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Destiny 2: The Witch Queen allows Guardians to craft their own weapons for the first time in franchise history. While Menagerie and other seasonal activities have let players force certain weapons to spawn, The Witch Queen's weapon crafting system allows for a level of control never before seen in Destiny 2.

Related: Destiny 2: Void 3.0 Aspects And Fragments Guide

Players can make weapons with the exact barrels, magazine perks, main traits, and even the Masterwork they wish. Crafted weapons have also introduced enhanced perks, Weapon Patterns, and a new resource economy that will take some getting used to. For those looking to craft their own god rolls to slay Savathun's Lucent Brood, here is a complete guide to weapon crafting in Destiny 2.

Updated March 1, 2023, by Charles Burgar: Weapon crafting saw some major economy changes with the launch of Lightfall, removing Resonance Elements from the game entirely while making pattern extraction a breeze. We've updated this guide to reflect the current state of weapon crafting, including economy changes and sources of certain endgame crafting materials.

What Is Weapon Crafting?

Destiny 2 Weapon Crafting Perks

Weapon crafting is a system introduced in The Witch Queen expansion that allows you to create weapons with the exact perks you want. Instead of relying on the RNG nature of weapon drops, you can instead earn materials and use various weapons to craft your own god roll. Just about every aspect of your gun can be tweaked with this system, right down to your Masterwork.

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How To Unlock Weapon Crafting

Destiny 2 The Relic Weapon Crafting Quest

Upon completing the first mission of The Witch Queen campaign, you'll unlock the Deep Sight ability and access to the Enclave, a secluded area on Mars that acts as a weapon forge for Guardians. An introductory quest named "The Relic" will guide you through the very basics of weapons crafting and unlock all the Enclave's features. You must unlock Weapon Patterns, Destiny 2's take on crafting blueprints, before you can start forging your own gear.

The missions required to access the Enclave are free to all players. You do not need to own The Witch Queen expansion to access weapon crafting.

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Unlocking Weapon Patterns

Destiny 2 Weapon Pattern Unlock Menu

Before you can craft any weapon, you're going to need a Pattern. Patterns are obtained through certain questlines, raids, seasonal content, and expansion-related activities. By default, you'll have access to a Legendary Glaive Pattern, allowing you to experiment with this new weapon type.

You might have a Pattern for your weapon, but what good is a weapon without perks? Crafting a weapon requires Resonance Element harvested from Deepsight Resonance (red box) weapons. These weapons have a red border around their UI icon to denote their unique status. Extracting the gun's crafting components is as easy as clicking a button.

Inspect any red border weapon and view the "Deepsight Resonance" option. Click it to extract the weapon's crafting blueprint while retaining the gun itself. If you don't care for the roll you got, dismantling red border weapons will also give pattern progress. You no longer need to use weapons to earn crafting materials or crafting patterns. If you get a red border, you can immediately extract its crafting pattern.

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Crafting Your Weapon

Destiny 2 Weapon Crafting Shape and Reshape

You now have the basic components for making a weapon. Head to Mars' Enclave to start the crafting process. Interacting with the central device will display a UI with two options:

  1. Shape: Craft a new weapon using the Patterns, Deepsight Resonance, and other materials you've gathered.
  2. Reshape: Change the perks on a pre-existing weapon you've crafted.

Reshaping is much simpler than creating a new weapon, so let's talk about making weapons first.

Shaping A Weapon

Destiny 2 Weapon Crafting Shape and Reshape

You'll be asked to select a Weapon Pattern before proceeding. This is just selecting the weapon you want to make, like a certain SMG model or Rocket Launcher. If you don't have the specific Pattern for a weapon you wish to craft, you'll need to unlock it. You can find the unlock requirements for each Weapon Pattern on the Triumphs page.

You'll now need to select the perks on your weapon. You have quite a few options:

Not all options will be unlocked when you start the weapon crafting process. To unlock additional perk options, you must increase your weapon level (explained in a later section).

Intrinsic Trait

Behaves similarly to a Masterwork bonus. Weapons at level 20+ gain Adept Masterworks.

Barrel

Grants a bump to your weapon's core stats (stability, handling, range, and reload speed).

Magazine

Alters magazine capacity, reload speed, range, and other base stats.

Trait #1

One of your weapon's main perks (Rapid Hit, Outlaw, et cetera).

Trait #2

One of your weapon's main perks (Rampage, Kill Clip, et cetera).

Memento

Adds a unique shader, tracker, and title to your weapon. These are consumed once the weapon is forged or reshaped.

