Destiny 2 Lightfall Preparation Guide Tips and Strategies

The Witness is coming, and every Guardian feels the pressure. With new threats on the horizon and gear metas shifting fast, smart preparation could make the difference between survival and frustration. Here’s how to sharpen your arsenal, plan your loadouts, and make the most of every hour before Lightfall drops.

Preparing for these large add-ons can be a hard and confusing process, so in this Destiny 2: Lightfall preparation guide, we’ll break down everything you should know about what’s leaving the game and tell you everything you need to know to best prepare for Lightfall.

How to prep your Destiny 2 character for Lightfall

Prepare your Guardian for Lightfall by stockpiling powerful gear, upgrading your subclass with the newest Aspects and Fragments, and refining your weapon pool to match the new enemies and environments. Prioritize manifesting resilient resilience, collecting +elemental resistance where possible, and ensuring your fireteam has complementary roles. Complete seasonal and dungeon milestones to unlock rewards that boost power and recovery, then tailor your build around your playstyle for new campaign challenges.

One of the best ways to prepare for a new season or expansion is to start saving up on materials and bounties. There are a few community-made tools that can help you prepare, like the amazing Destiny Recipes. Log in with your Destiny 2 account, and this tool will help show you the materials, bounties, and vault space you have, thus giving you a target to aim for. Below we’ll break down the major categories of this checklist to help give you an idea of what to stockpile before Lightfall.

Unlike in previous years, you can no longer acquire Planetary Materials, so we don’t recommend you save them. If you still have some, they’ll be great to turn into Glimmer at Rahool, but you do not have to worry about saving them up.

Materials prep

Gathering materials before Lightfall launches can save plenty of time once the new expansion drops. Focus on stockpiling upgrade modules, enhancement cores, prisms, and ascendant shards through weekly activities, strikes, and bounties. Farm planetary materials and Glimmer so you can quickly fine-tune weapons and armor when new gear becomes available. Completing seasonal challenges before the update is also smart, as they can yield high-value upgrade items and bright dust for cosmetics.

Materials 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 materials as you can – however much you think you’ll need is less than you really need. Starting out with a large stockpile of materials 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 much of each material as you can so you can focus on everything new. Destiny Recipes’ Pre-Seasonal Checklist gives a great breakdown of what materials you want, and how many of each material to get – they can be found under the “Resources” section. 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
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 each of your characters can hold 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 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 would have an extra 250,000 Glimmer that you can break out when you need to.

Bounty prep

Bounties are a reliable way to stockpile XP before Lightfall launches. Collect daily and weekly bounties from vendors like Zavala, Shaxx, Banshee-44, and the Gunsmith but avoid turning them in until the new expansion goes live. Focus on high-XP tasks from playlists and seasonal vendors, and make sure your inventory has room for completed ones. This method helps you advance the new season pass and artifact faster once the expansion arrives.

Saving bounties is tedious and not for everyone. It allows you to get a head start 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. Prominent community members Skarrow9 and Kimo made a very handy spreadsheet that you can use to keep track of all the bounties you should be saving, we’ll break down the different types of bounties and what you want to prioritize below. You can watch Skarrow9’s YouTube video going over bounty prep and the spreadsheet here:

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 26 weekly bounties, as follows:

8 Weekly Clan bounties†
7 Dreaming City bounties†
4 Europa Weekly bounties†
2 Weekly Moon bounties
2 Nightmare Hunt bounties
2 Cosmodrome bounties
1 Starhorse Bounty

† 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. Every week, there is a general Europa bounty for completing Lost Sectors, Patrols, and other small missions like. There is also one bounty per Empire Hunt available each week. The earlier you start hoarding, the more weekly bounties you can save. Each of the six weekly Ascendant Challenges in the Dreaming City has a bounty associated with them (as of publishing, we are less than six weeks away from Lightfall – but it’s worth starting now if you haven’t already.)

After weekly bounties, you want to fill up your remaining inventory with daily bounties, not repeatable bounties, since those do not give as much XP. You’ll want to try to save seven bounties from each vendor of the three primary playlist activities: Crucible, Vanguard Ops, and Gambit. This will get you almost all the way toward completing the weekly challenge of completing eight bounties. You want to only save seven because if you complete that bounty challenge too early, the light level of the gear you receive will be too low to be useful. Wait to complete these challenges until after you complete the campaign and reach the game’s soft power cap, which will be revealed in the coming weeks as the expansion approaches.

Because you’re prepping for a new expansion, there are bounties that will not be available to turn in when Lightfall starts. These bounties include anything from one of the seasons (see more about the seasons below) 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 Lightfall.

Vault cleaning

Keeping your vault clean is something few 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, or 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.

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 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 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. 28, 2023

Several destinations, campaigns, and activities from Destiny 2’s older content vaults were retired on February 28, 2023, ahead of the Lightfall expansion. Players lost access to the Witch Queen season content, including Season of the Seraph, as well as limited-time events and certain playlist weapons. Seasonal vendors, activities, and Triumphs tied to these events were also removed, meaning rewards like ornaments, titles, and unique gear were no longer obtainable once the servers transitioned to the next expansion.

