• Guide

How to prepare for Lightfall - Destiny 2

With Lightfall almost here, Destiny 2 players are starting to prepare for its arrival. Here is everything you should be doing.

Sam Chandler

January 16, 2023 11:30 PM

Bungie

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Destiny 2: Lightfall is just around the corner, as such, preparing for its release is a top priority for a lot of players. By preparing this season, they are able to launch into the new expansion with their best foot forward, ensuring they unlock artifact mods early, can upgrade any of their gear with ease, and more. Preparation is also an integral part of the World’s First raid races. Here is everything you need to know and do to prepare for Lightfall.

Bounty hoarding

One of the best things you can do to prepare for Lightfall is to hoard bounties. What this means is picking up bounties, completing them, but not claiming your reward. Instead, leave the completed bounties in your inventory. This stockpiles XP, allowing you to extremely quickly move up through the Season Pass ranks as well as unlock artifact mods and Power levels.

When the new expansion arrives, you will need to get the seasonal artifact, equip a Blinding Light Ghost mod for an extra 12 percent XP, join another player for the Fireteam XP bonus, and then claim your bounties.

To min-max this process, there are specific bounties you should collect. Let’s start with the 26 Weekly Bounties that each reward 12,000 XP.

If you manage to get each one, you will have 37 slots free for Daily Bounties. You can pick up Daily Bounties from Zavala, Shaxx, Banshee-44, Drifter, and Saint-14 in the Tower. There is also the various destination vendors like Eris, Petra, Variks, and others who offer bounties.

Do not store bounties from seasonal vendors like the Crown of Sorrow, Exo Frame, or the elsewhere. These vendors are likely to disappear when Lightfall arrives, meaning those bounties will disappear from your inventory.

Try to avoid hoarding eight bounties from a Tower vendor. Turning in eight will reward you with a Powerful engram. At the start of a new expansion, getting a Powerful engram while you’re still trying to reach high levels can disrupt your Power growth.

The other thing to remember is that you should try and keep a few spaces free on your main character. This is needed as campaign quests take up one quest slot.

Once all three characters are fully prepared with bounties, you’ll be in a great spot once the new season begins. Remember to take advantage of the Blinding Light Ghost mod, Fireteam XP boosts, the Weekly Well-Rested buff, and the Season Pass boons. And do not forget to wait until you have the seasonal artifact. You can check out Destiny Recipes to get an indication of how many levels you will be able to hit once the new season arrives.

Gathering resources

The quantity of resources you have heading into a new season can either make or break the experience. Have too few and you’ll be struggling to infuse your armor. This is why having a stockpile of resources is critical. Before Lightfall arrives, you want to have the maximum amount of these resources (except Legendary Shards, as they do not have a max):

• Glimmer
• Upgrade Modules
• Enhancement Cores
• Enhancement Prisms
• Ascendant Shards
• Legendary Shards

Glimmer and Upgrade Modules are the big ones at the start of Lightfall. Modules are used to infuse gear, which you will be doing as you hit the Powerful Engrams and then Pinnacle Engrams. Enhancement Cores and Prisms and Ascendant Shards are all needed for Masterworking armor, which you may want to do if you pick up a high-stat Exotic or want to power up a weapon.

Keep in mind you can “store” Enhancement Prisms and Ascendant Shards at the Postmaster. When the maximum amount of Prisms and Shards is reached in the inventory, any additional drops will be sent to the Postmaster. Continue farming Grandmaster Nightfalls and let the drops accumulate, just be careful they don’t get pushed out by other drops.

As for Legendary Shards, these are needed to interact with many systems in Destiny 2. Try and have at least 3,000 with the goal to hit even higher.

Weapon patterns, crafted weapons & god rolls

This will be the most time-consuming aspect of preparing for Lightfall. Acquiring weapon patterns means playing older content to focus Umbral Engrams using Umbral Energy or farming activities for drops. With all the patterns collected, you’ll want to craft your favorites and level them up to unlock Enhanced Perks. Check out our Crafted Weapon XP leveling guide for some raw stats.

