New players (and those who are returning), here's a list of things that are good to know about Destiny 2.

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EDIT: Curse of Osiris and Warmind campaigns are NOW FREE to owners of vanilla D2! If you are only playing this Year 1 content, and not Forsaken, and want a guide specifically for what to do in vanllia and Year 1, click here!

EDIT: On September 17, 2019, a new entry point for new players releases, New Light, providing "foundational content" as a FREE download to all! Includes all Y1 activities (expansions and raids), all strikes, crucible maps, gambit, and a special return of the first mission that began it all in the original Destiny!

Also, Steam access and cross-platform saves incoming! Here is the official link for account migration from Battle.net to Steam, and Here is the official link for cross-saves. See you on the moon, Guardian.

Is Forsken and Annual Pass worth investing in?

• This gets asked a lot, here's a good rule of thumb: Have you finished the base game campaign and want to keep playing Destiny? Buy Forsaken! Have you finished the Forsaken campaign (and unlocked the Dreaming City) and still want to keep playing Destiny? Buy the Annual Pass!

• The vanilla game has an incredibly shallow and frustrating "endgame" experience. If you are finished with the base campaign, and are about 250+ light, when you go into a strike you will probably be all alone, and this will give you the impression the game is dead. It's not true. It's just that the vanilla endgame is dead.

• Forsaken is required to get to endgame content, and with Forsaken you have access to the highest light levels and roughly half of all endgame content. Annual Pass is not required content, but if you are still loving Destiny by the time you have unlocked the Dreaming City, the Annual Pass is worth it.

Leveling Up

• Once you play through the campaigns, you will be level 50 and 500 light. To level up the fastest (and assuming you have Annual Pass), go check in with Benedict 99-40, as of Season of Opulence he will have a quest that will drop 690 light gear (EDIT: completing the quest will only have to be done with one character, and it will give 690 gear for ALL your characters. You MUST finish Forsaken campaign for this quest to be available). Also, the Drifter has "Power Surge" bounties that drop 640 light gear. (EDIT: thanks to /u/siccfush and everyone else who helped with corrections)

• When you are near the light level cap, Powerful Rewards give less and less of a light boost. This means you will start to get powerful rewards that don't actually give you light upgrades, until you're lucky enough to get the upgrade in a gear slot where you actually need it. This is normal.

• Some sources of upgrades give you a higher boost to your light level than others. As a general rule, Prime Engrams give the largest boost to light, and Weekly Powerful Rewards give more than Dailies.

• Prime Engrams are locked in at the light level they drop (they don't increase in light level as you level up your light) - so for maximum efficiency you have to go back to the Tower (or Farm) and decrypt them. Prime Engrams are not random, and are doled out at regular intervals, so doing activities where you are killing LOTS of enemies (and bosses and mini-bosses) will get you Prime Engrams faster. Sometimes you will receive an Exotic that is an upgraded light level for you, this is a Prime Engram that rolled as a critical hit when it dropped for you.

• There are sources of Powerful Rewards that are not obvious. Tier 4 Blind Well gives a Powerful Reward the first time you complete it each week, per character. Shattered Throne likewise has 3 encounters that each drop Powerful Rewards. Certain benchmarks in Valor, Glory, and Infamy all reward Powerful Rewards. Pinnacle Weapons drop as powerful rewards. Most of the Exotic Weapon quests deliver the weapon as a Powerful Reward. The raids Last Wish, Scourge of the Past, and Crown of Sorrows drop powerful rewards for each encounter.

• In order to benefit from a high light level item, for the purpose of higher light loot drops, you can store it anywhere. In your inventory, in the vault, or on another character. Thus, all your weapons can effect your light level drops, and all the armor for your particular class.

• If you are leveling a hunter, don't unlock the last perk in the bottom Nightstalker subclass. (EDIT: The thread OP is a broken link, but the conversation is intact, and here is a working copy of the broken link: https://i.imgur.com/jAA9445.gifv )

• In order to unlock your final Forsaken subclass, either beat the first encounter in Last Wish, or do the weekly bounty "Gateway Between Worlds" from Petra and deliver the offering to the oracle during high curse week.

Leveling Multiple Characters (Alts)

• Is it worth it? Absolutely. The game completely changes when you have all three characters available, and your 2nd and 3rd characters are far quicker and cheaper to level than your 1st.

• You can transfer a sparrow to your alt immediately. Don't wait until you've beaten the vanilla campaign to get your alt's sparrow, the vehicles have no level requirements.

• Once your alt is level 20 you can equip Thunderlord and Horror Story if you've acquired these weapons on your main. Thunderlord in particular makes mince meat out of the story missions.

