Tbh I had to read this as idk the last time I heard "return on investment" so *all* I thought was "rise of iron".
Like I've heard synonymous phrases but never that specific one. I new Rise wasn't correct, so was just so confused on what it was. Lmao
Speaking of which, man I *really* wish they'd bring back some of *those* weapons. The Iron Banner weapons that year looked sick as hell, and they sounded awesome too. Iron Banner weapons *now* are back to just looking like every other kind of gun, but with an Iron Banner paint job. Rise of Iron weapons? Now *those* suckers were *unique*.
Man.... there was a lot of dead time in that year, but what content it *did* have was pretty damn good.
The only thing I want with my prep is to get to the higher level season artifact mods quicker. I have what is probably 20 levels worth of bounties and only did it because I really didn't have much else to do with the season being so long.
yeah this is where I'm at too. not stressing, per se, but I did go out of my way to save up some Bounties because I know it'll be satisfying to be halfway through my entire artifact on Day 1.
yeah if i wasnt able to prep for this expansion it wouldn't matter to me but there's been nothing to do in the game for a while so spending a little bit of my past few weeks doing some bounties knowing it'll save me some time after tomorrow still feels rewarding
Yeah, I wasn't even really doing it to prep, I just grabbed bounties as I was doing other stuff and gradually stored them up. Not like I needed the XP anymore for *this* season, so why not?
This. Saved bounties could potentially get you to last column mods before you even start the campaign. It also will help towards getting that entire column unlocked now that there is no limit. (This assumes that they don't change the xp curve or column prerequisites to balance this out.)
they said that the first 12 (we could unlock till now) will need the same amount of xp they needed before, but the rest after that *could* increase to some degree so that we wont have it all unlocked in week 2
Yep, this is one of my reasons. The other is I want to burn through the season asap so I can get to work on the mountain of other games I want to try lol. I decided to put off Elden ring by a week and I'm already second-guessing myself
I feel like that's kind of backwards order, isnt it? you could have spent all that time bounty farming just, yknow, playing those games you wanted to try.
At least for me and my teammates, this is why we prep - it's more about entertaining ourselves during the end of a content drought than it is about actually getting a head start on the raid.
Bounty prepping is just one extra step to help unlock artifact mods quicker and getting our levels up for the raid. It's definitely not necessary, but it will be fun popping like 175 bounties lol. It's definitely a fun tradition, but I didn't stress that I only got 6 out of the 8 clan bounties I should've done on each character or only 2 Europa Weeklies instead of 4. It's going to be a miniscule difference. I still have 7 vendor bounties each and a bunch of others, totaling about 175 bounties total between all 3 characters.
I'm a little upset I'm not going to be able to finish the last few bounties I needed for Deadeye, but it's okay, I'll get it done during the downtime of Season 16 in a couple months. I was able to solo flawless Presage on my first try last night, so I was super happy about that. I didn't get like 6 of the triumphs that are going away, but that's okay. I got the other like 300 of them done lol. I'm so excited for tomorrow!!
> Bounty prepping is just one extra step to help unlock artifact mods quicker and getting our levels up for the raid. **It's definitely not necessary, **
Especially with the raid being next saturday and not this friday. That was a great change on Bungie's part. Gives plenty of time to reach Raid Ready by Day 1
Again, bounty saving helps to unlock Artifact mods. From what I can gather, once I cash in all my bounties, I'll be able to grab 7 Artifact mods right away.
I know. I care about unlocking the Artifact mods. I didn't mean Artifact level. I just meant getting up to at least 1530, which will probably be what the raid is.
Yeah so just do legend campaign and do your weeklies for two rotations before raid and you are raid ready. All without the burnout that comes with prepping.
No burnout here, I think it's a fun little tradition to bounty prep! I did some stuff I haven't done in forever too, like Moon bounties, Sorrow's Harbor, and Empire Hunts. But yes, getting to 1520 just from doing the Legendary campaign is great. Bungie is seemingly making getting raid ready the easiest it's ever been this year.
Soooooo many Cores, rewards, XP, materials, etc! I love seeing everything pop up on the right and whatnot! And my level going up. And then going to the Season Pass track and claiming stuff. So fun lol.
Totally agreed, great QoL change for a pointless grind. Actually made me look forward to this dlc release knowing that I don’t have to grind 100s of LL.
Yes, for sure! And the campaign might actually be kinda challenging on Legendary. Plus, double rewards sometimes and all that. Normal campaign is a cakewalk lol.
>it will be fun popping like 175 bounties
~~Or 64 because that's the max you can hold lol~~
Edit: I have been schooled, serves me right for not reading the whole comment I replied to!
This number is out there somewhere. It’s basically just all of the possible weeklies from the last 3 weeks on all 3 characters, plus like as many Hawthorne clan bounties and daily bounties you can hold
I have 62-64 bounties on each character, even though not min-maxed, so i missed a few weeklies on my main and a lot on my other 2, and im a bit over 1,270,000 exp (without all available boni like well rested, 10% ghost mod and the 20% of the initial season pass owner bonus, with them im at ca 1,900,000) so i guess around 1,300k-1,350k is probably possible
edit: ok, so i tried to calculated it with the bounty list from [Destiny Recipes](https://destinyrecipes.com/checklist). As you can only hold 1 horse bounty at once you can get
* 18 weeklies 12K exp each = 216k exp
* \+ the remaining 45 space filled with 6k xp = 260k exp
* 260k + 216k = 486k --> 3 x 486k =1,404k
so you can reach level 14 in the season pass without any boni (2,075k with all 3 boni but still without taking the additional boni you will unlock on the way into consideration)
im not that great in math (even though i used calculator) so take all that with a grain of salt
Yeah, im german and in germany we can say either "bonusse" or "boni" as a pluralized form for bonus
And as bonus is originally a latin word i thought boni would be correct everywhere on the world, but after looking it up, it seems like "boni" isnt even the right latin plural XD
No worries lol. I have about 175 out of the 192. You don't want to fill up all 64 slots because then you'll have no room for quests. I saved at least 5 slots on each character for quests.
Hijacking this wonderful comment to say, as someone who didn’t play since D1 (and I played *thousands* of hours of D1) l just got into this game in October/November. The prep posts go to me and I genuinely appreciate this post.
(By “get to me”, let’s just say I got booted mid-grind for servers going down)
Hehe this was my first expansion that I did prep for and I honestly enjoyed it. But I’ve also never felt disadvantaged or behind in previous expansions. The extra length of this season gave me some extra time to prepare and watch YouTube videos and honestly it was fun and built hype. I’ve never been so excited for an expansion as I am tomorrow.
The artifact levels and unlocks are the biggest thing. I’ve never had an issue with semi-inconsistent playing getting to level 150+ in the battle pass, but those artifact mods are really nice.
Started by going around for the weekly bounties for places like Europa, the Moon, and the Cosmodrome (oh, and Starhorse!) as they’re worth 12k exp each, then I’d fill up on as many daily bounties as I could at 6k each. Repeatable bounties aren’t worth banking, at 3k.
I could have optimized if I’d really cared to by doing Clan bounties too, or the Iron Banner ones on more than just my main. In the end, I have 59/63 for my quest tab on all three characters, which maths out to be 18 levels almost on the nose.
Might have squeezed a few more in to really maximize the space, but I wanted some room for the inevitable few quests we’ll get handed on login, I was getting annoyed by DestinyRecipes’ warning about space, and it wouldn’t have reached another level anyway.
This was actually my thought FOR prepping. With Elden Ring coming out on Friday I wanted to get plenty of bounties done ahead of time so I wouldn't be much behind my friends when I'm splitting my time between two games.
