Bungie has introduced an official gear management app within the Destiny Companion available through Internet browsers, offering it to all users in an open Beta.

Apart from the moment-to-moment first person shooting, Destiny is a gear game. Players collect and work towards earning better armor and weapons with every activity they complete in Destiny, and the need for better gear pushes them forward. Some have built up extensive collections within the game, in fact, pushing the limits on their Vaults, even when Vault Space was increased.

Managing and switching gear between characters can be a chore, especially for players that run more than one character. Bungie had previously given players a Destiny Companion App tool for item management, but the browser version just got a little sweeter thanks to a Gear Manager overhaul.

The Gear Manager has been in limited Beta for a while now - only unlocked on selected accounts for initial testing - but as of an update yesterday, Bungie has opened the Beta version of the Gear Manager to all users.

Anyone with a Bungie.net account can use the new Gear Manager now. To access it, go to Bungie.net, select My Legend, and click Manage Gear at the bottom of the screen. Accessing it will show every weapon on each character and within a player's Vault. Users can also see every weapon’s level, damage type, and rarity, in addition to organizing the gear into categories. The Manager also allows players to drag and drop gear to characters, moving the weapons and armor immediately in game.

Bungie’s Gear Manager offers a very unique and useful feature as well, called Maximize Light. Clicking this option will instantly equip a selected character with their most powerful gear, allowing them to hit the maximum Light level possible using the gear inside their inventory, regardless of where it is located. This is especially useful when players want to have their level maxed out for the King’s Fall raid, Trials of Osiris, or for decrypting engrams to get the highest Light roll.

Bungie says that their new Gear Manager is very much still in Beta with more features coming when it officially launches. The Destiny Companion was also patched yesterday, making some fixes to the application, which Bungie detailed in patch notes.

The Maximize Light feature is definitely a draw to use the new Gear Manager, but it will take time to see how many players start using it on a regular basis, as many in the Destiny community already use Destiny Item Manager (DIM), which does much of the same (and some more) things for gear management. DIM is a Chrome extension that was created by members of the Destiny community, and is considered the go-to manager for most players. However if Bungie can continue to deliver more useful features, they will most likely pull players to use Destiny’s official gear management application, especially if it can be implemented into the mobile app.

Have you used Destiny’s official Gear Manager, and if so, what do you think about it?

Source: Bungie