Destiny 2 Witch Queen Checklist: What’s Leaving And What To Do Right Now

We’re now just a day away from the launch of Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, the game’s new DLC expansion. It releases on Tuesday but will be preceded by a longer-than-average maintenance period, during which servers will go down and the game will be rendered unplayable. That means if you want to prepare–gathering up resources, taking care of some final tasks, experiencing content that will be leaving the game entirely–the clock is ticking. We’ve assembled a list of everything you need to consider doing before servers go offline later today.

Finish the Season of the Lost story

This is perhaps the most obvious thing you can do, but it’s nonetheless essential. While seasonal content has not always immediately tied into what comes next, The Witch Queen is very much directly continuing the ongoing story of Savathun, Crow, Mara Sov, and company. As such, you should ensure you’re continuing to rescue the lost Techeuns for Mara, as each increment of the ongoing seasonal story will reveal more about what Savathun has been up to, Mara’s plans for Savathun, the search for Osiris, and Crow continuing to deal with his true identity.

After weeks of waiting, the final legal of story–the Exorcism quest–is now available as of the weekly reset on February 15. You can take part in a special six-person quest to finally deal with Savathun’s worm and see where things stand before The Witch Queen launches. Even if you haven’t yet made it to this final step, there’s not a huge amount of grinding involved here–you’ll pretty much bounce between the Astral Alignment activity and the Shattered Realm (with occasional trips to the HELM for story advancements) until you’ve seen all this season’s full narrative. We also have a full recap of what’s happened between Beyond Light and The Witch Queen.

Do Presage and Harbinger

Presage is an exciting and fun quest from Season of the Chosen, but along with the Forsaken campaign (which you should also play, if you never have), it’s among the playable content entering the Vault. Presage consists of a mission, The Voice on the Other Side, that’s well worth doing for yourself both because of how enjoyable and creepy it is, and also because it’s your ticket to unlocking Dead Man’s Tale, an Exotic scout rifle.

In order to play Presage, you have to own access to Season of the Chosen. Assuming you do, you’ll first need to enter The Arms Dealer Strike and locate the Intercepted Distress Signal. Once you’ve done that, you can hop into the mission, get creeped out, and earn yourself a new Exotic. You can play through this solo, but having a fireteam along for the ride will make it (and especially its final boss) much easier.

Much of this can also be said for Harbinger, a mission that lets you get different rolls on the Exotic hand cannon Hawkmoon. For this, you’ll need to own access to Season of the Hunt and then talk to Spider, which will send you on a quest to collect paracausal feathers and, ultimately, Hawkmoon. With both Hawkmoon and Dead Man’s Tale, you can replay a mission to get alternative rolls on the guns, which will be cheaper than buying them in the future.

Cash in your rewards, Gunsmith Materials, Mod Components, and Etheric Spiral

As always at the end of a season, you’ll want to claim any season pass rewards you’ve earned and grab your rewards from the various vendors at the Tower–Zavala for Strikes, Shaxx for Crucible, and The Drifter for Gambit. But this is more than just a standard season shift, so there are additional considerations.

For instance, Gunsmith Materials are leaving the game entirely. Any you have in your inventory will disappear come February 22, so be sure to visit Banshee-44 at The Tower and cash them all in. Depending on how many you have saved up, this may take upwards of 30 minutes, but you can speed along the process by visiting him without any weapons or armor on you and a cleared-out postmaster. Most of what you’ll receive is junk, but you might get a good weapon roll in there; everything else can be scrapped to receive Legendary Shards.

Etheric Spiral, the planetary material for Tangled Shore, is also going away, so you can offload all of it to Spider in exchange for Glimmer. Ditto for Mod Components, so feel free to spend those on any mods you don’t own from Banshee and Ada-1.

There are numerous currencies and items going away in Year 5. You can find the full list further below.

Visit Tangled Shore one last time

Much like locations such as Mercury, Io, and Titan, Tangled Shore is headed to the Vault. That means you won’t be able to visit it or take part in the aforementioned Forsaken campaign or any other content that takes place on it. Whether you want to take one last stroll around the Tangled Shore (it presumably will return in the future, but we don’t know when) or have some lingering business with Spider, now’s the time to sort it out. That includes completing any Wrathborn Hunts or Wanted bounties from Spider, or the Presage and Harbinger missions.