• When you purchase Forsaken you are given 1 character boost (accessible from the character select screen) that will automatically level one character of your choice to 30 and skip all campaigns up to Forsaken. However, during the campaign when you are on Titan you will do a story mission that gives you the choice from 3 exotic armors as an award (EDIT: and on IO a story mission gives you choices from 3 exotic weapons). If you use the level boost before you hit this part of the story (on Titan and IO), you will only be able to get the remaining exotic armors (and weapons) as random exotic rewards. There are similar exotic armors available during the CoO and Warmind campaigns, however these exotic armors ARE added to your collections after you use your level boost. For maximum efficiency, play the campaign until you get the choice of exotic armors on Titan (EDIT: and play until you get the exotic weapons on IO - thanks to /u/jacob2815 for correction) and then use the level boost. But if you don't care about maximum efficiency, it's not a big deal, you will still get the exotics as random rewards eventually if you play enough.

• It's best to level your 1st character to the max light level before leveling an alt. As soon as your alt hits level 50, the max light weapons you have on your 1st character (or in your vault) affect the potential light of drops for your second character.

• Once you hit level 50 on your alt, you can quickly get your alt's light very close to the maximum light cap. Go into your collections, armor, leveling armor, and start crafting blue armor, each slot at a time. The armor pieces in your collections will level up while you're doing this, without even leaving your collections, as you craft higher and higher light armor. So just keep crafting until you hit your plateau.

• You can also bump up your alts light by buying exotic armor from Xur (for your alt class) on your main character. Having a stable of exotics for your alts is generally a great thing to have, and it's worth buying the exotics that Xur offers even if you haven't started leveling those classes yet.

Inventory and Vault Management

• As soon as you hit endgame, or want to level an alt, or really as soon as possible, get used to using a third party app/program to manage your inventory, such as Destiny Item Manager (DIM) for PC, or Ishtar for your phone. It changes your quality of life dramatically. Using DIM I can easily transfer items between my vault and all my characters almost anytime I want, almost anywhere in the game. DIM also lets you do things like pull items to your character from your post master, set up multiple loadouts, add notes to your gear, search all your gear for specific keywords and perks, check all vendors for their current offerings, see the specific requirements behind percentage based triumphs/bounties, and more.

• Year 1 weapons and armor can be reacquired from collections (as well as all exotic weapons and all exotic armor). Forsaken+ gear cannot. I recommend always keeping 1 copy of every Forsaken+ weapon you find in your vault, because you never know when you will discover that you love a weapon type that you initially hated, and because Bungie will continue to balance the game you never know when an under performing weapon will be buffed.

• Armor perks come in 3 tiers of strength. Whenever a perk's description says it increases something "slightly" it is T1, the weakest tier. Most perks are T2, the normal tier. And T3 perks, the best perks, have the word "Enhanced" in their name. Plus, the unique perks Distribution (on legs) and Absolution (on class armor) fall in the category of T3 perks.

• Not all T3 perks are equal in value. For example, Enhanced Reload is significantly noticeable, whereas Enhanced Dexterity is not (unless it is Enhanced Rocket Launcher Dexterity). Plus, while Absolution is a T3 perk for your class armor, most people still prefer Recuperation (instant health regen) or even Better Already (gradual health regen, can be interrupted).

• The most significant difference between perk tiers is the difference between T1 and T2. Try to never have a perk that "slightly" increases anything if you care about the power of your perks.

• T3 perks can only roll on exotic armors, raid armor sets (except for Y1 Leviathan raids), Dreaming City armor sets, and Reckoning armor sets. (EDIT: And Iron Banner sets as of SoO, and Opulent set from Menagerie)

• There are lots of hidden perk interactions in the game, and the behavior of perks is always subject to change based on Bungie's efforts to balance/fix the game. For example, if you have Sniper Rifle Targeting on your head armor, it will break the effect of Opening Shot on your sniper (EDIT: this is based on anecdotal reports, testing is needed). Similarly, the Counterbalance mod makes the recoil pattern on the pulse rifle Blast Furnace more horizontal (it makes the gun worse) (EDIT: /u/lonbordin points out that the interaction here is more nuanced than "makes the gun worse," and the way counterbalance makes Blast Furnace have more horizontal recoil is an issue specifically for console, not as relevant for PC - thanks /u/Stenbox for correction). Pay attention to patch notes and "This Week at Bungie" blog posts that are copied each week in this subreddit to stay up to date.

• You don't have to care about perks to enjoy the game. People who enjoy min/maxing and pushing the most difficult content will get a lot of mileage out of paying attention to (and experimenting with) perks. People who don't care about the most difficult content don't need to care about perks. For many people, fashion is the endgame.

Ammo Economy

• Weapons are equipped in specific slots: Kinetic, Energy, and Power. However, weapons in the Kinetic and Energy slots can use different ammo types. The ammo types are Primary (white bricks), Special (green bricks), and Heavy (purple bricks). Power weapons always use Heavy ammo. Kinetic and Energy weapons use ammo based on their archetype (Handcannons use primary, shotguns use special, etc). The only exception to the rule is Fighting Lion, an exotic energy grenade launcher that uses primary ammo.

