22 Things I Wish I Knew When Starting Destiny 2 (Beginners Guide by Veteran Players)
Destiny 2 can be a little confusing, so I got some tips from veteran players to pass onto new Destiny 2 players. Today I want to share their top helpful suggestions, plus add in a few of my own, with the goal of making Destiny 2 easier to understand, and a smoother experience for new players.
Getting into Destiny 2 can be a very rewarding experience. I’ve put over 1600 hours into the game, and some of my personal favourite gaming moments have come from Destiny 2 – whether that’s beating a raid, getting some exotic loot to drop, teaming up with other guardians, or enjoying the story in the latest expansion.
I’ve gathered some top tips from veteran Destiny players (and huge thanks to everyone who contributed). First I’m going to go through their tips, then I’ve gathered some of my own. If you have any tips for new players, share them down in the comments below.
@pimberger3262
Know what to do, at first I felt insanely overwhelmed after finishing the new light campaign.
After you pick your class, then run through the onboarding process. This takes a couple of hours and you’ll run through the basics of weapons, leveling up, strikes and meeting vendors in the Tower. If you get lost, then check out your quests for instructions on what to do next.
If you are playing free-to-play then I would recommend trying Vanguard Ops, Crucible and Gambit and seeing what you like. You can also check out the various planets and moons from the director and explore, check out some public events and patrols. Level up your character and then check out Nightfall strikes, found under the Vanguard node on the menu. Continue to level up and try a Dungeon and Raid.
If you have paid for an expansion, then the place to start is the latest campaign. At the time of creating this Lightfall was the most recent, so make your way to Neomuna on the director map and start there. If you enjoy that, then I’d recommend going back to Witch Queen and Beyond Light too. Once you have finished the campaign then work your way towards the endgame of your preferred way of playing. If you like PVP, practice with the various game modes and work towards taking part in Trials of Osiris. If you like PVE then work up to Nightfalls, Dunegons and Raid content – completing a raid with a team is one of the best feelings in Destiny 2.
@XbladedGG
Never waste shards or cores early on, I learned that the hard way. Save them up instead.
Good tip from xblade here. Legendary Shards and Cores are valuable resources you’ll need to upgrade your guardian later on, so try and build up a good stash of both. You get Legendary Shards by dismantling weapons and you can guy cores from Banshee-44 in the Tower.
@lorgeloo5974
I used to not know what special weapons were and always went double primary, it was terrible.
Thanks Lorge! Good tip here. We have 3 weapon ammo types; Primary, Secondary and Heavy Ammo. Primary ammo is generally for auto / pulse / scout rifles, weapons you’re going to be using a lot. Primary ammo weapons have infinite ammo, and you don’t need to collect this. Primary ammo weapons can sit in the Kinetic and Energy slots. Secondary ammo weapons including shotguns, snipers, fusion rifles, grenade launchers – weapons that pack a little more punch than primary ammo weapons. You have to collect secondary ammo, and these are yellow bricks on the floor. Heavy ammo weapons are machine guns, rocket launchers, heavy grenade launchers, linear fusion rifles and we have to collect blue heavy ammo bricks on the floor. You can use any combination of weapons you like, but I tend to use a combination of primary, secondary and heavy.
@darkwolf8151
Wish I knew about Xur sooner
Xur is a vendor that visits from Friday – Tuesday arriving at reset time. He sells exotic armor and weapons in exchange for legendary shards, and he also has legendary weapons and high stat armor. He arrives in a set location each time, although that location rotates through a number of places. The Tower, Nessus, EDZ. His inventory rotates each week, and it’s a good place to get exotic weapons and armor. He has a set inventory for that week, however, you can purchase an exotic engram from Xur, and he’ll give you a random drop. Plus this has drop protection, meaning he’ll give you new stuff. You can check out what you have by inspecting his inventory. Some good items from Xur include Graviton Lance (Void Pulse Rifle), Sunshot (Solar Hand Cannon), and Trinity Ghoul (Arc Bow). For Titan’s check out Heart of Inmost Light chest armor, Hunter’s St0mp-ee5 legs armor, and Warlock’s Nezarec’s Sin head armor.
@allanabraham7990
Look at todayindestiny before spending your bright dust. There could be stuff you like a lot more coming up in a later week of the season compared to what is on for the current week.
The eververse store is where you can buy cosmetics like armor, ornaments, shaders, emblems. There are 2 currencies here; Silver and Bright Dust. Silver is the real money equivalent in Destiny 2, you can buy Silver from your platform store on Steam, Playstation or XBox. Bright Dust you can collect by completing tasks in the game, or from the season pass. You can exhange Bright Dust for select items in the Eververse Store each week. I do a weekly update showing off all Bright Dust items in the eververse store each week, so if you’re interested in cosmetic items then keep your eyes open for that update every tuesday.
