Destiny 2: The Witch Queen preparation guide (2024)

On Feb. 22, 2022, Bungie will release Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, the game’s largest content drop since Beyond Light in November 2020.

Preparing for these large content drops can be a hard and confusing process, so in this Destiny 2: The Witch Queen preparation guide, we’re breaking down everything you should know about what is leaving the game and how to prepare for The Witch Queen.

Table of contents

Saving resources, materials, and bounties

• Materials
• Bounties
• Vault cleaning

Everything leaving Destiny 2 on Feb. 22, 2022

Tangled Shore and the Forsaken Campaign

Season of the Hunt

• Weapons
• The Warden title
• Hawkmoon and its Catalyst

Season of the Chosen

• Weapons
• The Chosen title
• Dead Man’s Tale and its catalyst

Season of the Splicer

• Weapons
• The Splicer Title

Season of the Lost

• Weapons
• The Realmwalker title
• Moments of Triumph

Saving resources, materials, and bounties

Image: Destiny Recipes via Polygon

One of the best ways to prepare for a new season or expansion is to start saving up on resources, materials, and even bounties. There are a few community-made tools that can help you prepare, like the amazing Destiny Recipes. This tool helps show you how many resources and materials you have and can give you a target to aim for, so you’re the most prepared you can be. Below we’ll break down the major categories of this checklist to help give you an idea of what to stockpile before The Witch Queen.

Materials

Image: Destiny Recipes via Polygon

Materials, or Planetary Materials, are the items that you can collect when exploring the different planets. Each planet has its respective material — like Helium Filaments from the Moon — and you can use them to purchase certain resources from Banshee-44, Ada-1, and the Spider — The Spider will no longer be the material vendor when The Witch Queen launches, with those duties moving to Master Rahool in the Tower. Banshee-44 and Ada-1 both sell Upgrade Modules, Enhancement Prisms, and Ascendant Shards for a variety of resources and materials (some of which will also move to Rahool in February). Spider has a rotating inventory where you can spend or purchase materials for Glimmer or Legendary Shards depending on the day. Having enough materials can be crucial for a situation where you might be running low on Glimmer.

Resources

Image: Destiny Recipes via Polygon

Resources in Destiny 2 serve a wide variety of purposes from upgrading weapons and armor to purchasing weapons and armor from a vendor like Banshee-44. Going into a new expansion, you want to start with as many resources as you can because you will need a lot of them. Starting out with a large stockpile of resources can help delay the need to go out and hunt for them. You want to spend the first days or weeks of the expansion focusing on the new content, so get as many of each resource as you can so you can focus on everything new. Destiny Recipes’ Pre-Seasonal Checklist gives a great breakdown of what resources you want, and how many of each resource to get. We agree with their goals, so we suggest targeting the following:

• Legendary Shards: 3,000
• Upgrade Modules†: 25 (a full inventory)
• Ascendant Shards†: 10 (a full inventory)
• Enhancement Prisms†: 50 (a full inventory)
• Enhancement Cores: 200
• Spoils of Conquest†: 240 (a full inventory)
• Glimmer‡: 200,000

† We suggest that you have a full inventory of these items, but you can also store them in your postmaster. The amount that you can hold on your characters in their inventory is the same amount you can store in each of your postmasters, meaning that the inventory cap of 10 Ascendant Shards is the same per postmaster: 10. This means you can hold a total of 40 Ascendant Shards across your inventory and three postmasters. For all of these materials, when your inventory is full they will automatically go to your postmaster and can stay in there until you need them.

‡ You need Glimmer for almost everything in Destiny 2, so having as much as possible is the way to go. You can store Glimmer by buying certain ships and sparrows from collections, you can keep them in your vault and dismantle them when you need some extra Glimmer. For example, you can purchase the Otherside sparrow for 7,500 Glimmer and 5 Legendary Shards. When you dismantle it, you will get back 5,000 Glimmer and 5 Legendary Shards. This means if you were to have 50 of these sparrows across your inventory and vault, you have an extra 250,000 Glimmer that you can break out when you need to.

Bounties

Image: Destiny Recipes via Polygon

Bounty saving is tedious and not for everyone. It allows you to get a small headstart on the season pass and on the new artifact, but it’s not really going to hold you back past the first couple of days.

