Have you ever thought to yourself that Destiny 2 is so great, so mind-blastingly awesome, that you wish you could just stick your feet straight into it? If so, I have some oddly specific but still very good news for you: Soon, you'll be able to, symbolically at least, do just that.

Boots! Official actual footwear courtesy of a partnership between Bungie and Palladium, which apparently got its start making airplane tires in the 1920s before moving into footwear after the war. (The company's history also gets into the French Foreign Legion and Duran Duran, among a great many other things. It's really quite a journey.) There's no word on pricing at this point, but similar-looking boots on the Palladium website generally start at around $100 at regular price. Having those logos plastered on this pair will no doubt push that price a little higher, though.

I agree with my esteemed colleague at GamesRadar that it's a fair price for a decent pair of boots, but take some issue with the suggestion that they "look nice." I mean, they're grey. And it not even an interesting kind of grey, like urban camouflage or something that looks like it fell off a Vex's ass; it's just dull, flat, blah grey. Where are the glowy bits? The neon accents? The gaudy, random embellishments that clash blindingly with everything you own, but the boots are just so damn comfortable that you're compelled to wear them anyway?

Despite the self-evident lack of Destiny-like flair, the reaction to the footwear so far seems quite positive—certainly better than the $276 Fallout 76 jacket, at least. When the time comes, the boots will be available for purchase from the Bungie Store.

Thank you, 2009 Toyota Yaris, for saving my ass. It was a Vex Invasion on the moon and they were getting ready to teleport. A Minotaur took me out from behind and the Gatelord wasn't getting the DPS it deserved with me outta the fray. You picked me up and dabbed. I pet a holographic chicken in thanks. Together, we finished the Gatelord, a fairly routine event in Season of the Undying made special by a guardian with a dumb name. 

When Destiny 2 launched on Battle.net, player names were tied to the account names. I was MrDavenport, probably the most dad I've ever been, a tag I chose only because my usuals were taken, not because I thought it'd follow me around on a billboard chained to my guardian's back. There was no changing it, either. I used up my one free username change in a pivot away from my embarrassing college-era handle.

But Destiny 2 screen names have since been liberated in the transition to Steam. Steam allows users to change their screen name at will, so I've adopted my true name, Games Havingport. Other players are getting way more creative and absurd with theirs. Some named their guardians after memes, others use puns or bizarre imagery to get a laugh, and some don't make any sense at all, which work as their own sort of left-field joke. 

Dumb names are so abundant that a new Twitter account, @destiny2names, sprouted up just to serve as a dumb name resource, retweeting images of all the wild, funny guardian handles players are rolling with. I've gathered a few of my favorites from the account below since most of my own have been lost to time. Lesson learned. Don't be like me: Keep the screen capture software rolling for a chance to submit your own, just be sure to check the submission guidelines first. 

My favorite guardian naming trend: objects. I've seen IKEA furniture, cars, printer models, something that sounds like the name of a boat. The more specific and mundane, the better.  

With the right context, the action feed make magic out of some usernames.

More than a joke, some screen names make guardian cosplay even more apparent. Here we have a space wizard dressed as a space truck man. 

Keep those computers locked. If I didn't work from home, you know I'd be messing with Tim's guardian name on the daily.  

Custom guardian names can be little stories, too. Opportunities to plant a beautiful image in the mind of passersby.  

I liked this one because Destiny 2 could also be described as a thing intended to make me happy that often makes me very sad. 

Imagining an emojis only clan and I'm like :D about it.  

OPTIONS. 

Some clever data sniffers found out how to get Destiny symbols into their usernames by digging through the game files to find the Destiny font package, which includes a ton of symbols for guns, subclasses, and all sorts of special icons like, uh, OPTIONS. 

A nice stranger compiled all the symbols into a doc and shared it online, so if you want some flair of your own, just copy symbols from this page into your Steam username field. They'll look like empty boxes in Steam, but load into Destiny 2 and your work will come to fruition. Behold, my latest:

Occasionally I steel myself to look at the time I've sunk into Destiny 2 (note: not wasted) and—deep breath—before last week's migration from Battlenet to Steam it stood at over 2,500 hours. To have stuck around that long, I obviously think the game's pretty special. For me it's the combo of sublime-feeling weaponry and Destiny's majestic-but-ruined art direction. It's essentially the game that, as a kid who was in love with the imagery from a book called Spacewreck: Ghostships and Derelicts of Space, I always dreamed of playing. 

But there's no way I would have stuck around this long without the support system of the various clans I've been a part of. It's a story that will be familiar to anyone who's played more traditional MMOs, but I've met people though Destiny 2 that I've had incredible experiences with. Players who helped me finish my first raids, carried me though Iron Banner grinds with brutal gallows humour, and shared my excitement at each new exotic unlocked.