The launch of Lightfall will see some content enter the Destiny Content Vault – the removal of certain activities and/ or locations that may return at a later date. Luckily, Bungie isn’t removing as much as it did with Beyond Light or even The Witch Queen. This year, we’ll only lose the content from seasons 16 through 19.

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

A note about Destiny 2’s seasonal weapons

All of the weapons that are directly tied to a season, i.e. not world-drop weapons, are craftable. They all require five deepsight patterns to complete, so if you are behind, it is likely best for you to try to get a good roll rather than trying to craft them. Crafted weapons are only marginally better than their non-crafted versions, so focus on just getting the gun rather than crafting it. If you do want to focus on crafting a particular gun, each of the seasons has an upgrade you can obtain at the seasonal vendor in the HELM that makes the first weapon you purchase from that vendor each week a Deepsight version. Starting Jan. 31, you’ll be able to focus one Deepsight weapon per day rather than per week as outlined in the 1/26/23 This Week at Bungie.

Season of the Risen

The Season of the Risen sees the Vanguard and Caiatl team up to prevent Savathun’s Lucent brood from spreading across the galaxy. This season also brought with it the Void 3.0 subclass overhaul. The primary activity from this season is PsiOps Battlegrounds.

Weapons

The seasonal weapons from the Season of the Risen are all pretty good, but we think there are four that stand out.

Under your Skin: Void bow – This bow can roll the great combo of Archer’s Tempo and Explosive head. It is one of the best legendary bows that you can get in the game.
Piece of Mind: Kinetic pulse rifle – This pulse has great roles for PvE and PvP. If you want one for PvE, you want to look for Overflow and focused Fury. If you want one for PvP, you want to look for Perpetual Motion and Moving Target.
Thoughtless: Stasis sniper rifle – This is one of the best snipers for boss damage, look out for Overflow and Focused Fury.
Explosive Personality: Solar grenade launcher – This is currently the only Solar Wave Frame grenade launcher in the game. The rolls are not outstanding but look for Auto-Loading Holster and either Frenzy or One for All.

The Risen title

All of the Triumphs associated with the Risen title are getting vaulted when Lightfall starts. If you need help, follow our Risen Title guide.

Dead Messenger and its Catalyst

The Exotic mission that contains Dead Messenger, “Vox Obscura,” launched with The Witch Queen but was actually part of the Season of the Risen. Because of this, it is likely to go away when Lightfall Launches. If you want more information, follow our Dead Messenger guide.

Season of the Haunted

The Season of the Haunted sees the return of Calus and his Leviathan ship, though it is now corrupted with Nightmares. We work with Eris Morn to prevent Calus from accessing the Lunar Pyramid ship and releasing more Nightmares. This season also brought with it the Solar 3.0 subclass overhaul. The primary activity from this season is Nightmare Containment.

Weapons

There are two sets of craftable weapons from the Season of the Haunted, the seasonal weapons and the Opulent weapons. The Opulent weapons are all pretty good, but the same cannot be said about the seasonal weapons. Our four standouts across both sets of weapons are:

CALUS Mini-Tool: Solar sub-machine gun – This weapon is one of the best in the game because of its ability to roll Incandescent. The perk options in the first column are only ok, but something like Grave Robber is a great choice, especially for Solar Titans that take advantage of their throwing hammer.
Austringer: Kinetic hand cannon – If you are looking for a PvP hand cannon, it is harder to get a better weapon than this. Eye of the Storm and Rangefinder make this 140 a top choice for PvP.
Bump in the Night: Stasis rocket launcher – This weapon stands out for boss damage due to its ability to roll Chill Clip, this in combination with a Galajhorn provides massive boss damage and excels in fights like the Daughters from Kings Fall or Taniks from the Deep Stone Crypt.
Hollow Denial: Void trace rifle – This is currently the only Void legendary trace rifle in the game. Trace rifles are criminally underrated and this weapon could be a standout come Lightfall. Look for a roll with Repulsor Brace or Killing Tally.

The Reaper title

All of the Triumphs associated with the Reaper title are getting vaulted when Lightfall starts. If you need help with these Triumphs, you can follow this great video guide by This Week In Video Games here.

Season of Plunder

The Season of Plunder sees us work alongside the Eliksni to prevent Eramis from collecting the Relics of Nezarec and using them against us. This season also brought with it the Arc 3.0 subclass overhaul. The two primary activities this season are Ketchcrash and Expedition.

Weapons

There were only six weapons that came from Season of Plunder, but a lot of them are solid picks because of their perk pools.

Tarnished Mettle: Arc scout rifle – This Arc scout can roll with Voltshot, one of the best perks in the game when it comes to general fighting and ad clear. Try to find one with Rapid Hit as well and you’ll have yourself an amazing weapon to pair with an Arc 3.0 subclass.
Blood Feud: Stasis submachine gun – This weapon stands out because of the recent buff to Ambitious Assassin on primary weapons. It now gives them up to 150% more ammo in the magazine, which paired with Frenzy makes this a great primary weapon.
Brigand’s Law: Arc sidearm – This weapon stands out for the same reason Tarnished Mettle does, the Voltshot perk. Look to pair that with Feeding Frenzy in the first column.
No Reprieve: Stasis shotgun – Should slug shotguns come back into the meta for boss damage, this weapon’s ability to get Surrounded makes it a top choice. This shotgun also excels in general play and is all-around a good pickup.

