Mote of Dark

A mote of dark laying on the floor of Kell's Grave.

Motes of Dark are items dropped by defeated enemies during Gambit, to be collected and banked by players during the game. They are of value to the Drifter, who can use them to summon Primevals.

Gameplay

Motes of Dark are dropped by combatants and vary depending on the enemy type and rank along with invading Guardians dropping 3 motes. However depending on the gamemode and time period, their functions change.

Development Build

For a single day on September 1, 2018, PlayStation 4 users could play an early mode of Gambit. In this mode Motes every enemy only dropped 1 mote, regardless of class and rank, along with only needing 50 motes to summon a Primeval, dying would permanently lose collected motes. In this build Invaders could not collect enemy motes and were not automatically pulled back even if they got four kills, allowing for possible multiple One Man Army medals in one invasion (Even if technically the medals hadn't been introduced yet.).

Forsaken

With the release of Forsaken three days after the Development Build, Gambit had changed in certain ways. Now the team needed to gather a total of 75 motes to summon a Primeval, and banking certain amounts from a single player at once caused a Blocker to spawn on the enemy side, closing down their bank and preventing them from banking their own motes. 0-4 motes of dark didn't send anything, 5-9 motes sent a Ravenous Taken Phalanx, 10-14 motes sent a Ravenous Taken Knight, and finally 15 motes sent a Ravenous Taken Ogre. It was also now that Invaders could collect mote on the enemy side, allowing for them to deny already collected motes, but to also prevent the enemy from easily recovering by stealing uncollected motes of dark.

Gambit Prime

Gambit Prime was released as a more competitive version of the original Gambit with changed rulesets. In Gambit Prime the requirement for a Primeval was now 100 motes and the blockers had been switched in both game modes. 5-9 was now a Taken Goblin, 10-14 a Ravenous Taken Captain, and 15 a miniboss Taken Knight. If the disabled bank was left unattended and more than one blocker was active, the bank would begin to be drained, siphoning motes from that teams bank into the enemy's until the blockers were dealt with.

Along with these new modes, new role specific armor was introduced, along with the Mote-centric Collector armor set. With a full set of Collector armor gained from The Reckoning gamemode that shipped along with Gambit Prime, it allowed the wearer to collect up to 20 motes, that when banked would summon an Ultra Taken Phalanx on the enemy side and automatically start draining motes, regardless if there was more blockers on the enemy side or not.

Beyond Light

With Beyond Light's release and the sunsetting of Gambit Prime and the Reckoning, vanilla Gambit was merged with Prime to make the current iteration and mote system. Gambit Prime armor sets now no longer affected gameplay and Gambit Prime's required mote amount to summon a primeval was carried over. The medium blocker was changed from a Ravenous Taken Captain to a Ravenous Taken Phalanx and mote siphoning now has a grace period before activation.

Gallery

• 

  A Guardian running for a Mote of Dark in the Gambit release trailer.

Trivia

• Motes of Dark appear as black tetrahedral objects with glowing white outlines; this lends them some resemblance to the mysterious fleet of pyramidal entities frequently shown in association with the Darkness.
• At one point, Drifter described Motes of Dark as "delectable". What he means by this is unknown.