How to prepare for The Final Shape - Destiny 2

Though The Final Shape has been delayed to June 4, 2024, it’s never too early to start preparing for its release. Because this is the longest season in Destiny 2 history, you’ve got plenty of time to do this casually while still enjoying the seasonal content.

While preparing for a new expansion isn’t for everyone, those who have their eyes on competing in the Day One raid race will likely want to put in some effort. In fact, even casual players can benefit from some light preparation, as it will make tackling the new expansion a bit easier.

This guide goes hand-in-hand with our other one: Everything leaving Destiny 2 with The Final Shape. Not everything that’s leaving is needed to prepare, however, you might want to get a few things before they’re no longer available.

How to prepare for The Final Shape

How many of these you do to prepare for The Final Shape is up to you. Do all of them, do some of them, or do none of them! However, the more you do, the more of a headstart you’ll have at the beginning of the expansion.

• Hoard bounties
• Gather resources
• Craft weapons
• Finish Exotic catalysts
• Farm Artifice armor
• Clean your vault
• Equip a loadout
• Finishing unlocking Strand
• Unlock Exotic armor & weapons
• Rahool's Secret Stash
• Gift of the Thunder Gods
• Free Bright Dust

That’s a quick look at what you should be doing during the remainder of Season of the Wish. Those with multiple characters will want to do a couple of those points across all three classes. Now, let’s take a deeper dive into each of those points.

Hoard bounties

Do not complete Vanguard, Crucible, or Gambit bounties. Bungie has announced these Ritual activities will be getting a refresh in The Final Shape and these bounties will be deleted.

If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a dozen times: bounty hoarding is one of the best things you can do to prepare for a new expansion. While players have no idea what the XP or leveling system will be like in The Final Shape, there’s a good chance bounties will still give XP and XP will still be important. Take a look at our guide, Artifact XP: Perks & Power, to see how much XP you need to unlock all the perks and hit new Power levels. This will help you navigate the bounty hoarding stage.

So what is bounty hoarding? It’s when you pick up a bounty, complete it, but don’t turn it in to claim the reward. You keep as many completed bounties as you can in your quest slot. This essentially banks XP, allowing you to quickly claim them all when a new expansion drops, skyrocketing you through the artifact levels and season pass ranks.

By equipping the Blinding Light Ghost mod (for an extra 12 percent XP) and joining another player, you can claim the bounties and potentially hit the 20s in the season pass. It’s important to do this only when you have the artifact, as you’ll also want the XP funnelling into that so you unlock perks.

To maximise your XP potential, you should focus on completing as many of the Weekly Bounties as you can before filling up on daily bounties. Don’t do repeatable bounties, as these only yield 4,000 XP a piece. Weekly Bounties offer 12,000 XP each. Here’s each one you can do:

Once you’ve done as many of these as you can, visit other vendors and complete their daily bounties. As mentioned above, do not complete any bounties from Zavala, Shaxx, or the Drifter. These three are responsible for Vanguard, Crucible, and Gambit and their upgrade paths will be changed in The Final Shape to a new Pathfinder system and any bounties of theirs in your inventory will be deleted. Instead, complete bounties from Banshee-44 and Saint-14 in the Tower, as well as Eris on the Moon, Petra in the Dreaming City, Nimbus on Neomuna, and any other planetary vendor (Fynch, Variks, etc).

Do not hoard any seasonal vendor bounties, as they are leaving at the end of Season of the Wish. 

Finally, keep a few quest slots free on your main character. New expansions give you a quest when you first load in, and if you’re full on bounties, you won’t receive the quest.

Gather resources

A new expansion means new weapons to unlock and craft along with new armor to max out. In order to do this, you will need a good stock of resources. Before we go any further, Legendary Shards will be completely gone when The Final Shape launches, so spend them before Season of the Wish ends. Check out our guide on what to do with Legendary Shards if you’re not sure.

