Destiny 2 servers down for six hours of maintenance ahead of weekly reset

Destiny 2's servers are offline as developer Bungie carries out maintenance ahead of Tuesday's weekly reset. The servers went down at 2pm BST (6am PT / 9am ET) and are scheduled to return at 8pm (midday PT / 3pm ET).

This is the third maintenance period in as many weeks following the online shooter's launch in September on PS4 and Xbox One. Since that launch, the game has been offline for a total of 17 hours due to these lengthy periods of downtime.

On the first Monday following its release, Bungie encountered trouble during their work on the game's servers, delaying the return of the game by three hours.

During these periods, all players are unable to log into the game, which requires a constant internet connection to play and offers no offline, single player modes.

Each Tuesday, Bungie introduces a new set of challenges and milestones for players to work towards, including new Nightfall Strikes and Flashpoint locations. This week (26 September) will also see the introduction of the new Faction Rally event.

This event will see vendors representing three factions – New Monarchy, Dead Orbit and Future War Cult – appear at The Tower hub space. Players will be able to align themselves with one of the three groups, after which Faction Tokens earned from completing challenges will be gathered.

"Once you have chosen your side, your mission will be to return to the wild and complete activities in support of your faction. You can do public events, explore Lost Sectors, complete strikes, clear the raid, or compete in the Crucible. As you complete these activities, you will be rewarded with faction tokens that you can turn in for packages full of loot," Bungie explained.

These three factions return from the original Destiny, and are represented by the same three characters: Arach Jalaal (Dead Orbit), Lakshmi-2 (Future War Cult) and Executor Hideo (New Monarchy).

Each faction has a specific weapon assigned to it. At the end of the event on 3 October, the faction that has gathered the most Faction Tokens will unlock its weapon and it will go on sale. That weapon will cost members of that faction a paltry 1,000 glimmer, but 50,000 for those who are not.

For Dead Orbit the weapon is a scout rifle, for the Future War Cult it's a pulse rifle, and for New Monarchy it's a sidearm.

In addition to Faction Rally, the weekly reset will see the Flashpoint (which rewards the completion of public events in specific locations) take place on Titan and the challenging Nightfall Strike focus on Io mission The Pyramidion.