The Ultimate Destiny 2 Season 14 Prep Guide

Season 14 of Destiny 2 is hot on the horizon with there being only 19 days until the May 11th launch day. As this new Season approaches there are always a few objectives you can be working towards in order to give yourself a head start. Below is a handy prep guide for Season 14 with everything you can be doing right now to give yourself this head start.

Complete the Season Pass

At the start of this Season, Bungie reworked the Bright Dust system to be rewarding to the players and so now there is a huge amount of this currency to be obtained towards the end of the Season Pass.

This means that completing the Season Pass this Season has become much more worth it as on top of the high level upgrade materials and ornaments, there is now almost 7K Bright Dust to be earned in the last 30 ranks.

Each week, you are given a ‘Well-rested’ buff which gives a 2x experience bonus for the first five Season Ranks within that week. This buff is applied to each character so if you play on three, that’s 15 ranks per week that are earned at an accelerated pace. From now until the new Season that’s 45 ranks that can be earned fairly quickly through doing quick Gunsmith bounties each day or by playing a few Strikes.

If you mainly play on one character but have others at the ready, be sure to hop on the lesser used characters to grab the Seasonal Ornaments from the Season Pass. If you forget, no dramas, as you can go to this Bungie.net page to claim items from a previous Season, just as long as you reached the appropriate rank.

This page can also be used as a little workaround for getting to the Power cap in upcoming Seasons. The armor gained from the Season Pass drops at your current Power level and so this older armor can be used in an upcoming Season to round out any under-leveled gear you have. Your current Chest piece is lagging behind your Power average and you can’t get one to drop? Hop on over to that Bungie page and grab the Chest piece from the previous Season to give yourself a large boost to your average Power.

This will only work if you have yet to already claim these pieces of armor, if in the current Season you don’t exactly need it, be sure to leave it as it could come in handy later.

Complete Seasonal Challenges

At the start of Season 13, Weekly Bounties were retired and replaced with Seasonal Challenges. Each week throughout the Season a new set of objectives are unlocked for the player to complete for both XP and Bright Dust. These objectives can range from simply completing some bounties on a certain destination, to completing a Nightfall on Grandmaster difficulty.

These Seasonal Challenges not only reward a huge amount of XP, which can be used to quickly level up the Season Pass, but also a huge amount of Bright Dust. These are definitely worth grinding for the Bright Dust to ensure you have a nice amount to spend on future Eververse cosmetics.

Fully Upgrade Prismatic Recaster and Hammer of Proving

Since Umbral Engrams will be sticking around for future Seasons and that Bungie has stated they want to keep Seasonal content relevant throughout the year, it's a good idea to fully upgrade the Prismatic Recaster and the Hammer of Proving. This will ensure that you have all the Focusing Lens to make it easier to farm gear and also have a good supply of Hammer Charges to use for Focusing.

I do feel that it is likely that when a new set of Umbral Engrams are released that there will be an entirely new set of Focusing Lenses as well as a new currency to charge them with. This means that the current Lenses and Proving Hammer won't actually be able to be used for the new Umbral Engrams. It is because of this that this step isn't as necessary as the rest of this list but is worth doing if you have nothing else to do or are a completionist.

Hoard Upgrade Materials

It is always important to save up a healthy supply of upgrade materials when heading into a new Season as they are used frequently at the start as you prepare your Guardian for the endgame.

Upgrade Modules are perhaps the most important here; without them you will be unable to raise the Power on some of your favorite gear. These can be purchased from the Gunsmith. These cost Enhancement Cores which can be obtained through Gunsmith bounties, dismantling gear, and as a reward from Nightfalls.

Ascendant Shards and Enhancement Prisms are used to upgrade armor to a higher energy limit. These are highly valuable materials and so it is always a good idea to save up these when heading into a new Season. These materials can also be purchased from the Gunsmith although they are quite expensive. The best way to farm these is through Nightfall: The Ordeal where on higher difficulties they are a fairly common drop.

One trick for hoarding Enhancement Prisms once you reach the max of 50 is to complete the Pit of Heresy Dungeon. Completing this will reward you with a piece of Masterworked armor that can be stored in your Vault and dismantled at a later date for a few extra Prisms and Cores.

Glimmer is also an important resource as it is used in almost every purchase in the game. While you can normally only hold 250,000 Glimmer there is a small trick to holding more. There are several Ships and Sparrows such as Zavala’s Authority, Otherside, and Universal Wavefunction that can act as a sort of extra Glimmer bank. These items can be purchased from the Collections tab, stored within the Vault, and then dismantled at a later date to receive a decent return in Glimmer.

Dismantle Shaders

The shader system will be getting a slight rework in Season 14 with shaders being changed from a single use consumable into a permanent unlock. Shaders for armor/ weapons can now be accessed and applied from the appearance tab of that particular  piece of gear. Bungie has stated that every shader you have currently unlocked in Collections will be available in this shader tab so when Season 14 starts there will be no more need to hold on to the single use consumable shaders in your inventory.

Bungie themselves have said that it is a good idea to completely dismantle these single use shaders before the Season starts in order to give a nice boost to both Glimmer and Legendary Shards. It is best to do this step just before the new Season starts so you don't find yourself without any shaders before then, or you can do it now to avoid forgetting, it's up to you.

A quick way to avoid dismantling one at a time is to visit the Cryptarch in the Tower as he is able to dismantle five at a time for you.

Hoard Bounties

Like upgrade materials, when heading into a new Season it is always worthwhile to save up some completed bounties to be able to turn them in at the start of a Season for a huge experience boost. Be sure to be in a Fireteam and have a Ghost equipped with the Blinding Light mod for the XP modifiers.

While a lot of the regular Weekly Bounties have been retired and folded into Seasonal Challenges, there are still Weekly Bounties for Europa, the Cosmodrome and the Moon. Grabbing and completing these along with as many Daily/Repeatable bounties as you can hold will give over 1 million XP when the new Season goes live.

This can come in handy when trying to reach the endgame at a fast pace as experience also rewards Artifact Power levels and Artifact Mods. Artifact Mods can be especially important as Champion Mods can be a must-have in certain endgame activities like Nightfall: The Ordeal.