However, if you do want to save bounties, you want to optimize which ones you go for. The bounties that you want the most are the weekly bounties, these give the most XP and have the label XP++. You can currently save around 27 weekly bounties and they are:

• Six Iron Banner bounties†
• Eight Weekly Clan bounties†
• Four Europa Weekly bounties†
• Two Weekly Moon bounties
• Two Nightmare Hunt bounties
• Two Cosmodrome bounties
• Three Starhourse Bounties

† These bounties are on a rotation so not all of them will be available at one time, for example, the four total Europa weekly bounties are spread out over three weeks. There is a general Europa weekly bounty to complete Lost Sectors, Patrols, etc. that is there every week. There is also one bounty per Empire Hunt and one of those is available each week. The earlier you start hoarding, the more weekly bounties you can save.

After weekly bounties, you want to fill up your remaining inventory with daily bounties, not repeatable bounties — repeatable bounties do not give as much XP.

Because you’re prepping for a new expansion, there are bounties that will not be available to turn in when The Witch Queen starts. These bounties include anything from one of the seasons (see more about the seasons below), anything from the Tangled Shore, and anything from any event such as the Dawning or the Festival of the Lost. Any bounties from these sources will get removed from your inventory before you log in for The Witch Queen.

Vault cleaning

Keeping your vault clean is something that not many of us like to do, but it is a necessary step in preparing for a new expansion — you’re going to need space for the multitude of new items you’re about to receive. There are many things to think about when cleaning your vault, and we’ll break down a few of them here. For even more advice, we recommend Datto’s video about the topic.

Our biggest tip when it comes to keeping your vault clean is to use a tool like Destiny Item Manager (DIM), which allows you to organize your inventory outside of the game. DIM is packed full of amazing features that not only help keep your vault clean but streamline playing the game as well. DIM’s primary feature is to help move items between your characters and the vault, but it can also do more.

The easiest way to keep your vault clean with DIM is to label items. You can label items as: save, junk, infuse, favorite, and archive. This pairs well with DIM’s powerful search feature which allows you to search for items using a variety of criteria, including being able to search for a particular tag.

Image: Destiny Recipes via Polygon

Selecting items to label as junk is hard. Here are a few simple questions to think about when cleaning your vault:.

• How often do I use this item?
• Does this weapon / this weapon’s kill tracker mean something to me?
• Is this the only weapon of this archetype/ element I have?
• Is this the best PvP/ PvE role I have of this weapon?
• Can I use this armor to make a good loadout?

Lastly, you can also cut down on the amount of armor in your vault by using a tool like D2 Armor Picker. This tool helps you create the best loadout that you can using a variety of variables that you can control, such as what class you want to work on, which exotic to use, and even how much of a certain stat you might want.

Everything leaving Destiny 2 on Feb. 22, 2022

The launch of The Witch Queen will see some content and locations enter the Destiny Content Vault. Luckily for us, we aren’t losing as much as we did with Beyond Light. This year, we’ll lose the Tangled Shore destination, the Forsaken Campaign, and most of the content from seasons 12-15.

Below we will break down everything that is leaving and let you know what to look out for.

Tangled Shore and the Forsaken Campaign

If you haven’t played the Forsaken campaign before, we can recommend it enough (Bungie made it free for all players ahead of The Witch Queen, so you have no excuse to miss it). It’s not too long and is great even if you just play through it for the story. With the Tangled Shore leaving, that means all of the Triumphs are getting vaulted, so go through the Tangled Shore Triumph tab to see which ones you need. Almost all of the Triumphs are currently earnable, but certain ones relating to Nightfalls on the Warden of Nothing and The Hallowed Lair strikes are not.

Season of the Hunt

Season of the Hunt released one week after Beyond light and pitted us against Xivu Arath’s High Celebrant and their forces as they tried to take power after the Darkness consumed some of the planets in Sol. This season had a fascinating story, but the weapons were mediocre. This season did however contain the Harbinger mission for the Exotic hand cannon Hawkmoon.

Weapons

Most of the guns that came with this season are pretty underwhelming. There are two standouts though: keep an eye out for the Kinetic Submachine Gun Friction Fire and the Void Wave Frame Grenade Launcher Deafening Whisper. The best way to go for these two weapons, besides the Wrathborn Hunts, is to use the Umbral Decoder in the H.E.L.M. and use the Tools of the Hunt tier one focus. That engram contains these two weapons, as well as Arc Heavy Grenade Launcher Blast Battue, which is just an ok Heavy Grenade Launcher.

The Warden title

Image: Bungie via Polygon

All of the associated Triumphs for this season are getting vaulted when The Witch Queen comes out, so if you are still missing the Warden title, you can follow our Warden guide to get it.