I want to pay that forward, and so we've decided to try something new here on PC Gamer. To celebrate the arrival of Shadowkeep—and with it New Light, the newly free-to-play component of Destiny 2—we're partnering with Bungie to create the Official PC Gamer Destiny 2 Clan. Launching fully on Tuesday with the weekly reset, the clan's goal is to bring together both veteran and new Guardians. Sign up is open now to everyone via the links below.

Clan sign-up on Bungie.net

Make sure you're logged in to Steam and then follow the link above to take you to our second clan. Our first is now oversubscribed, but you can still find it here.

PC Gamer Destiny 2 Clan Discord 

Join here and start chatting with fellow Guardians. Clan members will be expected to abide by the usual PC Gamer community guidelines. 

The100.io

We also recommend making an account on this third-party site, as we'll be using it to schedule game session for you to join.

For the first month the clan will be led by our own hand-picked Vanguards—C_Stewie  and ImAPsychoLlama, each of whom have years of experience with the game. They'll be in Discord every day, helping schedule games, answering questions, and playing with clan members.

Remember this isn't a carry service. We want to create a community where players are working together to knock out the exotic quest for Deathbringer or grinding to craft a god roll Tranquility sniper rifle. We'll also be publishing additional Destiny 2 content throughout October to provide tips, advice, deep dives on the lore, and a ton of other stuff. 

Once the launch period is over, our plan is to hand the keys to the community, to players who've proved they're ready to step up. If the initial clan is oversubscribed, we'll branch off into some sub-clans to ensure as many people can be part of it as possible. And don't forget, there are significant benefits to playing in a large clan, like the weekly powerful engrams you'll receive from Hawthorne as your compadres complete activities together. Speaking of which, don't forget to register for a free engram from the Bungie website.

Sign up, hop on, and say hi to a bunch of potential new fireteam members. 

I'll see you on the Moon.

It isn't obvious where to start with the Destiny 2 Eyes on the Moon quest, the mission you need to tick off in order to get stuck in with the new Vex Offensive game mode. When you first log into the game after the new Shadowkeep activity comes available, you'll see that you won't be able to access it straight away, even if you've purchased the expansion and the Destiny 2 season pass for Season of the Undying bundled with it.

In your way is the Destiny 2 Eyes on the Moon quest, without much guidance in terms of how to tackle it. You'll want to do that, too: it is a six-player co-op activity which pits you and your fellow Guardians against the new, foliage-covered Vex, and it's an easy way of ticking off one of the Divinity exotic quest steps.

So, with only Eyes on the Moon in your way between you and a satisfying Vex clash, I'm going to take you through how to start it and the steps you hurdles you need to surmount before getting in on the action.

How to complete the Destiny 2 Eyes on the Moon quest

Ok, let's get started. You can start Eyes on the Moon by paying Ikora a visit at the Tower. As she hands you the Vex Invasion Emergent Protocol to kick start this mini-mission, you'll then need to kill 100 Vex enemies on the Moon, plus three Gate Lords.

As you may have found in your dalliances on Earth's desolate satellite, the Hive are not the only baddies you can battle. The cybernetic Vex can also be found through the new Public Event type, Vex Invasions. Look for the small Vex logos on your map; you won't find them here all the time—and there's nothing in the shape of a Vex invasion timer to give you an idea of how long you must wait—but they'll turn up eventually.

You may also find pockets of Vex in different places, but completing the mission through the new Public Event type is the most efficient means of doing so. This is not only because this is where Gate Lords will appear, but Vex will keep spawning as long as these special bosses are alive, so you can just rinse and repeat until you've taken out enough robotic targets.

Then, once you've killed 100 Vex and three of the Gate Lord chums return to Eris in the Moon's Sanctuary area to unlock Vex Offensive. And that's all there is to it, and I wish you some happy Vex bashing.

My Hunter Guardian has been frozen in time for nearly two years, but with the arrival of Destiny 2: New Light I've finally taken him out of stasis. The game has moved on without us, however, changing over the course of four expansions, leaving me with no clue how to pick up where I left things. It offers up a feast, including three campaigns, for free, but it does an atrocious job introducing new or lapsed players to any of it. 

Destiny 2 has always been obtuse, but now it dumps new players in the Tower, after a brief and very basic tutorial, and saddles them with a series of checklists that are largely devoid of context. You're told to go do some strikes or go to any planet you want and do some activities—it's like a sample menu—but there are no attempts made to bring you up to speed with the story or even tell you who your allies or enemies are.

