It’s come to my attention that there are some Destiny 2 players that are not using Destiny Item Manager, perhaps the most amazing third-party app ever made for a video game, and I’m here to preach to those people the gospel of DIM. Destiny Item Manager brings your vault with you wherever you go in the solar system. It lets you make loadouts and allows you to quickly swap between them whenever you want. And best of all, it lets you optimize your armor so that you get the best possible stat distribution--all things you cannot otherwise do in Destiny 2.
But even if you don’t want to get into the slightly more complicated process of creating loadouts of your favorite gear, just having quick and easy access to your entire vault is so much better than going to the Tower every time you need to swap gear.
In this guide, we’re going to go over the basics of Destiny Item Manager before we get to get to the truly amazing things that you can do with it. Note this is only a basic level guide to get you started/converted. For the full user manual, head over to the Destiny Item Manager Fandom site here.
Okay, But What IS Destiny Item Manager?
Destiny Item Manager is a web-based application that allows you to access your entire player inventory across all three character and swap items mid-game. It can also quickly search for specific items, search for general item types to complete weapon-specific bounties, and it can help sort your loot into junk you want to throw away and stuff you want to keep.
You can also use Destiny Item Manager to check on quest, bounty, triumph, and challenge progress, as well as see what items/bounties are being offered by every vendor at every location in the game.
Finally, Destiny Item Manager can be used to sort through your various armor pieces to find a specific stat distribution or to maximize your character’s stats. This last option can be of particular use to Destiny veterans with lots of high-stat armor as it saves you the effort of manually mixing and matching armor pieces and automatically determines the highest possible stat distribution.
Destiny Item Manager can be found here. It can be accessed through any type of browser, so you can even use it on your phone. Note that you will need to log in using your Destiny 2 account info on whichever platform you play on.
Using DIM To Manage Your Inventory
The biggest benefit to using DIM is seeing your entire inventory at once. As soon as you log into Destiny Item Manager, you'll be greeted with your inventory. On mobile, you'll just see your current character's equipped inventory, but on a PC browser, you'll see all three character's inventories as well as what's in your vault.
Transferring items on PC is easy--just click on the item you want and drag it to the character you want it on. Note that if your character's inventory is full, you won't be able to transfer items.
There are a few things worth noting on the Inventory screen. Underneath your character's banner, you can see your current power level and if you mouse over that number, a dropdown will appear showing you specifically which items are below, above, or at your current power level. This can assist you with leveling your character by showing you which items need to have their power boosted to increase your overall level.
At the top is a search bar that can accept a number of different search parameters and highlight weapons and armors that meet those parameters. For example, typing in "is:fusionrifle" will cause all non-Fusion Rifle weapons to darken and only Fusion Rifles will remain visible.
There are many other commands that can be input into the search bar to find a specific subset of items. Also note that individual items can be clicked on to undertake various actions, such as applying user-generated tags, infusing items to increase their power level, and comparing item stats.
If items are in your Postmaster, you can retrieve those items by clicking on the labeled button in your Postmaster. This can help you avoid losing items if your Postmaster becomes full.
Using DIM To Optimize Your Loadouts
Seeing and managing your entire inventory is probably the most useful thing DIM does to streamline your loot grind in Destiny 2, but there’s one more thing DIM can do that’s even more incredible, and that’s to automatically optimize your stats.
In Destiny 2, every piece of armor has a stat distribution that when combined will determine your character’s overall stats. However, only stats that reach a decimal tier matter, so a Discipline stat of 51 will provide the exact same grenade cooldown as a Discipline stat of 59. In the latter case, those nine Discipline stats are essentially wasted and might as well not exist.
The Loadout Optimizer helps to eliminate those wasted stats by offering armor combinations that provide the highest number of stat tiers--ie, levels which have achieved the highest possible decimal number. I used DIM’s Loadout Optimizer to create a Titan Build that has a near-perfect stat distribution and an incredibly high number of tiers, and you can too.
Click on the Loadout Optimizer to see what I mean. Here, DIM will go through your entire inventory or armors and determine which combination will deliver the highest possible stats.
As you can see below, my Titan has a number of possible builds that would achieve a total of 32 stat tiers. Each possible build shows which armors and included and what tier is achieved in each stat. The top build would achieve tier 7 Mobility, tier 4 Resilience, tier 5 Recovery, tier 3 Discipline, tier 7 Intelligence, and tier 6 Strength (for a total of 32).
Scrolling down will reveal every possible combination of armors that achieve 32 tiers in stats before moving on to the combinations that provide 31 tiers, then 30 tiers, and so on. Note that DIM shows only the best possible combinations of stats, which assumes each armor is masterworked. A checkbox on the left can be unchecked if you're short on masterwork materials and can't afford to throw a bunch of Ascendant Shards into a new build.
You might find a great build just by looking through what the Loadout Optimizer presents by default, but more likely you're looking to create a build that revolves around a specific item. Most builds center around an Exotic, so it's more useful for DIM to show the best possible builds that include that specific Exotic.
To pin a specific armor piece (which will ensure all displayed builds always include that armor piece), click the "Pin Item" button on the left-hand side and then select the armor you wish pinned. For example, I recently acquired a Cuirass Of The Falling Star, and I wanted to know what builds I could make using that armor. Pinning the Cuirass now displays different possible build combinations, letting me select the build with the stat distribution I prefer.
Once you've found a build in DIM that you like, you can save that loadout by clicking the "Save Loadout" button. This will allow you to go to the Inventory screen and click on your character's banner and select a saved loadout. You can also just equip that loadout immediately from the Loadout Optimizer Screen by clicking the "Equip" button.
How To Fine-Tune Your Loadouts
But what if you wanted to create a build using a specific Exotic armor that had a specific stat distribution? DIM's Loadout Optimizer can further refine the displayed results by letting the user select which stats they wish to prioritize.
On the left toolbar, you can see a dropdown beside each stat. These dropdowns show both the lowest and highest possible stat you can achieve using that specific Exotic. If you wanted to prioritize a stat (for example, Recovery), then you can select the lowest tier of Recovery and set it to the same value as the highest tier. This will set DIM to only display builds with at least T8 Recovery.
You can use these dropdowns to set minimum and maximum tiers for DIM to display builds for. This can be especially useful for creating builds that focus on a specific thing, such as a grenade-focused build that has a very high Discipline, or a tough build with extremely high Resilience.
Toy around with DIM’s Loadout Optimizer to see what builds you can come up with. You can save as many loadouts as you want, so go nuts.
Believe it or not, DIM can do even more than the amazing things described above, but that’s why there’s an entire wiki dedicated to its use. Creating and optimizing loadouts is perhaps the most impressive thing that Destiny Item Manager can do for you since it takes out a lot of the math involved in creating builds and can let you achieve some pretty great things. So go out there, log in to DIM, and make your dream build.