The Scallywag Title

All of the Triumphs associated with the Scallywag title are getting vaulted when Lightfall starts. If you need help with these Triumphs, you can follow this great video guide by StrawDesertHD here:

Season of the Seraph

The Season of the Seraph sees us try to rebuild the Warmind Rasputin to prevent the forces of Xivu Arath from gaining access to the Warsat network. The primary activity from this season is Heist Battlegrounds.

Weapons

Season of the Seraph came with ten craftable weapons, six that are linked to the season, and four are returning IKELOS weapons. Here are our top four to take a look at.

IKELOS_SMG_V1.0.3: Arc submachine gun – This weapon can roll with Voltshot and it is certainly a great choice, but some chose to go with Frenzy instead. Both options are great, and this weapon is certainly worth getting before Lightfall.
Disparity: Stasis pulse rifle – This weapon has all the favorite perk rolls for PvE and PvP. Rapid Hit is great for both, and you want to look for Kill Clip or Desperado for PvP, and Frenzy for PvP.
Retrofit Escapade: Void machine gun – A new perk with this season, Target Lock, makes this weapon deal massive boss damage. That perk along with Fourth Time the Charm looks to be one of the best DPS options for Lightfall.
Judgment of Kelogorath: Solar glaive – The fight Glaive of its archetype, this feels great to use. Look for the new perk Close to Melee to give yourself a great increase in your damage when chaining melee and projectile kills.

The Seraph title

All of the Triumphs associated with the Seraph title are getting vaulted when Lightfall starts. If you need help with these Triumphs, you can follow this great video guide by This Week In Video Games here:

Revision Zero and its Catalysts

What is Strand and how does it work in Lightfall

Strand is the new Darkness subclass introduced in Destiny 2: Lightfall, letting Guardians manipulate psychic threads from the Weave-a web connecting all minds and reality-to grapple, crowd-control enemies, and summon Threadlings.

Core Mechanics

Strand revolves around key verbs like Suspend (immobilizes foes by lifting them in Strand webs, disabling PvE enemies fully while PvP players can still shoot slowly), Unravel (makes targets spew tracking threads that chain to others on damage), Sever (slashes enemy damage output by severing world ties), Tangle (explosive Strand knots from defeated debuffed enemies, throwable for area damage), and Woven Mail (damage-reducing armor mesh). All classes get a Grapple grenade for swinging, multiple melee charges, and Threadlings-seeker minions hatched from eggs that auto-target foes (Warlocks perch up to five).

Class Abilities

Warlock: Aspects like Weaver’s Call (Rift spawns Threadling eggs) and Mindspun Invocation (Grapple spawns eggs; grenade tweaks summon Threadlings or Suspend bursts).
Hunter: Ensnaring Slam (aerial suspend AoE); Widow’s Silk (extra grenade for grapple Tangles, enabling team swings).
Titan: (From context) Banner of War (melee buffs allies); Frenzied Blade (melee spawns Threadlings).
Fragments like Thread of Ascent (grenade boosts handling/airborne) or Thread of Generation (damage builds grenade energy) customize builds.

Gameplay Role

Strand emphasizes mobility, add-clear, and traversal-perfect for Neomuna’s verticality-while synergizing in raids like Root of Nightmares via Unraveling Rounds piercing Barrier shields.

How to unlock Strand in Lightfall

To unlock Strand in Destiny 2: Lightfall, you must own the Lightfall expansion and complete its main campaign on any difficulty, which introduces the subclass toward the end.

Campaign Completion

Start the Lightfall campaign by selecting Neptune on the Director map after purchasing the DLC. Progress through missions like “Headlong” (for initial Strand practice) up to the finale “Desperate Measures.” Once finished, return to the Tower to talk to key NPCs (like Nimbus), then head back to Neomuna’s Hall of Heroes. Interact with the cushions by the Pouka Pond to meditate-this permanently unlocks your class’s base Strand subclass (e.g., Warlock’s Broodweaver, Hunter’s Threadrunner, Titan’s Broodweaver).

Unlocking Aspects and Fragments

After meditating at Pouka Pond (behind Striders’ Gate landing zone), you’ll get starter Aspects via the “Parting the Veil” or “Unveiled” quest from Nimbus-complete steps like data packet collection, Lost Sectors (e.g., Thriller), and missions (e.g., Maya’s Retreat). Use Strand Meditations (earned by defeating enemies with Strand abilities or in Neomuna activities) to buy additional Aspects (need two first), Fragments, and grenade options at the pond-about 3,200 total per character, as unlocks are character-specific.

Alt Character Notes

Repeat the full campaign per character (or buy the optional skip) to unlock Strand on others; progress doesn’t carry over. Farm extra Meditations in Vex Incursion Zones for efficiency.