Destiny 2 Xur location and items, Feb. 23-26

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 in the Tower’s hangar, and there’s a helpful icon on the planet map to show you where he is. You can find Xur behind Dead Orbit on the stairs.

Bungie/Activision

Xur’s inventory this week consists of the following:

• Crimson, Exotic hand cannon: 29 Legendary Shards
• Graviton Forfeit, Hunter helmet: 23 Legendary Shards
• Helm of Saint-14, Titan helmet: 23 Legendary Shards
• Vesper of Radius, Warlock chest: 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.

Crimson

The Crimson hand cannon arrived in Destiny 2 with the Curse of Osiris downloadable content. However, Destiny players may recognize it as an offshoot of the fan favorite weapon Red Death. Its first exotic perk is Banned Weapon, which causes it to fire in three-round bursts. Its secondary perk. Cruel Remedy, causes Crimson kills to heal the player. If they’re precision kills, the magazine is instantly refilled.

Be warned: Crimson currently has the same amount of reserve ammunition as a normal hand cannon. However, it fires three bullets per shot. This effectively means that you’ll be running out of ammo with Crimson constantly.

Crimson is an awesome hand cannon, capable of some real destruction in the right hands. This is one of those weapons that players will either love or hate, depending on their preferences. If you enjoyed Red Death in Destiny or just love pulse rifles (which also fire in bursts), this is an awesome weapon. If none of that sounds appealing to you, you can probably skip it.

Graviton forfeit

The Graviton Forfeit is a Hunter helmet from Curse of Osiris. While it looks like a returning exotic from Destiny, its exotic perk, Vanishing Shadow, is completely different in Destiny 2. This perk increases the length of your invisibility skills and causes your melee ability to recharge quickly while you’re invisible.

This helmet has a lot of potential for Trials of Osiris players, but with the understanding that you have to play Nightstalker to take advantage of it. While Gunslinger is the more powerful PvP spec, if you enjoy playing Nightstalker, then this is a great helmet for you.

Helm of Saint-14

Another returning Destiny exotic, the Helm of Saint-14 is rarely useful in Destiny 2. Its exotic perk, Starless Night, causes your Ward of Dawn to blind enemies who walk inside it. Guarding with Sentinel Shield will provide the same result.

Unfortunately, there are few times where you want to drop Ward of Dawn rather than use your full Sentinel Shield. When using the block, this perk doesn’t activate easily enough to be useful. If you like the way it looks, pick it up for some tower fashion. But if you want a functional Titan helmet, look elsewhere.

Vesper of Radius

The Vesper of Radius is a new Warlock chest piece from Curse of Osiris. Its exotic perk, Planetary Torrent, causes a shockwave to explode out from you when you place your Rift. Your Rift also recharges far faster when you’re surrounded by enemies.

All of this sounds pretty cool, but unfortunately Vesper of Radius is overshadowed by so many other Warlock exotics that it’s very difficult to see a situation where Vesper of Radius is your best chest piece. Unless you’re a collector, 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.