5 Tips I Wish I Knew Before Starting Destiny 2: Lightfall

Destiny 2 Lightfall isn’t the largest expansion in franchise history, nor is it the best, but there’s still a ton of content between the mediocre campaign, the expansive post-game, and all the progression toward maximum power levels.

You probably won’t be doing everything right the first time through, but there are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind as you do your first playthrough and even subsequent ones. These are five tips I wish I knew before arriving on Neomuna. 

Destiny 2 Lightfall Guide: 5 Important Tips I Wish I Knew Before Starting

If you’re coming into Destiny 2‘s latest expansion as a new player or a long-lapsed veteran, you’ll need to catch up on many systems, activities, and loot changes. We don’t recommend trying out the Legendary Campaign without a viable endgame build, but it is entirely doable solo or with a Fireteam, provided you have the determination (or stubbornness).

Despite that, the tips here are worthwhile whether you’ve been playing Destiny 2 for six days or six years.

You Only Need to do the Legendary Campaign Once

If you want a challenge for yourself or a fireteam, the Legendary Lightfall campaign will provide one. It’s especially unforgiving solo, as many boss encounters have multiple phases and will take at least a few minutes to complete.

Your reward for completing the campaign is twofold.

• First, you can choose between two new pieces of Exotic Armor and a complete set of 1770 gear.
  • The Exotic Armor might seem like the prize, but you want the 1770 weapons and armor. Exotics you can farm later with Legendary and Master Lost Sectors.
• The free high-Power equipment makes progressing both your first playthrough character and subsequent characters much easier.

You get one set of 1770 gear, then level up your first character as high as possible. You then transfer your high-level weapons to your second character and watch their armor Power skyrocket.

You’re free to do Classic difficulty on whatever you have left. We have a guide on changing the campaign difficulties if you’re wondering. 

Wait to Fully Upgrade the Strand Subclass

You unlock the new Strand subclass at the end of the Lightfall campaign, but you don’t have access to its full potential without significant grinding. You need to collect Strand Meditations to purchase all the Fragments you need to make Strand the best it can be.

There’s a catch, though. If you unlock everything for Strand on a single character, you stop earning Meditations on that character.

That means you’ve effectively locked yourself out of an easy source of Meditations. We recommend buying all but one or two based on what your class is best at, then finishing the campaign on Classic difficulty to unlock the subclass on additional characters.

The Best Vanguard Rep Grind? Nightfalls

Newer players will want to stick to Vanguard Ops, but should you be at or around Power level 1775, you can have a chance in the Hero-difficulty Nightfall activity. Said Nightfall is the best Vanguard Rep grind for Engram focusing, extra gear, upgrade materials, and more. Most importantly, you can now progress both the Nightfall and Vanguard Pinnacle rewards at the same time.

You gain Vanguard progress faster in Nightfalls, so you only need three completions rather than five. You’re almost guaranteed to earn 200,000 points across three completions as well, giving a second +2 Pinnacle without much effort.

Embrace Build Crafting

Destiny 2 is more difficult across the board, especially if you don’t have a lot of gear. Investing in and embracing build crafting is the best and most consistent way to overcome that difficulty. Every subclass — Void, Solar, Arc, Stasis, and Strand — all have viable endgame builds that make you essentially unkillable.

If they don’t make you invincible, they will probably destroy everything in the room before it can hurt you. Even less optimized setups are usable if you’re careful and play smart.

Don’t Wait to do Optional Quests

The Lightfall campaign, especially on Legendary, can be grueling. However, you’ll come across various sidequests and optional activities. We recommend doing these as you come across them for several reasons.

• First, they’re a good break from the Lightfall campaign’s monotony and are better written and more enjoyable overall.
• Second, the rewards you get from them will significantly help the campaign’s difficulty, and they aren’t as challenging to complete, making them a nice mechanical respite as well.

We could go on and on about little details here and there, but these are five of the biggest tips I wish I’d known the first time I went through Lightfall. We’ve covered plenty more content on Destiny 2’s latest, including how to get the Exotic Catalysts for the Quicksilver Storm, the Verglas Curve, and how to complete the NODE OVRD AVALON Exotic mission for Vexcalibur. Our D2 guides hub has even more.