Much like with the previous expansion, The Taken King, it will help to hit the ground running when Rise of Iron arrives. Making sure you have everything you need to take on the new enemies, environments, and — most importantly — the loot you’ll encounter in Rise of Iron can mean the difference between a frustrating experience and a rewarding one.
With that in mind, here’s everything you should do to get ready for Rise of Iron and everything it brings with it to the Destiny universe.
Save up your Legendary Marks and Glimmer
The two main forms of currency in Destiny, Legendary Marks and Glimmer, have always been important to have on hand when new content arrives — even if it’s just to keep player stocked-up with reserve ammo or resources for leveling up gear.
Legendary Marks have been particularly valuable in the early days of each expansion, as they allow players to buy engrams that — with a little luck — can be de-crypted into some of the new weapons or gear specific to the expansion. If you’re short of the upper limit of 200 Marks, you can run some of the daily and weekly missions and PvP events to add to your reserves. Dismantling legendary gear will also provide you with Marks, but it might be better to save some of that gear to dismantle after Rise of Iron arrives, as it’s an easy source of Marks once you blow through the 200 you saved.
If you’ve been stockpiling consumable items that can be converted to Glimmer, you’ll be in good shape for Rise of Iron, so make sure to stash them away in your vault where they’ll stack nicely without taking up too much space.
Clear out space in your inventory
On the subject of vault space, now’s a good time to clean out your inventory a bit to make room for all that sweet new gear you’ll get in Rise of Iron. As we’ve seen in past expansions, quite a bit of your old gear will end up being replaced as you work your way through the expansion, so if you’re tight on vault space, try to free up some room for what will likely be a flood of new weapons and gear.
Like a particular weapon, but hate the set of perks that came with it? If it’s something that’s relatively easy to get again (i.e., not ultra-rare, story-specific loot), discard it for the sake of future inventory management. Your future self will thank you, since it reduces the amount of vault management you’ll have to do down the road, and you can consider it a sacrifice to the gods of Destiny in the hope that they’ll grant you better loot next time around.
One thing to keep in mind, however: Dismantling legendary gear yields Legendary Marks, so if you already have the maximum limit, go buy some stuff with those Marks before dismantling anything. There’s no sense in wasting the Marks.
Edge out your ranks
By now you know that leveling up your Faction, Vanguard, Crucible, House of Judgment, or Cryptarch rank gets you a sweet reward, so if you want to get the new loot available in Rise of Iron as soon as possible, you should try to build up your rank just shy of hitting the next level. By doing so, you can set yourself up to hit the next level in the early stages of Rise of Iron, and your reward packages will draw from the pool of loot available after the expansion instead of before it.
(And yes, there are other ranks available to level up, but the rewards for leveling up your reputation with Eris Morn and the others haven’t been very, well… rewarding… for a very, very long time.)
Reacquaint yourself with your rocket launcher
One of the biggest elements of Bungie’s initial Rise of Iron announcement was the news that the famous (or is it infamous?) rocket launcher Gjallarhorn will be returning to relevancy in the expansion, with a new look and updated design for the current Destiny game environment.
It’s certainly big news for anyone who’s been playing since Year One and has fond memories of the memorably overpowered weapon of mass destruction, but it also serves as a reminder for many other players that yes, rocket launchers are still a thing that people can use in Destiny.
Sure, some people made the transition from Gjallarhorn to other rocket launchers — like the exotic Truth, for example — but quite a few others shifted their attention to machine guns (or the heavy fusion rifle, Sleeper Simulant) in a post-Gjallarhorn world. If you haven’t touched a rocket launcher in a while, now might be a good time to get familiar with these explosive tools again. After all, this is Gjallarhorn we’re talking about, guardians.
Save up those legendary and exotic engrams
Arguably the most important thing you can do to prepare for the arrival of Rise of Iron is saving up your encrypted exotic engrams — and to a lesser degree, legendary engrams. This will make you a very happy guardian in the days following the expansion’s release. That’s because the item that an encrypted engram turns into is determined at the moment it’s decrypted, not when you pick it up.
That means that if you bring an encrypted engram to the Cryptarch before the release of Rise of Iron, the pool of items it can turn into is limited to only those items available before the expansion. Bringing the same encrypted engram to a Cryptarch after the expansion is released adds all of the new, Rise of Iron gear to the item pool, giving you the chance to get some of that sweet, sweet expansion gear at an early stage of your adventures.
Of course, this doesn’t work for engrams that are already decrypted, like the typical loot you get from a boss. Those items are determined by your Light Level when you pick them up (so make sure you’re always at your character’s maximum Light Level when you pick up boss loot), but holding on to those encrypted engrams could be a goldmine down the road.
And there you go, a good starting point for your Rise of Iron preparation. Keep in mind that all of these tips aren’t intended to hurry you through the expansion, but rather to let you spend more time enjoying the best parts of the game without getting hung up on inventory management or grinding for resources.
Destiny: Rise of Iron will be available September 20 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. See you in the stars, guardians!
Updated on 09-13-16 by Mike Epstein: This article originally referred to Silver as the currency to save up, when it intended to recommend stockpiling Glimmer, another in-game currency. The article has been edited to refer to Glimmer as intended.
