How to get yourself prepared for Destiny 2: Lightfall

Hit the ground running in Neomuna by hoarding bounties and completing seasonal content

Destiny 2: Lightfall is due for release on February 28, and whether you are a lapsed fan or somebody who plays Bungie’s online shooter every day, there is plenty you can do to prepare. This guide covers everything from bounty hoarding and resource gathering to which seasonal weapons to craft. Pick and choose the parts that matter to you so your Guardian can put his or her best foot forward on Neomuna.

Bounty prep

If there’s one thing Destiny 2 players associate with a new release, whether an expansion or even just a season, it is hoarding bounties. What this means is picking up a bunch of those little daily or weekly quests from vendors around the solar system, completing the objectives, and then leaving the rewards unclaimed in your quest log to pick up later.

Essentially what you are doing is stockpiling XP that you can then activate after Lightfall is released. This will allow you to advance through Season Pass ranks, artifact levels and Power levels very quickly while other players are still getting their bearings. When Lightfall drops, complete the first few missions to obtain the new seasonal artifact, then equip the Blinding Light Ghost mod (+12% XP gains) and maybe jump into a fireteam with friends (Fireteam XP bonus) before claiming your bounties.

It stands to reason that the best bounties to stockpile are the ones that give out the most XP, and there are around two dozen that give big boosts. Check out these vendors and the bounties they have for the corresponding tasks:

• Eris Morn and the Lectern of Enchantment (The Moon) - Altars of Sorrow waves, Nightmares in Lost Sectors, Nightmare Hunts, Lost Sector chests
• Petra Venj (Dreaming City) - Weekly Ascendant Challenge, Blind Well runs
• Shaw Han (Cosmodrome) - Full Spectrum, Public Disturbance
• Suraya Hawthorne (The Tower) - Pretty much any clan bounties
• Variks (Europa) - Empire Hunt challenges, Courageous Expedition
• Xur (Xur’s Treasure Room) - the 180k bounty

Your character has 37 bounty slots, and you can do bounties per character too, so in theory, you could have around a hundred bounties ready to claim when Lightfall lands. Just make sure to leave some quest log space for the actual Lightfall quests — your quest and bounty board shares storage capacity.

Crafting weapons

If you have lots to do and you’re already happy with your arsenal, feel free to skip this bit, but as Season 19 runs dry prior to the Lightfall launch, the remaining weeks are the perfect time to fill a few holes in your collection. What’s more, Bungie is dropping a patch at the end of January that will make it easier to craft the weapons you want faster than before.

Certain weapons from the Witch Queen, subsequent seasons, Raids and Dungeons can be crafted using the Darkness metronome doodad (our unofficial name) at The Enclave on Mars. In order to craft them, however, you need patterns, which are obtained by extracting Deepsight from special “red border” versions of the weapons.

Typically these have to be earned through rewards or bought with Spoils of Conquest at the end of a Raid, but for the last few weeks before Lightfall, you will be able to trade an Umbral Engram, some legendary shards, and seasonal currency for a new red border weapon every day. Every day! Umbral Engrams drop through regular play, and seasonal currency (e.g. Seraphic Umbral Energy) can be farmed from seasonal activities (like Heist Battlegrounds), so get that stuff in your inventory, and then get ready to buy.

Which weapons should you focus on though? Across the multiple seasons and endgame content releases, Bungie has given us so many to choose from. Fortunately, we have crafted pretty much all of them, so here are some we recommend. Feel free to go after them in the order that seems most appealing to your gameplay preferences.

• Austringer (Hand Cannon, Season of the Haunted) - Just one of the best and most enjoyable hand cannons in the game.
• Bump in the Night (Rocket Launcher, Season of the Haunted) - A fantastic, self-reloading and slowing delight with Demolitionist and Chill Clip perks
• CALUS Mini-Tool (SMG, Season of the Haunted) - An absolute workhorse of a gun, which you will probably use for everything, forever.
• Drang (Baroque) (Sidearm, Season of the Haunted) - The only sidearm you will ever need, and weirdly good fun in the Crucible.
• IKELOS_SMG_v1.0.3 (SMG, Season of the Seraph) - A recent addition, this Arc remastering of an old favorite packs a punch.
• Retrofit Escapade (Machine Gun, Season of the Seraph) - One of the few Machine Guns worth using, this 900rpm beast benefits from Target Lock and Fourth Time’s The Charm perks in particular.
• Taipan-4fr (Linear Fusion Rifle, Season of the Plunder) - The most popular boss damage gun in Destiny 2 pre-Lightfall. The meta may shift, but it’s worth having.
• Tarnished Mettle (Scout Rifle, Season of the Plunder) - This Arc scout rifle is weirdly moreish. A useful thing to have around.
• Thoughtless (Sniper Rifle, Season of the Haunted) - A primary sniper that does sniper things. Less relevant than some, but excellent utility.

