Destiny 2 Xur location and items, Feb. 16-19

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 on the EDZ to the north of the the Winding Cove landing zone, and there’s a helpful icon on the planet map to show you where he is. You can find Xur hanging by the crashed Ketch.

Bungie/Activision

Xur’s inventory this week consists of the following:

• Merciless, Exotic fusion rifle: 29 Legendary Shards
• Lucky Pants, Hunter pants: 23 Legendary Shards
• ACD/0 Feedback Gauntlets, Titan gauntlet: 23 Legendary Shards
• Starfire Protocol, Warlock gauntlets: 23 Legendary Shards
• Fated Engram: 97 Legendary Shards
• Three of Coins: 31 Legendary Shards

Each of the items comes at a maximum power level of 305 — a base power of 300, 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.

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.

Lucky Pants

Lucky Pants are fairly worthless in most situations. Their exotic perk, Illegally Modded Holster, allows you to ready hand cannons very quickly as well as increase accuracy for your first shot. If you use hand cannons in both your energy and kinetic slots, these pants are for you. Otherwise, skip Lucky Pants.

ACD/0 Feedback Fence

The Titan exotics are the ACD/0 Feedback Fence. These gauntlets have the exotic perk Fury Conductors, which causes melee kills to build up energy. When you get hit with a melee attack, you release that energy in an explosion. While the Feedback Fences look very cool, their primary perk is fairly unimpressive. If you’re looking to expand your armory and collect all the exotics, grab these. If you don’t want to waste shards, these Titan gauntlets aren’t for you.

Starfire Protocol

Starfire Protocol will rarely be a worthwhile exotic. Its perk is Fusion Harness, which grants you an extra charge of fusion grenades and causes fusion grenade kills to grant you Rift energy. The fusion grenades are fairly subpar in Destiny 2, which makes this perk mostly useless. It also requires you to use Dawnblade, which is the least useful of the Warlock specs. If you already love being a Dawnblade and using fusion grenades, then you should absolutely pick this up. If you don’t often use either, skip it.

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 in the wild. Bungie clarified their effectiveness, and they don’t seem particularly worth the steep Legendary Shard cost at the moment.