How to get ready for Destiny 2’s Crown of Sorrow raid

Bungie is doing something new with Destiny 2: Season of Opulence, and launching the Crown of Sorrow raid only six hours after the season’s start. For Guardians interested in having the best chance to be world first, this poses a few challenges. How can you reach Power 720 — the highest the raid will let you be, thanks to the Contest mode — in only six hours?

It’s doable, but it’ll take a lot of work.

Preparation

Bungie via Polygon

Getting to 700

Your top priority before Destiny 2: Season of Opulence should be getting any Guardians you have to 700 Power. If you have three Guardians, get all three up there to make it easier to grind up in Season of Opulence. But your first priority should be to get the character you want to raid on to 700 first.

Hoarding materials

Before a new Season, you want to gather as many different materials as you can. This is doubly true for Season of Opulence, where you’ll likely be infusing a lot day one so you can use a raid loadout you want.

Try and save as many of these items as possible:

• Ghost Fragments (up to 20)
• Ballistic Logs (up to 5)
• Planetary materials
• Simulation Seeds
• Enhancement Cores
• Weapon and armor mods
• Mod Components
• Gunsmith Materials
• Raid Banners
• Ethereal Keys (up to 5)
• Charge of Light - Tier 3
• Tincture of Queensfoil (up to 5)
• Dark Fragments
• Forge Polymer
• Glimmer (up to 100,000)

Finishing content

To grind as fast as you can, you don’t have time to go backward. There’s some content you’ll need to complete if you haven’t yet.

• Complete all of Mercury’s Adventures. Assuming Bungie sticks to the same Flashpoint rotation, Mercury is the weekly Flashpoint on June 4. You’ll need access to the Heroic Adventures.
• Unlock all three Black Armory forges for Ada’s powerfuls.
• Unlock Reckoning and Gambit Prime for Drifter’s powerfuls.
• On the off chance it carries over or unlocks a new questline, complete the allegiance questline.
• Earn Outbreak Perfected and other Exotic rewards you may want to use in the raid.

Saving time

• Grab 5,000 XP worth of Hawthorne Clan bounties. Complete them but don’t turn them in.
• Complete but don’t turn in seven Petra bounties from the Dreaming City. Leave any Lost Sector bounties uncompleted.
• Complete 50% of the Gateway Between Worlds Blind Well bounty, and save the rest for June 4.
• Complete and don’t turn in either seven Ada-1 or Drifter bounties.
• Complete the Io flashpoint but don’t claim the reward from Asher.
• Stop doing Daily Challenges on May 31 so you’ll have all four active on June 4.
• Complete any lingering Exotic quests for Exotics you don’t want, but don’t pick them up. Complete the quest and wait for June 4.
• If you haven’t completed the Invitation of the Nine quest, complete it up to the Mystery and Potential step.

Day 1

Mechanize on Twitter

Getting everything ready to go will save you time on raid day. The hardest part of June 4 will be ignoring all the cool Season of Opulence stuff to dive back into older Destiny content. Push through your desire to do something new.

Your Opulence launch day will be drastically different depending on if you have one character or three at 700.

If you have three 700 Power characters with all the above prepped, keep reading. If you only have one character ready to go, skip down to the “first priority character” section.

If you have three characters, start in reverse order from who you want to bring in the raid. For example, if you want to raid with your Titan first and then your Warlock, start with Hunter, then move to Warlock, and finish on your Titan.

Third priority character

Set a timer on your phone to limit yourself to one hour. When the hour is up, move on to the next section.

1. Load into the Tower and collect a powerful weapon frame from Ada. Work on it while you do the Dreaming City steps.
2. Complete all the activities in the Dreaming City: War for the Dreaming City bounty from Petra. (Turn in your seven prepped bounties and complete a Lost Sector bounty — don’t use all eight bounties from a previous week or it won’t be a powerful reward.) Tackle the Ascendant challenge, story mission, and blind well.
3. Complete Shattered Throne as quickly as you can. If you’re going slow, beat the first encounter and leave.
4. Turn in your Invitation of the Nine.
5. Forge your weapon frame in the Bergusia forge. Grab a second frame. Work on it during the Nightfall.
6. Complete the 100,000 point Nightfall.
7. Complete Spider’s powerful bounty.
8. Turn in prepared bounties for your Clan reward, Ikora reward, and pick up the completed Flashpoint. Grab the reward from your Allegiance quest.
9. Forge your second weapon frame for a powerful weapon and armor piece from Ada.
10. Turn in any Exotic quests you’ve been saving.
11. Complete any weeklies until time is up. Start with weekly Reckoning first.

