5 Things To Do First In Destiny 2: The Witch Queen And Season 16

If you're feeling overwhelmed by the sheer number of options to tackle in Destiny 2 right now, you're not alone. Between The Witch Queen expansion and Season of the Risen, you have a ton of directions you can head in, and they're all good options. But there are certain things you should do first to make the most of your time. Below, we've rounded up five things to prioritize as you dive into the new content. For more, check out our Destiny 2: Witch Queen guides roundup.

Grab the Grand Overture catalyst quest

As usual, season pass holders get a new, free Exotic weapon right at level 1 of the season pass. This time around, it's Grand Overture, which is basically a machine gun that fires missiles. While you'll probably want to claim that immediately and start messing around with it, it's also worth paying a trip to Banshee-44 at the Tower. He'll provide you with a new questline to get the Grand Overture catalyst. While the first step is reasonable enough (killing Cabal with the new gun, or any Power weapon, is basically all there is to it), the next requires you to play a ton of Nightfalls or Crucible/Gambit matches. As such, you want to reach that step as quickly as possible so that any forays you take into those modes are counted toward unlocking the catalyst.

Pick up your bounties

This can be easy to forget if you're intent on rushing ahead with the story, but once you first arrive at the Enclave and have the freedom to choose what to do next, head to the Tower for bounties. Even if you want to just continue doing story missions, you can work your way through many of these while doing so, and the XP they grant will help you to level up the season pass (getting you, among other things, XP bonuses to maximize gains from everything you do in the future) and let you unlock artifact mods more quickly. And don't forget to hit up the HELM as well--there are new bounties at the War Table, and while they're themed around the new season and are most quickly completed in PsiOps Battlegrounds, many can still be done during other activities.

Do a little of everything to unlock progression paths

Many of the new progression tracks are unlocked by completing different steps. For instance, once you meet Fynch, you should continue his questline briefly, as doing so will unlock bounties you can complete in the Throne World (which can be collected and then completed as you're doing other tasks). Heading to the Hangar at the Tower to kick off the seasonal storyline after progressing the Witch Queen campaign a bit will gain you access to the PsiOps Battlegrounds activity, which you'll want to mix into your weekly rotation, and you'll start a quest that can be progressed by doing numerous things (including playing the WQ campaign). Completing story missions to gain access to the Relic will not just get you your first glaive, but also allow you to begin collecting weapons with Deepsight Resonance. That, in turn, lets you use those weapons to extract materials used to craft weapons (or adjust those you've already made), which, again, is doable while pursuing whatever activity you wish.

Claim your new grenade types

Early on, you'll be introduced to the Void 3.0 system, which overhauls your Void subclass to function like Stasis, giving you Aspects and Fragments to further customize your character. But an added element of this is that grenade types have been separated from specific classes, meaning you now have a wider variety to choose from. Head to Ikora at the Tower and, for a small Glimmer fee, you'll be able to unlock four more types of grenades--and possibly other customization options, depending on how much you played Destiny 2 prior to this update.

Review your mods

All of last season's mods are now gone (so long, Particle Deconstruction), which means your armor potentially has a bunch of slots to fill. As before, you'll unlock additional mods through the artifact as you level it up, but in addition to planning out which of those you'll want to use, there are some other considerations to keep in mind. For instance, generating Orbs of Power is no longer tied to individual weapons; as detailed in the update 4.0.0.1 patch notes, new helmet mods have been added and automatically unlocked for all players which let your guns generate Orbs of Power. And on the weapon mod side, legendary weapons can now have mods equipped instantly and for free, making it easy (and cost-free) to experiment with different options.