This weekend sees Xur’s last visit before the holidays, and more importantly his first since update 2.7.0. That matters because of this change to the way exotic engrams work: “When opened it will award a new exotic if any remain to be collected; otherwise, it contains a random piece of exotic armor.”
So, if you now buy the engram which Xur sells for a whopping 97 legendary shards, you’re guaranteed to get a good roll on a piece of armour, assuming you already own all the weapons. Also note that he will give you one of the new exotic armour pieces from Season of Dawn, again assuming it’s the only item you’re missing on that class.
This week you can find Xur in the Rig area of Titan. Head left from spawn, drop down to the lower level, and he’s hunkered down inside one of the little rooms. As ever, if in doubt look for the name tags of other players clustered together.
Reminder: Xur’s main use these days is as a way for new players to catch up with exotics, but also bear in mind that the ones he sells (excluding the engram) come with a low stat roll—it’s actually the same roll as the copy you can pull from your collections tab once unlocked.
If you are new to Destiny 2, check out our beginner’s guide to help get started.
Xur sells a specific armor piece for each class, at 23 Legendary Shards, and an exotic weapon for 29 Legendary shards. Xur is open for business from 8:00 am PST / 12:00 pm EST / 3:00 pm GMT, and leaves when the game resets on Tuesday. Here’s what he has this week.
Two-Tailed Fox (rocket launcher) — maybe buy
Rocket launchers were all the rage circa Destiny 1 (you may have heard of a little weapon called Gjallarhorn, which was quite good) but in the current Destiny 2 sandbox you’re better off using a grenade launcher for single-target damage or a machine gun for clearing trash mobs. I say this with some regret, as the concept behind Twin-Tailed Fox is cool: It fires a two-rocket salvo, of which one is a void rocket that suppresses enemies abilities, whilst the other is a solar rocket that does burn damage over time. Not that you tend to notice either effect as the target is usually in bits at that point. Both rockets have tracking, though it can still be hit or literally miss.
I’ve done some damage testing of exotic rocket launchers in the Tribute Hall, and Twin-Tailed Fox offers the most total bang for your buck versus Truth and Wardcliff Coil. It’s usability is helped by the fact you can run double rocket launcher reserves, rocket launcher scavenger and rocket launcher finder mods. With all those in place you’ll be picking up three-four shots per brick and holding a total of seven shots (each of which is actually two rockets, remember).
As good as all that sounds, Twin-Tailed still feels clunky to use, and that’s largely because all rocket launchers (bar Truth or ones with the Ambitious Assassin perk) only hold one shot in the pipe, which means you’ll spend as much time reloading as you will ‘sploding. Hopefully the forthcoming exotic catalyst, which will apparently boost reload speed and ammo inventory, will help.
Contraverse Hold (Warlock gloves) — definitely buy
These gloves are absolutely beastly in PvP when combined with the Handheld Supernova ability on middle tree Void Warlock. Upon using your void grenade they return a random amount of grenade energy. That randomness can vary between ‘a smidge’ and ‘almost the whole bloody thing’, but it’s usually a decent amount. Given that there are plenty of other ways to speed up grenade recharge—notably weapons with the Demolitionist perk—it means you can have very high uptime on your purple pineapples. In PvE, Voidlock ‘nades on both top and bottom tree are very strong and essential to most builds, again making Contraverse Hold a solid choice, although personally you’ll have a hard time prying Nezarec Sin off my head.
Dunemarchers (Titan boots) — probably buy
Now that One-Eyed Mask has been toned down a notch, these boots will likely become the exotic of choice for Titan mains in PvP. The main perk reads: “Increases sprint speed. Sprinting builds up a static charge. After melee-attacking an enemy, that charge will chain damage to nearby enemies.” Essentially they make your ability to ape around the map with a shotgun even more obnoxious, particularly when running any sort of shoulder charge ability. The fact they come in arc affinity by default means you can slap on shotgun scavenger and combine it with the traction mod to become even more of an annoyance. Some of you guys are okay, so you might want to stay out of the Crucible this weekend.
Assassin’s Cowl (Hunter helmet) — maybe buy
Chances are you picked this up as a reward for completing the Shadowkeep campaign on your Hunter, but if you’re a New Light player who hasn’t lined Bungie’s pockets for the DLC you might want to grab it from Xur now instead. Aside from giving off serious Dancer of the Boreal Valley vibes, the helmet is more cool looking than it is actually useful. The signature ‘Vanishing Execution’ perk grants a boost to health and shields, and makes you turn invisible briefly. It actually functions better in PvP because it procs off any melee kill, whereas in PvE you have to perform a finisher move. So if you’re looking for reliable healing Wormhusk Crown is probably a better bet, and if you cosplaying as the Invisible Man is more your bag, then Graviton Forfeit is the way to go.