As for the resources you should be stockpiling, it will look the same as it did last year:

• Glimmer
• Phantasmal Fragments
• Upgrade Modules
• Enhancement Cores
• Enhancement Prisms
• Ascendant Shards
• Ascendant Alloy

Because Legendary Shards are going, there will likely be a stronger emphasis on Glimmer. You should have your wallet maxed out and try to keep some supplies in reserve for when you spend it all – like Phantasmal Fragments, which can be exchanged for Glimmer.

Then there are Upgrade Modules, which are used to infuse gear, leveling it up. You’ll be doing this a lot when The Final Shape arrives, as it will likely lift the max Power level by at least 200 points (unless Bungie changes how it handles Power).

Other than Glimmer, Enhancement Cores will be the most important currency in the game. You need these to do just about everything including Masterworking armor and crafting weapons. We’ve got a guide on how to get more Enhancement Cores, but the short of it is: do Gunsmith bounties and dismantle high-tier gear.

Finally, Enhancement Prism, Ascendant Shards, and Ascendant Alloy are three of the big boy currencies. Bungie has lifted the inventory caps on these, so get as many as you can across all three characters by farming endgame content, like Grandmaster Nightfalls.

Craft weapons

Crafted weapons are the most powerful weapons in Destiny 2. These things absolutely dominate endgame activities like Day One raids. Before The Final Shape gets here, try to get as many of the high-priority weapons crafted as you can. The more you have, the better equipped you’ll be when you roll into the raid. Here are a few recommendations, the weapon type, and where to farm them. You can also check out our complete list of all craftable weapons.

From now until the release of The Final Shape, you can earn an guaranteed red border weapon from each season once per day. Missing patterns from Season of the Deep? Run a Deep Dive or Salvage each day until you get them all. Don't have all of the Season of Defiance weapons? Do the same thing: run one Defiant Battleground every day. This will help you get everything unlocked in time for the next expansion.

Farm Onslaught's Brave Arsenal weapons

Into the Light introduced a new game mode called Onslaught, which offers Brave Arsenal weapons as rewards. These are reissued and powered-up versions of fan-favorite weapons. Many of these weapons have extremely powerful god rolls that will make Pantheon a breeze and will help you take on the Witness. Here are all the weapons and their god rolls:

• Elsie’s Rifle
• Succession
• Falling Guillotine
• Edge Transit
• Hung Jury SR4
• The Recluse
• Midnight Coup
• The Mountaintop
• Forbearance
• Hammerhead
• Blast Furnace
• Luna's Howl

Finish Exotic catalysts

While you’re leveling up your crafted weapons, you need to be leveling up your Exotic catalysts. A good catalyst can dramatically improve an Exotic weapon, turning it from a ho-hum option into something everyone needs to have. Take a look at our Exotic Catalysts guide for a list of every single one in the game. But, as a starting point, try and finish off these Exotic catalysts:

• Gjallarhorn
• Dragon’s Breath
• Tractor Cannon
• Thunderlord
• Sleeper Simulant
• Riskrunner
• Cloudstrike
• Sunshot
• Witherhoard
• Arbalest
• Izanagi’s Burden
• Lumina
• Osteo Striga
• Outbreak Perfected
• Whisper of the Worm
• Leviathan's Breath
• Legend of Acrius

Farm Artifice armor

Artifice armor has a bonus slot in it that raises a chosen attribute by 3 points. This can massively improve your build, even offering you a chance to hit Tier 10 in two slots (sometimes three). If you’re serious about endgame content, you need to be farming for Artifice armor.

Take a look at our dungeon schedule and plan to farm Grasp of Avarice, Duality, Spire of the Watcher, or Ghosts of the Deep when it is the featured dungeon. All things being equal, Grasp of Avarice is probably the easiest to farm.

Clean your vault

Vault space is at a premium in Destiny 2. With so much gear to acquire, those slots fill up exceptionally quickly. The last thing you want to do at the start of a new expansion is spend time fiddling around trying to free up space so you can check out the new gear. Start cleaning your vault right now.

