Since it was implemented in The Witch Queen, weapon shaping (or, crafting) has been an essential part of Destiny 2’s Loot Chase, and essential to how you receive your weapons. But, for such a core part of the modern Destiny experience, it’s been an incredibly controversial feature throughout the community.
For a new player, though, it can be difficult to keep up with why so many people are opinionated on crafting, especially when, with the last two seasons having non-craftable weapons, it’s harder for new players to know that crafting even exists — unless you’ve specifically played The Witch Queen, crafting is pretty poorly explained throughout the game wholly.
Now Bungie have put crafting on the backburner, now’s a great time to examine the Weapon Crafting system, its flaws, and why Bungie have essentially turned away from it. In this article, we’ll introduce the crafting system, and how you can take advantage of it, as well as why Bungie are slowly turning away from it.
What is Weapon Crafting?
Weapon shaping, also known as crafting, is a system that Bungie introduced in The Witch Queen, which allows players to craft the specific rolls they want. To do this, they’d need to collect five ‘Deepsight Patterns’ (or, red borders) from the weapon they wanted to craft, which would then allow them to craft that weapon.
Ultimately, this is so you don’t have to keep rolls in your vault, and you don’t have to grind for hours for the exact roll that you want. Seasonal craftable weapons were generally the default up until Episode: Revenant, where seasonal weapon crafting was axed by Bungie to instead incentivise players to earn weapons through activities.
Generally speaking, weapons from Expansions and Raids have been craftable on release, and Seasonal weapons were craftable up until Episode: Revenant. Dungeon weapons have never been craftable, though, and neither have weapons from Trials of Osiris and Iron Banner.
Whether the weapons from The Edge of Fate and its new raid will be craftable is yet to be seen, but one thing’s for certain — Bungie seems to be determined to move away from crafting over the long term.
How to Craft Weapons
First of all, there are a few prerequisites to be able to craft weapons:
- You must own The Witch Queen expansion.
- You must have played The Witch Queen past the Crafting tutorial at the start of its campaign.
The tutorial is great for the basics, but doesn’t go over a lot of the important ways that you can truly take advantage of the benefits of crafting, since a lot of the best crafting features have been implemented since the release of The Witch Queen.
First of all, head over to The Enclave on Savathun’s Throne World, and head on down to the Relic. This is your ‘Crafting Bench’, and will be where you shape all of your weapons.
If you find that you can’t access the Relic due to it being ‘Inactive’, it generally means that you haven’t progressed The Witch Queen’s campaign past the tutorial on that character. You can either change to a character that has one, or if you don’t want to or don’t have one, continue the story until it becomes active.
Interact with the Relic, and click ‘Shape’ to make a weapon.
Find the weapon you’d like to shape and click on it. You can only shape weapons that you have a completed pattern for (meaning that you’ve collected five ‘red borders’ for that weapon).
Enter the perks that you’d like, and then click on the weapon at the end to shape it. Bear in mind that your base weapon will probably not have the perks you want, and so you’ll need to level it up to unlock the specific perk you’d like. To unlock all perks, you generally want to get to level 10.
There are also enhanced perks, which unlock after the base perks. They have enhanced features, making them stronger than the base perk. To unlock all enhanced perks on a weapon, you’ll generally want to level your gun up to level 17. It can be a pain to farm kills to level up, though, so you can spend Enhancement Cores and Glimmer to increase your weapon level as desired.
Once your weapon is the desired level, head back to the Relic and click reshape. Make sure your weapon is in your character’s inventory and not equipped, and click on it. You’ll be able to spend currency to upgrade your perks and masterwork however you want.
When you’re finished, make sure to check you’ve selected everything right, as you’ll have to spend more to reshape it again. So, check your barrel, magazine, masterwork, and perks to save yourself the materials and currency in the long run.
Shape the weapon when you’re ready, and you’ll finally have the weapon you desire to use to your heart’s content.
How to Obtain Deepsight Patterns
‘Deepsight Pattern Progress’ (or red borders) are necessary to be able to craft the weapon you want, but once you have five, you’re able to craft as many weapons as you can afford in Glimmer (and other currencies). Generally speaking, red border weapons will drop randomly throughout your time playing Destiny, but there are ways to guarantee them.
Obtaining red borders differs based on the weapon that you’re looking to get. Once you’ve done the correct prerequisites, the vendor for the specified weapon will give away one red border per week (including raid red borders), so make sure to grab your ‘free’ red border from every vendor that you have one with every week.
For raids, there will be a ‘red border challenge’ or quest to ensure your free pattern progress. Some raids will have a puzzle, like Salvation's Edge, whereas other raids, like Vault of Glass and Garden of Salvation, simply require a quest from Suraya Hawthorne.
If you don’t want to farm for Red Borders, the season pass has ‘Deepsight Harmonizers’ — you can use these to extract a pattern from a non-Deepsight weapon (meaning it can only be used once per non-Red Border weapon), letting you get pattern progress far more easily. However, using these on Raid weapons will require spending Spoils of Conquest, and they can’t be used on Raid weapons bought from the ‘end chest’ using Spoils of Conquest.
Why is Weapon Crafting So Controversial?
Crafting has been a controversial topic for a long time. There are generally two schools of thought when it comes down to it:
- “Crafting is good because it makes getting weapons easier and less grindy.”
- “Crafting is bad because it removes the loot grind and makes getting weapons easier.”
Generally speaking, both perspectives are valid. It’s a pain to have to farm for a weapon roll, and, especially if you’re busy, it may just be impossible. However, on the other side of the coin, Crafting has generally made engaging with content and activities far less important. For example, during Episode: Echoes, I got all of the red borders and just stopped playing the seasonal content, and lots of people did the same thing.
Bungie concur with this. They removed seasonal weapon crafting during Episode: Revenant, and the introduction of weapon tiers in The Edge of Fate makes it look more and more likely that weapon crafting won’t be returning. Which is great for the loot grind, but makes it more difficult to play Destiny without constantly feeling like you’re missing something.
One of the most contentious topics in Destiny is Vault Space, in that there’s not enough space to hoard the rolls you need in your vault with the amount of content that’s dropping. Crafting alleviates this, as you don’t need to store rolls you’re not using in your vault, meaning that if a roll does become good in the future, you can just craft it rather than having to farm for it again.
This happened to me recently with the Word of Crota buff from the Destabilising Rounds rework. I don’t opt for red borders personally, and prefer Adept weapons, so I had to farm for a new Word of Crota with a Destabilising Rounds roll. I don’t mind doing this, but doing this for every weapon might be out of the question for players who can’t dedicate the time to the game.
However, the new Garden of Salvation and Vault of Glass weapon reworks are craftable, and Bungie has said that Vault Space is being addressed in Episode Renegades, so we’ll have to just wait and see what their choice is.
Closing Time
Weapon Crafting is a contentious topic that has had a lot of arguments for and against, but ultimately, we’ll have to wait and see what Bungie decides the best steps forward are. After all, we don’t have much information on The Edge of Fate, and so they could sway either way in the long term.
Hopefully, this guide helped introduce you to crafting, so you can enjoy it before it potentially becomes less important as time goes on. If you’re looking for the best weapons, keep an eye out for our tier lists over the coming weeks, so you know exactly what to grind for.
In any case, thank you for your time, and see you in the stars.
