Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate is bringing new systems to this legendary game, and a few of them might be a bit confusing for some people, such as the new tiers. At a glance, they may seem too convoluted, especially to some who have grown accustomed to the current weapon and gear mechanics. However, Bungie has put out a lot of information to make wrapping our minds around this system much easier. Here’s a breakdown of how tiers will work in Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate.
[Note: This article contains information from the recent Dev Insights articles and will be updated once the expansion launches.]
Explaining Weapon and Gear Tiers
If you’d like to read the article that goes deep into the tier system for Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate, here’s the link. If you prefer a shorter rundown, stick around.
To begin, there are five tiers for weapons. They go from Tier 1 to Tier 5, with the latter being the highest. Each one provides an enhancement to the weapon in some capacity. Some provide enhanced traits, some enhanced weapon mods, and even cosmetic effects. With that in mind, let’s break down what each tier provides.
- Tier 1
- Base weapon. No changes whatsoever.
- Tier 2
- These weapons drop with two pre-enhanced traits.
- Tier 3
- All the previous enhancements, plus two perks per column. In other words, you’ll get the pre-enhanced traits, but also two perk options to choose from.
- Tier 4
- It will have all the previous enhancements, plus the extra perks, plus enhanced mods, barrel, and magazine.
- Tier 5
- All the previous enhancements, perk options, mods, barrel, and magazine enhancements, a third multi-perk column, and new cosmetics.
As you can see, this is a great and simplified way to incentivize players to obtain new and higher-tier weapons. However, you won’t be able to obtain the hardest tiers so easily, but more on that later.
But what happens with armor tiers? Well, they feel even simpler than weapons, and something that will streamline the gearing process for many players. In short, every tier will determine the amount of stat points it has, at least from Tier 1 to 4. For Tier 5, you’ll be able to tune some stats to provide better bonuses, so it goes like this:
- Tier 1
- 48-53
- Tier 2
- 53-58
- Tier 3
- 59-64
- Tier 4
- 65-72
- Tier 5
- 73-75 and the Stat Tuning.
At the time of writing, Stat Tuning will let you place mods that will affect the stat the armor is attuned to. So, if your armor piece is attuned to Melee, the mods you place through Stat Tuning will affect this stat. Beyond the tiers, there are other changes coming to armor, but we’ve made a guide here for those.
How To Obtain Higher-Tier Items
At the time of writing, Bungie has confirmed a few of the activities you can do to obtain items from specific Tiers. For instance, everyone will start with Tier 1 items in Destiny 2: The Edge of Fate. By following the campaign, you’ll slowly progress to Tier 2. However, Tier 3 will work in the same way as obtaining Adept weapons does right now. And Tier 4 and 5 seem to be exclusive to some of the expansion’s new activities with a higher difficulty level. In any case, we’ll update this guide once we have the exact sources for each item Tier.
