justin Truman: Hey everyone,
If you’re like me, you’re playing a lot more video games now than you did last month. In these uncertain times, we want Destiny to be a satisfying escape rather than a frustrating grind.
There’s been a growing list of concerns with the game lately: Trials, the rise in cheaters, our new Seasonal model, the balance between rewards you earn vs. items you buy. We’ve been closely watching and discussing each of these topics as we read your feedback. When our community managers relay that everyone at Bungie is listening, I assure you, we are.
We’re also working hard from our homes, trying to address and improve each of these areas for future releases. Nothing in Destiny is as easy as flipping a switch, and everything’s gotten trickier while working remotely. But as Destiny players ourselves, we struggle with the same issues you do, and we want to fix them as quickly as we can.
But fixing these issues isn’t good enough if we keep you in the dark the whole time, so we’re going to try something a little different. Every week for the rest of this Season, we’ll have updates from different members on the dev team covering the most important topics in Destiny right now, and what we’re planning to do about them.
Today we’re going to discuss Trials and our war against cheaters.
Next week we’ll be diving deep on our Seasonal model, and how we plan to improve it in the future as well as some info on bounties and our plans involving their evolution.
We have plans for future editions of the TWAB, but we also want to hear from you. What are other topics you want to make sure we discuss in the coming weeks?
Like you, we love Destiny and the community that makes it as special as it is. For a bunch of us, Destiny represents more than a decade of our lives, and we’re never going to stop trying to make it better – even if we have to do that from our beds and couches in this unprecedented time. I’m looking forward to sharing more with you in the coming weeks.
Stay safe out there, Guardians.

Trials and Tribulations

A few TWABs ago, we talked about some of the issues with how the Trials of Osiris rewards are currently set up. We have an update on how we’ll start addressing some of your feedback.
Our goal for Trials is to encourage players to chase seven win tickets. Resetting tickets should not be the most effective way to earn Trials gear. Rewards should show players that the further you progress, the better the payout. Players that have already gone flawless once over a weekend should be encouraged to repeat the experience on passages other than Mercy – to strive to earn more rewards and not sit at the bottom of cards picking on fireteams struggling to hit three wins or even just win a single match.
Trials has always had a problem of being approachable for players who aren’t highly skilled PvP gods. We believe that players should be encouraged to make an attempt every week, regardless of skill. You should feel some value in dipping your toe in each week to see if you can get a little further than last week, to push yourself to improve and get better. While every single player won’t make it to the Lighthouse, you should feel like you can get meaningful rewards by pushing yourself and still get some rewards for spending time in the activity.
So what are we doing about it?

• Problem: Token Rewards incentivizes players to farm to three wins and reset their card.
  
  • Solution: In Season 11 we’re planning on creating token payout milestones at 3/5/7 wins that give successively larger chunks of tokens. Bonus Tokens Passage should increase these payouts, and on a flawless run it will generate a significant token payout.
• Problem: Trials is unrewarding for players stuck at 1-2 wins.
  
  • Solution: Create a weekly bounty that encourages participation each weekend and does not require match wins. When redeemed, the bounty will reward the same item that comes from the three-win passage unlocking the engram for purchase that week.
• Problem: Trials feels unrewarding compared to other endgame activities.
  
  • Solution: Inject more chances to earn Masterworking materials from Trials. Masterworking/infusion materials will come from 3/5/7 win payouts in Season 11. We’re also looking into possibly adding a new material-focused farming card in Season 12.

These are our current plans for changes we want to make in the short term. We’re also still investigating improvements we can make in the long term. For example, you may be asking “What about Adept weapons?” We’re currently investigating a new form of Flawless aware weapons for a future Season. They might not have the same name, but these weapons would have some differences in order to set them apart. Right now we are currently looking at giving these weapons the ability to replaces the weapon mod slot with an adept mod slot(name may change) that can accept custom-built mods in addition to the normal list of weapon mods. All of this is subject to change as we continue to develop but wanted to give you an early look. We’ll share more details in the future.
We know many of you are far more concerned about cheaters ruining your trips to the Lighthouse, and rightfully so. It’s a punch in the gut to lose on your final game to someone with a fully automatic Whisper of the Worm. Let’s now take some time to update you on the cheater war effort.

