For Returning Players

A history of major changes to the game.

Don't panic!

This guide is in order of more recent changes at the top and older changes at the bottom. I try to summarize the most major changes that occurred in each time period.

Changes are announced in TWABs (This Week at Bungie news posts) and patch notes. You can search TWABs[destiny.bungie.org] by key word here, and search patch notes[destiny.bungie.org] here.

In game, there is now a timeline. Each "unit" of story, such as a DLC or a season, has an associated icon. Items and quests added at those times usually have the associated icon somewhere on them. This is often the only way to tell which quest is associated with which DLC or season pass. The timeline will tell you what, if anything, you have purchased, and gives a brief story summary.
I do not own Beyond Light. Left click to view the full timeline with a story summary.

If you want to know what story stuff you have missed, there's plenty of summaries you can find online. I like to look up "cutscene movies" where people take all the relevant dialogue and cutscenes and stick it together into one video. Here is one youtuber who does that.

Should I make a new character?

If you have an open character slot, go for it. Make a character of each class, because a lot of loot drops are per class, not per character.

If you would need to delete a character to make a new one, you may not want to do this because it now costs A LOT of glimmer for new characters to unlock light subclass abilities that established characters start with for free.

What should I buy to get back into the game?
Nothing. As of Shadowkeep's release in late 2019, parts of the game are now free to play. See my guide here for a summary of free content. If you do wish to buy things, see my guide here for a summary of paid content and an FAQ at the bottom.

New as of Lightfall release

Engrams

Umbral engrams, added in 2019, no longer exist! They've been replaced by a variety of vendor-specific engrams. The current season pass vendor gives you get a tracker that goes in your inventory tab to keep track of which vendor has how many redeemable or focusable engrams.

Blue rarity items no longer drop once you reach the soft cap, which is the power level where only powerful and pinnacle rewards will raise your power level.

Guardian Ranks and User Interface

Immediately upon startup, you will see that alongside the button to go to the Director (destinations tab), there is also a Journey button. The Triumphs tab was renamed the Journey tab, because it now includes a lot of things besides Triumphs. There's a new guardian rank system where you rank up as you complete triumphs, which unlocks mods and more UI options such as the ability to swap between loadouts conveniently. You can give Commendations to other players at the end of matchmade activities, which ties into both this system and a future upcoming in-game LFG (looking for group) system.

Mods

The entire armor mod system has been overhauled. Mods now come from ranking up your Guardian Rank, accessed from the Journey tab. Unlike the previous few times this happened, armor from the previous system was converted to the new system! But if you have armor from the earlier two mod systems before that, it still can't be modded. If it's legendary, definitely shard it, if it's exotic, consider holding on to it until you have a modern one drop.

Strand

Owners of the Lightfall DLC can use the new darkness subclass Strand. If you see little green things zooming around the map or green floating yarn balls, this is where they came from.

All players can get weapons in the kinetic (first) slot or heavy (third) slot that deal strand damage.

Ikora is useful!

Ikora has some free to play quests that let you replay dramatic moments of now-removed content. Once you accept the mission from her, you launch it from the Timeline on the director.

She also has three quests for each class, meant to introduce the subclass effects such as jolt.

New as of Witch Queen release.

Weapon Crafting

After completing the first 2 Witch Queen missions (available free), you can access free roam in the Throne World and Enclave. The Enclave has a chamber where you can craft weapons after you have unlocked weapon patterns. See the Collections tab for your progress on unlocking weapon patterns. Some weapon patterns are paywalled. Some older content has been updated with craftable weapons, such as Deep Stone Crypt.
Some players think weapon crafting is paywalled, but they are actually clicking the wrong icon when trying to go to the Enclave.

See my weapon crafting guide for more information.

Void 3.0, Solar 3.0, Arc 3.0

One by one, thee three light subclasses were reworked to be fully customizable, like Stasis.

You can purchase extra abilities from Ikora for glimmer. All grenades are now class neutral.

Orbs

Initially called Orbs of Light, later called Orbs of Power, these used to come from super kills/usage and from killing 2 enemies in quick succession with a masterworked weapon.

Now, masterwork weapons don't make orbs. Weapons generate orbs based on mods that go in your helmet. These mods are immediately available to all players. Weapon masterworking is now only for the tiny stat boost and fancy gold border.

The End of Vaulting

In the Lightfall reveal stream, Bungie declared that, going forward, DLC is a permanent part of the game. Only season pass content will be removed periodically. Paid content that is neither a DLC nor a season pass is unclear.

Destination Materials and Glimmer

The resource nodes you can harvest on planets give glimmer. They no longer give a separate material that exists in your inventory. Destination materials have been retired.[www.bungie.net] You still have any materials from before this change, but now, the only use for them is to trade them in for glimmer at Rahool. You may wish to put them in your vault instead, for the memories.

Raid and Dungeon Rotations
All dungeons and raids give loot once per class per week, which is the same since launch.

