In less than a week, Destiny 2 will launch Season 7: Season of Opulence for Annual Pass owners to experience as the last major content drop for Year 2. Although Season 7 will likely include plenty of new experiences for players, the main focus of Season of Opulence is likely the Crown of Sorrow raid, which launches just 6 hours after the Season starts. It’s a bold new strategy for Bungie when it comes to launching a raid and as a result, it compresses the usual Destiny 2 power level grind.
While plenty of Destiny 2 players will likely wait until the weekend to try the Crown of Sorrow raid, others will make an attempt on Day 1, either for fun or as part of the World First race. For those players we have a few tips on how to prepare for the raid in such a short amount of time.
Because Bungie eliminated the ability to “hoard bounties” with Season 6, the focus ahead of Season 7 is on preparing quests, missions, and bounties that are necessary to complete larger bounties that grant powerful rewards. With only 6 hours to work with, Destiny 2 players will not be able to get everything done so it’s important to have some bounties completed ahead of time.
Dreaming City
The Dreaming City can be a time consuming destination, but it’s also ripe with powerful rewards. To make sure you don’t have to spend much time in the Destiny 2: Forsaken endgame destination, complete 7 daily bounties from Petra Venj.
That way, as soon as season 7 goes live, you can pick up the Dreaming City bounty that needs 8 daily bounty completions, pick up 1 daily bounty, complete it, and get that powerful reward. We recommend holding 7 completed Dreaming City bounties and not 8 because the powerful reward bounty is known to bug out and not give a higher drop if the player is holding 8 completed daily bounties.
We also recommend picking up the Gateway Between Worlds bounty and completing one Heroic Blind Well this week. Then, next week you can complete the other Heroic Blind Well for a powerful reward and complete the bounty, which grants the Oracle Offering. You will need this bounty and the Ascendant Challenge bounty (don’t pick up or complete that one) to count towards Petra’s Complete Two Weekly Bounties Challenge and another powerful reward
Black Armory
When it comes to Black Armory content, all you need are two Ballistic Logs. This will speed up the process of obtaining two powerful frames, which you can use strategically when your weapons are lagging behind in power level.
To gain the Ballistic Logs complete Ada-1’s two Weekly Bounties. One requires completing 7 daily bounties and the other requires two forge completions. You can also hold onto completed bounties and turn them in at the start of the week, but that's personal preference. We'll explain why holding on to a ton of completed bounties can be important down below.
Flashpoint Completion
If you still have the Flashpoint from this week available, it is possible to complete it and not collect the reward from the destination vendor. Once the new week rolls over, the vendor will still have the Flashpoint reward and it should be a powerful drop.
This move is only meant to save time, as collecting the carryover Flashpoint reward cancels out the powerful drop from the current week’s Flashpoint. So if you already did the Flashpoint it’s not too big of a deal.
Saving 20 Completed Bounties
Assuming that Ikora Rey’s challenge for the week is to complete 20 bounties, Destiny 2 players will want to hold on to at least 20 completed bounties in their inventory. Some of these bounties are already part of the raid prep detailed above, but others can be used to benefit other aspects of the game.
We recommend completing Gambit and Gambit Prime bounties for two reasons. First, the Gambit Prime bounties that the Drifter offers are fairly easy to complete. And second, these Gambit bounties will increase your Infamy rank and each rank up grants another powerful reward.
Clan XP Prep
While you will likely earn enough Clan XP to unlock the powerful reward from Hawthorne just by playing, it’s worth it to save her 3 clan bounties in order to make sure you max out the XP bar immediately. These bounties can also count towards the 20 needed for Ikora. Don’t hold on to the powerful clan bounties, though, since those will likely be locked at power level 700.
Weapon Quests
Not everyone will be able to meet these requirements but if you have any pinnacle weapon or exotic weapon quests that you have yet to complete, we recommend getting those to the point you can collect the weapon. Like the Forge Frames, these can be used if a particular weapon is lagging behind, like claiming 21% Delirium if your heavy weapon slot is low.
We also recommend holding onto the Xur bounty that releases on Friday and not completing it until after Season of Opulence starts. It’s unclear if this will be a powerful reward or if it’s locked to Season 6 levels, but it can’t hurt to have it ready to go.
Consumables
The only other aspect of power leveling prep that players should do before Season of Opulence starts is to make sure they are maxed out on all the necessary consumables. If you’ve been playing enough Destiny 2 over the last few weeks, you should be fine but just in case make sure you have at least/the maximum number of:
- Tincture of Queensfoil for Ascendant Challenge
- Ghost Fragments to buy Spider’s Wanted Bounty
- Glimmer for infusion and buying bounties
- Enhancement Cores for infusion
Should players feel like they have enough time, they could prepare all of the above steps on all three characters to ensure maximum power level gains. Whether or not that will be possible in the six hours between the launch of Destiny Season 7 and the Crown of Sorrow raid is unclear, but even just this bit of prep will eliminate a lot of busy work.
The good news, though, is any player at 700 power will go into the raid at the highest possible level. With the Contest modifier active, Bungie is limiting the power level of players for each encounter until the raid is complete, starting at 700 for the first encounter and concluding at 720 for the final boss.
Destiny 2: Season of Opulence releases June 4, 2019 at 10 am PT for PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The Crown of Sorrow raid goes live at 6 pm PT that same day.