Destiny Guide – General Tips and Tricks

Destiny is a huge game, with so many little details it can be difficult to understand everything that’s going on at any one time. VideoGamer has put together some quick tips to help you get started and understand the basics. We’ll keep updating this guide once we delve deeper into the game, so check back here if you want to become the best in the galaxy.

Destiny Campaign Tips

• If you decide to tackle a mission on hard difficulty, but find it too challenging, make sure you’re at the Respawn Restricted part of the mission, then jump back into orbit, change the difficulty and head back down. You’ll spawn at the start of the restricted respawn zone.
• You can replay missions as many times as you like, or simply jump into the “Patrol” level to engage in free roam around the location.

Destiny Weapons and Armour Tips

• It’s not worth buying campaign weapons and armour from vendors in the early part of the game, as loot drops are so frequent and often better than what they stock. Save your Glimmer for later on, or for emblems if you wish to customise your character.
• As well as improving your basic armour rating, certain pieces of equipment will also improve three key attributes: Intellect, Discipline and Strength. These three stats can be seen just to the left of your armour in the character menu. How these three stats help depends on the Guardian class. For the Hunter: Intellect reduces the cooldown of the Golden Gun, Discipline reduces the cooldown time of grenades and Strength reduces the cooldown time of the Throwing Knife.Items can also offer other benefits, like increased reload speeds for certain weapons or improved grenade throws.
• Just like switching weapons, you can equip new armour you find mid-mission. Head into the Guardian menu and check if your loot is better than what you currently have and switch.
• If you have any items you don’t want to carry around, but don’t want to dismantle, head to the Tower and store them in the vault. Access the vault, then press pause to access your character, hover over any items you wish to store and hit X/A.
• You can compare your current equipment with any in your inventory by hovering over unequipped sets and pressing R2/RT.
• Certain weapons can have status effects. The game symbolises these by colour: purple is void damage, red is solar and blue is arc. These effects deal more damage to certain enemies than others, as discussed above with the enemy shields. Pay attention to the bullets that hit, especially against tougher opponents, as it will sometimes say ‘immune’ or ‘weak’ as well as how much damage is dealt.

Destiny Enemies Tips

• Pay attention to the colour of higher-level enemy’s shields, as it corresponds to the status effects of certain weapons. For example, a Wizard’s red shield will deplete much faster if you have solar-based weapons.
• Always aim for headshots. Headshots do far more damage and can help conserve ammo and thin out a large group of enemies.
• Depending on your Guardian class, it’s vital that you are as mobile as possible on the battlefield. Titans are able to stay in the fight, but Hunters and Warlocks need to avoid taking more than a few hits otherwise they’ll be dead in a flash. Use cover and your evasive abilities (double jump, glide etc.) to escape when the fight becomes too hectic.
• The Thrall and other swarm-focused enemies can be the toughest, because many of Destiny’s weapons don’t have a large clip size. Once you see the Thrall approaching, try to kill as many as possible from a distance to give you time to reload for when they’re up close.If you’re faced with more than two, don’t be tempted to melee, as while trying to kill one, the other two will quickly beat you to a pulp. Switch between your primary and secondary weapons to kill off the crowd before meleeing the few that remain.
• If you retreat far enough, the game will reset enemies back to their spawn point. This is a great ‘trick’ for survival and getting a breather, especially in the Respawn Restricted zones. Some will follow you further than others, so just keep retreating until they stop and/or disappear from view.
• If you stumble across any foe with “???” above their heads, it means they are too many levels ahead of you. These guys are easy to avoid as they are usually found away from the mission path. If you want to fight them, come back once you’ve progressed a bit further.
• Enemy bullets track you, which makes it even more important to keep mobile when fighting. When retreating, don’t run in a straight line, zig zag to dodge incoming bullets.