How to prepare for Destiny 2: The Final Shape

Preparing for The Final Shape, Destiny 2’s upcoming expansion that will serve as the finale of the Light and Darkness saga, is going to be quite a bit of work. But I have two pieces of good news for you on that front. First, there’s only so much you can do in a given week. And second, depending on what you like to do in the game, you might not need to prep at all.

In this Destiny 2 guide, I’ll walk you through what you need to do before jumping into The Final Shape, explain what’s going away on June 3, and, most importantly, if any of this matters to you at all.

Note: While the release date for The Final Shape is June 4, Bungie will shut the servers down 24 hours early, on June 3, in order to prepare the game for the expansion. Do not plan to cram last minute the night of June 3 or you will be very, very sad when you find the servers are offline.

Do you really need to prep before The Final Shape?

Image: Bungie

Whether Destiny prep is a thing you need in your life is a question that only you can answer, as it depends heavily on what kind of player you are.

Are you planning on jumping into The Final Shape day one, playing the campaign on normal, exploring the new destination, grabbing a few of the new Exotics, and then moving on to another game for a bit? If that describes you, you absolutely do not need to prep at all for The Final Shape. Even if you’re intending on eventually playing through the new raid once the Contest mode leaves, you still don’t need to prep. Enjoy the final weeks of the Into the Light update stress free.

So, if even normal raiders don’t really need to prep, who does? Endgame players and raid racers, that’s who.

For those of us who like to push into difficult content immediately in Destiny 2, materials are important, as you’ll want to be able to quickly Masterwork new Exotics or other items before diving into new content. But the XP grind is the really big one, as dropping tons of bounties on day one is how you can quickly access the new Artifact perks.

The early perks will be useful if you’re planning on playing the Legend campaign, but certainly not necessary. Where you’ll really want these perks is in the day one raid race for The Final Shape, as they can make a huge difference in your damage. Bungie hasn’t announced the Artifact mods as of this writing, but there is always something useful for a day one raid in there, and they typically come toward the end of the Artifact’s upgrade track, so you’ll need a lot of XP.

Image: Bungie

To throw just one more small caveat in here, Bungie is introducing the new Fireteam Power system in The Final Shape, which you might be wondering about as you’re starting your prep. Well, Bungie has already clarified that Fireteam Power won’t apply during the Contest mode period of The Final Shape raid. So even if you have a designated Power grinding machine on your team, you’ll still want to prep your bounties and gather some materials.

For those not in the know, Fireteam Power allows the member of the Fireteam with the highest total Power level to share it with their allies — although players who are sharing that power will be five levels below the leader. This will be useful for the normal version of the raid once the Contest modifier is off, but as I mentioned before, you shouldn’t need to prep much anyway if your only goal is to complete the raid on normal.

Even if you’re a very confident raider and endgame player, prepping is more important than ever before if you’re planning on jumping into that raid race. Because The Final Shape raid release launches only three days after the expansion — rather than the customary 10 days — you’ll have very little time to grind out XP and resources once the expansion is in your hands.

How to prep your Destiny 2 character for The Final Shape

Image: Bungie

Prepping your Guardian for an expansion is a big task, but it’s a ritual Destiny players have been engaging in for years now. The idea here is to spend the last few weeks before an expansion comes out running around the worlds of Destiny and loading up your character with bounties, materials, and great weapons. It’s doing the busy work now so you don't have to do it when there is new content to focus on instead.

What materials should you hoard?

With Legendary Shards going away in The Final Shape, it’s hard to know exactly what the economy is going to look like on June 4. However, there are still some materials you definitely want to try and max out before the expansion launches:

• Upgrade modules (25 max)
• Ascendant Shards (30 max)
• Ascendant Alloy (30 max)
• Enhancement Prisms (100 max)
• Enhancement Cores (no max, but try to store a few hundred)

Finally, let’s talk about Glimmer for a second. Glimmer has been given increased importance in Destiny 2 over the past few years, and that’s a trend that will likely continue in The Final Shape. The problem is you can only hold 500,000 at once.

So how can you stock up on something with a finite cap? Well, some players are taking their excess Legendary Shards and using them to purchase Phantasmal Fragments at the Lectern of Enchantment on the Moon for 10 Legendary Shards a piece. Rahool, the Cryptarch in the Tower, will allow you to exchange 10 Phantasmal Fragments for 10,000 Glimmer.

Keep in mind that Bungie could absolutely remove the ability to exchange these things in The Final Shape. But think about it this way: What else are you going to use those Legendary Shards for? It’s worth exchanging them now on the off chance Bungie doesn’t change anything here.

How and why you should prepare bounties

Bounty prepping is its own beast, and is extremely useful for juicing your XP the moment an expansion comes out.

There are definitely right ways to do it — as Skarrow9 details in his video above — but you also can’t really go wrong with it. Weekly Bounties like the Ascendant Challenges are ideal, but dallies also give great XP. Just stay away from repeatable bounties, bounties associated with seasonal content (as they’ll disappear from your inventory on June 4), and hoarding more than seven Crucible, Vanguard, and Gambit bounties.

If you have any bounties to turn in on Final Shape day, wait until you’re given the Artifact, group up with some friends on a destination like the Moon, put an XP boost mod on your Ghost, and just dump all of them at once.