Most of these options will cost Glimmer, Legendary Shards, and Enhancement Cores. Crafting Enhanced Traits (explained later) will cost Enhancement Cores and Ascendant Alloys as well. If you need to stockpile on any of these resources, consult the following guides:

Reshaping

Destiny-2-Weapon-Crafting-Reshape-UI-2

You will not be refunded materials for reforging a weapon. Choose your perks carefully, especially enhanced traits.

At any time, you can return to the Enclave to reforge the perks on your crafted weapon. This will cost crafting resources for each reshape. You can reforge a crafted weapon as much as you'd like, but you cannot reforge weapons found in the wild. Certain perks can only be applied to your weapons through the reshaping process, so come back to the Enclave whenever you've leveled your weapon to see what new options are available to you.

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How To Obtain Crafting Components

Crafting Destiny 2 -via Bungie

All craftable weapons in Destiny 2 require a few core materials:

Resource

Drop Source

Carry Limit

Enhancement Cores

Complete endgame activities, dismantle Masterwork-quality gear

999 per stack

Enhancement Prisms

Complete endgame activities.

50

Resonant Alloy

Dismantle non-raid weapons

80

Harmonic Alloy

Dismantle raid weapons

80

Most weapons require Enhancement Cores and Resonant Alloy to craft. Raid weapons use Harmonic Alloy instead of Resonant Alloy, obtained by dismantling gear from any raid. You'll find an abundance of Resonant Alloy as you play Destiny 2 and dismantle items. As for Enhancement Cores and Prisms, you can't go wrong with Nightfalls. Easier Nightfalls drop Enhancement Cores while tougher variants drop Prisms. If you're especially low on Cores and can handle endgame activities, run Master or GM Nightfalls to earn Prisms, then infuse those Prisms into fodder armor pieces. DIsmantle them to gain a large sum of Enhancement Cores. We cover more of these tips in our Enhancement Core and Enhancement Prism guides.

Resonant Alloy is earned by dismantling any non-raid weapon, craftable or not. You should hit the cap of 80 in a few play sessions. If you really need this resource, clean out your Vault. Harmonic Alloys are rarer but follow a similar trend to Resonant Alloys. Dismantle any raid gear you get—this can be from any raid, not just the current Pinnacle raid—to increase your Harmonic Alloy reserves. So long as you regularly raid, you shouldn't have an issue making the occasional raid weapon.

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Increasing Weapon Level

Destiny 2 The Enigma Crafted Glaive

Crafted weapons in Destiny 2 have a weapon level attached to them, separate from the item's Power Level. Defeating enemies and completing objectives with that weapon will grant XP towards its next level. When the weapon levels up, additional crafting options become available for use at the Enclave through the reshaping process. Weapons don't seem to have a level cap, although you unlock all weapon crafting options at around level 20. All Memento vanity options are unlocked at weapon level 30.

Fast Weapon Level Farm

Kill farms are an excellent way to quickly level your weapons. Last Wish's Shuro Chi encounter and Grasp of Avarice's opening encounter have plentiful fodder enemies you can kill to level your weapons quickly. Both encounters can be farmed solo. Objective completions also give a large chunk of XP, so any activities that have nested objectives (like campaign missions) should also be a great XP farm for crafted weapons.

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Enhanced Perks

Destiny 2 Weapon Crafting Enhanced Vorpal Weapon

Unique to crafted weapons, players can create enhanced versions of Destiny 2's iconic perks to give them an edge over their non-enhanced counterparts. Just about every main trait available in weapon crafting can be enhanced. Enhanced perks unlock rather late in a weapon's leveling progression, and each enhanced perk requires an Ascendant Alloy to craft, a new currency type available for purchase from Master Rahool and Banshee-44. You can also earn Ascendant Alloys from weekly campaign missions and the Throne World's Wellspring activity.

Enhanced Perk Bonuses

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Crafting Tips

Destiny 2 Witch Queen Weapon Crafting Table
  • While leveling, equip any Deepsight weapons you get. Their crafting resources will prove useful when you start to use this system.
  • If you haven't cleaned out your Vault yet, do so. Dismantled Legendary weapons grant crafting resources and Gunsmith reputation.
  • View the Triumphs tab to learn the acquisition method for each Weapon Pattern.
  • You can obtain Ascendant Alloys from the current Legendary campaign (weekly playlist) and The Wellspring activity. Clear those first before purchasing any from Rahool or Banshee.
  • Check out light.gg to look at potential perk combinations for all craftable weapons.

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Next: Destiny 2: Ability Cooldowns And Super Tiers Explained