Destiny 2‘s Lightfall expansion is bringing the Vanguard to the city of Neomuna, a cyberpunk-esque metropolis besieged by Calus and the Witness. This won’t be an easy fight: the Witness will bring its Tormentors and forces to Neomuna, and the Vanguard will try its best to help stop its advances. Of course, this means players will need all the help they can get, and there’s no harm in preparing for it ahead of time.
Even before Lightfall releases and kicks off Year Six of Destiny 2, players can take the tail end of Year Five to get a head start. The Witch Queen and its seasons have given players a ton of goals to chase, from weapon Patterns and god rolls to resources and activities.
And, of course, don’t forget to channel your inner Marie Kondo and make room for all the weapons and armor you’ll find in Lightfall.
Here’s how you can prepare for the next expansion.
What you should do before Lightfall in Destiny 2
Before Lightfall launches, it helps to have the right weapons and gear. If you’re looking to make the most out of Year Five, it also helps to clear out any loose ends you might have, from seasonal quests and titles to chasing weapons that may go away soon. It also doesn’t hurt to know what to expect from the Lightfall sandbox so you’ll realize why your linear fusion rifles aren’t hitting as hard as they’re supposed to.
Wrap up seasonal campaigns, catch up with the story
The Witch Queen‘s campaign is extraordinary in its own right, and it also introduced fans to the major narrative foil in Lightfall: The Witness. This mysterious entity has been drafting the help of its Disciples to conquer the Sol System, and the seasonal narratives in Year Five tell that story.
Later, Season of the Risen heralded the rise of Calus as a Disciple, which finally happened the season after that. Season of Plunder gave us the tools to wake up Osiris, who promptly shared a hint he found in Savathûn’s memories, which leads to Neptune—which we know is the location of the Lightfall metropolis of Neomuna.
The seasonal stories also require you to dive into the seasonal activities, which in turn give you plenty of currency to spend on Umbral focusing. If you’re still chasing those last rolls or Patterns for seasonal weapons, you can kill two birds with one stone.
Farm seasonal and non-seasonal weapons
You have until Lightfall to easily obtain any seasonal weapons you may have missed, whether through sheer luck or by crafting these guns. Luckily for players, Bungie made the Deepsight vendor count reset daily instead of weekly, meaning you can snag at least one Deepsight copy of a weapon from each season per day as long as you have the currency for it. Revisit old seasonal activities before they go away, then use the currency to grab whatever is still missing from your collection, and if you’re quick, you can even level those weapons as you go about your activity to unlock the perks you’ll need ahead of Lightfall.
Related: These are the 20 best weapons to farm before Lightfall in Destiny 2
Farm high-stat or Artifice armor
With the major changes to buildcrafting coming with Lightfall, you may want to pick up some high-stat armor before the expansion drops. Armor pieces with high stats drop from several sources, but focusing Engrams from Season of the Risen and Haunted will also give you armor with high spikes.
Don’t forget to equip the Ghost mod related to the stat you want, which should make it somewhat easier to target what you need. This method doesn’t really have a time gate, so you can keep focusing armor pieces as long as you have the currency and the Umbral Engrams.
Related: How to obtain high-stat armor in Destiny 2
Artifice armor pieces will also have their own mod slot that gives players a +3 to a stat of their choice instead of the added mod slot when Lightfall releases. Since Artifice armor drops from Master dungeons, the end of a season—when you’re already at a high Power level—is the prime time for trying your RNG with a solid piece and even better stat distribution.
Again, don’t forget to use the corresponding Ghost mod to tilt the odds in your favor a bit. Master versions of Grasp of Avarice and Duality are only available when they’re in rotation, but Master Spire of the Watcher is available as long as it’s the pinnacle dungeon.
Stack bounties
If you want to skip some of the artifact grind or just get some season pass levels in early, you can stock up on some bounties from the previous season and open them when Lightfall launches to get a bump in Power. Bounties are stored in your quest inventory, so each character can save up to 63 bounties or quests in total. Weekly bounties award more than dailies, and dailies award more than repeatable bounties.