Be ruthless about cleaning your vault. Channel your inner Marie Kondo and dismantle anything that doesn’t bring you joy. Has it been sitting there, unused since Curse of Osiris? Delete it. Got seven rolls of Hawkmoon for some reason? Throw six of them in the trash and keep the one you actually use.

The one caveat with cleaning your vault is that you should keep something that might be useful in an endgame activity. This could mean keeping two versions of Reed’s Regret, even though we all know that a Cataclysm god roll is S-tier.

Equip a loadout

When The Final Shape launches, there’s a good chance the Destiny 2 API will be unavailable, which means no access to DIM. To prepare for this eventuality, equip your ideal loadout before the new expansion arrives and have your favorite guns and armor on-hand. Following this, take some time to reassess your current loadouts and fix them up for the next raid.

Finishing unlocking Strand

Strand Meditations. These pesky little green things are what you need to unlock Strand. Chances are you’ve already got everything on one character, but now might be the time to get everything unlocked on your alts. This is going to take a whole lot of farming on Neomuna, so spend your time wisely, like completing Terminal Overload and Vex Incursion Zones.

Unlock Exotic armor & weapons

While you’re farming Vex Incursion Zones for Strand Meditations, you’ll also be unlocking Exotic armor. If you’re missing any pieces, make sure you either grab them while Xur is selling them, complete Legend Lost Sectors, or keep hitting up the Incursion Zones. You never know which piece of armor will dominate the PVE meta when The Final Shape arrives.

The same can also be said about the many Exotic weapons out there. Make sure you’re getting any that can be acquired via quests or guaranteed drops (Gjallarhorn, Divinity, etc). Additionally, if you’re missing any and need to buy them from the Monument to Lost Lights, then here are a few top picks:

• Witherhoard
• Outbreak Perfected
• Lumina
• Izanagi’s Burden
• Sunshot
• Tractor Cannon
• Whisper of the Worm

Rahool’s Secret Stash

Each season you can pick up several valuable resources from Master Rahool’s Secret Stash. The location of this stash has changed to the terminal behind Rahool, which is now the Special Deliveries. Here you can pick up some Ascendant Alloys, Ascendant Shards, Exotic Ciphers, and Upgrade Modules.

Complete Pantheon

Though not as critical as other things on this list, playing and completing Pantheon is definitely a great idea. This special, limited-time mode offers players a raid boss gauntlet with a new version unlocking each week that has new rewards but also an increase in difficulty. The final week will be the equivalent of Contest Mode. Completing this will get you in the mindset for a Day One raid, which is actually a great way to prepare. Take a look at the Pantheon schedule so you know what bosses you’ll be facing starting on April 30. Any players that nab all the Pantheon Triumphs will get the Godslayer Title.

Gift of the Thunder Gods

Leveling up your alt characters: While it might not take priority, it’s certainly something you should consider doing. Thankfully, Bungie has made it easy to do this with the Gift of the Thunder Gods chest in the Hall of Champions. Crack this open and pick up the gear you need to lift your lagging characters to 1810. This will come in handy when you need your alts to do endgame content in order to stockpile bounties.

Free Bright Dust

While this isn’t necessary in order to power your way through The Final Shape, extra Bright Dust in your pocket is never a bad thing. Bungie is giving players a bunch of Bright Dust completely free every single week until the release of this expansion. Make sure you log in at least once a week and collect the currency from the Eververse store.

Preparing for Destiny 2: The Final Shape will take a lot of work, especially if you want to dive into a Day One raid. However, the good news is that Season of the Wish is the longest one in the game’s history, so you’ve got plenty of time to hoard bounties, complete catalysts, and otherwise prepare to take on the Witness. The fun will all kick off on June 4, 2024. Keep it locked to our Destiny 2 Strategy Guide as we continue to cover this final season and The Final Shape.

Sam Chandler

Guides Editor

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 a Guides Editor. 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