Guardians, we should be enjoying Beyond Light right now. But sadly, and understandably, the expansion was pushed back and we still have a little less than two months to wait.
We’re now in the stretch where Season of Arrivals is essentially over, and we’re just in the prolonged waiting stage. Some additional Iron Banners, the current Double Nightfall Rewards, and even Festival of the Lost will be happening in this stretch.
At the time of this writing, we have 55 days left in this season. And that’s good news for a lot of us because it gives us ample time to begin prepping, and yes I know many have been prepping for months.
There’s a lot changing in the game when Beyond Light drops on November 10th. For starters, Titan, Io, Mercury, Mars are all going away as playable locations. The Red War, Curse of Osiris, and Warmind campaigns will be gone. All the strikes on these destinations gone. Also biting the dust is the Black Armory, Gambit Prime, and Menagerie content. All four raids on the Leviathan are leaving the game, and so to is Scourge of the Past.
Some of you could have an awful lot left to do, as there are exotic quests and catalysts tied to some of these activities. Now the good news is that the exotics will become earnable via other means at some point, and with that you’d think the catalysts will too. Still, if you have the quests, say Thorn, Whisper of the Worm, Outbreak Perfected, and so on then you might as well go ahead and finish them now.
With that said, here’s our guide for what you should be doing now in Destiny 2 to prepare for Beyond Light. And no, hoarding bounties isn’t something we’re going to recommend this time because we don’t know what changes Bungie is making to the bounty system but we do know they won’t be the big source of XP in the future that they are a currently. Hoard them if you want.
Destination/Triumph Clean Up
The Triumph system is getting an overhaul in Beyond Light and you can read all about that here.
With this change, there will be “Legacy Triumphs.” These are triumphs that will contribute to your Career Triumph Score, but not your Active Triumph Score. These “Legacy Triumphs” are triumphs that are no longer earnable in game.
With several destinations and activities going into the Destiny Content Vault, their associated triumphs will no longer be earnable and thus become Legacy Triumphs.
If you care at all about triumphs and your Career Score, then go through your destination triumphs and make sure you finish the ones you haven’t done yet for the ones that are leaving the game. In writing this, I see that I still need to do seven patrols on Mars and get one more Sleeper Node. With the duplicate protection now in place, getting this last Sleeper Node shouldn’t be a problem and I’ve been casually trying to get it for two years now.
I also still need to do public events and heroic events on Mercury, but frankly I don’t care that much.
There are triumphs for the Menagerie, the Forges, Reckoning, and the raids going away as well. Some of these triumphs award things like sparrows, ships, and emblems so beyond just a score there’s items here that will no longer be earnable. These include exotic rewards as well.
With the triumphs and destinations going away, that means that certain Seals will also become unearnable. That would be your Wayfarer, Chronicler, Blacksmith, Reckoner, and Shadow.
Your time is running out if you care about these things.
Do Vanguard and Crucible Bounties Daily
You should start doing the Vanguard and Crucible bounties every day until Beyond Light releases on at least one character. If you can find the time, do it on a second or even third character as well.
Again, we’re not holding on to them; we’re turning them in for the tokens.
Do not spend your tokens at Zavala or Shaxx until after Beyond Light releases. Unless you’re chasing a god roll weapon that you can’t get from Umbral Engrams, there’s no need to be dumping your tokens right now. Save them.
Beyond Light should introduce some returning and hopefully new items to the loot pool in terms of weapons and the new armor set.
The more tokens you have, the more packages you can open when Beyond Light releases to get relevant loot. Start stockpiling now.
Pop a Vanguard or Crucible boon while you’re doing these activities, use a Ghost that gives extra tokens, use a Strike emblem that grants extra tokens… just start building that large collection of tokens now.
Do Gunsmith Bounties Daily
With Beyond Light, the Power Cap for Season 12 will go up by 200. The cap now is 1060, next season it’ll be 1260.
There’s a lot of stuff that will become unusable in activities where power level matters. Anything released from Year 1 through Season of the Undying is capped at 1060 power. Season of Dawn gear will be able to hit the new power cap but won’t be able to advance past it in the next seasons.
As you advance in power level up to the new hard cap and then the pinnacle cap, you’re going to want to infuse stuff at some point or masterwork that new weapon or armor piece. To do that, you’re going to need Upgrade Modules and Enhancement Cores.
The Gunsmith offers two weekly bounties that award an Upgrade Module, and four daily bounties that award an Enhancement Core. If you do these bounties on three characters each week/day, then when Beyond Light releases in eight weeks you will have 48 Upgrade Modules and 660 Enhancement Cores.
You want to be sitting on as many of these Cores as you can be. Not only are they useful for your masterworking your gear, but you can use them to purchase Upgrade Modules and Enhancement Prisms.