Hawkmoon and its Catalyst

Hawkmoon is one of the two randomly rolled Exotic weapons in the game currently, and with the activity where you earn it leaving, Bungie had to do something different with them than just adding it to the Monument of Lost Lights. When The Witch Queen is released, Xur sells a set roll of Hawkmoon each week, but it doesn’t come cheap. Each roll will cost one Ascendant Shard, one Exotic Cipher, 125,000 Glimmer, and 200 Legendary Shards. With this high price, we highly recommend trying to get some rolls of the weapon now, you can follow our Hawkmoon guide. The Catalyst for Hawkmoon will become a random drop from playlist activities, and while this won’t be the hardest to obtain, if you want to get it before Witch Queen, you can follow our Hawkmoon guide.

Season of the Chosen

Season of the Chosen had us go against Cabal Empress Caiatl, the daughter of Calus, who came to us with an offer of an alliance. Her terms were not acceptable, so we pushed back and fought against her and her war council. This season brought with it some very good weapons, including the exceptional Dead Man’s Tale Exotic Scout Rifle and its secret mission, Presage.

Weapons

Most of the weapons for this season are pretty good, but there are some standouts. Look out for the Kinetic Submachine Gun Extraordinary Rendition, the Void Bow Imperial Needle, and the Void Heavy Linear Fusion Rifle Threaded Needle. You can get these using hammer charges, but you can also get Extraordinary Rendition and Threaded Needle through the Tools of the Chosen tier one focus in the umbral decoder. This engram contains these two weapons, as well as the Solar Special Sniper Rifle Far Future, which is an ok Sniper Rifle but gets outclassed by others.

The Chosen title

Image: Bungie via Polygon

All of these Triumphs are getting vaulted when The Witch Queen comes out, so if you are still missing the Chosen title, you can follow our Chosen guide to get it.

Dead Man’s Tale and its catalyst

Dead Man’s Tale is the other randomly rolled Exotic weapon in the game currently, and with the activity where you earn it leaving, Bungie had to do something different with them than just adding it to the Monument of Lost Lights. When The Witch Queen is released, Xur sells a set roll of Dead Man’s Tale each week, but it doesn’t come cheap. Each roll will cost one Ascendant Shard, one Exotic Cipher, 125,000 Glimmer, and 200 Legendary Shards. With this high price, we highly recommend trying to get some rolls of the weapon now, you can follow our Dead Man’s Tale catalyst guide. The Catalyst for Dead Man’s Tale will become a random drop from playlist activities, and while this won’t be the hardest to obtain, if you want to get it before Witch Queen, you can follow our Dead Man’s Tale catalyst guide.

Season of the Splicer

Season of the Splicer had us push back against the Vex who sent the Last City into an endless night. We allied with Mithrax, Kell of the House of Light, to fight our way through the Vex Network to end this curse over the Last City.

Weapons

The weapons from Season of the Splicer look great and there are a few top-tier ones. Keep an eye out for the Kinetic Auto Rifle Chroma Rush, the Void Pulse Rifle Gridskipper, and the Kinetic Special Grenade Launcher Ignition Code. You can get these through the Season of the Splicer tab using Decrypted Data, but you can also get the Chroma Rush and the Ignition Code through the Tools of the Splicer tier one focus in the Umbral Decoder. This engram also contains the Solar Special Shotgun Sojourner’s Tale, which is a fun slug shotgun but doesn’t stand out above the rest.

The Splicer Title

Image: Bungie via Polygon

All of these Triumphs are getting vaulted when The Witch Queen comes out, so if you are still missing the Splicer title you can follow this guide from Will Sawyer at GameRant.

Season of the Lost

Season of the Lost saw the return of the Queen of the Awoken Mara Sov. It was also revealed that our ally Osiris got replaced by the Hive god Savathun who wishes us to help her in removing her Worm.

Weapons

Most of the weapons from Season on the Lost are underwhelming, but there are two that stand atop the rest: the Arc Primary Bow Wolftone Draw and the Stasis Special Shotgun Fractethyst. You can get these, along with all of the Season of the Lost weapons through the current season section of the Umbral Decoder.

The Realmwalker title

Image: Bungie via Polygon

All of these Triumphs are getting vaulted when The Witch Queen comes out, so if you are still missing the Realmwalker title you can follow this guide from Charles Burgar at TheGamer.

Moments of Triumph

Moments of Triumph is Destiny 2’s yearly wrapup event to celebrate the accomplishments Guardians have completed throughout the year. This seal and title will also be leaving the game at the launch of Witch Queen, but we have a Moments of Triumphs guide to help you out.