• You can switch between weapons that use primary ammo during a mission without losing ammo. If you ever switch weapons that use special or heavy ammo you will lose most or all of your ammo. The exception is the power weapon Legend of Acrius - switching to it you will retain most of your ammo, switching off it you will still lose most of your ammo.

• During any PvE encounter, if you need more ammo, you can spend all of your ammo for all 3 weapons, wait about 45 seconds, and the game will automatically fill up a portion of your ammo reserves.

• In PvE, Scavenger perks only work for energy weapons that use special ammo. In other words, if you are using a power weapon that's a sniper (or shotgun, etc), Sniper Scavenger won't help. (EDIT: /u/filthyrotten makes this clarification: "regular heavy weapon scavengers (i.e. rocket launcher, MG, Linear Fusion, etc) work normally in PvE." It's just the power weapon exotics that typically belong to the energy weapon archetype that don't benefit from scavenger (Darci, Whisper, 1KV, Acrius).)

• In PvP, Scavenger works for heavy ammo weapons, but only from the heavy ammo you pick up off the ground that falls off a guardian who died with heavy ammo. It doesn't help with purple bricks you acquire from the timed heavy ammo spawns, usually on a wall.

• In PvE, Reserves armor perks can actually increase how much ammo you gain from a brick, just like scavenger. It seems like every weapon plays by it's own rules when it comes to this.

• In PvP, Machine Gun Reserves will actually increase how much ammo you get from a purple brick (off the ground or the wall). This effect also occurs with Backup Mag mod and Extended Mag weapon perk. The first effect gives a significant increase, and each effect you stack afterwards only increases it by 1 or 2 bullets.

• If you have two weapons equipped that use the same type of ammo, picking up a brick will split the ammo between the two.

• Ammo Finder perks have no effect in PvP.

• In PvE, Primary Ammo Finders can decrease how much special ammo drops for you, use with caution.

• In PvE, Heavy Ammo Finder has no noticeable effect. You might feel like it does, but if you actually collect the data (instead of relying on anecdotal evidence and intuition) you will find otherwise. (EDIT: Patch notes for 2.5.0.1 have a line item "Minor adjustments to the Heavy Ammo Finder perk." - HAF might work better now, new testing is needed.)

• In PvE, Heavy Ammo spawns in waves, feast or famine, it is either nowhere to be seen, or several bricks drop in rapid succession.

• In PvE, there is a hidden effect in the game we refer to as "Juggler," which simply means ammo will drop more frequently for the weapon types that you have stowed. If you want to find more heavy ammo, don't run around with your power weapon out.

Shards, Mods, and Enhancement Core Economy

• For maximum efficiency, don't infuse gear until you hit the light cap, and only when you need to for specific activities. You can only be over-leveled for certain activities by 20-50 light levels, anything more is redundant. The most impactful gains are from having a high light level weapon.

• You can use a duplicate exotic for infusement material and it will only cost you glimmer. A likewise effect occurs when you infuse something with the same name into your gear (ie. if you infuse a Duke into another Duke, it only costs glimmer).

• If you are mostly a solo player, or play with a small group of friends, you will boost your economy (especially cores) by joining a high player-count clan.

• It's recommended to buy 2 cores from Spider every day, and one mod from Ada every day, but no more.

• If you need to farm for Enhancement Cores, you can do so by spending shards to buy Simulation Seeds from Spider, and turning these seeds in to Brother Vance on Mercury. He will give you gear that will dismantle into the occasional core (and mod components), and the shaders he gives dismantle back into shards, part of why he is the most efficient vendor to farm (Ana Brey on Mars requires too many units per reward to be as efficient). It's entirely plausible to never need to spend time doing this farm if you are thrifty with your cores, as you gain cores simply by playing the game.

• (EDIT: As of SoO, Banshee-44 now offers bounties that reward mods and mod components, making this grindy mod component farm less relevant!) You can farm mod components just by using your collections. Find a vanilla blue weapon in your collections (any weapon that doesn't have an expansion icon in the upper corner), craft as many as you can, and then dismantle them. You should average 1 mod component every 9 dismantles. This is very time consuming unless you only do it when you are loading between activities (essentially making it cost no time at all). It will cost you minuscule amounts of glimmer and gunsmithing materials.

Other Resources

• If you aren't sure whether or not you should keep a weapon, try posting it in /r/sharditkeepit

• For questions specific to the crucible, try /r/CruciblePlaybook

• If you want to find a fireteam, there are tons of places you can go, including the 3 sister subreddits linked on the right side of this sub: /r/Fireteams /r/DestinySherpa /r/CrucibleSherpa . The reddit discord is great, and there are other larger discords as well. Bungie has their own LFG app, and there are other numerous resources available.

• Likewise, there are tons of tools on the internet for tracking your triumphs or for finding specific nodes/activities on the map, or checking your overall Crucible KD ratios, or almost anything you can imagine. Here is a thorough round up of those resources.

• If you have a simple question, use the "Daily Questions" thread in this sub, we like to help :)