The newest raid can be farmed endlessly for spoils of conquest, a new currency added a couple of years ago. It is used to buy former raid items from the Monument to Lost Lights or to buy extra loot from the ends of most raids. First clear per class per week gives a pinnacle from each encounter.

The newest dungeon can be farmed endlessly for loot. First clear per class per week gives a pinnacle from each encounter.

Each week, one older raid and dungeon are "in rotation" and can be farmed endlessly for loot. First clear per class per week gives one pinnacle upon completion. Looking for this pinnacle challenge in game is the best way to see if something is in rotation. You can also use third party references such as the website Today in Destiny or this spreadsheet[docs.google.com].

The rotation goes in release order. A new raid and dungeon will release in alternating seasons until Bungie states otherwise.

Played after Beyond Light but before Witch Queen?

Owners of Beyond Light have access to the Stasis subclass. Upon Beyond Light release, Io, Titan, Mercury, Mars, and the Leviathan were all removed from the game. To visit Europa, players must complete On Darkness's Doorstep, accessed from the Quest Archive in the Tower and Helm.

Armor Transmogrification

Ada-1 returns as an armor cosmetics system. Her quest will introduce you to a system where you complete bounties for her, awarding a class specific material that you turn into a currency. This currency is used in the appearance sub-screen (the same place you change your emblem, ship, and sparrow from) to turn any non-exotic counted as "discovered" in collections into a universal legendary armor ornament.

Stasis Weapons

After Beyond Light's initial release, a variety of weapons in the kinetic and heavy slot that deal stasis damage were added for all players. These can make bounties/quests to get "kinetic" or "kinetic weapon" kills behave strangely, because most of the time they do not count as kinetic even if they are in the kinetic slot.

It's a good idea to have a variety of weapons and at least each element available, but only stasis subclass wielders can make use of certain features on stasis weapons, such as the Headstone perk.

Vanguard Ops

The Strikes playlist has now been renamed "Vanguard Ops." Some season pass activities, Battlegrounds from Season of the Chosen, were added to the playlist. Players still refer to them all as strikes still, but the game often uses the term Vanguard Ops.

Eternity

This is some sort of pocket dimension associated with the Nine. It is where Xur lives when he is not appearing on weekends to sell exotics. Functionally, the Xur in Eternity and the exotic selling Xur are basically different NPCs, even though technically it's the same person. All players can do Dares of Eternity, a 6 player pve activity, here.

Played after Shadowkeep/Steam release, but before Beyond Light?

As described in the last section of this guide, if you did not manually migrate your Battle.net Destiny 2 progress to Steam, it has all been lost and if you return, you will be starting from scratch.

Mission on Startup

On any character that has completed the "tutorial," you will be placed in a current new mission when you first start up the game. Right after a major DLC release, this is the first DLC mission. After that, it is the first season pass mission. To continue these campaigns, you would need to pay money, but completing these first missions unlocks essential parts of the game such as free roam destinations, and champion mods. The season pass ones give loot that is normally paywalled. You can leave at any time by taking out your ghost and going to orbit(default on PC is tab > press and hold O). You can return to an incomplete mission later.

Season Pass System

In addition to yearly DLCs, there are now $10 (USD) season passes, which you buy in-game for Silver. These provide access to various cosmetics, items, and a seasonal activity each. At first, season passes in their entirety were removed when the next season started. Later on this was changed so that the "battle pass" reward track viewed from the Director becomes unavailable when the next season starts, and the rest of the season pass becomes unavailable when the next year's DLC is released.

Vaulting

This is the start of content vaulting. The stated reason was that the Destiny 2 file size is getting too large, and having to test and bug fix each new piece of content with a greater and greater amount of old content was taking more time and effort, so to cut down on file size, development time, and bugs, and increase the speed of bug fixes and new content development, Bungie decided to periodically cull older parts of the game. News of an upcoming "vaulting," meaning upcoming content removal, gets announced a few months in advance.

With Shadowkeep's release, the Red War, Curse of Osiris, Warmind, and the Annual Pass were removed. Some areas and assets may appear in the future, but besides that this content is all gone forever.

In the Tower, there is now the Monument to Lost Lights, a place where exotics, and ritual playlist quest weapons, go after their original quest got removed. Any item not in here can still be acquired in its original manner (or close to it), and any item in here can only be acquired by purchasing it from here.

Important note: For players planning to return eventually, each season there is one exotic weapon that is only available for free during that season. Afterward, it becomes paywalled. You can view this in the "seasons" tab of the director, at rank 1 of the paid ranks and rank 35 of the free ones. It may be worth logging in each season just to get to rank 35.

Sunsetting

This was initially announced some time after Shadowkeep. The plan was to have an "expiration date" on all legendary items, based on when they were added to the game. Items added more than a certain length of time ago would be capped in power level, unable to be infused to higher levels. "

Later on, this was changed to a one time thing. No new legendaries will be sunset. A variety of old items are now sunset, meaning they are capped at the current minimum power. They can be easily identified by looking at the upper left corner. All items have an icon in the upper left corresponding to when they were added. Sunset items have a gray upper left corner with a black icon, while non sunset weapons have a shaded upper left corner with a white icon.

