Everything we just learnt about Destiny: The Taken King

Bungie just held its first Destiny: The Taken King reveal stream, and we've rounded up all the new information.

The reveal focused on the Tower social space, items and the way characters progress with the expansion, due out in September.

First, a few things we already knew:

Don't dismantle anything because Bungie will use the items in your inventory and your vault to determine your new character level.

The level cap is increased to 40, and progression is now experience point-based.

Your light level is the average of your total defence and attack ratings across all equipped items. It's a product of all your gear, rather than a single stat on pieces of armour.

Ghosts have a light stat now. Your class item has a light stat now. The idea is every item matters, and every item progresses your Guardian in some way.

Intellect, Discipline and Strength ratings remain, but their impact is better explained. You'll see how many seconds your cooldowns are reduced by each, rather than a percentage.

Your Quest tab is where you'll see bounties. You now have 16 bounty slots.

Bounties a a bit quicker to complete, with fewer ordering you to go to a certain place. They're more like, "get solar weapon kills", which you'll probably be doing anyway.

You can also track up to four bounties. Pull up your ghost to see your progress.

You can now turn in your bounties from anywhere. You don't need to return to a social space to turn them in.

You can hold up to 32 quests. Some you'll get from the Vanguard, some from your class, some are story quests. A new quest unlocks your new subclass.

Quests show you their rewards. The idea is to take the guesswork out of the game and reduce the randomness.

There's a new item called Spark of Light, which every buyer of The Taken King gets. With this, you can boost a character to level 25, with level appropriate gear so you can jump straight into The Taken King.

The starting line for The Taken King is level 25, Bungie said.

Your Guardian's face can be displaced inside user interface screens. Inside the Tower you can switch weapons, letting you show off the weapon of your choice.

The Speaker sells new Ghosts.

Class items now have a defence rating and perks that increase upgrade rates and reputation gain.

New Ghosts also give you defence, and can carry intellect, discipline and strength stats. New Ghost perks include marking resource nodes, such as "detect Spirit Bloom".

The Tower is home to terminals, from which you access your collections of emblems, shaders and space ships.

You can safely get rid of these items from your inventory and vault because those you've collected will be available inside your collection at any time. So, you can pull these items out and reclaim them whenever you want. This should help make room in your vault (more on that later).

Your collections also show you the items you don't have, and how to get them, which sounds pretty useful.

The Factions (Dead Orbit, New Monarchy, Future War Cult) have been updated.

You now go to a faction vendor and pledge allegiance. If you do, every time you earn Vanguard or Crucible rep you also earn rep with that faction, so you can gain both at the same time.

Being aligned with a faction means you can buy their gear. All your Destiny Year One rep carries forward.

You can change your faction allegiance once a week.

Faction gear has new types of perks, some of which tie into burns (recovery boost after receiving solar splash damage). So you may want a specific item for a Nightfall, for example. Here, Bungie is trying to make the items more meaningful.

Faction vendors have quests. When you hit certain ranks, quests will be waiting for you.

Faction packages are improved. You won't just get a single shard. You'll get a guaranteed legendary plus some strange coins and motes of light. There's a higher chance to get shaders and emblems, too.

Once a shader, for example, has been added to your collection, it's taken out of your loot stream, so you're guaranteed to eventually get the shader you're after.

Crucible chief Shaxx has quests for you now that start as early as level five.

Shaxx also has weekly bounties. If you complete all five, you complete the last one, which offers Nightfall tier rewards, so a chance at an exotic drop.

Shaxx also sells legendary ghosts with PvP-focused perks (additional glimmer when killing Titans).

Vanguard and Crucible marks are replaced by a single new currency. Legendary marks are account wide, like glimmer. These marks drop from the daily heroic and weekly heroic, as well as daily PvP lists.

You need these Legendary marks to buy Legendary gear from vendors in the Tower. There's no limit on how many you can earn in a week, but your wallet size is 200.

Old marks will be converted to commendations, which you can cash in for reputation. A reputation level gain nabs you a Reward Package.

When you shard a Legendary item you get Legendary marks.

The Crucible Quartermaster specialises in PvP weapons and offers PvP weekly bounties that are weapon-focused.

Your Crucible rep and rank carries over, so you may be able to gain access to items from day one of Destiny year two.

Exotic Armour Blueprints make important changes to the game.

Every time you find an exotic its blueprint is added to your collection. If you "misplace" an exotic, you can pull another out of the Vault and get back what you may have lost. Think of it as the Star Trek replicator, except instead of getting tea, you get Plan C, Bungie said.

Blueprints are tied to your account, so if you've got an alt Guardian you can get a copy of an exotic for use with that character.

Year two has taken some of the year one exotics and upgraded them. Any of the year one exotics you've found that have been upgraded are already available.

The upgrade costs Legendary marks.

On these upgraded exotics, the signature perk is automatically applied, so you no longer need to upgrade that perk.

They start at max power, too, so when you get an exotic you can just use it. There are new talents.

But only some exotics are coming forward in this way. Not all will.

Auto rifle Suros Regime has a sexy new look. "Darth Vader's Ferrari," Bungie said.

The Cryptarch sells legendary engrams for 135 Legendary Marks. They may even turn into exotics. Cryptarch reputation carries over.

Banshee the Gunsmith has undergone significant changes.

Field Test Weapons are guns you can lease out for free. They're like weapon bounties.

You take a Field Test Weapon into the world and use it to earn rep with the Gunsmith. He's also involved with a lot of the quest chains.

Foundry Orders are new for Destiny Year Two.

Once you hit rank one with the Gunsmith, you can buy Foundry Orders, which supply unique weapons from the various manufacturers in the game.

Wednesday is new gun day, or "Armsday". As if Xursday wasn't enough!

The Infuse node replaces "ascension" for year two items.

Here, you can consume an item to make another more powerful. So it's a way to keep things current.

This only works on Destiny year two legendary weapons, exotic weapons, legendary armour and exotic armour. So you can't Infuse Year One items.

"It's using other higher level items as fuel to make your legendaries and exotics stronger," Bungie said. The idea is characters will look unique at endgame.

Vault space! It's been doubled. There are weapons, armour and general (for materials) tabs.

And what's that? A new weapon type: the sword.

Bungie ended the stream with a dance party in the Tower. Yes, there are new dances.

Twitch's archive of the Destiny stream is below.