Playing Destiny after Tuesday’s 2.0 patch is a little bit like waking up in a just-barely parallel universe. Everything has shifted a little, but you can’t always put your finger on how. Did that thing always sound that way? Did that lady always stand over there? Was that thing always blue?
The 2.0 update is both exciting and frustrating. It mostly feels like table-setting for the real meat and potatoes, which arrive next week when the big Taken King expansion comes out. There are some good things to check out before Tuesday, and some other things that you’d be better off waiting to undertake until the expansion hits, assuming you’re planning to get it.
Note: This article originally ran on 9/9/2015. I’ve bumped it up and updated it for the weekend crew.
For now, here’s what’s good:
If you’re not level 34, get to level 34 however you want.
If you’re not 34, well, now you can be! You should be able to get to level 34 super quickly, particularly because there are so many good/easy ways to get XP. Do some quests, play some Crucible; whatever.
Go get a legendary stranger’s rifle.
You probably sharded your Stranger’s Rifle after getting it the first time around, then came to regret it after realizing it was a collector’s item. Good news! You can get another one, and it’s legendary this time. Don’t get too excited—it’s still just a year-one gun, so it’ll still have limited application. Still, you know you want one. To get it, go to the “Abandoned Quests” kiosk on the right-hand wall of the Vanguard area of the Tower and select the Stranger questline. Run those missions (they’re low-level and easy) and the gun is yours.
Save your other ‘abandoned’ quests.
You can pick up a bunch of other abandoned quests, too, but if you’re already level 34, I suggest holding onto those for next week. A lot of those quests give easy XP, since they go back to the phases where you just have to go talk to someone or do a very short mission to finish the quest. Wait to cash them in until the new level cap goes into effect and you’ve got a new subclass to pour XP into.
Take a ton of bounties; you have room now.
Enjoy walking up to the bounty robot and accepting every single bounty without even looking at them. You’ve got space to spare.
Contemplate your expanded vault space.
Sure, we all have way more storage space in our vault. How long do you think it’ll take us to fill it and start complaining again? A month? Six weeks?
Finish some bounties, but save them for next week.
A lot of the new bounties are pretty easy, and you’ll clear some of them extremely quickly. Still, better to save them for next week than to turn them all in now. If you know you’ll be playing hard all week, sure, cash some in for faction rep or something. If not, just store them up so you’ll go into next Tuesday with a full slate of completed bounties and get to level 40 that much faster.
Enjoy Crucible; it’s a madhouse.
Crucible is absolutely bonkers at the moment. No one knows what’s going on because no one’s quite sure which guns are good for which situations. As a result, regular Crucible matches are more interesting than they’ve been in a long time. There are still plenty of The Last Word + Sniper and Thorn + Shotty players running around, but you’re far more likely to run into a huge shouty auto-rifle fight than you were a week ago.
Try some old Crucible modes to learn the new balance and maps.
While everyone will be naturally drawn to the new (fun!) Rift and Mayhem modes, I’d also suggest playing some matches with familiar game modes. Playing Rift on a new map feels totally crazy, but if you actually want to get your head around the new weapon balance and the new maps, better to do so while playing a more familiar game mode.
Dunk at least once in Rift.
Obviously the new Rift mode is the hot attraction this week—it’s the only current thing that is fully new, and not just tweaked/freshened up/adjusted. Rift takes a while to get the hang of, and at the moment greatly favors full teams who are communicating with one another. Lone wolf teams wind up running the spark alone and getting mowed down; coordinated teams keep their opponents on their heels and are constantly running the ball.
Anyway, when you’re playing, do yourself a favor and get into at least one situation where you can dunk the spark. Be bold! The payoff is worth it.
Try Out Some Mayhem Multiplayer
On Friday, a preview of The Taken King’s second multiplayer mode, “Mayhem,” was added to the game alongside Rift. It’s currently a modified version of Clash team deathmatch, and it is ridiculous. All cooldowns have been sped up a crazy amount, so you’ll see supers and grenades popping off like nobody’s business. Mayhem is a riot, and while in the long term it may prove to be more of a diversion than a mode that’ll support dedicated play, it’s certainly fun.
Try out an auto rifle in crucible, then abandon it.
The new rebalancing patch changes a lot of things in Crucible. Notably, it promised to buff auto rifles until they were usable again. And they’re… better? I guess? I can’t quite tell. Hard Light seems fine. The Summoner isn’t all that. Anyway, whip out your auto rifle for a while and play with it, then when you’re losing, switch back to whatever pulse rifle/hand cannon/scout you were using before. It’s okay, you tried.
Skip a cutscene.
Just skip the hell out of it. Hold down the circle button until you can’t hold it down no more.
Buy a ghost shell from the speaker.
If you want to get the highest light (currently) possible, you’ll need a Ghost shell. Buy one from the Speaker, and your new Northbot will be prettier and your light level will be higher.
Stop wearing that corny faction class item.
You no longer have to equip a faction class item. Rejoice, Hunters! That Hot Topic-ass Dead Orbit cloak can go away forever. Also, check your class items—some will give you slightly higher defense than others.
Say goodbye to your current armor, because it is trash now.
Seriously, your legendary armor is garbo. Going by the year-two exotic armor we can already see, year one armor all has inferior attribute bonuses, so your grenade/melee/super recharge rates are currently well below what they’ll be with year two armor. Your existing armor just won’t be competitive, even in vanilla Crucible. Make your peace with it now, and say goodbye.
Get some guns to test out from the gunsmith.
Starting wednesday, you can get prototype weapons to test for the Gunsmith. That’s a good idea, since if you complete the tests you’ll earn reputation. If you rank up, you’ll be able to place orders for new year two legendary guns, though it isn’t entirely clear when that’ll unlock. Commenter Casen notes that if you get the Nightfall XP boost first and then finish all of the Gunsmith’s current field tests, you can get to rank one. I’ve done most of the prototype tests, and they’re almost all a cinch, aside from the Crucible ones.
Try to spot when Nolan North does a different line-reading.
You guys. Nolan North’s Ghost performance is way better than Peter Dinklage’s was. I share in the collective Stockholm syndrome for Dinklage’s oddball performance, but the new guy is just better. North sounds like a robot reading bad dialogue; Dinklage sounded like a robotic human reading bad dialogue.
Anyway, as you’re listening to North’s new line readings, try to spot the places where he reads his lines differently than Dinklebot did. I’ve spotted a few so far, including (I believe) one totally different line.
Edge up your faction and Cryptarch rep.
See if you can get as many factions as possible riiiight up to rounding the bend to a new level, then let them sit. When The Taken King launches, you can level those all up quickly and get a bunch of faction packages, hopefully with some decent gear.
Buy a new shader from Eva Levante… or you know, don’t.
You can buy two new Taken King armor shaders from Eva Levante. So… yeah, if you want to do that, do that. Maybe the shaders look cool on some armor. They do not look cool on my Hunter’s armor.
Check out the new emblems.
It’s fun to pick through the big wall-pads next to Eva, where you can see the shaders and emblems that you have and haven’t gotten, as well as some that you’ve never seen before. Like this one:
I want it.
And most importantly...
Demonstrate how to point.
It’s an important gesture. Go into the new emotes menu in your inventory and find an emote. For example, I have the emote “Point.” Watch your guardian point from various angles. Enjoy pointing. Point at a friend. Point at someone you hope will be your friend. Point at nothing at all. The pointing is the important thing.
We’ll be playing more of the 2.0 update as the week goes on. If you have any good tips of your own, I hope you’ll share them below.
To contact the author of this post, write to kirk@kotaku.com.