Ignore the gold Masterwork border. I dismantled all my non-masterwork sunset items so I didn't have a better comparison.

Champions

A type of miniboss added with Shadowkeep. They have special abilities making them extra difficult to kill, such as damage resistance, self-healing, etc. which requires equipping specific mods to counter. Some exotics have intrinsic anti champion capabilities, but for the most part anti champion mods from the current Season Artifact are how to counter these.

Nightmares

Minibosses and bosses with a veiny red glow added with Shadowkeep. Unlike champions, they haven't been developed any further, and only appear in lost sectors on the EDZ and Nessus as well as all over Earth's Moon.

Played after Forsaken but before Shadowkeep/Steam release?

Most of this is gone now, but not all.

Vaulting, and What Became of Forsaken

The campaign and Tangled Shore destination were removed from the game The former "annual pass" things, including the raids Scourge of the Past and Crown of Sorrow, have been removed as well.

Rahool in the Tower now sells glimmer and materials similar to how Spider did. However, Rahool does not allow you to buy materials for glimmer.

Everything else is still there, including the Dreaming City in its entirety (including the 3 week curse cycle, Shattered Throne, Last Wish, and the various secrets and side objectives), and all the exotics. As a result, Forsaken had a permanent price reduction and its name changed to "the Forsaken Pack," but players still commonly refer to it as Forsaken. You don't get anything extra if you bought Forsaken before all of this happened.

More info here.[www.bungie.net]

Gambit?

If you were around for Reckoning and Gambit Prime, both of those are now removed. There is one single gambit mode, lasting 1 round. Relatively little has changed.

Played at launch?

Destiny 2 initially released on Battle.net and there was a window of time to migrate your account to Steam. If you did not do this, your progress from before Destiny 2 moved to Steam (Shadowkeep release, fall 2019) has been permanently lost. If you return, you will be starting from scratch as a new player.

Vaulting

Almost everything from before then has been either changed drastically or outright removed. The free roam destinations EDZ and Nessus, Vanguard Strikes, and the Crucible are the most recognizable.

The entirety of the Red War, Curse of Osiris, and Warmind have been removed from the game. Titan, Io, Mercury, Mars, and the Leviathan have been removed. They are gone forever. There's no way to play them, and you don't get anything special if you bought these back when they still existed.

Special Ammo

Ammo types have changed a lot. Before, guns in the first/kinetic slot used white (primary) ammo, guns in the second/energy slot used special (green) ammo, and heavy or power weapons in the third slot used purple ammo.

Now, primary ammo is infinite. The ammo type is now tied to the type of gun, and not the slot it goes in. All guns that used special ammo on launch now use primary ammo, and many heavy weapons were turned into special weapons, including sniper rifles, shotguns, and fusion rifles. Special ammo is limited in capacity, but intermediate in damage between primary and heavy.

Most of the time, it's a good idea to use one gun of each ammo type. I think this is a good change.

If your character does not have any heavy weapons and as a result is at an impossibly low power level, this is why. Your one and only heavy weapon was instead turned into a special weapon. If this has happened, look in your vault to see if you have another heavy weapon, or go to the Collections tab and see if you can make a copy of one you got before.

[Heliopteryx]

If you really want to get into semantics, yes, the Headstone perk does make a stasis crystal for everyone who uses it.

But the default stasis crystal without any of the stasis subclass upgrades has essentially zero utility. If you WANT to use it, that is perfectly fine. But the point of this guide was some general advice. I do not advise non Beyond Light owners to use Headstone. But if you just really want to, then that is your choice.

[lasersquirrel]

"only stasis subclass wielders can make use of certain features on stasis weapons, such as the Headstone perk."

this is not true. Headstone is *better* on a stasis subclass because of synergies, but I can still use stasis weapons with headstone just fine on my void warlock.

[PrettyGreyDay]

Thank you so much for this. I've been trying to get back in for a while, but there's just so much new and I've missed a TON of story, it was hard. This helps me not feel so overwhelmed and behind.

[AwwSkiSkiSki]

The thing that sucks about Destiny is that it's like a TV series.

Coming back to Lightfall after only playing at launch is like watching the first few episodes of LOST and jumping back in at season 5.


WTF is even going on with this story?

[darkflufyy]

Thank you.

[Shigbitty]

Thank you King

[br0]

Good read, bravo.

[ Problems]

This is all great info, but just a minor thing (shouldn't impact any returning player): in the second paragraph under Vaulting, it says "With Shadowkeep's release [content was] removed" instead of with Beyond Light. It's in the right section of playing during Shadowkeep but not after BL, so super easy fix.

[Serg]

Måke here spitting truth, we're all here; Just to suffer.

Every night.. I can feel the characters.. planets, the content I've lost..

[LiL Måke]

For returning players: Don't return game is still garbage, only playing for seal at this point.