Note: Bungie mentioned a potential change to the bounty system months ago, called Pathfinder, but haven’t said anything else about it. While there’s nothing to suggest bounty prepping won’t work in The Final Shape, it’s worth keeping in mind that Bungie could change this process anytime and invalidate all your hard work — especially with whatever Pathfinder is on the horizon. Now, there isn’t much evidence to suggest that your bounties will be worthless on June 4 — and I’d like to think Bungie would’ve said something by now if that was the case — but it’s worth keeping in mind all the same.

How to clean your Vault

Excess vault space is very important at the start of a new Destiny 2 expansion, as it lets you hoard new stuff into your bank before anyone has decided if it’s any good yet. There’s nothing worse than getting a new gun or perk, thinking it’s useless, sharding it, and then finding out it’s actually amazing 24 hours later.

We’re getting more vault space in The Final Shape, so cleaning out your old junk is less important this time around. However, I’d still aim to have anywhere between 50-100 open slots available. It’ll probably take you a bit to fill up 200 open slots once The Final Shape arrives, which should give you a nice break from vault management for at least a couple of weeks.

One final thing to keep in mind here is that Bungie is un-sunsetting all of you sunset weapons in Destiny 2: The Final Shape. If you’ve gone this long with a bunch of old guns still cluttering up your vault — specifically the ones you currently can’t upgrade, with the grayed out seasonal banners — do not delete them. Bungie will allow you to upgrade their power again in The Final Shape, meaning you’ll be able to use all of them once again. If you’ve sadly deleted a lot of your great, old guns — like I have — have no fear, as Bungie has assured players that it will add new methods to reacquire those old guns sooner rather than later.

Everything leaving Destiny 2 on June 3, 2024

Image: Bungie

Even if you don’t care about preparing for Destiny 2: The Final Shape, you might want to go experience the Lightfall seasons before they disappear for good. Sure, there is some decent loot to have here, but really you want to soak in the story and vibes while you have the chance. While each season only has a moment or two that really matters — like the massive lore cutscene Bungie dropped during Season of the Deep —there is still some important stuff for you to know before jumping into the latest expansion.

Below, I’m going to lay out what all is leaving and what is worth spending time on while you can.

Lightfall seasons

Image: Bungie

As usual, the seasons from the year of Lightfall will all disappear once The Final Shape comes out. That means all of their story content, their activities, and their craftable weapons will be gone. And while Bungie likes to reprise a handful of old guns every season or place them into the Exotic mission rotator, there’s no telling when any of that will happen.

If you want to get caught up on the story and experience all the various activities, you want to do it before The Final Shape. For reference, the four seasons are:

• Season of Defiance
• Season of the Deep
• Season of the Witch
• Season of the Wish

If all of that feels a little too intimidating, open up your menu, go to the Journey tab, and select Titles. You’ll find the Moments of Triumph 2023 badge there. Work your way through the Triumphs, as they do a really nice job of pointing you toward all the stuff that’s about to go away, and it offers some fun rewards as well.

As for craftable weapons, there are some really good ones this year and some really not good ones. I’ve combed through each of the four seasons and selected two weapons from each that you should really focus on for PvE (non-competitive or Crucible content).

Some of these weapons — like Scatter Signal and The Eremite — are incredible for endgame content. And some are just unique weapons that offer some rare rolls. Grab them all if you can:

• Regnant (Void grenade launcher, Season of Defiance)
• Imperial Decree (Kinetic shotgun, Season of Defiance)
• Until Its Return (Strand shotgun, Season of the Deep)
• Thin Precipice (Strand sword, Season of the Deep)
• Semiotician (Strand rocket launcher, Season of the Witch)
• The Eremite (Solar fusion rifle, Season of the Witch)
• Scatter Signal (Strand fusion rifle, Season of the Wish)
• Appetence (Stasis trace rifle, Season of the Wish)
• Subjunctive (Arc submachine gun, Starcrossed mission)

Exotic missions

Image: Bungie

We got three Exotic missions during the year of Lightfall, with Season of the Witch being the only season without one.

• Avalon (Vexcalibur, Void glaive)
• Whetstone (Wicked Implement, Stasis scout rifle)
• Starcrossed (Wish-Keeper, Strand bow)

The fate of these missions is currently unknown. Typically, Exotic missions disappear along with their season. However, Bungie has recently added the Exotic mission rotator to the game, which allows you to dive into old Exotic missions like Presage or Operation: Seraph Shield.

However, even if all three of these missions go straight into the Exotic rotator, you’ll still need to wait for them to come around if you want to replay them or get their rewards. Now is the time to get your fill and craft these Exotic weapons.

Into the Light

Image: Bungie

Some of the Into the Light update is leaving, and some of it is staying. It’s a little bizarre, so let’s get into it.

Here’s everything leaving from the Into the Light update on June 3:

• Pantheon, the endgame raid gauntlet, as well as its Godslayer Title
• The Limited Editions of the Brave Arsenal weapons
• The Hall of Champions, including the Arcite 99-40 quests, the Super Black shader quest, the Parade Armor chests, Trophy of Bravery tokens, and the weapon attunement system

So if all that is going away, what’s staying from Into the Light? Basically everything else:

• Onslaught
• The non-Limited Edition Brave Arsenal weapons (Bungie has mentioned re-adding the weapon attunement system in sometime after The Final Shape)
• All three PvP maps
• “The Whisper” mission
• The “Zero Hour” mission
• The Parade Armor and Super Black shader (Bungie said it will add new ways to get both of these after The Final Shape)

Now is the time to farm for all of the items above. Even for the stuff sticking around, it will be more difficult to do all of it after June 3 than it is before.

If you do all or any of the above, you’ll be ahead of the curve for The Final Shape when it launches on June 4.