No Quarter

Image Link^imgur
When winning every match is more important than ever, it’s no surprise that there are some who are willing to cheat or pay others to cheat for them. We asked Destiny Engineering Director David Aldridge to give an update on the fight for a fair fight.

David Aldridge: Let’s talk about cheating.
Cheating in Destiny 2 is up roughly 50 percent since January, and significantly more in the highest skill echelons. We expected a significant bump with the return of Trials, and we made a number of careful preparations, most notably partnering with Valve to integrate Steam Datagram Relay into our PC build to mitigate DDOS attacks. While many of those preparations were successful (e.g. DDOSing on PC is nearly extinct), we’re still not happy with the amount of cheating happening today, especially in Trials. When your pinnacle achievements are denied by encountering a cheater on a high Trials ticket, or devalued by seeing someone else with ill-gotten goods, that’s frustrating. Those frustrations are happening too often right now, and the vengeance of the Banhammer is often too far behind.
That said, the Banhammer has not been idle. Before Season of the Worthy launched, we were averaging 656 bans or restrictions per week. In the first four weeks after launch, that rate more than tripled to 2133 punishments per week.
When it comes to tracking and punishing cheaters, we have to keep some of our plans and knowledge secret for obvious reasons, but we still wanted to give you a brief overview of the worst types of cheating we’re actively combatting:

• On PC (where most cheating occurs, unsurprisingly):
  
  • Memory-poking attacks to gain gameplay advantage (e.g. infinite ammo, infinite ability energy, infinite respawns, teleports)
    • To acknowledge a valid point that we often see come up in community discussion, some of these attacks leverage Destiny’s unique hosting model, discussed here and at much more length here. We designed Destiny’s model to optimize for the feel and consistency of high-complexity, high-action, high-fidelity PvE experiences, while allowing the seamless blending of PvE and PvP. Unfortunately, that model comes with some unique challenges in providing PvP security guarantees. That said, we continue to invest in preventions and detections in this space, leveraging the servers that host and monitor every match. This is a subtle point we’ve struggled to convey over the years: we do have servers hosting every match, but in our hosting model, those servers don’t have complete authority over the game simulation to prevent all of these sorts of attacks naturally. This makes it more difficult (but not impossible) to mitigate these attacks.
• Aimbots
  
• Wallhacks
  
• Lag switching
  
  • We have detection and banning systems in this area, and we’ll continue to hone those. We want to be cautious here because some players suffer with unreliable internet through no fault of their own and aren’t using it to gain advantage.
• On consoles:
  
  • DDOS in Trials
    • We have detection and banning systems around this (we’ve been evolving them since the original Destiny) but they’re imperfect because DDOS occurs entirely outside of the machine running the game. One long-term mitigation to this is adopting SDR on consoles as well, which we hope to do at some point in the future.
  • Lag switching
    • See above.

But you didn’t come here just to hear us describe the types of cheating in Destiny. The more pressing question is: What do we plan to do about it?

