Destiny Tips and Advice

Destiny Tips and Advice by Daniilthethird

PvE and General

HUD, Menus and Appearance

• You can tell a guardian subclass by shooting them – the color of flash generated by bullet contact represents the energy type of the subclass (e.g. purple flash on warlock = Voidwalker). Does not work with rockets and SS)
• If guardian level box is flashing yellow, their Super is up (works for enemies in PvP)
• If guardian level is “…”, they are browsing inventory
• If guardian level is “!”, their health is in red
• When you have your ghost out you can use the d-pad up and down to scroll through strike/mission modifiers, voice options, etc.
• Scroll through friend list pages with L1/R1 or LT/RT
• You can press triangle (Y) to inspect person, rather than going into their character menu and clicking “inspect”
• Show off you <insert weapon here> in public space. Hold triangle/Y. Press to switch to secondary and back

Shooting

• You can shoot projectiles in midair. Grenades, hammers, bolt-caster mini-lightning clouds, axion bolt balls(very small hit box), even rockets.
• You can kill anything with grenade head shot (no explosion). Works in PvP – does 2 dmg.
• Small Arms/Specialist modifier not only increases dmg output of primary/secondary but also decreases that of two other weapon types
• Air Born modifier kicks in when projectile hits the target, not launched. Fire a rocket -> jump -> stay in the air until profit
• Any kills in radiance produces orbs, not only grenade ones. Shooting usually works better than other options.
• Different Supers (and action) will result in different Orbs, they in turn will give different amount of Super
• You can manipulate the spread of Shatter Nova Bomb by turning left or right while casting it.
• Red Death health regen (and looks like some other perks on different weapons, e.g. Army of One) will proc on trip mines, lightning grenades and on other destructible projectiles like taken centurion balls
• ToM will burn your health faster on the last round if Small Arms modifier is active
• Any exotic Sword can shoot a Bolt Caster projectile if used on the last ammo. R1 then R2
• Sword hilt kill count as ability kills. Might help some defenders to finish exotic sword quest
• Ricochet projectiles can kill you (SS, skip rounds, Hard Light) or help you to start a party
• While reloading a weapon you can also do any of the following: revive someone, loot a node/chest, or go into your character menu
• Full-auto perk on shotguns slightly increases rate of fire

Moving

• You can pop out and back to low cover by pressing aim
• Shadestep FTW. You can cancel projectile tracking on you, including colossus missiles, taken hobgoblin void projectiles, centurion and Golgoroth’s balls etc.
• You will jump higher/farther if you hold jump button. Especially useful on Hunter
• You can cancel your jumps by simply pressing the jump button again. On Hunter works only on the latest jump
• If you cancel your double jump, you can re-apply it afterward with whatever the remaining duration was. Does not work for Hunters.

Enemies

• Hobgoblin shield protects only the hobgoblin. You can shoot through and damage mobs inside the shield
• Destroying hobgoblin head will prevent him from putting on shield
• Hobgoblin face will glow orange if they have their shield ready
• Any offensive super can ignore/penetrate hobgoblin shield
• Omnigul & Flayers aren’t ultras so you can stun them, blind them, etc.
• With suppression grenade you can make hive wizard float… just float and nothing else – no shooting or poison. Works on Omnigul. Probably works on taken wizards also
• Alak-hul won’t teleport if you don’t shoot him. Grenades and swords!
• Duck in front of minotaur, fallen captain or punchy guy from Shield Brothers – their melee won’t hit you
• If you shoot the face off a minotaur, they can no longer regenerate their shield ^but will go berserk and aggressively chase you
• If you kill explosive shanks with a fusion rifle they don’t detonate
• If you watch the Cabal from a distance they’ll sometimes (and hilariously to me) float in place, showing off their boosters lol.
• The Vex seem to scan up and down with their eyes when viewed from a distance.
• The Fallen will sometimes examine the ground when viewed from a distance.

Farming

• Siege of the Warmind mission is good most of the PvE bounties and Gunsmith testing. There are plenty of thralls running at you in straight line and you can easily kill yourself by jumping down and restart the encounter. Just don’t go past the hive major (you can kill him though)
• Use sniper rifle + ghost with material scan perc combo to farm for planetary mats for sword (or just for planetary mats. I don’t even want to know why you farm for mats only). ADS with sniper extend ghost detection range
• Use nightstalker to farm hadium flakes. And any other kind of farming). Keen scout for life
• When farming planetary materials for the sword bounty, if a node near an area exit yields a rare material, leave the area immediately and come back to harvest the same node (repeating this until it either stops working or you complete the bounty). You have to be the only Guardian in location
• Opening the Scent Chest in the Mausoleum and the Poisoned Chest in the Hall of Oryx after each weekly reset yield something between 3-5 Hadium Flakes per chest per character. If you still need them for sword quest.

