Here's five things you need to know before Destiny 2: The Witch Queen launches

If you’ve been reading our ongoing Destiny 2 coverage, or have been keeping tabs on the game in even a limited capacity, you’ll know the the newest expansion The Witch Queen is right around the corner! As any expansion before it, the release will supercharge the game with a vast array of new changes, updates, and features.

All in all it can be a lot to take in and research on your own, which is why Dorrani has created a succinct video taking you through many of The Witch Queen’s most important additions. You can check that video out right now embedded just above - a must watch for anyone looking to dip their toe into the game next month.

We’re getting new Dungeons and a new Raid

Now, as you’d expect from a big new expansion like The Witch Queen, we’re getting lots of new co-op and PvE content, and that – of course – includes some new dungeons. However, there are a few caveats.

For one, the dungeons aren’t due to come out on The Witch Queen’s launch date. At the time of writing, we still don’t have any concrete release date out there for this content, so amend your expectations before you jump in. At least you won’t use up all that precious content on Day One, right?

These dungeons also aren’t available to those who buy the standard version of Destiny 2’s Witch Queen expansion, instead being paywalled behind the Deluxe Edition. It is what it is unfortunately, so if you want to jump into these dungeons when they eventually release, it may be best to save some cash now and get the more expensive version of the game.

There’s also a mysterious new raid in Destiny 2 that fireteams of up to six players can jump into. We don’t know its name, or anything like a full layout of the raid, but if you’ve watched the recent trailer you would have caught a peak at the raid (probably without knowing it).

The as-yet-unnamed raid takes place in a giant black pyramid ship that has sunk into the swamps on Savathun’s throneworld. Players that have kept up with Destiny 2 ever since its launch will be aware of these giant ships and the fact that they’re generally bad news, so we’ll have to wait and see what will be lurking around down there. Don’t expect it to be easy.

The expansion will drop some big story beats

The Witch Queen expansion centres around, well, the Witch Queen! Savathun is one of the three original leaders of one of Destiny’s major factions – The Hive – and we’re heading off to her throne world to take her down. This is basically an entire planet where she has total control, so it’s safe to say that the odds are stacked against us. Just how Guardians like it.

If that wasn’t bad enough, The Witch Queen has somehow managed to use the same powers we’ve been using for years – the Light, a gift from The Traveller – and managed to buff up some of her forces with our powers. Like resurrection, if the trailer is on point. Gulp. Expect what we learn in this expansion to set the tone for plenty of upcoming Destiny 2 expansions and story beats. We’ve got the power of the Darkness, and now The Hive have the power of the Light. Where could it go from here…

For those who want to read deep into the lore, you can jump into Destiny 2 right now for tons of content surrounding the next expansion’s big bad with The Season of the Lost, but you’ll have to do it quickly because…

Things being vaulted (again)

A bunch of story content that you can play in Destiny 2 right now is being vaulted away forever when The Witch Queen launches. Now, this has happened before with the original Destiny 2 campaign (when a lot of the early Destiny 2 campaign got rotated out of action), and we’re going to see the same thing happen again with some loot and seasonal content with this new expansion.

So, if you do want to hop into Destiny 2 with some background information about who Savathun is, and some of the horrible things she has done, you really have to get to it soon. The next wave of content vaulting is coming on The Witch Queen’s release date, February 22. If you want to really, thoroughly bone up on your D2 lore, you’ve got about a month to do it.

We’re finally getting weapon crafting

Enough about stuff getting taken out, let's go back to the new stuff that’s getting put in! One of the new headline features is weapon crafting, which will allow players to build new and old weapons from scratch, while being able to add certain stats they’re aiming for, rather than praying to RNJesus for the perfect weapon roll. In theory, this will save a lot of time in the long run, and will save you churning through dungeons just to get your favourite gun with that lesser-seen perk you’ve been jonesing for for weeks.

Any of you who have jumped into Destiny 2 recently would have used the H.E.L.M and umbral engrams that allowed players to craft certain items with specific stats as the main focus. It stands to reason this weapon crafting system will build on the foundations these seasonal items established. We don’t know just yet how much we’ll be able to customise our new loot, but this should hopefully take some of the randomness out of Destiny 2.

Say hello to the Glaive

To wrap everything up nicely, we’re getting a new melee weapon type with The Witch Queen’s release. This new weapon type – the Glaive – will follow the sword as an option if you want to get up close and personal in the Crucible or with the hordes of Hive you’ll be butchering, planet-side. But, unlike the sword, you stay in first person when you equip and use the Glaive. Because first-person melee combat has always worked so well…

Interestingly, Glaives will sit in the energy weapon slot rather than the power weapon slot, perhaps hinting that there’s going to be more of a focus on melee in this expansion (which makes sense if you need to butcher a load of Thrall every time you wake up the Hive).

If that doesn’t sound exciting enough for you, Glaives will also allow you to shoot out projectiles, giving the weapon both offensive and defensive capabilities, as well as crowd control utility. Talk about a jack-of-all-trades. So if you’re somehow tired of zooming across the map with the Eager Edge perk, maybe the Glaive will reignite some of that crunchy hand-to-hand passion we all felt back when Swords were added to the game in The Taken King.

Let us know below, are you excited to jump into The Witch Queen February 22, and which of the new additions mentioned in the video are you especially looking forward to?