There are so many guns that you should try and acquire that it could be tough to get them all. In saying that, here are some recommendations for crafted weapons.

Outside of these crafted weapons, go ahead and craft any that you personally like. For me, Tears of Contrition is a great Scout Rifle with Four Time’s the Charm and Triple Tap. You should also be focusing on collecting various god rolls. Take a look at our God Roll section in our Destiny 2 Strategy Guide for PVE god rolls of popular guns.

Exotic catalysts

Exotic catalysts are a powerful tool that drastically improves your Exotic weapons. Collecting and then leveling up catalysts is another time-consuming but important preparation step. Read over our Exotic catalyst guide for a list of every single one in the game, where to get it, and how to level it up.

If you can’t feasibly get them all leveled up, just focus on a couple of winners. Gjallarhorn, Outbreak Perfected, Witherhoard, Arbalest, Thunderlord, Tractor Cannon, D.A.R.C.I., Izanagi’s Burden, and Cloudstrike are all great Exotics that often get used in raids.

How will you be leveling up the Exotic catalysts? Simple. Just head to the Last Wish raid and use Wish 4 to skip to the Shuro Chi fight. Defeat all the enemies in the area, reset the encounter (by dying), and go again. It’s tedious, but it’s the best method.

Farm Artifice armor or high-stat gear

While you’re out there getting weapon patterns, crafting weapons, and scouting for god rolls, you should try and get at least one full set of Artifice armor. Ideally, you’ll have a couple of sets for different element types and builds.

Artifice armor is the best armor in the game. It has an additional mod slot, meaning you have more freedom when creating builds. It allows you to double up on some mods, use a normal mod where you’d otherwise have to use an artifact mod, or even have all three anti-Champion type mods on your arms.

To farm Artifice armor you must complete encounters in Master dungeons. Grasp of Avarice, Duality, or Spire of the Watcher are the three dungeons that drop Artifice armor. You’re able to repeat the encounters as many times as you want, just use an alternative character to hold the checkpoint. Read over our Featured dungeon schedule to see which one is coming up next.

You’ll also want to consider high-stat gear when preparing for next season. Try and acquire a set where it’s possible to hit 100 Resilience, as this offers the most damage resistance against foes. Focusing Umbral Engrams is a great way to get high stats, but they do not have the extra slots that Artifice gear offers.

Clean your Vault

Before Lightfall gets here, take a moment to clear out your Vault. If it’s full, you’ll have no room for new drops or infusion material. Get in there, be brutal, and cut out anything you don’t use. Figure out how much room you can give yourself – it’ll be different for everyone. The bonus here is that for every weapon and armor piece you dismantle, you will gain resources like Legendary Shards and Enhancement Cores.

The day before Lightfall and launch day

The night before Lightfall is when all the work comes to an end and you can sit back and relax. However, before this happens, you must do one last thing: remove seasonal mods. Previously, any seasonal mods left in a piece of amor had a chance of breaking that piece of armor. Either go through your armor and remove any artifact mods you see or use a program like Destiny Item Manager to do it for you.

When Lightfall arrives and you log in for the first time, all your hard work is close to paying off. Do the following once you load in:

• Equip the maximum Blinding Light Ghost mod
• Earn the Seasonal Artifact from the campaign
• Join another player for the Shared Wisdom XP boost

Once this is done, you can start claiming bounties, which will rocket you through the Season Pass and Seasonal Artifact. As you unlock mods, slap the ones you need into your shiny Artifice armor and dive into the new expansion.

Preparing for Destiny 2: Lightfall takes a bit of work. The earlier you can start this process, the easier it will be in the long run, especially when it comes to hoarding bounties and crafting weapons. Be sure to keep it locked to Shacknews as we bring you the latest on Lightfall and all the upcoming seasons. You can find more information on our Destiny 2 Strategy Guide.

Sam Chandler

Head of Guides

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as Head of Guides. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler