Destiny: Rise of Iron guide, tips and tricks

Find every collectible, the best Exotics and beat the Raid in Year 3 of Bungie's online shooter.

Guide by Matthew Reynolds Former Guides Editor

Updated on Dec. 16, 2016

After a confident Year 2, Destiny heads into its third year with another expansion, Rise of Iron, debuting new story missions, a new Patrol area and social space set within The Plaguelands, original and revamped Strikes and gear and, most tantalisingly, the first new Raid in a year.

Going live for all players on September 20, we've done a Destiny: Rise of Iron guide for the expansion's story missions and major Quests, including Exotics, how to get mysterious new consumables and collectibles, and how to tackle the new Raid.

As well as links to all our Destiny: Rise of Iron guides, we'll also give you advanced tips and tricks to keep in mind while playing - whether you're just starting out or are tackling those high-end activities to the level cap. Best of luck, Guardians!

Other Destiny: Rise of Iron guides

Story missions:

Rise of Iron's Wrath of the Machine Raid:

Exotic weapon Quests:

Collectibles:

New materials and items explained:

Other Destiny: Rise of Iron guides:

Destiny: Rise of Iron seasonal events:

Destiny: Rise of Iron tips and tricks

Starting fresh? Don't worry about class choice or race too much

If you're picking up Destiny: The Collection, or fancy starting over with a new character, then as with most role-playing games the choice of what new character and race to choose from can be pretty stressful. While each character has their own sub-class, exclusive abilities and armour types, no weapon or mission-type will be off limits by your choice. As for race, it's something the game barely acknowledges, so go with whatever you prefer.

It's only when it comes down to end-game content such as the Raid where very occasional situations desire some classes more than others, but with only three classes available, it'll be easy to find a player with whatever class you need. So choose what most interests you, and get playing!

Coming back? The expansion's new enemy faction doesn't change much

When we started Destiny Year 2 and The Taken King expansion, we had a whole other faction of enemies to worry about - the Taken. Yes, they were remixes of every existing enemy in the game, but they were devious to make us play the game in different ways.

Rise of Iron introduces the Devil Splicers, an augmented faction of Fallen. However, new look aside, they're largely the same to fight as regular Fallen, albeit stronger and with some slight tweaks you shouldn't worry too much about, such as Void shields on Captains. So take the same strategies to them as the Fallen, and if you find yourself struggling, then always boosting up a few Light Levels might help.

The new faction aren't too different to what you've faced before.

Faction rewards are now more flexible

Levelling up Factions in the game - such as the Vanguard and Crucible, or vendors like the Gunsmith - is perhaps even more useful as it was before, since it's one of the few waysto get higher Light level gear as you make the tricky jump from Light level 365 all the way to Rise of Iron's new level cap of 400.

In Rise of Iron, however, it's even more flexible, giving you a choice between a new weapon, armour or Chroma-infusible Spektar gear, so you can level up whatever you need most. Be sure to press Triangle, or Y, to get a preview of the items that can drop, too.

If you want a fast way to level up certain Factions with the arrival of weekly vendor Xur, then see our Xur location page.

Fill up on as many Bounties as possible, and try and play to the game's schedule

This is obvious for regular Destiny players, but it's worth mentioning; take note of when the game updates every day and week in order to get the most out of the game. For example, you can only get one set of rewards per character from the Nightfall and Raids, but every Tuesday morning UK time, this will reset, giving you a time to play towards. It's also worth remembering when Xur is selling items each week, as it's one of the easier way to get Exotics.

You should always carry as many Bounties and Quests as you can; one of the best things about Destiny is you can check off multiple objectives at once, and while Bounties can be fiddly to replenish every day, each one gives you a small amount of experience and Faction reputation which really starts to add up, so keep on top of it.

There is a reason to come back every week

As well as the above reasons to play to the game's schedule, Rise of Iron gives more incentive than ever to come back week-after-week with new Rise of Iron Artifacts. Eight special items now have game-changing abilities, from giving you unlimited spring to turning low-level enemies to your side, but they are being drip fed to the community, with only one up for grabs per week thanks to a weekly Quest. It means that it'll take you a total of eight weeks to get them all - giving you a Trophy and a Rise of Iron Record Book completion entry - as well as the chance to try out all new strategies.

Wrap your head around the new currencies and materials

Forget Armour Cores, Ascendant Shards and Etheric Light from Destiny's past - they're all pretty useless now. New Destiny expansion bring with it a new set of currencies and materials to make use of, and Rise of Iron is no different. For example in Strikes you can now collect and spend Skeleton Keys to get Strike-exclusive items, use Splcier Keys, Intel Relays and SIVA Offerings to access new areas, and the Isenfyre Token to do something cool once the Raid is over. (Spoilers!)

Meanwhile, cosmetic items - such as Ornaments - can be unlocked with Radiant Treasure boxes, earned at a rate of one per week (or more with real-world cash), or picked up from Xur with the Silver Dust currency.

Whether it's finding collectibles or getting Artifacts, you'll spend sometime in The Plaguelands Patrol.

Rise of Iron's collectibles don't have much use, but are easier to get

Rise of Iron's new collectibles - Dormant SIVA Clusters - are similar to The Taken King's Calcified Fragments, but are fewer in number (30 instead of 50) and, right now, don't provide players with any reward for collecting them all.

However, they are far easier to get; while grabbing all 50 required completing Kings Fall's toughest challenging and working out dextrous puzzles in the Dreadnaught, the vast majority of SIVA Clusters are dotted around missions and Patrol areas. That said, they're still enjoyable to collect, taking you to areas you probably didn't know were there, with the always nice bonus of increasing your Grimoire score.

There's also a Dead Ghost added to every Crucible map, if you fancy spending an afternoon exploring some lovingly crafted multiplayer maps.

Crucible has seen one of the biggest updates since Destiny's launch

On paper Rise of Iron's improvements to Crucible, Destiny's player-versus-player competitive mode, seem pretty slim compared to what's been added elsewhere, adding one new mode (Supremacy mode, which is similar to Kill Confirmed from Call of Duty), four new maps, one of which is a PlayStation exclusive and a hefty Iron Banner revamp.

However along with it came the addition of Private Matches, finally allowing (all) Destiny players to customise the way they play, from using their own maps, modes and custom modifiers, and earn Bounties at the same time. It's a ton of fun, especially as you can experiment with one-on-one matches or even play solo if you want to explore maps in closer detail.