Destiny: The Taken King – what to do first

The Taken King is upon us, and it’s exciting to finally have something new to do in Destiny.

But what is The Taken King all about? Remember the big, grumpy dude that you killed at the end of the Crota’s End raid?

That just happened to be the son of Oryx, the Hive King, and Oryx is really quite upset about the death of his son, like any concerned parent would be, and now he wants you dead.

Oryx travels on his Dreadnaught with his army of Taken, the enemies you’ve come to know in the Destiny universe that have been tainted by his darkness and changed into more powerful versions of themselves.

Having converted an army, Oryx comes for us all, unless you can stop him of course.

This means travelling into the Dreadnaught itself, shooting a bunch of Taken in the face, and finally putting an end to Oryx, once and for all.

But before you do that, Destiny: The Taken King comes with a bunch of new things to do, and I’m here to give you some tips for your day one experience.

Get rid of your old gear

Let’s face it, by the end of the 15^th you will have gear that is three times better than those spiked arms you wear on your Hunter, or that antenna helmet your Titan thought was fashionable.

You need to come to terms with the fact that your old gear is obsolete, so feel free to dismantle it or store it away in your vault if you’re extremely attached to it.

Day one Taken enemies require 220 light, minimum, and your Raid gear or Prison of Elders gear will get you to 160 max. So you need to get better gear and leave the past in the past.

There will be better Crota’s End gear available to you later on with an upgrade system that allows you to dismantle the gear to get an item that will help you upgrade it to a higher light level.

Exchange your upgrade materials

Bungie has decided to get rid of all the Ascendant Shards and Energy, having replaced them with a universal material, Upgrade Material.

This material will be used in place of any purple materials that were needed to upgrade gear up until now, but don’t think that it means all of your hard-earned current material is wasted.

From day one, you will be given the opportunity to exchange all current purple upgrade materials for the new white material.

That means you will have more space in your bank and character as four of the materials are becoming one.

Use Motes of Light to level up

Prior to the Destiny 2.0 update, Motes of Light were pretty useless, other than the odd Exotic Engram form Xur, or useless class item from The Speaker.

Now you can use them by going into you menu and pressing square (or X if you’re playing on an Xbox).

The Mote of Light will then be consumed for XP, so make sure you have the gear you want to level up equipped at the same time as the XP will not only go into your character class and level, but your gear progress too.

40 is the new 34

When the King’s Fall raid releases on the 18^th of September, you will want to take part in it as early as possible. This means that you will have to be level 40 with the best gear possible, as it is going to be extremely tough to take part in.

Luckily, The Taken King’s main story will grant you some great gear before then, and of course Xur might have some pretty new Exotics on his usual day.

Worried about not reaching level 40? Use the Motes of Light to boost up, take on the subclass quests as they will reward new emblems and gear at the same time, and play all those new, pretty Crucible maps for XP boosts.

I know it might seem like a grind for players who have multiple characters, but focus on one character at a time as it would be more ideal to take on the raid at least once this week when it launches.

Consume you first legendary

Many of the new legendary items allow you to consume another more powerful one to power it up in both light stat and stat boost.

This means that if you find a new piece of gear early in the new story, love it and don’t want to swap it out for a more powerful piece, have it eat other items and it will get more powerful in terms of defence and light.

How these items eat each other is on a need-to-know basis, but its useful nonetheless.

Get your Strike on

As soon as you can, get into those strike playlists that open up at level 36 and 38. These strikes will grant you major XP and gear drops when you complete them, and who doesn’t like that?

Start a second or third character

The Taken King will come with one very special item, a one-time use level booster.

This means that you can create a brand new character, complete the first mission, and then as soon as you can, consume this item which will boost your character to level 34 instantly.

This means that if you are tired of playing with a Warlock, then simply start as, say, a Titan and get to level 34 in 2 minutes.

This item will only be available once per PSN/Xbox Live account, and not per character, so you will have to level up your third character the hard way.

It will also only be available for consumption once.