Destiny 2 guide: New Infusion and Masterwork currencies

Destiny 2: Shadowkeep and New Light mark a new era of Destiny. Some of the old systems, like Masterworks and Infusion, require new currencies that aren’t easy to find, so you need to be precious with them.

Here’s how to Masterwork your armor and infuse your gear with Upgrade Modules, Enhancement Prisms, and Ascendant Shards.

Infusion and Upgrade Modules

Infusing is still the process of empowering a weaker gun with the power of another. If you have a 750 Sunshot and a 900 Energy shotgun, you could feed that shotgun to your Sunshot. You’ll lose the shotgun, but your Sunshot will end at 900 Power.

To infuse items in Destiny 2: Shadowkeep and New Light, you need a new material: Upgrade Modules. They’re the only item you need to infuse, but that doesn’t mean you should use them without pause. These things are rare, and as of this writing, we haven’t seen any drop in the wild that weren’t from quests or seasonal rank ups.

You can purchase Upgrade Modules from Banshee-44, the Gunsmith in the Tower. They’re expensive, but he has a rotating offering of currencies he’ll accept every day. They all follow the same formula of one Enhancement Core, 5,000 Glimmer, 10 Legendary Shards, and 25 of a specific planetary material, like Helium Filaments.

The only time you don’t need an Upgrade Module for is when you’re infusing the same gun into itself — a high power Sunshot into a low power one, for example. That kind of transaction only costs Glimmer.

Masterworks, Enhanced Prisms, and Ascendant Shards

In Destiny 2, you can create Masterwork versions of weapons and armor.

Masterworking weapons is simple, pretty cheap, and has obvious benefits. You can upgrade a special Masterwork stat all the way to 10, and Masterworked weapons drop Orbs of Light on multi-kills. Simple enough.

Masterworking armor is much more expensive, but potentially just as useful. Each piece of armor only has so many Energy slots when it starts, and you’ll need to upgrade your armor to earn more Energy and place more expensive mods. This process is also called Masterworking, and the more Energy you add, the more expensive it’ll get.

From levels 1-7, you’ll only need items like Glimmer, Enhancement Cores, or Legendary Shards. But to get from seven to eight, you need Enhancement Prisms. These are like super Enhancement Cores, and they’re tough to get.

You’ll occasionally get Enhancement Prisms for quests or seasonal ranks, but we haven’t seen any drop in the wild yet. Like Upgrade Modules, you can also buy them from Banshee-44. They cost 10 Enhancement Cores, 25 of a specific planetary material depending on the day, and 10,000 Glimmer.

There’s one more currency we haven’t touched on yet, partially because we’ve never seen it: Ascendant Shards. Their item description at Banshee-44 says that they’re for Masterworking, and we’re going to bet you’ll need one for the final step of Masterworking your gear — the coveted 10 power armor.

These presumably drop from very difficult activities, but you can also buy them from Banshee-44. They cost 10 Enhancement Prisms, 100 of a specific planetary material depending on the day, and 50,000 Glimmer.

Until you’re absolutely sure of the gear you want to use, we recommend not spending any of these currencies.