@giovannivanhouten685
Find a sweat spot for your sensitivity and FOV on 105
Field of view makes such a huge difference in Destiny. Before the PS5 and Xbox Series S and X, consoles were constrained to a lower field of view. PC players have always had the luxury of 60fps and 105 FOV, but it makes a huge difference, so if you haven’t adjusted these settings yet, check out the graphics settings asap.
@Telesto_Timelost
Spoils of conquest and raid banners are not the same thing
Thank you Telesto. Spoils of conquest are a currency from raids. Everytime you complete various encounters in raids, you’ll get spoils of conquest. This is a currency you can use on the Monuments to Lost Lights Liosk in the Tower to help buy legeacy raid weapons. Raid Banners are useful for putting into the ground and you’ll get your super plus a full ammo refill. Often you’ll see a little cirlce on the ground before major encounters, and someone can place a banner into the ground to refill your team’s super/ammo.
You can get world drop weapons from Banshee-44, and his inventory resets on Tuesday. Banshee-44 can be found in the Tower, under the stairs when you land at the courtyard. He’s a useful vendor when it comes to weapons and upgrade modules, plus bounties.
You can craft weapons on Savathun’s Throne World, if you have the patterns. Head on over to the Savathun’s Throne World and select the Enclave. Land there, make your way to the left and there is the crafting station. You’ll need weapon patterns to craft weapons, but you should get a tutorial for the Ammit AR-2.
You can unlock new subclasses and abilities. You’ll get access to all 3 light subclasses for free, and if you like those then you can unlock a stasis subclass by completing the Beyond Light Camapign, and Strand by completing the Lightfall campaign. Beyond Light is a few years old now, so you should be able to pick it up pretty cheap, plus stasis is useful for controlling the battlefield by freezing enemies.
You can fuse a weapon of the same make and model for just glimmer, without needing an upgrade module. Most of the time you’ll need upgrade modules to level up weapons and armor, but if you have something of the same type, then it’ll only cost you glimmer.
Create simple builds with exotic weapons, exotic armor and subclasses. Start playing with mods when you get confident with simple builds. Builds can be complicated when bringing in mods and all the variations there. To start simple, I would use a combination of your subclass, 1 exotic weapon and 1 exotic armor piece. I would create a build around a subclass element, like Void, Arc, Solar, Strand or Stasis. A couple of simple builds to try include:
- Warlock Void build with Nezarec’s Sin and Graviton Lance
- Titan Solar Build with Loreley Splendor and Sunshot
- Hunter Arc Build with Liar’s Handshake and Risk Runner
- Warlock Poison Build with Necrotic Grip and Thorn
There are loads more options and combinations for builds, but these ones are easy to start with.
Soft Cap, Hard Cap, Pinnacle Cap. The Soft Cap is currently 175, Hard Cap is 1800 and Pinnacle Cap is 1810. When you get to 1800, only pinnacle rewards will help you level up, so check out the Director. d2optimizer.com is a useful tool to help you level up, telling you about loot sources.
You can play the game solo and LFG isn’t as bad as everyone says. Bungie have a good LFG app, plus it’s coming into the game later on this year.
Lookout for high stat armor, ideally your base stats should be in the 60’s. You can pick up armor from Xur when he’s around at the weekend, plus Ada sells armor too. For Exotic armor, check out Legend and Master Lost Sectors to get select exotic armor. Otherwise run nightfalls for Exotic drops, plus you have your weekly playlists from Vanguard Ops, Crucible and Gambit. Go to Master Rahool and check out the Exotic Armor menu there.
There’s a transmog system at Ada in the Tower, meaning you can transform any armor piece into the look you want. Then you can wear your high stat armor, and wear an armor ornament to be powerful and fashionable at the same time.
There are Champions in higher difficulty content, and you need certain artifact mods to stun the champions. We have overload, anti-barrier and unstoppable. Match the mods with the weapons to beat the champions. You can find your artifact on your character screen, and you’ll want to unlock all the mods on the left hand side. They are automatically applied to your weapons, rather than traditional mods which have to be slotted onto your armor. For example, if you have Antibarrier Champions in Nightfalls, you will need an Anti Barrier weapon. Check the artifact and it’ll say Anti-Barrier Pulse Rifles mods, therefore use a pulse rifle. Different elements also have the ability to stun champions.
Each week Bungie drops a weekly update on their website called This Week In Destiny and you’ll get all the latest news from the game. Sometimes they drop developer updates on Wednesday.
There’s a weekly schedule to the game. Weekly reset is Tuesday (5pm GMT, local time may vary), Trials is from reset time on Friday – Tuesday (unless Iron Banner is around), Xur also arrives on Friday – Tuesday.
There are very useful tools outside the game – DIM, Light.gg, Trials Report
If you’re having fun with the game, don’t spend too much time on Reddit or Twitter.
If you’re not having fun, take a break!