• We’re shifting more people to help work on this space. More eyes analyzing cheater reports, more developments in our anti-cheat systems, more people developing and testing new ban rules, and more fuel for the hammer. There are many details about new detections and preventions, but sharing those would give the bad actors a head start. The one thing I can say is that a big focus is rapid response – we want to get cheaters out of the pool more quickly. This is key to reducing the value of cheating, especially in selling access to cheats.
• We’re changing a key policy – fireteammates of cheaters are no longer innocent. We now reserve the right to restrict or ban any player who has benefitted from cheating, even if they didn’t cheat themselves. This includes scenarios where players group up with or provide account information to a guide or carry service, which then cheats on their behalf. We want you to find new friends out there, but be sure they have your trust before you go. If you LFG your way into a fireteam with a cheater, get out and report them. If you ride them to a flawless, the Banhammer will come for you as well.
• We’re considering requiring a much higher player time investment to play Trials. We’re interested in your thoughts on this. What if you had to have ~100 hours of play on an account to participate in any Trials match where a ticket with more than four wins was at stake on either side? Increasing the time it takes for a new account to become Trials-ready increases the power of our Banhammer (since cheaters can always create new dummy accounts), but it also adds barriers to honest, law-abiding PvPers that want to check out Trials. Would the reduction in cheaters be worth the increased barrier to getting your T-1000-aimskill buddy who’s running behind on Light to join your fireteam?
• [REDACTED]. Because this is a cheating discussion, know that we have additional initiatives we do not intend to share publicly, in order to stay one step ahead of attackers.

There are a couple of common misconceptions about Destiny security that are worth discussing here as well:

• “Destiny does not have an anti-cheat”
  
  • Destiny does have anti-cheat that consists of custom security code and a third-party security product used by many other AAA games. We have a team of senior security engineers working on anti-cheat.
  • Anti-cheat isn’t a yes-or-no thing, it’s a constellation of possible mitigations. We’re always looking to add new stars to our constellation, and to strengthen existing ones.
• “Destiny relies on player reports or humans to identify cheaters”
  
  • The vast majority of punishments issued come from automated detections. We use player reports to help us identify emerging threats. All automated detections are reviewed and verified by a human before punishment to minimize the risk of false positives.
• •“Destiny should use Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC)”
  
  • Destiny does utilize some of VAC’s security features, and we have plans to utilize more. Bungie’s security team and Valve’s security team meet regularly to discuss the latest attacks and mitigations.

We’re also re-evaluating some of our decisions along the way – for example, we may have made a mistake in not having Trials behind the Season Pass paywall, which would have created more friction against free-account-recycling cheaters. We won’t change this for Season of the Worthy, but we’ll re-evaluate access requirements in future Seasons. At its best, Trials is a fountain of nail-biting space combat crescendos, and it’s something you can’t find anywhere else. We want that experience to be available to as many people as possible. But if we’re forced to choose, we will choose for Trials to be a sacred space, even if that means fewer people can play.
Our overall goal with Destiny security is to provide a competitive, fair ecosystem where cheaters are rarely seen and are rapidly ejected from the game. We’re not there right now, and we’re increasing the priority. We’ll keep you posted.

Guardian’s Heart

Last week, we unveiled the Guardian’s Heart charity initiative. Our mission is to combine the forces of this amazing community in support of the frontline healthcare workers who are risking their personal safety to battle COVID-19. If you missed our announcement stream, you can read all the details here.
One week later, we’re already in sight of our total goal. To date, you have collectively raised well over $600,000! While we never doubted you, we never take you for granted. Thanks to each and every one of you for your support.
This initiative was designed to last for a full month and we intend to keep rolling. Some truly awesome people have hosted their own Bungie Bounties to raise awareness for the cause. Those will continue. Here’s who you can look forward to hunting in the wilds of matchmaking this week. All times are PDT.

• April 23 - ms_kdlh and vJayTeer at 3:00 PM on PS4
• April 23 - Nexxoss Gaming at 10:00 AM on PC (Germany)
• April 24 - RocketBearLive and Tryhard Tristan at 4:00P PM on Xbox
• April 24 - Tutuu at 12:00 AM on PS4 (France)
• April 27 - Mesa Sean and Clintus at 11:00 AM on PC
• April 28 - JOverated_ and RythmOnTwitch at 3:00 PM on PS4
• April 29 - BroFish and vNogi at 11:00 AM on PC
• April 29 - Puxian555 at 11:00 AM on Xbox (France)
• April 30 - T1riot and Mr_Ar3s at 4:00 PM on Stadia
• April 30 - Andy Edition at 10:00 AM on Xbox (Germany)

