Destiny 2 Xur location and items, Jan. 5-8

If you played Destiny, you may be familiar with Xur, the weekly exotic item merchant. In Destiny 2, he’s back, and he can now appear all over the map. This week, he’s north of the Giant’s Scar landing zone on Io and there’s a helpful icon on the planet map to show you where he is. You can find Xur hiding out in a cave.

Bungie/Activision

Xur’s inventory this week consists of the following:

• Merciless, fusion rifle: 29 Legendary Shards
• Young Ahamkara’s Spine, Hunter gauntlets: 23 Legendary Shards
• Mask of the Quiet One, Titan helmet: 23 Legendary Shards
• Wings of Sacred Dawn, Warlock chest: 23 Legendary Shards
• Fated Engram: 97 Legendary Shards
• Three of Coins: 31 Legendary Shards

Merciless

The Merciless fusion rifle is easily one of the best exotics in Destiny 2. Its exotic perk, Conserve Momentum, causes it to charge its fusion bursts faster for every non-lethal hit you strike. This makes killing bosses very fast. If you have any interest in Nightfalls or the Leviathan raid, Merciless is a must own.

Young Ahamkara’s Spine

Young Ahamkara’s Spine is fairly unremarkable as far as exotics go. Its main perk, Wish-Dragon Teeth, increases the length of your tripmine grenades and marks any targets struck by them. This is situational at best in PvP and useless in PvE. A situational PvP exotic doesn’t cut it when Hunters already have very good PvP catchalls like the Foetracer helmet. If you’re trying collect all of the exotics and you’re missing these, Young Ahamkara’s Spine is for you. Otherwise, you’ve no reason to waste your Legendary Shards.

Mask of the Quiet One

Mask of the Quiet One is one of the Titan’s top exotics in both PvP and PvE. Its exotic perk, Dreaded Visage, grants energy for your grenade, melee and class ability each time you take damage. Even better, kills with void abilities instantly trigger your health regeneration. While this helmet is best used with Sentinel, you’ll get the extra energy on damage regardless of your subclass. If you’re going to be taking a lot of damage (which you will be in most activities), this is a great exotic.

Wings of Sacred Dawn

Wings of Sacred Dawn is one of the weirdest looking exotics in all of Destiny 2. Its exotic perk, Tome of Sacred Dawn, allows you to hover while aiming in the air, keeping you suspended for a short period of time. The more precision hits you get like this, the longer you stay up.

Wings of Sacred Dawn is very fun to use, but it sadly requires you to equip Dawnblade. While fun, Dawnblade isn’t nearly as competitive as the Warlock’s other two subclasses at the moment. If you play Dawnblade occasionally, pick this up. If not, save your Legendary Shards.

Fated Engram

The Fated Engram is new as of the Dec. 12 update. Buying one may be expensive, but it guarantees you an exotic that you don’t have. If you find yourself drowning in Legendary Shards and missing a few key Exotics, this is a pretty great way to spend your Shards. You can only get one per account, once a week. However, some players are reporting that the Fated Engram is failing to give them new exotics. Buyer beware.

Three of Coins

This old farming buff has returned from the Destiny graveyard to help you farm exotics. Also new as of Dec. 12, Three of Coins is a four-hour buff that increases the odds of Exotic engrams dropping for you in the wild. Bungie clarified their effectiveness, and they don’t seem particularly worth the steep Legendary Shard cost at the moment.

Each of the items comes at a maximum power level of 270 — a base power of 265, plus a Legendary (purple) mod that raises the value by five. This scales to your character’s power level, so make sure you’re buying Xur exotics on your highest level character.