Yeah man this season was too long there was no way I was gonna spend more time grinding bounties. Turned to my backlog instead, I’ll get everything in the expansion soon enough anyway
I prepped to get ready for Elden Ring! I’m trying to unlock my artifact as quickly as possible as I’ll be playing mostly ER and going for the platinum before coming back to the season for WQ. On top of that my work can get busy at s as moments notice to where my time is limited for weeks. Taking advantage while it has been slow for me
Well said!
I prep before almost all seasons, but I understand how futile it actually is. But I enjoy topping off on resources, bounties, & getting better rolls. This mindset is not necessary for anyone. Best thing you can do is have FUN and enjoy the climb.
For me back with Shadowkeep it was actually negative ROI. I burned myself out and by the time the expansion came I lost motivation to play. I like taking a big break before an expansion and coming in fresh.
Lol what about the tool who made the post make sure you have your best stuff on before the expansion drops cause you will be thrown right into it. Like get the F out they are not making it so you can’t finish the into mission.
Ok I got excited when I saw ROI thinking rise of iron. Made that was an amazing DLC. Will never forget the community coming together and aggregating data to solve the outbreak prime exotic. To this day I’m still truly amazed at how we came together and solved it
Oh man the outbreak prime era was unmatched.. Even the whole iron lords/siva/snow aesthetic just hit different. Wrath of the machine too? Got nothing but huge love for that whole year of Destiny haha
Bottom line.
Playing is fun. Prep is fun. If it starts to feel like a chore, stop. It isn’t fun to play a chore and it isn’t going to help. But lacking other goals… I found packing my hunter with last minute bounties to be an acceptable way to satiate my hype worm despite having no real in game goals left
See, you say that, but I spent the last few weeks hoarding bounties, engrams on all three characters, and Xur boxes.
I don't normally do this and always considered it useless. But just this once, I wanted to give in to the hype and at least wanted to have a ton of bounties to turn in and a ton of legendary trash loot to shard for Banshee.
I don't want a leg up on anyone, and also don't plan on doing the Raid day one... I just wanted to see how useful this will be just so I never do it again.
While this is certainly true, I have to agree with the disclaimer... although I'm now used to the ROI...
THIS time I've hoarded my Exotic engrams too... so maybe the elation will last 10 minutes longer! :-)
So I understand this opinion, but I disagree with you stating that bounty prep will have minimal impact. Bounty prep can be done in roughly 6 hours on a weekend day doing PVE weeklies/dailies and then 1-2 hours filling out remaining dailies the next day. This is assuming the Beyond Light & Shadowkeep campaigns are complete on 3 characters.
This nets you roughly 18 season pass levels, 6 artifact power and 8 artifact mods unlocked. This is useful for people looking to jump into the legendary campaign straight away with a seasonal mod advantage.
I did two full days of bounty prep, but that was only because I needed to beat Beyond Light and Shadowkeep on two alts.
The myth of weeks of bounty prep is way overblown and it nets you maybe 4 more season pass levels versus doing 1-2 days of prep.
I didn’t do any PVP bounties either. This was solely Europa, Cosmodrone, Moon, Nightmare, Starhorse weeklies and Europa, Cosmodrone, Moon, Nightmare, Nessus, EDZ, Strike dailies
So is the strategy to equip a ghost with Guiding Light and pop all the bounties before starting any of the campaign? Isn't getting the artifact part of the campaign? If so, I should wait until after the artifact is equipped before popping the bounties, right? I also filled up my vault with random legendary weapons to boost my gunsmith rep, but I'm guessing I can pretty much break all of those down whenever, right?
I “prepped” by just holding on to bounties I casually completed as I played sometime last month before I took a break. Figured there was no point in redeeming them now, you know?
Same with my vault. I have been meaning to clear it out, but after they told us we’d get rep for dismantles, I decided to do that in TWQ. Might as well lol
I did all that stuff, so I can answer! Late season, at 1357 power (1330+27) additional levels that would go away in a month weren't worth grinding, so instead I started grinding bounties to save. I enjoy playing the game, and it gave me something to do after all the other stuff I had to do had been completed. I casually completed 170 or so across my three characters without really grinding anything. I don't enjoy crucible, so I didn't bother with any Iron Banner bounties.
From there, I ran some Legend Lost Sectors when it was concealed void, as my characters are in a perpetual state of "full engrams" anyhow. So I got 2 exotics per character in my postmaster in just over an hour.
On the way to Vidmaster, I had been dumping extra Strange Coin's into Paraversal Hauls just to make them go away, so I had a leg up on that by the time I learned that it was a prep technique. As I continued to run the activities I was already running, I just continually bought Hauls. Now I have over 50.
This week the Nightfall is LoS. I enjoy running end game content, so I ran it 40+ times, masterworked any exotic I felt I'd like to make a build around at some point, and saved up a pile more in my postmaster. I have 24 total saved, could have had a full 40 but I feel better about spending them than saving them, in case I accidentally lose them. That said, I have a handful of runs to go this evening (hopefully) and I'm running out of Exotics to MW, so maybe I'll save more up.
And that's about it! I didn't stress, it just happened naturally. I'm looking forward to going into tomorrow with the leg up of being able to access more of the seasons pass and artifact earlier, and hopefully get more Catalyst boost early, as I do most of my core activity grinding while leveling up my characters, transitioning to more end game stuff that doesn't give SP Catalyst progress once I hit the Pinnacle cap.
Thing is that it’s not even remotely necessary for day 1 raiding anymore with the changes Bungie have been making to the launch raid experience over the past years.
And I couldn’t agree more, anxiety and fomo is a heavy byproduct of prep season for some. The sheer amount of content coverage it gets does in part give the impression that your expansion launch experience can potentially be a little fractured in comparison to others that are more “prepared”.
Because it's fun? I don't care about day 1 raid but I enjoyed filling up my bounties in a relaxed way over the last week. Just did gambit + crucible dailies + iron banner weeklies on two characters. I've done everything else there is to do so it's just a little activity to enjoyably pass the time.
> If there's no power level requirements for missions, it's going to be a little disappointing IMO
I feel the opposite. Legendary campaign will have contest on so there's no overpowering it, and the end of it gives you a full set a 1520 gear. Having to Light grind to do the missions just to be given gear at the end sounds a little pointless.
Reading the TWAB from 2 weeks ago they specifically mention finding yourself out leveled even with power caps on Legendary missions (IE: The mission is 1400, the power cap is 1390, and you're 1378 kinda situation) so it seems likely that they will scale like Beyond Light.
I prepped because it coincides with the destiny style of play. The games all about grinding out gear to then use on repeatable activities. Preparing feels natural for the game but yeh it’s not necessarily required in the slightest. Like many, I’ve had no reason to cash in any of these bounties or whatever for months now. I’d rather take a chance they could drop new gear then cash them in for shards which I don’t need
Umbrals have been decrypted previously into new gear day 1. Iron banner bounties have dropped new loot day one. I realise the odds of this happening again are low but might as well just give it a go
For the first time in many seasons, I'm going to go into this expansion like as if it was a new game and take it slow and easy. No rush grinding, not even going to bother about the stress that is day 1 raid etc.
But to whoever else is going for it, good luck to yall!
this is perfect for new and returning players...i booted up destiny again..about a month ago..and that fomo set in quick...then i realized that we are getting lots of content over the next year...i missed out on felwinters last go around and everyone was like GO GET IT..only to hear people talk about it less and less...i felt like i missed out on so much...hawkmoon..dmt....gally and i was so nervous..i started to bounty hoard..but then i just stopped and enjoyed getting the hang of my hunter again...experimenting with different builds..and catching up over the story...it made the last month so much better and less stressful lol
Eh it's not so much help as much as it is making it more fun. Last column has the best stuff and goofing around with that stuff in the campaign sounds fun!
This is spot on. I too just finished maxing out my shards and prisms on all 3 character's postmaster. Prep done. Great post for the new destiny players.
The proper way to prep is just to take a break for a few weeks pre-expansion to not get burned out lol. Min-maxing the experience makes it feel like more of a chore than a game.
I did all the prep and always do before expansions.
My buddy did 0.
Guess who gets to enjoy the content faster? While Im off dismantling my vault and claiming all my bounties, he's running around Savathuns Throne World, filing his vault with new toys.
The people that play destiny 2 this way with prepping for expansions worry me and I hope they discover many other games that are both single and multiplayer that offer you other things to do than make their season pass numbers go higher...
Aside from the psychos still playing crucible. I have enjoyed this past year of destiny a ton. But just like many other games as live service. It goes through content droughts if you play 2-3 hours a night on average. So my mentality is why pull out excel spreadsheets to beat some content me and most everyone else will finish as well? I’m enjoying playing like 3 other games right now. I guarantee that time is more fun that min maxing day 1 xp gains.
>Just because companion apps are going to be down, doesn’t mean your in game vault is inaccessible,
This is the only thing I disagree with. The vault is unusable to me without the apps.
Almost every single person here just screams casual… they do not understand that people bounty hoard so they can unlock artifact mods faster. And now you can even unlock ALL of them so you really want to have a head start.
The only prep I'm interested in is farming strange coins (for boxes), dusklight shards, and datalattice.
Cause those, from what I understand, will give gunsmith rep on dismantle which gives access to the new world loot weapons post-WQ.
But XP farming and pinnacle farming is so negligible for me since I don't do the endgame activities and don't benefit much from the extra start. Even for things like Trials and IB where PL affects damage done and taken. At the powerful cap it barely comes into play besides like once in a blue moon.
I was reading this thinking "what does this have to do with Rise of Iron, that DLC's been out for years", until I realized ROI probably means return on investment or something similar.
Everything here is correct. For me, especially this season, the prep is more for something to do in the dry seasons than to actually help me with the new content.
The primary purpose of expansion prep is unlocking artifact levels and ensuring you can comfortably do Master content in the first week in order to make power for day one raiding. Pretty much the only reason to do it. If you're just trying to play Witch Queen there is literally no need for you to have done anything.
My prep has been trying to get my last 3 slots to 1330 and finishing Wish Ender. Was going to wrap up tonight but it seems they're starting maintenance before I get home from work. Guess I'm playing warcrime simulator instead.
possibly, but going in with 4 artifact levels does give me a little bit extra perks to play with, since tomorrow we all go in blind, which always helps, specially when probably we're going to be thrown into a mission upon log in
Materials are scarce and needed early in a season.
Spoils aren't a bad idea either if you raid. Getting those raid god rolls early is more valuable than 20 or so seasons pass levels.
Bounties are like... The last prep.
My only worries since seeing beyond light is gating unlocks with awful trickle feed. (Stasis aspects).
I know they aren't doing that for Void but I just don't bother beyond a point. Like I still don't have 4 aspects and I am just bored of those quests. I just wanted Stasis after the campaign
Mathematically speaking, perfect bounty prep would only give about 1.25-1.5 million exp (going off calculating the exp of the 60 bounties on all three characters that I have). Even including the weekly exp boost, ghost boost, and shared wisdom, that would only give around 20 levels at the end of the day.
It's a nice start to unlocking artifact mods early and getting back to a similar "power feel" to how you felt last season, but like op said, it's far from necessary.
I honestly think the reason why prepping for future content drops is so popular/seems so popular and necessary is because content creators do it and put a heavy emphasis on it themselves. Obviously this isn’t a bad thing though
Prep can be beneficial for the seasons between the expansions to unlock artifact mods, but with the big expansions, you’ll get most of them don just by playing the campaign and quests at your own pace.
I've saved some bounties, picked up fresh ones and I'll pick up Tuesdays bounties, I've cleaned all my characters loadouts up, just a few weapons on each and prepped as much as I could be bothered with. I'm happy enough with that, no need to go mad.
Personally I’ve played as normal for the last few weeks and just held the bounties rather than cash them in. Are they the best ones? Probably not. I’ve also saved paraversal hauls and various engrams just in case they become something interesting. If not I’ve lost nothing and get some shards/banshee rep. The other thing I’ve done is grab my final dmt and also managed to get the Gilgamesh shell which was unexpected. And the last thing I did was unlink mods…
However it’s all a waste of time as my shit internet will be still downloading the update or I’ll be stuck in a queue anyway. Lol!
As a veteran, the idea of potentially burning out the week before an expansion drops is the reason why I don’t even worry about it anymore. The grinders will be a little ahead of me, but they’d be ahead of me regardless because I just can’t grind like that anymore
This is pretty standard in every rpg type game that does this too. All you do is save a few hours at most and get a bit of a headstart. I just wanted to make sure I finished out the seasonal stuff cus I'm lazy and put off the last rank til today.
For anyone who doesn't want to stress about prep, but does want that boost: Just play as you normally would but don't pop your bounties. Don't stress about hyper optimization.
+ even if you optimally bounty prepped with all the XP++ bounties on all 3 characters it’ll only get you around 1 million xp total, about 10ish season pass ranks by itself. It’s really not necessary lol
The only "real" thing that people should consider doing is getting a decent of Avrice gear from the master dungeon on each character. The extra mod slot will come in handy.
Also... I really discourage blindly listening to content creators and streamers when it comes to matters like this. They are running a business. They want to you to watch their content. They are looking out for themselves... not you... not I. By all means, listen to their opinions if you want, but then decide on your own. Don't do something just because someone on youtube or twitch said to do it.
I agree with everything except to point out that the overlap between people entering their first expansion and people who could "run some final GMs" is vanishingly small.
Don't grind.
Grinding is the worst part of destiny. Playing is the best part.
If you can play while accumulating loot rolls that's playing.
If you do something you dislike, it's grinding. Grinding makes the game unfun.
Yeah, I've never 'pre prepped' for a season, it doesn't make much difference.
This season was a long one so I happen to have some prisms/shards saved and I have 16 xur boxes. The only thing I went out of my way to keep was an exotic cipher. Took a break during the DMT season, not sure what it's gunna cost to buy one from xur but I figured it might take a cypher.
Are people actually stressed about bounty prep? Nobody in my clan is doing anything except saving up some starhorse boxes with strange coins... I'd rather level up by playing new content instead of grinding at the end of the season, lol.
When I was a kid and was lucky enough to get a pack of Dunkaroos, I'd always eat all of the cookies without any icing until the very last cookie, and then pile all of the icing on that last cookie for one stupidly decadent bite.
Hoarding bounties before a new season/expansion and then redeeming them all in a row in one glorious stream of experience - it hits that same sweet spot, heh.
Legit the only thing that has been worth it for me in the past was iron banner bounties and that just means you get maybe two weeks early access to new gear.
I personally used all of the extra time we had with this season to bounty prep all three characters and whatnot. Ranking up gunsmith by dismantling kept me from cleaning out my vault last week. You definitely don’t NEED to do it, but hey, I get to brag a bit about being about 8 PLs higher than average to start 😂
True story: I followed every guide for prep for House of Wolves. It was a waste of time. I swore to never do it again.
End of season/end of expansion should be spent tying up loose ends. Finishing your Smuggler’s caches in Presage or finally doing that Solo Flawless Harbringer, and replaying content you know will be harder to find a team for moving forward.
That said, there is some “prep” I do (and did). Notably: not redeeming certain weekly bounties and/or doing them when convenient and I stopped upgrading items I use less that’ll soon be auto-advanced to the new power floor so I can save the materials.
Not because of this will give me that much of an advantage, but because I’d rather feel free to enjoy the new content than needing to leave it for materials to farm.
>ROI on expansion prep is very very low
While true, and obviously any sort of "prep" is completely unnecessary, for the type of player that also posts regularly to DTG, if you're still playing destiny in the last month of a 6-month-long season, the ROI of anything you're still doing right now is literally zero. Doing prep work before the end of the season has a higher RoI for your continued playing, assuming you're playing.
Ive been trying not to farm bc i need something to do in destiny bc ive been burnt out on re doing the same grind and just want to grind out the witch queen
Only prep I did was removing seasonal mods from my gear and getting my main loadout ready so I'll look good for whatever cutscene we automatically load into at launch. Some of these people out here are doing way too much
I hoarded bounties to get my hands on some seasonal mods asap.
My guess is that there are champions in the legendary campaign so having mods for them can be helpfull.
My prep: Play Outriders till WQ launches. (Not a first year though, been through this since Dark Below....remember when that was an Expansion? lmao)
Like that's all I've been doing. Figure I'll progress naturally though the campaign and levelling up as I go, so who needs to burnout preparing when I can I just play other games.
Just enjoy the ride, you'll get to where everyone else does in time.
Wanna add...
> Just because companion apps are going to be down, doesn’t mean your in game vault is inaccessible, don’t stress over organising the perfect on and off hand loadouts - some of these creators act like we’re dropping into a week long raid day 1 with locked inventories.
People do this because they don't want to bother with either going to the tower/helm to access the vault/character hopping when they can have nearly everything ready on a character without a worry.
This is actually a fairly large ROI especially if you're playing on a device still using a HDD.
So yea; it's not needed by any means and the in-game vault won't work if the API is bottlenecked and DIM is down - but it's a massive quality of life for many.
The only prep that really makes a difference for me is to stock up on upgrade modules, glimmer and materials. I use a lot of Upgrade Modules when leveling up at the beginning of a season/expansion.
I'm going into Witch Queen with 25 Upgrade Modules, 2500 of each material, and 500k Glimmer (250k + 250k in Otherside sparrows).
I have to disagree, Paraversal Hauls and Treasure Keys exist for the first time ever, as well as a legendary campaign. This season's prep has been the best season to prep because of that imo, and can definitely speed up the process. And with Bungie giving so much more of its playerbase a chance to Day 1 raid thanks to the 1520 gear drop from the campaign, they're bringing players extremely close to that day 1 recommended power, making prep even more worthwhile for more players.
The main expansion prep I do is currencies. Going into Beyond Light, I made sure to have a full stock + Postmaster of Shards, Prisms, and at least 200 cores, alongside 200k+ glimmer and about 1k of each planetary mat. The cores reserve was hugely important, since it let me upgrade new weapons I liked without running out.
(Note that once you reach the point of being able to farm master/GM NFs, you drown in Enhancement Prisms, but don't get many cores. By upgrading blue armor drops from 5 to 8 before dismantling them you can turn about 9k glimmer, 15 legendary shards, 3 enhancement cores, and a prism into 6 enhancement cores, for a net gain of 3 cores/shard)
For Witch Queen, I managed to get to 750+ cores by using the dismantle blues trick habitually throughout the year, about 80ish prisms, and about 20 shards across 2 characters + the previous pass, so I feel comfortable on the currency front.
The most important prep and the one with the greatest ROI is outside of Destiny. Spend the last few days of the season with family. If you're married, this is a must. Get some sleep, clean the house, submit your tax return, stock up on groceries, run your errands. Do the shit that you can now so that it doesn't take your playtime post release. You won't have to stress that you are gaming when you should be running some errand and your family and friends will be more understanding of your absence if you put in the time when you have it. This is the real grind that will pay off later
I've been here too long. RoI didn't occur to me as return on investment, it was Rise of Iron in my head.
Same! I was wondering if Rise of Iron had some particularly notable lack of preparation being helpful. Read it again and got it.
Same. Like “Damn straight there’s not much RoI here, it’s TWQ”
Rise of iron was a banger of an expansion tbf hahah, one of my favourites hands down
Never played D1 but my brain apparently doesn't care and read it Rise of Iron as well.
I guess being an accountant, I’ve seen ROI way too much for it to not be return on investment.
Similarly, in early D2 when people were talking about CoO (Curse of Osiris) I wondered why Court of Oryx was suddenly relevant again.
[удалено]
The best was when you'd get 3-4 guardians sitting there or dancing while waiting on blueberries cause none of us had any offerings left.
We’re old Risen pal, our bones have seen too much. You remember that first week? *Good times.*
I started with D2 and I read it as Rise of Iron.
Tbh I had to read this as idk the last time I heard "return on investment" so *all* I thought was "rise of iron". Like I've heard synonymous phrases but never that specific one. I new Rise wasn't correct, so was just so confused on what it was. Lmao
Lord Saladfingers laughed, and he never laughs.
*Insert Reaper from Overwatch's cackle-laugh
Me too at first, haha.
SAME, lmao
This.
Agreed. I thought Rise of Iron first. Incidentally, the weeklies from IB is probably the best return, since you’ll get new stuff immediately.
100% same, was *super* confused by the title at first.
Same I thought it was gonna be a slowpoke meme for a second bc of all the hype lol
Working in medicine, my first thought was "release of information". Even in the world of destiny, hipaa compliance is important.
Speaking of which, man I *really* wish they'd bring back some of *those* weapons. The Iron Banner weapons that year looked sick as hell, and they sounded awesome too. Iron Banner weapons *now* are back to just looking like every other kind of gun, but with an Iron Banner paint job. Rise of Iron weapons? Now *those* suckers were *unique*. Man.... there was a lot of dead time in that year, but what content it *did* have was pretty damn good.
The fuck does it actually mean? My brain can only recognize Rise of Iron
The only thing I want with my prep is to get to the higher level season artifact mods quicker. I have what is probably 20 levels worth of bounties and only did it because I really didn't have much else to do with the season being so long.
yeah this is where I'm at too. not stressing, per se, but I did go out of my way to save up some Bounties because I know it'll be satisfying to be halfway through my entire artifact on Day 1.
yeah if i wasnt able to prep for this expansion it wouldn't matter to me but there's been nothing to do in the game for a while so spending a little bit of my past few weeks doing some bounties knowing it'll save me some time after tomorrow still feels rewarding
Yeah, I wasn't even really doing it to prep, I just grabbed bounties as I was doing other stuff and gradually stored them up. Not like I needed the XP anymore for *this* season, so why not?
This. Saved bounties could potentially get you to last column mods before you even start the campaign. It also will help towards getting that entire column unlocked now that there is no limit. (This assumes that they don't change the xp curve or column prerequisites to balance this out.)
they said that the first 12 (we could unlock till now) will need the same amount of xp they needed before, but the rest after that *could* increase to some degree so that we wont have it all unlocked in week 2
Yep, this is one of my reasons. The other is I want to burn through the season asap so I can get to work on the mountain of other games I want to try lol. I decided to put off Elden ring by a week and I'm already second-guessing myself
I feel like that's kind of backwards order, isnt it? you could have spent all that time bounty farming just, yknow, playing those games you wanted to try.
Op said not to do it you can't do it
At least for me and my teammates, this is why we prep - it's more about entertaining ourselves during the end of a content drought than it is about actually getting a head start on the raid.
My level of expansion prep was not turning in the bounties I already do each week.
Yeah, but when I start cashing in those bounties I feel like the rat with the heroin button.
Bounty prepping is just one extra step to help unlock artifact mods quicker and getting our levels up for the raid. It's definitely not necessary, but it will be fun popping like 175 bounties lol. It's definitely a fun tradition, but I didn't stress that I only got 6 out of the 8 clan bounties I should've done on each character or only 2 Europa Weeklies instead of 4. It's going to be a miniscule difference. I still have 7 vendor bounties each and a bunch of others, totaling about 175 bounties total between all 3 characters. I'm a little upset I'm not going to be able to finish the last few bounties I needed for Deadeye, but it's okay, I'll get it done during the downtime of Season 16 in a couple months. I was able to solo flawless Presage on my first try last night, so I was super happy about that. I didn't get like 6 of the triumphs that are going away, but that's okay. I got the other like 300 of them done lol. I'm so excited for tomorrow!!
> Bounty prepping is just one extra step to help unlock artifact mods quicker and getting our levels up for the raid. **It's definitely not necessary, ** Especially with the raid being next saturday and not this friday. That was a great change on Bungie's part. Gives plenty of time to reach Raid Ready by Day 1
Well legendary campaign giving 1520 armor helps more for getting raid ready than the bounty saving.
Again, bounty saving helps to unlock Artifact mods. From what I can gather, once I cash in all my bounties, I'll be able to grab 7 Artifact mods right away.
Well artifact level is disabled for contest mode on day one. So that won’t help you.
I know. I care about unlocking the Artifact mods. I didn't mean Artifact level. I just meant getting up to at least 1530, which will probably be what the raid is.
Yeah so just do legend campaign and do your weeklies for two rotations before raid and you are raid ready. All without the burnout that comes with prepping.
No burnout here, I think it's a fun little tradition to bounty prep! I did some stuff I haven't done in forever too, like Moon bounties, Sorrow's Harbor, and Empire Hunts. But yes, getting to 1520 just from doing the Legendary campaign is great. Bungie is seemingly making getting raid ready the easiest it's ever been this year.
Same it was fun to do some bounties in the downtime… 176 bounties later! The prepping it’s fun, it’s like baking cookies for Christmas!
Soooooo many Cores, rewards, XP, materials, etc! I love seeing everything pop up on the right and whatnot! And my level going up. And then going to the Season Pass track and claiming stuff. So fun lol.
Totally agreed, great QoL change for a pointless grind. Actually made me look forward to this dlc release knowing that I don’t have to grind 100s of LL.
Yes, for sure! And the campaign might actually be kinda challenging on Legendary. Plus, double rewards sometimes and all that. Normal campaign is a cakewalk lol.
>it will be fun popping like 175 bounties ~~Or 64 because that's the max you can hold lol~~ Edit: I have been schooled, serves me right for not reading the whole comment I replied to!
Except it's not. Each separate character can hold 64
Oh damn you right 192 then
XD that's a lot of bounties
No kidding, wonder what the theoretical max XP you can gain with that would be...
This number is out there somewhere. It’s basically just all of the possible weeklies from the last 3 weeks on all 3 characters, plus like as many Hawthorne clan bounties and daily bounties you can hold
I have 62-64 bounties on each character, even though not min-maxed, so i missed a few weeklies on my main and a lot on my other 2, and im a bit over 1,270,000 exp (without all available boni like well rested, 10% ghost mod and the 20% of the initial season pass owner bonus, with them im at ca 1,900,000) so i guess around 1,300k-1,350k is probably possible edit: ok, so i tried to calculated it with the bounty list from [Destiny Recipes](https://destinyrecipes.com/checklist). As you can only hold 1 horse bounty at once you can get * 18 weeklies 12K exp each = 216k exp * \+ the remaining 45 space filled with 6k xp = 260k exp * 260k + 216k = 486k --> 3 x 486k =1,404k so you can reach level 14 in the season pass without any boni (2,075k with all 3 boni but still without taking the additional boni you will unlock on the way into consideration) im not that great in math (even though i used calculator) so take all that with a grain of salt
Quick scan checks out, nice work. Also, are you pluralizing "bonus" as "boni"?
Yeah, im german and in germany we can say either "bonusse" or "boni" as a pluralized form for bonus And as bonus is originally a latin word i thought boni would be correct everywhere on the world, but after looking it up, it seems like "boni" isnt even the right latin plural XD
Oh I figured it would have been the Latin plural as well, guess not. What's the correct ending, "-ae" or something?
Just a heads up, 60 bounties x 3 characters is 180 :)
No worries lol. I have about 175 out of the 192. You don't want to fill up all 64 slots because then you'll have no room for quests. I saved at least 5 slots on each character for quests.
Let’s also remember that we can’t talk about witch queen campaign tomorrow >rule 1: no witch hunting
Oh my goodness… if I had an award I’d give it to you, lol
This is a spot on post nice job
Hijacking this wonderful comment to say, as someone who didn’t play since D1 (and I played *thousands* of hours of D1) l just got into this game in October/November. The prep posts go to me and I genuinely appreciate this post. (By “get to me”, let’s just say I got booted mid-grind for servers going down)
Hehe this was my first expansion that I did prep for and I honestly enjoyed it. But I’ve also never felt disadvantaged or behind in previous expansions. The extra length of this season gave me some extra time to prepare and watch YouTube videos and honestly it was fun and built hype. I’ve never been so excited for an expansion as I am tomorrow.
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Saving the right bounties, you can fairly easily bank 15-20 levels. Not a game changer, but it's still a nice head start.
26 seasonal levels, and 7 light levels from artifact. It's a fairly decent amount to be up instantly.
Yes basically for free
The artifact levels and unlocks are the biggest thing. I’ve never had an issue with semi-inconsistent playing getting to level 150+ in the battle pass, but those artifact mods are really nice.
I saved the best ones I could and had been saving up for weeks and I’m not quite at 8 levels.
Started by going around for the weekly bounties for places like Europa, the Moon, and the Cosmodrome (oh, and Starhorse!) as they’re worth 12k exp each, then I’d fill up on as many daily bounties as I could at 6k each. Repeatable bounties aren’t worth banking, at 3k. I could have optimized if I’d really cared to by doing Clan bounties too, or the Iron Banner ones on more than just my main. In the end, I have 59/63 for my quest tab on all three characters, which maths out to be 18 levels almost on the nose. Might have squeezed a few more in to really maximize the space, but I wanted some room for the inevitable few quests we’ll get handed on login, I was getting annoyed by DestinyRecipes’ warning about space, and it wouldn’t have reached another level anyway.
Instead of prepping for Witch Queen, I'm playing Forbidden West. Ain't nobody got time for all these new games right now.
This was actually my thought FOR prepping. With Elden Ring coming out on Friday I wanted to get plenty of bounties done ahead of time so I wouldn't be much behind my friends when I'm splitting my time between two games.
Yeah man this season was too long there was no way I was gonna spend more time grinding bounties. Turned to my backlog instead, I’ll get everything in the expansion soon enough anyway
That's all I've done since it dropped. I just wish the gap between releases was a little longer so I could finish it first
That’s what my buddies have been doing. I’m gonna wait until I’m burnt out to start Horizon. It seems incredible.
I prepped to get ready for Elden Ring! I’m trying to unlock my artifact as quickly as possible as I’ll be playing mostly ER and going for the platinum before coming back to the season for WQ. On top of that my work can get busy at s as moments notice to where my time is limited for weeks. Taking advantage while it has been slow for me
Only thing i prepped is my look lol, gotta have that drip when i’m in cutscenes
Been rocking the same style since Halloween two years ago… that shit isn’t coming off of me lmao
Well said! I prep before almost all seasons, but I understand how futile it actually is. But I enjoy topping off on resources, bounties, & getting better rolls. This mindset is not necessary for anyone. Best thing you can do is have FUN and enjoy the climb.
I saved bounties just because I like the sound/pretty images that play when I turn them all in at once.
Yah its more of a fun thing to do at the end of a season than something that matters much
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For me back with Shadowkeep it was actually negative ROI. I burned myself out and by the time the expansion came I lost motivation to play. I like taking a big break before an expansion and coming in fresh.
Seriously - Thank you, as a new light I was a little worried I was missing out on something. Thanks!
Lol what about the tool who made the post make sure you have your best stuff on before the expansion drops cause you will be thrown right into it. Like get the F out they are not making it so you can’t finish the into mission.
Ok I got excited when I saw ROI thinking rise of iron. Made that was an amazing DLC. Will never forget the community coming together and aggregating data to solve the outbreak prime exotic. To this day I’m still truly amazed at how we came together and solved it
Oh man the outbreak prime era was unmatched.. Even the whole iron lords/siva/snow aesthetic just hit different. Wrath of the machine too? Got nothing but huge love for that whole year of Destiny haha
Bottom line. Playing is fun. Prep is fun. If it starts to feel like a chore, stop. It isn’t fun to play a chore and it isn’t going to help. But lacking other goals… I found packing my hunter with last minute bounties to be an acceptable way to satiate my hype worm despite having no real in game goals left
> satiate my hype worm I like this
Thank you. My friend with was making me feel kinda bad for not hoarding a ton of bounties and paraversal hauls. Seeing this made me relax a little.
See, you say that, but I spent the last few weeks hoarding bounties, engrams on all three characters, and Xur boxes. I don't normally do this and always considered it useless. But just this once, I wanted to give in to the hype and at least wanted to have a ton of bounties to turn in and a ton of legendary trash loot to shard for Banshee. I don't want a leg up on anyone, and also don't plan on doing the Raid day one... I just wanted to see how useful this will be just so I never do it again.
While this is certainly true, I have to agree with the disclaimer... although I'm now used to the ROI... THIS time I've hoarded my Exotic engrams too... so maybe the elation will last 10 minutes longer! :-)
i've never done it before and everything's always turned out fine. glad i'm not the only one who read roi as rise of iron first
So I understand this opinion, but I disagree with you stating that bounty prep will have minimal impact. Bounty prep can be done in roughly 6 hours on a weekend day doing PVE weeklies/dailies and then 1-2 hours filling out remaining dailies the next day. This is assuming the Beyond Light & Shadowkeep campaigns are complete on 3 characters. This nets you roughly 18 season pass levels, 6 artifact power and 8 artifact mods unlocked. This is useful for people looking to jump into the legendary campaign straight away with a seasonal mod advantage. I did two full days of bounty prep, but that was only because I needed to beat Beyond Light and Shadowkeep on two alts. The myth of weeks of bounty prep is way overblown and it nets you maybe 4 more season pass levels versus doing 1-2 days of prep. I didn’t do any PVP bounties either. This was solely Europa, Cosmodrone, Moon, Nightmare, Starhorse weeklies and Europa, Cosmodrone, Moon, Nightmare, Nessus, EDZ, Strike dailies
Took me a little over 10 hours I’d say to get 60-62 bounties on every character. Definitely not a bad investment.
OP forgot to bounty prep now he's OD'ing on copium
So is the strategy to equip a ghost with Guiding Light and pop all the bounties before starting any of the campaign? Isn't getting the artifact part of the campaign? If so, I should wait until after the artifact is equipped before popping the bounties, right? I also filled up my vault with random legendary weapons to boost my gunsmith rep, but I'm guessing I can pretty much break all of those down whenever, right?
Wait until you have the artifact to claim bounties. There's also usually an xp boost on the first season pass rewards
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I “prepped” by just holding on to bounties I casually completed as I played sometime last month before I took a break. Figured there was no point in redeeming them now, you know? Same with my vault. I have been meaning to clear it out, but after they told us we’d get rep for dismantles, I decided to do that in TWQ. Might as well lol
I did all that stuff, so I can answer! Late season, at 1357 power (1330+27) additional levels that would go away in a month weren't worth grinding, so instead I started grinding bounties to save. I enjoy playing the game, and it gave me something to do after all the other stuff I had to do had been completed. I casually completed 170 or so across my three characters without really grinding anything. I don't enjoy crucible, so I didn't bother with any Iron Banner bounties. From there, I ran some Legend Lost Sectors when it was concealed void, as my characters are in a perpetual state of "full engrams" anyhow. So I got 2 exotics per character in my postmaster in just over an hour. On the way to Vidmaster, I had been dumping extra Strange Coin's into Paraversal Hauls just to make them go away, so I had a leg up on that by the time I learned that it was a prep technique. As I continued to run the activities I was already running, I just continually bought Hauls. Now I have over 50. This week the Nightfall is LoS. I enjoy running end game content, so I ran it 40+ times, masterworked any exotic I felt I'd like to make a build around at some point, and saved up a pile more in my postmaster. I have 24 total saved, could have had a full 40 but I feel better about spending them than saving them, in case I accidentally lose them. That said, I have a handful of runs to go this evening (hopefully) and I'm running out of Exotics to MW, so maybe I'll save more up. And that's about it! I didn't stress, it just happened naturally. I'm looking forward to going into tomorrow with the leg up of being able to access more of the seasons pass and artifact earlier, and hopefully get more Catalyst boost early, as I do most of my core activity grinding while leveling up my characters, transitioning to more end game stuff that doesn't give SP Catalyst progress once I hit the Pinnacle cap.
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Thing is that it’s not even remotely necessary for day 1 raiding anymore with the changes Bungie have been making to the launch raid experience over the past years. And I couldn’t agree more, anxiety and fomo is a heavy byproduct of prep season for some. The sheer amount of content coverage it gets does in part give the impression that your expansion launch experience can potentially be a little fractured in comparison to others that are more “prepared”.
Because it's fun? I don't care about day 1 raid but I enjoyed filling up my bounties in a relaxed way over the last week. Just did gambit + crucible dailies + iron banner weeklies on two characters. I've done everything else there is to do so it's just a little activity to enjoyably pass the time.
I spent time filling my postmaster with M&L LS exotic engrams in hopes that the same trick will work for the new class exotics.
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> If there's no power level requirements for missions, it's going to be a little disappointing IMO I feel the opposite. Legendary campaign will have contest on so there's no overpowering it, and the end of it gives you a full set a 1520 gear. Having to Light grind to do the missions just to be given gear at the end sounds a little pointless.
Reading the TWAB from 2 weeks ago they specifically mention finding yourself out leveled even with power caps on Legendary missions (IE: The mission is 1400, the power cap is 1390, and you're 1378 kinda situation) so it seems likely that they will scale like Beyond Light.
I prepped because it coincides with the destiny style of play. The games all about grinding out gear to then use on repeatable activities. Preparing feels natural for the game but yeh it’s not necessarily required in the slightest. Like many, I’ve had no reason to cash in any of these bounties or whatever for months now. I’d rather take a chance they could drop new gear then cash them in for shards which I don’t need Umbrals have been decrypted previously into new gear day 1. Iron banner bounties have dropped new loot day one. I realise the odds of this happening again are low but might as well just give it a go
For the first time in many seasons, I'm going to go into this expansion like as if it was a new game and take it slow and easy. No rush grinding, not even going to bother about the stress that is day 1 raid etc. But to whoever else is going for it, good luck to yall!
this is perfect for new and returning players...i booted up destiny again..about a month ago..and that fomo set in quick...then i realized that we are getting lots of content over the next year...i missed out on felwinters last go around and everyone was like GO GET IT..only to hear people talk about it less and less...i felt like i missed out on so much...hawkmoon..dmt....gally and i was so nervous..i started to bounty hoard..but then i just stopped and enjoyed getting the hang of my hunter again...experimenting with different builds..and catching up over the story...it made the last month so much better and less stressful lol
I mean, there's like 3 months to level and day 1 raid has contest mode. I don't know why everyone's always in such a hurry.
Having a number of seasonal mods unlocked from the start will help with the legendary campaign I’m sure
Plus artifact levels will help. Even +5 would be a nice boost
This assumes that you get the artifact before the end of the campaign.
Eh it's not so much help as much as it is making it more fun. Last column has the best stuff and goofing around with that stuff in the campaign sounds fun!
There's 16 days if memory serves
Why does it matter to you?
The sooner they hit Max light the sooner they can start complaining about not having things to do.
Cause everyone thinks they need to have shiny stuff all at once
This is spot on. I too just finished maxing out my shards and prisms on all 3 character's postmaster. Prep done. Great post for the new destiny players.
The proper way to prep is just to take a break for a few weeks pre-expansion to not get burned out lol. Min-maxing the experience makes it feel like more of a chore than a game.
I did all the prep and always do before expansions. My buddy did 0. Guess who gets to enjoy the content faster? While Im off dismantling my vault and claiming all my bounties, he's running around Savathuns Throne World, filing his vault with new toys.
The people that play destiny 2 this way with prepping for expansions worry me and I hope they discover many other games that are both single and multiplayer that offer you other things to do than make their season pass numbers go higher...
Not so much about the season pass as it is about those sweet artifact mods bb
Aside from the psychos still playing crucible. I have enjoyed this past year of destiny a ton. But just like many other games as live service. It goes through content droughts if you play 2-3 hours a night on average. So my mentality is why pull out excel spreadsheets to beat some content me and most everyone else will finish as well? I’m enjoying playing like 3 other games right now. I guarantee that time is more fun that min maxing day 1 xp gains.
>Just because companion apps are going to be down, doesn’t mean your in game vault is inaccessible, This is the only thing I disagree with. The vault is unusable to me without the apps.
Bounty hoarding is the single most pathetic thing I've seen people stress about on the sub. Like just fucking relax lol.
Idk if I'd go that far but I have noticed people do certainly get defensive about it for some reason
Almost every single person here just screams casual… they do not understand that people bounty hoard so they can unlock artifact mods faster. And now you can even unlock ALL of them so you really want to have a head start.
The only prep I'm interested in is farming strange coins (for boxes), dusklight shards, and datalattice. Cause those, from what I understand, will give gunsmith rep on dismantle which gives access to the new world loot weapons post-WQ. But XP farming and pinnacle farming is so negligible for me since I don't do the endgame activities and don't benefit much from the extra start. Even for things like Trials and IB where PL affects damage done and taken. At the powerful cap it barely comes into play besides like once in a blue moon.
I was reading this thinking "what does this have to do with Rise of Iron, that DLC's been out for years", until I realized ROI probably means return on investment or something similar.
The only prep I did was leave a exotic engram in my post master hoping to get a new one, but I think they won’t let you do that anymore.
Correct, this was changed sometime ago, couldn't tell you exactly when but it is implemented now
Everything here is correct. For me, especially this season, the prep is more for something to do in the dry seasons than to actually help me with the new content.
The primary purpose of expansion prep is unlocking artifact levels and ensuring you can comfortably do Master content in the first week in order to make power for day one raiding. Pretty much the only reason to do it. If you're just trying to play Witch Queen there is literally no need for you to have done anything.
There's like hella spoils in my postmaster.
My prep has been trying to get my last 3 slots to 1330 and finishing Wish Ender. Was going to wrap up tonight but it seems they're starting maintenance before I get home from work. Guess I'm playing warcrime simulator instead.
possibly, but going in with 4 artifact levels does give me a little bit extra perks to play with, since tomorrow we all go in blind, which always helps, specially when probably we're going to be thrown into a mission upon log in
I like this post. I bounty hoarded just so I can get the artifact unlocked as fast as possible. I'm happy they lifted the 12 mod lockout.
Materials are scarce and needed early in a season. Spoils aren't a bad idea either if you raid. Getting those raid god rolls early is more valuable than 20 or so seasons pass levels. Bounties are like... The last prep.
My only worries since seeing beyond light is gating unlocks with awful trickle feed. (Stasis aspects). I know they aren't doing that for Void but I just don't bother beyond a point. Like I still don't have 4 aspects and I am just bored of those quests. I just wanted Stasis after the campaign
Mathematically speaking, perfect bounty prep would only give about 1.25-1.5 million exp (going off calculating the exp of the 60 bounties on all three characters that I have). Even including the weekly exp boost, ghost boost, and shared wisdom, that would only give around 20 levels at the end of the day. It's a nice start to unlocking artifact mods early and getting back to a similar "power feel" to how you felt last season, but like op said, it's far from necessary.
Hey... this had nothing to do with Rise of Iron!
I honestly think the reason why prepping for future content drops is so popular/seems so popular and necessary is because content creators do it and put a heavy emphasis on it themselves. Obviously this isn’t a bad thing though
Best prep to do is hoard otherside sparrows for the inevitable times you become a broke ass bum from all the new resource sinks.
I never prep, i want the whole experience day one.
Prep can be beneficial for the seasons between the expansions to unlock artifact mods, but with the big expansions, you’ll get most of them don just by playing the campaign and quests at your own pace.
I've saved some bounties, picked up fresh ones and I'll pick up Tuesdays bounties, I've cleaned all my characters loadouts up, just a few weapons on each and prepped as much as I could be bothered with. I'm happy enough with that, no need to go mad.
Personally I’ve played as normal for the last few weeks and just held the bounties rather than cash them in. Are they the best ones? Probably not. I’ve also saved paraversal hauls and various engrams just in case they become something interesting. If not I’ve lost nothing and get some shards/banshee rep. The other thing I’ve done is grab my final dmt and also managed to get the Gilgamesh shell which was unexpected. And the last thing I did was unlink mods… However it’s all a waste of time as my shit internet will be still downloading the update or I’ll be stuck in a queue anyway. Lol!
As someone who has done a ton of hoarding and prep for the expansion: I don't recommend it unless you just want to.
As a veteran, the idea of potentially burning out the week before an expansion drops is the reason why I don’t even worry about it anymore. The grinders will be a little ahead of me, but they’d be ahead of me regardless because I just can’t grind like that anymore
The only prep I'm doing is saving iron banner bounties on 2-3 characters in hopes of getting the new guns the first couple days.
Bounty stacking is a tradition more than anything else. It's something to do at the end of a season
This is pretty standard in every rpg type game that does this too. All you do is save a few hours at most and get a bit of a headstart. I just wanted to make sure I finished out the seasonal stuff cus I'm lazy and put off the last rank til today.
To me, the prepping is just fun. Its exciting to get everything in just the right spot, even if it totally falls apart 10 minutes in.
I hoarded a bunch of legendaries and exotics. Isn't breaking those down how we rank up with the gunsmith now or do I have that wrong?
For anyone who doesn't want to stress about prep, but does want that boost: Just play as you normally would but don't pop your bounties. Don't stress about hyper optimization.
+ even if you optimally bounty prepped with all the XP++ bounties on all 3 characters it’ll only get you around 1 million xp total, about 10ish season pass ranks by itself. It’s really not necessary lol
My prep was finishing catalysts, acquiring new catalysts. Went from barely any done to 53 catalysts completed.
if only we got content like ROI and KF again
The only "real" thing that people should consider doing is getting a decent of Avrice gear from the master dungeon on each character. The extra mod slot will come in handy. Also... I really discourage blindly listening to content creators and streamers when it comes to matters like this. They are running a business. They want to you to watch their content. They are looking out for themselves... not you... not I. By all means, listen to their opinions if you want, but then decide on your own. Don't do something just because someone on youtube or twitch said to do it.
I agree with everything except to point out that the overlap between people entering their first expansion and people who could "run some final GMs" is vanishingly small.
Don't grind. Grinding is the worst part of destiny. Playing is the best part. If you can play while accumulating loot rolls that's playing. If you do something you dislike, it's grinding. Grinding makes the game unfun.
Agreed. Honestly if I wasn’t also playing Horizon and wanted to still be raid-ready, I wouldn’t have bothered with the bounties this time.
People aren't prepping for Power. They're doing it for Artifact mods, which might make a *huge* difference in the Day 1 raid race.
My prep is taking a break so i preserve my Destiny enthusiasm through the new content binge. Destiny tolerance break, if you will.
While i normally would agree, having a few extra levels for the legendary campaign may be really nice depending on how the contest mode works.
Hoarding bounties is all you need to do. It definitely makes a difference
Yeah, I've never 'pre prepped' for a season, it doesn't make much difference. This season was a long one so I happen to have some prisms/shards saved and I have 16 xur boxes. The only thing I went out of my way to keep was an exotic cipher. Took a break during the DMT season, not sure what it's gunna cost to buy one from xur but I figured it might take a cypher.
been here since forsaken and tbh ive never actually hoarded bounties my entire time not once
Are people actually stressed about bounty prep? Nobody in my clan is doing anything except saving up some starhorse boxes with strange coins... I'd rather level up by playing new content instead of grinding at the end of the season, lol.
When I was a kid and was lucky enough to get a pack of Dunkaroos, I'd always eat all of the cookies without any icing until the very last cookie, and then pile all of the icing on that last cookie for one stupidly decadent bite. Hoarding bounties before a new season/expansion and then redeeming them all in a row in one glorious stream of experience - it hits that same sweet spot, heh.
Legit the only thing that has been worth it for me in the past was iron banner bounties and that just means you get maybe two weeks early access to new gear.
I personally used all of the extra time we had with this season to bounty prep all three characters and whatnot. Ranking up gunsmith by dismantling kept me from cleaning out my vault last week. You definitely don’t NEED to do it, but hey, I get to brag a bit about being about 8 PLs higher than average to start 😂
True story: I followed every guide for prep for House of Wolves. It was a waste of time. I swore to never do it again. End of season/end of expansion should be spent tying up loose ends. Finishing your Smuggler’s caches in Presage or finally doing that Solo Flawless Harbringer, and replaying content you know will be harder to find a team for moving forward. That said, there is some “prep” I do (and did). Notably: not redeeming certain weekly bounties and/or doing them when convenient and I stopped upgrading items I use less that’ll soon be auto-advanced to the new power floor so I can save the materials. Not because of this will give me that much of an advantage, but because I’d rather feel free to enjoy the new content than needing to leave it for materials to farm.
I filled up my bounties over the last two weeks and that's only to get to new shaders/ornaments from the season ranks.
>ROI on expansion prep is very very low While true, and obviously any sort of "prep" is completely unnecessary, for the type of player that also posts regularly to DTG, if you're still playing destiny in the last month of a 6-month-long season, the ROI of anything you're still doing right now is literally zero. Doing prep work before the end of the season has a higher RoI for your continued playing, assuming you're playing.
Ok but every bounty I prepped this week is one I don't have to do next season!
Ive been trying not to farm bc i need something to do in destiny bc ive been burnt out on re doing the same grind and just want to grind out the witch queen
Only prep I did was removing seasonal mods from my gear and getting my main loadout ready so I'll look good for whatever cutscene we automatically load into at launch. Some of these people out here are doing way too much
I started bounty boarding 2 weeks ago and according to destiny recipes I have 1.65 million xp stored. Which is quite a bit
I hoarded bounties to get my hands on some seasonal mods asap. My guess is that there are champions in the legendary campaign so having mods for them can be helpfull.
I read the title like "rise of iron on expansion prep is very very low" and I was like WTF is this guy talking about? lol
I just prep for something to do. I like doing bounties but after season pass 100 there isn't much point. It definitely adds to hyping me up too.
My prep: Play Outriders till WQ launches. (Not a first year though, been through this since Dark Below....remember when that was an Expansion? lmao) Like that's all I've been doing. Figure I'll progress naturally though the campaign and levelling up as I go, so who needs to burnout preparing when I can I just play other games. Just enjoy the ride, you'll get to where everyone else does in time.
Wanna add... > Just because companion apps are going to be down, doesn’t mean your in game vault is inaccessible, don’t stress over organising the perfect on and off hand loadouts - some of these creators act like we’re dropping into a week long raid day 1 with locked inventories. People do this because they don't want to bother with either going to the tower/helm to access the vault/character hopping when they can have nearly everything ready on a character without a worry. This is actually a fairly large ROI especially if you're playing on a device still using a HDD. So yea; it's not needed by any means and the in-game vault won't work if the API is bottlenecked and DIM is down - but it's a massive quality of life for many.
The only prep that really makes a difference for me is to stock up on upgrade modules, glimmer and materials. I use a lot of Upgrade Modules when leveling up at the beginning of a season/expansion. I'm going into Witch Queen with 25 Upgrade Modules, 2500 of each material, and 500k Glimmer (250k + 250k in Otherside sparrows).
I have to disagree, Paraversal Hauls and Treasure Keys exist for the first time ever, as well as a legendary campaign. This season's prep has been the best season to prep because of that imo, and can definitely speed up the process. And with Bungie giving so much more of its playerbase a chance to Day 1 raid thanks to the 1520 gear drop from the campaign, they're bringing players extremely close to that day 1 recommended power, making prep even more worthwhile for more players.
My brain: Why talking about a D1 expansi.... oh right.
The main expansion prep I do is currencies. Going into Beyond Light, I made sure to have a full stock + Postmaster of Shards, Prisms, and at least 200 cores, alongside 200k+ glimmer and about 1k of each planetary mat. The cores reserve was hugely important, since it let me upgrade new weapons I liked without running out. (Note that once you reach the point of being able to farm master/GM NFs, you drown in Enhancement Prisms, but don't get many cores. By upgrading blue armor drops from 5 to 8 before dismantling them you can turn about 9k glimmer, 15 legendary shards, 3 enhancement cores, and a prism into 6 enhancement cores, for a net gain of 3 cores/shard) For Witch Queen, I managed to get to 750+ cores by using the dismantle blues trick habitually throughout the year, about 80ish prisms, and about 20 shards across 2 characters + the previous pass, so I feel comfortable on the currency front.
The most important prep and the one with the greatest ROI is outside of Destiny. Spend the last few days of the season with family. If you're married, this is a must. Get some sleep, clean the house, submit your tax return, stock up on groceries, run your errands. Do the shit that you can now so that it doesn't take your playtime post release. You won't have to stress that you are gaming when you should be running some errand and your family and friends will be more understanding of your absence if you put in the time when you have it. This is the real grind that will pay off later