As cool as the Guardian’s Heart emblem is, you can’t take it with you once you’re done playing. If you’re looking for a way to show your support in real life for the heroes of this global health crisis, the Bungie Store is getting in on the action. Now through April 30, all profits from the Bungie Foundation Pin benefit Direct Relief charity for COVID-19 efforts.
With your purchase, you’ll also get the free exclusive “Bending Borealis” emblem.
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All Bungie Store orders over $50 will receive the Bungie Foundation Pin for free (while supplies last), and we’ll make a donation of $14.99 to Direct Relief.

Ghost Ship

On our Season of Worthy page we had an error that stated that there would be a Ghost available on the bottom Seasonal reward track for Season Pass owners. It was meant to inform players about the ship that is currently being offered. Since it was our mistake and we did promise a Ghost we will be delivering a Ghost that you will be able to claim next Season if you have purchased Season of Worthy.
Here is a quick look at the concept art for the Ghost and what perks it will have.
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Perks:

• Guiding Light
• Omni-Telemetry
• Random Destination Perk

Sorry for any confusion. We’ll have more details on how to pick up your Ghost before the next Season goes live.

Twitch Prime Rewards

Any player with an active Prime subscription can visit this page to link your Bungie.net account and claim your rewards. Amanda Holliday will then have your rewards waiting for you in the Tower. Here’s a look at what this month’s offering includes:

• S'mores - Exotic Emote
• Death to Kells - Exotic Ship
• Star Map Shell - Exotic Ghost
• The Whipcrack - Legendary Sparrow

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Emerging Issues

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The Player Support team is hard at work tracking down issues as players discover them in the wild.
This is their report.

ERROR CODES

Destiny Player Support is continuing to collect reports of players hitting WATERCRESS and NEWT errors. Our teams are still working on finding a fix for this issue.
We are also continuing to investigate increases in connection-based error codes such as ANTEATER, BEAVER, and RABBIT.

CURRENT KNOWN ISSUES

• While we continue investigating various known issues, here is a list of the latest issues that were reported to us in our #Help Forum:
• Players must complete the introduction quest, The Guardian Games, before bounties and medals can be obtained.
• The On Your Laurels Guardian Games quest sometimes doesn't go into player inventories, or Eva Levante keeps offering the quest to players.
• The Void Feast Guardian Games bounty does not count kills while Devour is active.
• Warlocks have to get 10 charged melee kills using the bottom tree of their Voidwalker subclass.
• The Lethal Buddy Guardian Games bounty does not gain progress from Arc Soul kills from the Getaway Artist exotic.
• Warlocks have to use the Attunement of the Elements Stormcaller subclass even if they're wearing Getaway Artist exotic gauntlets.
• The Show Your Colors Guardian Games triumph shows as account-based, but must be completed on a single character.
• The Daily Seraph weapons acquired from Rasputin bunkers can no longer be claimed even if players reach rank 92 on their Season Pass. For a full list of emergent issues in Destiny 2, players can review our Known Issues article. Players who observe other issues should report them to our #Help forum.

Talkies

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It’s Movie of the Week time. If you are new here, here’s how it works: We go on a hunt across the community to find some of our favorite videos and then we highlight them here. Here are this week's winners.
Movie of the Week: Crayola Crew
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Honorable Mention: Dance Dance Evolution
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As Justin mentioned at the top of the TWAB, we covered the first two topics in a series of write-ups about some of the biggest current challenges with Destiny. We plan to unpack new topics each week and give regular updates on how our efforts are going.
Next week, we plan on talking about our Seasonal model and bounties. We know there’s been a lot of feedback on bounties, especially since Guardian Games utilizes them for scoring. We’ll share some of the ways we’ll be changing up bounties and how they’re implemented in the future.
Bear with us as we work to steadily improve the game. Much like you, we love Destiny and we want it to be the best that it can be.
<3 Cozmo