Collect seasonal weapons you want

If there are any weapons (or armor) you’re particularly fond of from this past year’s worth of seasons, now’s the time to shoot for any god rolls you might have your eye on. You can focus Umbral Engrams at the HELM to try to fill out your collection, but try not to stress too much. With so many weapons changes and the weapon crafting system on the way, there’s a fair chance you’ll have a ton of new guns to obsess over in the months ahead.

Finish your seals and seasonal challenges

Those seeking the Realmwalker or latest Moments of Triumph seals have through February 21 to get them done. The same goes for seasonal challenges–even if you’re not intent on completing all of those, many of them reward you with Bright Dust, so completing just some of them might still be worth it. You can also still nab the Warden (Season of the Hunt), Chosen (Season of the Chosen), and Splicer (Season of the Splicer) titles, too.

Make space in your Vault

While the Destiny Content Vault might be growing in size, your personal vault won’t be. That makes this as good a time as any to scrap some old weapons, armor, and general junk you have laying around in there to ensure you have space for future items. The new weapon crafting system should offer more versatility than ever before, letting you tune weapons to your liking and even change their perks after being created. What that means is you won’t need to have numerous copies of the same weapon with different rolls. Get in that habit now by scrapping some of what you’ve got–nobody needs six different Shepard’s Watch snipers, I promise.

Gather upgrade materials, Glimmer, and bounties

You can help to make your initial time spent with The Witch Queen a bit easier by ensuring you’re stocked up in advance. Spend some time amassing planetary materials, Ascendant Shards, Enhancement Prisms, Upgrade Modules, and Glimmer now to avoid needing to grind for any of those once Year 5 starts. With Glimmer specifically, one trick is to buy certain sparrows or ships from your collection, such as the Otherside sparrow, store them in your inventory or vault, and then dismantle them later for quick and easy Glimmer. They’ll cost you money upfront to obtain, but you can then continue grinding out Glimmer to hit the cap in the meantime and be able to scrap these for additional Glimmer when you need it.

Similarly, you can complete as many bounties as you can hold before The Witch Queen arrives, but don’t cash them in yet. Wait until the new season is underway and you have the new seasonal artifact, and then complete all of those bounties to get a head start on unlocking its mods. If you’re intent on truly maximizing this approach, be sure it’s the bounties that reward “XP++” that you’re saving up.

Everything else that’s leaving

While we’ve tried to outline the key things you should pay attention to, you may want a comprehensive list of what’s leaving. Here are the items, quests, and currencies that will disappear once Year 5 begins on February 22:

• All Bounties, Missions, and Quests from the Tangled Shore, the Forsaken campaign, Season of the Hunt, Season of the Chosen, Season of the Splicer, and Season of the Lost
• All Ritual and Pinnacle Weapon Quests and Ornaments (the gear will become available in the Monument to Lost Lights Exotic Archive)
• Bell of Conquests
• Cabal Gold
• Cabal Runes
• Challenger Medallions
• Corrupted Data
• Corrupted Key Code
• Cryptolith Lure
• Decrypted Data
• Dreaming Token of Eriviks
• Dreaming Token of Querim
• Dreaming Token of Xavoth
• Ether
• Etheric Spiral
• Ghost Fragments
• Ghost Mods: Arc Analyzer, Solar Analyzer, Void Analyzer, Omni-Telemetry, Banshee Special
• Gunsmith Materials
• Hammer of Proving
• Imperial Access Code
• Intercepted Distress Signal
• Key Code
• Lure Mutation Finder
• Lure Mods: Prey Mods and Trophy Mods
• Mod Components
• Parallax Trajectory
• Pure Matterglass Lens
• Recon Data
• Splicer Gauntlet
• Strand of Nobility
• The Unclaimed Lightbearer
• WANTED Bounties and Enemies (Triumphs will be moved under the Tangled Shore Triumph area, which will be moved to the Legacy Archive)
• Weapon Telemetries

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