Destiny 2 Forsaken Guide for new/Returning players

Destiny 2 launched and massively over-corrected on a ton of the issues that many mainstream fans felt its predecessor suffered from, and didn’t have many of the improvements Destiny 1 benefited from through the end of its life. This resulted in a major contingent of the community feeling shunned while most of the mainstream fans did exactly what they always would have….moved on.

Forsaken is set to solve some of those major flaws, bringing back random rolls giving depth and importance to each drop, re-inventing the weapon slot system making it even more flexible than it was in the original Destiny. Reverting the infusion system and other changes that seem small on the surface but have larger impact across the game, I know that looking at this as a casual player, or someone who hasn’t played the original would be quite confusing so below i will attempt to make it more clear/prepare people who intend to jump (back) in.

Weapon Slots and AMMO for dummies

The easy way to look at this new system, is that they have allowed all non-heavy weapons to be in either slot 1 or 2, along with moving shotguns, sniper rifles and fusion rifles out of the heavy category, but no matter what slot it`s in it takes the same ammo type. For example-

You can see I have a shotgun and a sniper rifle in the kinetic weapons slot, they still take GREEN special ammo however, just like the shotgun in my secondary slot. You CAN equip two weapons that both use special ammo but it will split the ammo between the two weapons and limit you a bit since special ammo is more rare than kinetic now. There is no way to change a weapons slot contrary to early rumors. Having two kinetic weapons is also an option for increased ammo.

Infusion Confusion

One of the biggest changes is that infusion is based on any weapon in that slot instead of weapon type. Infusion will now require planetary materials, which have replaced tokens and other obsolete rewards so it will not nearly as limiting as it was in the original Destiny, however i still recommend you consider not infusing any gear until well after completing the story missions in forsaken. We will get into leveling tips a little later. One other note on infusion is that the closer to the weapon type the cheaper it is, duplicate weapons being the cheapest.

Mods 2.0!

Mods

The confusing and ineffective mod system is gone for both weapons and armor. The replacement takes some aspects of the old masterwork system (which is largely similar but more specific) along with some aspects of old perks, and a few new things, for instance increased damage vs bosses or elite enemies.

Random Rolls are back as mentioned but thankfully they have also added another perk to each weapon making them much more interesting and allowing for great combinations.

Armor up

There is not a whole lot to say about armor, it is getting perks and new mods as well, this is a major improvement over the essentially strictly cosmetic armor of year 1.

The Director, Challenges and the return of bounties…for some reason

Something that’s going to be frustrating and confusing for some players is the milestones of old have gone away, instead of hitting e and seeing what options you have left for getting new POWERFUL DROPS (this term is important and specific if you are interested in leveling efficiently)

You will instead have these little gold icons next to activities to let you know you still have your new Daily or Weekly challenges to get a powerful engram.

It will tell you if it is a daily or weekly, the requirements and specifically if it is powerful or simply legendary, which will drop at your current power level instead of being an upgrade. Some weekly milestones are actually able to be claimed twice a week, they have not specified which these are yet.

Bounties are going to be a source of these legendary drops, XP, reputation, etc depending on the source.

The new Competitive Co-op mode which is quite fun incidentally has more specific bounties since his rep is also your ranking within the mode.

Well, that was…not very quick huh, but i hope that someone is able to find this helpful if they load up destiny since the 2.0 update and beyond.

Leveling Guide-the numbers must go higher

This is more general advice than anything specific since we don’t know how they are changing some systems yet, for instance we don`t know where the softcaps are in the leveling curve.That being said a lot of the same strategies we have employed for warmind will very likely work or at least help a bit.

  1. Complete the story missions and required side content of course!

ftm

If possible use a fireteam medallion from the eververse to get some extra XP, along with any ghost you have that gives extra XP for activities. If the trend continues you will often not get quite enough Experience to just go straight through the campaign, and will have to do some other stuff to progress and access the next story mission, previously the most efficient way to do this was public events, they provide huge amounts of XP, and decent loot. World quests and adventures are also great sources of XP.

  1. Once you hit max level (50) you should be in a good position to start grabbing up tons of loot, and since the quality of this loot is completely irrelevant we still want to do a ton of public events. I know what you are thinking, why do i care about all this blue crap if im level 50!? well since that blue crap continues to scale to each soft cap you want as much of it as possible. This is the old method however, there may be something new that provides even more gear even faster, adventures or lost sectors perhaps. Its worth mentioning that you probably shouldn’t bother infusing gear while you are grinding this kind of gear since you will be progressing very quickly. Since Destiny 2 takes all possible gear into account you dont even need to equip this gear to continue getting progress.

    wp

  2. So, you have stopped getting any upgrades from standard drops, legendary or blue nothing seems to be an upgrade. Finally time to start hitting up those powerful engrams/exotics! Speculation has the final softcap around 530, but there very well may be one somewhere in the 400 range as well. It is highly recommended that you do a decent amount of turn-ins after every single powerful engram, just to ensure that you getting the maximum out of each powerful engram since they are so limited.

  3. Ignore all this and have fun! Sometimes we stress a lot over leveling efficiently and getting raid ready asap, but especially with forsaken i think if you start to feel overwhelmed or burnt out, just go play some gambit or hunt some wanted prison escapees, or collect some lore and enjoy the ultra cheesy-ultra good lore writing in this series.

See you in space o` reader mine

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Great guide, although this line worries me a bit

One thing to point out is that Fireteam medallions only work in Strikes/Crucible/Public events

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Thanks for taking the time to write this! It was very helpful for someone who fell off Destiny 2 after a few weeks of playing the latest Warmind expansion. Is it cool if I link out to this thread in our Waypoint Clan thread, and share it on our discord? I’m sure there’s folks in there that would find it useful, or have some tips of their own they may want to share.

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Haha I’m glad you caught that, as for fireteam medallions I know the description on them is confusing but they do actually provide a flat 25% boost to exp gains, the part about strikes and crucible is just saying who else can benefit from them.

@Emily, please share this with anyone who might find it helpful!

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Oh! I had thought that they helped XP but wasn’t sure- was going to run them anyway but that’s good to know. It definitely felt like they buffed drop rates when I ran through the story on secondary characters which made leveling a bit easier also.

I’ve been running the buffed YAS on 6-shooter and saw a really good suggestion on reddit that anyone wearing Ahmkara armour should hear whispers from time to time