If you have time to go through a few Raids or don’t mind jumping into Looking For Game (LFG) groups with strangers to get them done, you could also focus on a few of these excellent Raid weapons, which come highly recommended:

• Cataclysmic (Linear Fusion Rifle, Vow of the Disciple Raid) - The best solar LFR in an LFR boss damage meta.
• Forbearance (Grenade Launcher, Vow of the Disciple Raid) - One of our favorite weapons in Destiny 2, period. Fires streaks of death along the ground.
• Insidious (Pulse Rifle, Vow of the Disciple Raid) - An energy slot pulse rifle, to be more precise, and that makes a big difference.
• Submission (SMG, Vow of the Disciple Raid) - Another workhorse SMG, this time handily in the primary slot.
• Trustee (Scout Rifle, Deep Stone Crypt Raid) - Solar scout rifle that should be your primary objective in crafting DSC weapons.
• Zaouli’s Bane (Hand Cannon, Kings Fall Raid) - More for fun than anything, Zaouli’s is a fantastic addition to any arsenal.

Gathering resources

With your XP boosts in the bank and a Vault full of crafted weapons, the next thing on your to-do list for Lightfall prep should be filling your inventory with materials and resources. This will help you get your ideal build up and running when the game launches and meta picks emerge. This seems as though it is going to be particularly prudent for Lightfall, because Bungie is signposting big changes to the way mods work. We don’t know the full extent of this yet, but with mod costs and the way anti-champion mods work shifting, there is bound to be disruption, and players with lots of Glimmer, Upgrade Modules and other materials in the bank will be best placed to min/max their characters in response.

The list of things you will want to stockpile is short, even if the grind may not be:

• Glimmer - you can have 250k max account-wide
• Legendary Shards - for pretty much everything these days!
• Upgrade Modules - for infusing weapons and armor as you climb Power levels
• Enhancement Cores - for upgrading weapons and armor
• Enhancement Prisms - for upgrading weapons and armor
• Ascendant Shards - for upgrading weapons and armor
• Ascendant Alloys - for reshaping crafted weapons

The good news is that Bungie has stopped using planetary materials for upgrades and purchases, so if you have any of those left over, you can run along to Rahool at the Tower and exchange them for Glimmer. Easy money! Legendary Shards are pretty straightforward to obtain, too, because you get them for dismantling legendary items. (Maybe it’s time to clean out that Vault, huh? Hint: it is time to clean out that Vault.)

Some of the other things on our shopping list are less easy. Upgrade Modules can be bought from Banshee-44, the weapons vendor at Tower, but cost money and Enhancement Cores. You will want a bunch of them, all the same. You can also earn them by completing playlist activities with one of the Modularity range of Ghost mods equipped, and by purchasing and equipping Concentrated Mattergem items from Tess Everiss (the Store) using Bright Dust. These drop Upgrade Modules from the next boss you defeat.

There is also a Ghost mod to help with Enhancement Core and Prism drop rates, and Cores can be farmed day to day by completing Banshee-44’s daily bounties (four per day per character) to help you build up a solid total.

The best way to farm Prisms and Ascendant Shards, meanwhile, is to focus your efforts on Nightfalls: Master and Grandmaster tier Nightfalls, to be precise. Veterans will tell you to focus on GMs, because the rewards (especially during double-reward weeks) are huge and if you get into a good rhythm then you can fill up your inventory in a few hours. But if you aren’t sure you’re up for that challenge, Master Nightfall farming is perfectly valid, less stressful, and offers a decent rate of return. Wait for one of the easier Nightfalls to come around in rotation (Warden of Nothing is probably easiest this season), put some time aside with friends or LFG accomplices, and bash through it until your inventory is overflowing with prisms and golf balls.

As for Ascendant Alloys, the Master Wellspring activity generally rewards them for Platinum clears, and they also drop from some high-tier activities like Legendary Heist Battlegrounds.

And the rest

There is plenty more you could think about before Lightfall too. If there are exotic armor pieces you still don’t have, you could farm Legendary Lost Sectors each day. Coveted exotics like Divinity (even post-nerf) are worth pursuing. And by learning how to tackle Master versions of Dungeons like Duality and Pit of Heresy, you can farm for Artifice armor, which contains an additional mod slot. Who knows how useful that will prove with the changes Bungie is making to the mod system?

Lots to do then, and an ever-decreasing amount of time in which to do it. Lightfall is imminent. No time to lose, Guardian!