Exotic decoding
The Destiny 2 economy/farming system is changing in some pretty weird ways when The Final Shape hits, and will require a different sort of prep this time around.
Some things will remain the same. It appears that bounty stacking ahead of The Final Shape will still be necessary with Bungie keeping the artifact power system in place, in addition to grinding out new power caps through gear when the content itself launches. But bounties will give you an XP boost, as ever.
But now you can prep to more or less instantly get the new exotic armor The Final Shape launches with, given changes to that system which sound dull, as I’ve opined, but ultimately seem like a path to get that gear faster.
The new system relies on ranking up Rahool through focusing or decrypting engrams. High cost exotic engram focusing gives you the most XP, normal exotics give you some, and Prime engrams give you the least. Bungie says a “full collection” of exotic engrams, ie. taking up all your slots, should be enough to get you to max him out in order to start the new level of focusing to get the new Final Shape/Echoes exotics (we do not know how many there are yet, probably at least six, two per class).
So, you need a full inventory of exotic engrams, but also other things. But to start:
Exotic Engram Sources
- Many milestones have been changed from “powerful gear” to give you an exotic engram drop instead, which can be saved up.
- The season pass has many exotic engrams in it you can collect before the season ends. I am not sure if there is still an active way to pull engrams from older battle passes, as I know older methods were killed, but I’m looking into it.
- Exotic engrams are random world drops but so infrequent you can’t farm them in a meaningful capacity.
- Exotic engrams can drop from high level content like Nightfalls.
- Exotic engrams can come from vendor resets after your first one.
- Starting in The Final Shape, exotic engrams drop from legend and master Lost Sectors, but you can’t prep with that as right now they still drop decrypted.
Ascendant Shard Sources - Bungie also recommends you stock up on these as they are used in focusing exotics which will get you more XP.
- Ascendant Shards can come from vendor resets.
- Ascendant Shards can drop from Nightfalls.
- Ascendant Shards can drop from later wave chests in Onslaught.
- Ascendant Shards can drop from Trials chests or post-card farming.
- Master dungeons can drop Ascendant Shards.
- High tier Coil/seasonal activity runs can drop Ascendant Shards.
- You can buy Ascendant Shards from Rahool for Prisms and Glimmer, discounted ones have a weekly cap
Exotic Ciphers – You also need these to focus the new gear. These have a higher cap now of 5, but they have shockingly few sources.
- You can get one per week from Xur right now through an activity based-bounty.
- You can get one in the seasonal battle pass.
Yeah that’s it, unless I’m missing something. Since you can only hold five at a time, if there are more exotics than that when The Final Shape hits, you cannot fully stock up to focus them.
So uh, enjoy. All of this sounds dreary to me, but it should get you the exotics in less time than Lost Sector RNG farming and waiting for the correct day.
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