If you’ve already finished your season pass, there isn’t much harm in saving some bounties for Lightfall—but don’t forget to save some room for the campaign and seasonal quests, and don’t take off your Ghost experience mod either.
Complete Operation: Seraph’s Shield and craft (and upgrade) Revision Zero
Operation: Seraph’s Shield is one of the best short missions Destiny 2 has gotten recently. Unfortunately for players, it’s seemingly going away with Lightfall, based on the Feb. 9 This Week at Bungie blog post, meaning the window to enjoy the mission is closing. Since most Season of the Seraph content is also moving to the Destiny Content Vault, it’s unclear what the process for obtaining and upgrading Revision Zero will look like in Lightfall—so you might as well get everything you can ahead of time, just to be sure.
There’s a chance it will be easier to acquire Revision Zero in the next expansion, but it’s still worth diving into Operation: Seraph’s Shield if you haven’t tried it already (or if you’re looking for one last trip to the Seraph Station).
Deep-clean your vault
Lightfall and Year Six will bring a multitude of weapons to Destiny 2, and guardians will need the space to store them all (you can’t rent extra storage space in the Last City—we’ve tried). The weeks before an expansion are the perfect time to free up some vault space: you’ve probably farmed most of the weapons you need, so it’s a matter of clearing out the clutter. Even though you probably totally need your five copies of Prolonged Engagement, there are likely a few weapons or armor pieces you won’t use when Lightfall launches.
For a truly efficient vault cleaning, we recommend using Destiny Item Manager (DIM) paired with Destiny Recipes’ powerful vault tool. Destiny Recipes let you easily decide what to keep and what to destroy, and DIM lets you grab those items quickly. Drag, drop, dismantle, and enjoy the vault space while it lasts.
Claim your vendor Engrams
If you’ve done enough ritual activities, odds are you’ll have a few Engrams on each vendor. These will disappear when Lightfall launches, so be sure to focus them into anything you might need or even decode them straight away if you’re just looking for some Legendary Shards.
While it’s easy to think of Commander Zavala, Lord Shaxx, and the Drifter, don’t forget Banshee-44 and Saint-14 either.
Finish your Transmog bounties
You can only get up to 10 transmog bounties from Ada-1 each season. Due to that cap, anything that gets you past the limit is almost wasted. If you’re not topped up on Synthweave, you can bring that number back up. If you’re already at max and still have bounties left over, though, you can always spend your Synthweave to unlock more ornaments, then refill your stock by finishing those bounties. After all, you’ll have 10 more bounties next season anyway—and a myriad of armor pieces that may make you want to spend that Synthweave.
Finish your seasonal challenges and seals
The final weeks of a season could just be the opportunity you need to wrap up some seasonal challenges. You can get progress for multiple objectives at once depending on what you’re doing, and if you complete 72 objectives, you’ll get 4,000 Bright Dust. Individual challenges also award some Bright Dust and XP, so it may also be worth chasing them.
This is also the last chance you’ll get to wrap up progress on the seasonal seals—Risen, Reaper, Scallywag, and Seraph—which are available by engaging with each season’s activities. Get them before they’re gone away for good.
Catch up with the balancing changes for Lightfall
Lightfall is bringing some major adjustments to balancing, including an overhaul to the buildcrafting system and several tweaks to weapon classes and some Exotics. And that’s just what we know of so far.
Keep your eyes peeled for official communication from Bungie, including its weekly This Week At Bungie blog posts (released every Thursday) and the sporadic long-form updates on Bungie.net.
Write down the maintenance times and preload Lightfall
Lightfall will go down for maintenance 24 hours ahead of its release, Bungie confirmed in a blog post in February. This means players won’t have access to Destiny 2 between 11am CT on Monday, Feb. 27, and 11am CT on Tuesday, Feb. 28. You have until then to wrap up anything you might have missed. Though it’s a long maintenance period, the bright side is players can preload Lightfall, making it even easier to jump into the expansion as soon as it launches (or, more realistically, allowing you to get into the server queue more quickly).