Second priority character

Set a timer on your phone to limit yourself to one hour. When the hour is up, move on to the next section.

1. Complete the weekly Reckoning challenge.
2. Load into the Tower and collect a weapon frame from Ada. Work on it while you do the Dreaming City steps.
3. Complete all the activities in the Dreaming City: War for the Dreaming City bounty from Petra (turn in your seven prepped bounties and complete a Lost Sector bounty — don’t use all eight bounties from a previous week or it won’t be a powerful reward), Ascendant challenge, story mission, blind well.
4. Complete Shattered Throne as quickly as you can. If you’re going slow, beat the first encounter and leave.
5. Turn in your Invitation of the Nine.
6. Forge your weapon frame in the Bergusia forge. Grab a second frame. Work on it during the Nightfall.
7. Complete the 100,000 point Nightfall.
8. Complete Spider’s powerful bounty.
9. Turn in prepared bounties for Clan reward, Ikora reward, and pick up the completed Flashpoint. Grab the reward from your Allegiance quest.
10. Forge your second weapon frame for a powerful weapon and armor piece from Ada.
11. Turn in any Exotic quests you’ve been saving.
12. Complete any dailies and weeklies until time is up.

First priority character (the one you plan on raiding with)

Set a timer on your phone for four hours (six if this is your only character). When the timer is up, Bungie will launch Crown of Sorrow. Use this time to do real life stuff before the raid opens (food, bathroom, nap, etc.).

1. Pick up powerful bounties: two Gambit powerfuls, Reaper Head bounty, a weapon frame from Ada.
2. Complete the Power Surge questline for Banshee-44 to unlock Season of Opulence. Grab any bounties Banshee-44 might offer.
3. Complete weekly Reckoning Challenge.
4. Play Gambit Prime until you complete Gambit powerful bounties and the Reaper helmet bounty.
5. Complete all the activities in the Dreaming City: War for the Dreaming City bounty from Petra (turn in your seven prepped bounties and complete a Lost Sector bounty, but don’t use all eight bounties from a previous week or it won’t be a powerful reward), Ascendant challenge, story mission, blind well.
6. Complete Shattered Throne as quickly as you can.
7. Turn in your Invitation of the Nine.
8. Forge your weapon frame in the Bergusia forge. Grab the same weapon frame a second time so you can get the armor from Ada before the weapon. Work on it during the Nightfall.
9. Complete the Nightfall, then do a 100,000 point Nightfall run.
10. Complete Spider’s powerful bounty.
11. Turn in prepared bounties for Clan reward, Ikora reward, and pick up the completed Flashpoint. Grab the reward from your Allegiance quest.
12. Forge your non-powerful weapon frame. Grab a new, powerful weapon frame. Work on it during daily and weekly Challenges.
13. Complete all daily and weekly Challenges.
14. Forge your third weapon frame for a powerful weapon.
15. Turn in any Exotic quests you’ve been saving.

Don’t forget to take a break before the raid. Even if it’s only five minutes, stand up and walk away from Discord and your console or PC.

With all these steps, you should have as much powerful gear as six hours can get you. Keep in mind that on day one, you’ll be under Contest rules. The first encounter is 700, so you won’t see any of your grind benefit you until later in the raid when the Contest cap lifts to 720.

Special thanks to Reddit user JpDeathBlade for their single character guide, Destiny content creator and world first raider Sweatcicle for their multiple character guide, and software developer Kyle Craig for his detailed power leveling data over last season. You can check out Craig’s data listing to get an idea of how much power you’ll get from each activity.