The strange new way to prepare for Destiny 2’s final form

Destiny 2’s economy/farming system changes in very strange ways when The Final Shape comes out, and will require a different type of setup this time around.

Some things will remain the same. It appears that stacking rewards before The Final Shape will still be necessary with Bungie keeping the crafted power system in place, as well as grinding out new power caps through gear when the content itself launches. But the rewards will give you an XP boost, as always.

But now you can more or less get ready to get the new exotic armor that the final skin starts with, given the changes to this system which, as I’ve seen, seem tedious, but ultimately seem like a path to getting this gear faster.

The new system relies on Rahul’s classification by focusing on engrams or decoding them. Focusing on high-cost Exotic engrams gives you the most XP, focusing on Normal engrams gives you some, and focusing on Prime engrams gives you the least. Bungie says “a whole bunch” of exotic engrams, that is. Filling all your slots should be enough for you to max out in order to start a new level of concentration to get the final form/new alien echoes (we don’t know how many yet, probably at least six, two for each class).

Therefore, you need a complete inventory of exotic engrams, but also other things. But to start:

Ingram’s exotic sources

• Several milestones have been changed from Powerful Gear to give you an Exotic Engram drop instead, which can be saved.
• The Season Pass contains several exotic engrams that you can collect before the season ends. I’m not sure if there’s still an active way to pull engrams from old battle passes, because I know the old methods have been killed, but I’m looking into it.
• Exotic engrams are random drops from the world but are too rare to farm them with a meaningful ability.
• Exotic engrams can drop from high-level content such as Nightfalls.
• Strange engrams can come from vendor resets after the first reset.
• Starting with The Final Shape, exotic engrams drop from Legendary and Master Lost Sectors, but you can’t prepare for that because they’re still now decrypted.

Rising stray sources – Bungie also recommends storing them as they are used to focus exotic items that will give you more XP.

• Ascendant Shards can come from vendor resets.
• Ascendant Shards can drop from Nightfalls.
• Rising pieces can fall from subsequent wave boxes in the attack.
• Ascendant Shards can drop from Trials chests or farming postcards.
• Main dungeons can drop Ascendant Shards.
• High level seasonal/profile activity rounds can cause ascending pieces to be dropped.
• You can purchase Ascendant Shards from Rahool for Prisms and Glimmer, discounted items have a weekly cap

Strange ciphers -You also need it to center the new gear. These have a higher cap now of 5, but they have shockingly few resources.

• You can get one weekly from Xur now through an activity-based reward.
• You can get one in the Seasonal Battle Pass.

Yes that’s it, unless I’m missing something. Since you can only hold five at a time, if there are more oddities when the final form comes out, you can’t store them all away to focus on.

So uh, enjoy. This all sounds bleak to me, but it should get you the exotic items in less time than farming CNG in the Lost Sector and waiting for the right day.

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