Other

• Switch secondaries/heavies (shotty to sniper or back; include fusion rifle in the cycle if you want to feel special) when dead to preserve your ammo
• If you equip a regenerating ammo weapon (Invective/Icebreaker) and then when dead switch to another special weapon, you keep the ammo. Or you will keep a fraction of it if you do it alive
• You can equip “hold more ammo” armor/perk before popping a synth/picking up ammo, and then switch back to other armor/perk and you will still have the ammo
• If you run out of both primary and special ammo after 30 seconds it will refill (most likely picking up ammo scattered in the area)
• Don’t pop a synth while dead – you will get nothing and put the synth on 5min cooldown
• Full-auto weapons you might not know of: Last Word, Touch of Malice, Invective, Fourth Horseman Pocket Infinity and Vex Mythoclast. FH and PI can empty their mags almost instantly.
• There are weapons that do not need ammo (almost) – NTTE, Bad Juju and Jade Rabit
• You can infuse gear from other classes (e.g. titan’s chest into hunter’s chest)
• For those who miss solar wind (Salute to all Y1 warlocks and VoG or to people who would like to be a dick): You can push teammates of ledge by Raze Lighter uppercut
• If you are level 2 with Variks (House of Judgement) – he has a package for you after every reset. Usually with some mats and synths
• You don’t regen health inside blight aura
• You can zoom in / zoom out with stick while waiting for revival (orb state)
• You can choose the direction you will face after revival (just look this way while in orb state)
• Ives and Rahool sell different legendary engrams
• You can lock gear by pressing down on the right stick. It prevents you from dismantling it or infusing it into something else
• If you have an arrow on your radar, generally you can skip the current mission/strike encounter by running through it. You only have to stop and fight when the radar arrow disappears.
• You can use motes of light to level up gear

PvP

Shooting

• You can shut down active Super with suppression grenade
• You can shoot trip mines and lightning grenades when they are sticked to the surface
• You can shoot any grenade in midair before explosion
• You can shoot shadowshot ball to free yourself from tether
• You can cancel reload animations in several ways: throw a grenade, sprint, melee, change weapons. Just wait till the ammo count update on HUD than do something mentioned – adds valuable time in PvP and sometimes in PvE. Keep in mind that reloading is on internal timer, so if you cancel reload animation you still won’t be able to fire until countdown is over.
• Firebolt grenades while in radiance can destroy titan’s bubble
• Many perks have sound when they proc, like LitC and lucky bullets on Hawkmoon. Heard one -> reload

Moving

• You can revive while sprinting through orb if you have CoAL or LbN equipped
• Shadestep PvP edition. You can cancel grenades tracking if timed right. Moreover you can cancel burns, like thorn and pesky sunsinger grenades. Even more, you can evade tracking rockets and Stormcaller’s super.
• If you sprint, jump, turn in mid-air, and slide as soon as you land you slide in the newly facing direction with full slide speed

Other

• In ToO and IB 20 LL difference is around 5% damage penalty. 50 LL delta is ~10% penalty
• In ToO reviving your teammate after the round is over and countdown timer reaches zero will cause him to have a 10 sec timer should he die in the next round
• Trip mine light color can tell if it’s friendly or not. White = friendly. Red = it just waits for you to pass by or it’s yours.
• Neutralizing and capturing zones in Control gives Super
• You can save your teammates from getting revived sniped by pushing them while you res them (you’re able to push them before they stand up)
• To get heavy ammo you have to be 20m or closer when someone on your team opens it. So there is no need to cluster and attract NB or FoH

Sparrow

• The most important thing– You can dance on your sparrow by staring dancing in a fraction of a second before you take on it. This is only acceptable way to drive a sparrow!
• Sparrow beeps when reversing
• VoG and CE sparrows are the fastest (with super boost). Also they have visual scale and sound effect indicating when they are going to explode
• Red Bull quest sparrow is the fastest (+5 boost not speed) among the trick sparrows
• Press right or left on the analog stick while dismounting a sparrow to choose which side you will get off.
• Use D-pad to point the direction while driving. Doing this in midair on trick sparrow will result in a trick
• Pressing left or right stick will activate corresponding sideboost
• If you go invis and then mount and drive, enemies (does not apply to PvP) won’t shoot you until invis is over
• Your sparrow can KILL not just by riding over but as a projectile. Aim it. Shoot a few times so it gets on fire. It will eventually go off. Profit. You can kill teammates this way.

Misc and Game changers

• Be polite while playing with others
• You can report people for being nice and helpful
• If you are security freak – Bungie has its own item manager
• If you were late to the TTK launch 3VF-LGC-RLX. And some more if you just came out of the Vault. It is used here
• If you are collector psycho – both soundtracks from Bungie store come with exclusive emblem
• If you like numbers – here are your stats and even more stats
• If you are not satisfied with the amount of data above, here are some stats on /r/DTG, and some more