These bounties are super easy to complete and the daily bounties can be knocked out very fast. There’s no reason not to be doing them, and in the process of doing bounties you’ll get drops that eventually will dismantle into a Finest Matterweave, which you could then pop to get a guaranteed Core.
Get them done daily.
If you really want to maximize your Enhancement Core gains, our old friend Spider on Tangled Shore offers 9 Weekly Bounties that award a Core and he also sells one for 10 Legendary Shards a day (don’t buy more than one a day as the price increases each time you purchase one). The only problem with this is you’ll need a lot of Ghost Fragments to buy all the bounties; you’ll need over 30 of them to get all nine bounties on one character.
Farm God Rolls and Clean Up Vault
Umbral Engrams drop like candy and can be target focused to better get what you want. These engrams contain some of the best, easily accessible weapons in the game and almost all of them will continue to be useable next season (don’t waste your time on Undying Focused Engrams as these weapons will be power capped at 1060).
While you need to anticipate some weapon tuning, these are weapons you definitely need to target farm using Umbral Engrams to get god rolls and potential god rolls for (I won’t tell you what the god rolls are because that’s going to be largely subjective especially with upcoming sandbox changes we don’t know about):
- Falling Guillotine Sword (Arrival Focused Engram)
- Temptations Hook Sword (Edge-Focused Engram)
- False Promises (Rifle Focused Engram)
- Hollow Worlds (Rifle Focused Engram)
- Cold Denial (Arrival Focused Engram)
- Seventh Seraph CQC-12 (Worthy Focused Engram)
- Martyr’s Retribution (Dawn Focused Engram)
- Breachlight (Dawn Focused Engram)
- Lonesome (Contrast Focused Engram)
- Gnawing Hunger (Lead Focused Engram)
- Ikelos SR V1.0.2 (Assassin Focused Engram)
- Ikelos SMG V1.0.2 (CQC Focused Engram)
- First In, Last Out (CQC Focused Engram
Every weapon above can be easily farmed via the engram focusing, and with the exception of the Dawn and Worthy focused ones, the power cap for all of these 1360 meaning they’re good for the next year.
In addition to those, I recommend getting a good Dire Promise (World Drop), Bite of the Fox (Iron Banner), Crimil’s Dagger (Iron Banner), Fool’s Remedy (Iron Banner), Truthteller (World Drop), Long Shadow (World Drop) and Ikelos SG V1.0.2 (Prophecy).
Go through your vault and dismantle everything that will have a power cap of 1060 that you know you will no longer use. Keep a few of your favorites for crucible, like I’ll definitely not be dismantling my Horror’s Least or Drang. Dismantling is probably something you can wait until Beyond Light launches to do, but I’ll be knocking it out before then myself.
Play Another Game
A bonus thing to do to prepare for Beyond Light! Seriously, the prolonged Season of Arrivals is a bit of blessing. You have time to finish up content that is going into the Destiny Content Vault and you have time to farm and hoard materials and good rolls, but you also have time to play something else.
The quickest way to become burned out on a game is to play it too much. The delay gives us time to do what needs to be done, and then have time to put the game down some and play other games.
You don’t have to rush grind the above just to start a new grind in November. Use the downtime to finish up games you’ve started or experience some new ones that you’ve been meaning to get to.
I’ll be finishing up Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, but I’m also spending a good chunk of time with my current “main” game Marvel’s Avengers. It’s great, though has some issues, and I highly recommend it. Will also be playing Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning, Fall Guys, and Maximum Football 2020.
Taking a break from Destiny from time to time is a good thing for you and the game itself. Enjoy the prolonged season by taking advantage of the drought. Come back when Beyond Light launches on November 10th, and you’ll be reenergized and enthusiastic to start the new grind.
I’m pretty pumped for Beyond Light myself and will be doing a lot of the above. Already have the god rolls that I need and want, but will definitely make time every day for doing gunsmith bounties and the vanguard/crucible bounties on at least one character going forward.
Come November with Beyond Light, we’re going all in here at Vortainment. I linked to a few of our weapon god roll guides up above, and with Beyond Light we’re going to be do a lot more stuff like that. God Roll Guides, Weapon Reviews, Character Builds, and Quest Guides as well. We’ll probably get into streaming and November is looking to a good time to finally supplement the written content with some video content to get the YouTube channel off the ground.
Longtime readers know this site has been heavily Destiny focused since 2014, and that’s about to heavily ramp up.
Got something you’re doing to prep that we didn’t mention, or a tip you’d like to share with us and the rest of the readers? Drop a comment below and let us know what you’re doing to prep.
And if you need a clan, Valguard, the official clan of Vortainment.com is currently in open membership: https://www.bungie.net/en/ClanV2?groupid=797125
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