Destiny 2: 7 Things You Need To Do In Your First 10 Hours (2024)

Destiny 2 has been under scrutiny in 2023 for countless issues: a shallow campaign story in Lightfall, increasing microtransactions, and a general feeling of burnout toward the seasonal model. With every season and every DLC, the game becomes greater and more complex, which can be intimidating for newcomers who are curious about the game.

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Despite all its flaws, Destiny 2 has stood the test of time better than most live service games, a testament to its strengths. New players who are willing to look past some of its shortcomings are in for an immersive, high-quality MMO FPS experience. Here's how those first 10 hours of Destiny 2 are best spent for those who have only just downloaded the game.

7 Figure Out What DLCs To Buy

Although Destiny 2's core game is free-to-play, the meat of the game's content is found in its DLCs, which are called expansions, as well as its Seasonal Passes. There's a lot of additional paid content that includes Silver bundles and cosmetic bundles, which new players can safely ignore.

To start off, players should consider investing in the current season. Seasonal activities are usually beginner-friendly and as of 2023 far more unique PVE experiences. They also yield loads of rewards when completed, including powerful weapons and decent armor.

As of 2023, players can also purchase the Destiny 2 Legacy Collection, which comes with the three most recent large expansions (save for the newest one): Shadowkeep, Beyond Light, and Witch Queen. These campaigns will not only help players immerse themselves into Destiny 2's lore and background story, but they also come packed with weapons, gear, new locations, and with Beyond Light, a new subclass—Stasis.

6 Complete All The New Light Quests

As soon as players jump into the game, they will be greeted by several quests from various NPCs like Shaw Han, Lord Shaxx, Drifter, and Ikora. These are introductory quests to the game's core activities as well as the guardian abilities, so it's highly recommended to complete all of them.

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The rewards are also quite remarkable. Ikora alone will reward players with several Exotic armor pieces once the quests are completed, and Shaw Han can grant players one of their first Exotic weapons.

5 Don't Buy Anything—Except Bounties

When players first start, they will be strapped for resources. Glimmer is the game's currency, and is dropped by enemies, activities, chests, etc. There are also other resources like Legendary Shards, Ascendant Shards and so on that are used to purchase some of the items found on vendors in the Tower (the game's main hub).

Though it might be tempting, players won't need to buy anything in the first 10 hours of the game, unless a quest specifically requests it. The only worthwhile investment is bounties, found on vendors like Banshee-44, Lord Shaxx, and Commander Zavala, which reward XP to the player. Considering XP is what new players will want to grind, bounties are a worthy investment.

4 Start A Campaign

Destiny 2's strength lies in its campaigns and the stories they tell. If players feel like investing in an expansion, they should try and complete its campaign as soon as possible. Beyond Light is a great place to start, because the campaign is quite engaging with nice cutscenes, and the rewards include a new subclass that players can experiment with.

The Witch Queen is a great alternative for those who want a really good story and a longer campaign full of challenging twists and turns. This campaign can be played at a Legendary difficulty as well, so it's perfect for newcomers who feel ready to challenge themselves right off the bat.

3 Focus On Getting Powerful Armor

In Destiny 2, players level up by increasing their light level, which is the big number on the character screen. Higher power allows players to survive better in certain activities where the enemies are capped at a certain power level—and these activities tend to yield greater rewards. Therefore, the simple priority here is to increase that number.

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By completing various activities, players will gain gear with a specific power number. Always equip the armor pieces with the highest power, especially within the first 10 hours. After a while, players will hit a cap, and they will need to complete more difficult activities marked with Powerful or Pinnacle (a small golden, twinkling symbol) rewards to keep increasing their power. For now, however, players can complete any activity they want, and there's no need to min-max.

2 Don't Dismantle Any Weapons

While armor can be cycled through fast when first leveling up, weapons should be left alone for those who care about being efficient in the long run. When players first start, knowing what perks are good and which weapons are meta are things that might not matter, but they might end up dismantling something incredibly good without realizing it.

With 600 vault slots available (the vault can be accessed from the Tower), newcomers can just store their new weapons for the time being and play with whatever they want. Once they feel confident in their knowledge of the game, they can check what weapons they have stashed and delete the ones that aren't as good. Note that grey and green gear can always be dismantled.

1 Focus On One Character

Most Destiny 2 players have all three character slots taken, with one slot for each class. While this can be tempting, newcomers should absolutely just focus on learning one class in their first 10 hours and level that character up to the first soft cap.

Once that has been reached, they can create a new character, and using some of the higher light weapons they have earned on their first character, they can manipulate their new character's power level to be a bit higher right off the bat.

Destiny 2 is available on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.

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