Originally the Red War campaign would have provided context, introducing characters and locations before you embark on the side adventures or strikes, but now that's considered a legacy campaign, along with the DLC that followed, essentially consigned to the past. So instead of immediately being led through the beginning of Destiny 2, you're just given this big, open solar system to play around in as you work towards your true goal: becoming more powerful.

You can still play all the previous campaigns, but that's not mentioned in what passes for the new player introduction. They offer little in the way of rewards and don't seem to be as good a use of your time as doing the open-world events, PvP, strikes or raids, but if you're remotely interested in just what the heck is going on in this game you're about to sink a lot of time into, they're invaluable. 

It does feel like showing up to a party late, and there's no going back. You start at the old level cap, so there's no early game now, only the relentless power grind. Your quest isn't to stop some big alien villain, it's to get to level 800, then 900 and so on. Of course, that grind largely involves playing with countless fun toys while enjoying some of the best shooting you'll find, but I miss the illusion that there's more to it.

Despite New Light being framed as this great way to get into Destiny 2, it feels much more tailored for experienced players who want to start a new character. For alts, Destiny 2 is brilliant. There's almost nothing that's off-limits, so you can dip into whatever part of the game you want—including Shadowkeep, if you've bought it. It's like Blizzard giving you a free boost to 110 for every single character in World of Warcraft. 

Similarly, if the real draw for you is the multiplayer, New Light means you don't need to do much catching up to play with more experienced mates. The playing field has been levelled, somewhat, with everyone working towards similar objectives. Sure, you won't be able to make much sense of it, but maybe your friends can give you some commentary.

There are other things you miss out on by getting kicked straight to the end, though. Instead of unlocking new abilities for your Guardian over time, learning how to use them before you get something new to experiment with, you get your whole kit straight away, with no real introduction to how any of your powers work. When Bungie cut out this progression system, it also cut out one of the fundamental ways people learn how to play the game. 

After a few days (and long nights), I've finally found my footing again and embarked on my personal mission of just finding cool looking outfits for my Hunter, and I confess I'm coming around to Destiny 2's way of just throwing everything at you and letting you do whatever you want. Sure, I'm ultimately just trying to get more powerful gear, but there are so many ways to do that, and so many things I want. Importantly, I feel like I can start working towards any objective I get in my sights straight away. 

I've benefited from at least playing at the 2017 launch, however, so I've got some context—I'm not sure what I'd make of Destiny if this was my very first experience. If you're in that boat, you should absolutely check out our Destiny 2 beginner's guide. In-game, all you get are the occasional brief tips. 

It's worth noting that there's hardly anything hidden behind paywalls. To get Forsaken, Shadowkeep and the new pass, you'll need to shell out, but you're getting two years worth of stuff for free right out the gate. And while it's common for free-to-play games to throw obstacles in the way of your progression to tempt you to slap down some cash, Destiny 2's is on the other end of the spectrum. There's almost too much to do. 

How do I get Divinity in Destiny 2? As the dust settles on the Destiny 2 Shadowkeep raid, Garden of Salvation, players are discovering that there's more exciting new loot to acquire once the endgame challenge has been done and dusted: the Destiny 2 Divinity exotic trace rifle.

Divinity is a Shadowkeep exotic that creates a large critical hit spot on a target if you're dealing sustained damage to them. To get it you need to complete a few simple quest steps before venturing into the raid. In the Vex's Black Garden birthplace you have seven tricky puzzles to finish. 

First, we'd like to congratulate the indefatigable Datto and the good folk of r/RaidSecrets for the following information. So, without further ado, let's get into each of the Destiny 2 Divinity quest steps. 

How to get the Destiny 2 Divinity exotic

Your exotic quest starts in the Lunar Battlegrounds. This is the first place in which you'll have done battle with the Hive, and the spot you'll have picked up the Destiny 2 Captive Cord necessary to craft the Arc Logic auto rifle. In other words, head for the southern exit of Sorrow's Harbor and turn left when you arrive at the spot where you captured multiple nodes in the first Shadowkeep mission, instead of right.

After zooming your Sparrow through some narrow caverns, you'll hit the Vex gate. Here you'll face three waves of the cybernetic miscreants. Once you've sent them packing and the final boss, an exotic will drop. Pick up 'What's this... What's this' to start the Divinity exotic quest.

This is a core that you need to get analyzed on the planet, Nessus. The first place to go to do that is The Orrery, just northeast of Artifact's Edge. When you get to the large stairs that take you to the area's main boss, jump up to the small cavern midway up the stairs on your left. Inside is an oracle and a few foes to deal with.

You also need to get some analysis done in Ancient's Haunt, northwest of The Tangle. The cave you're looking for here is about halfway through this Lost Sector. The Conflux's Lost Sector is where you'll find the final node to visit, which is in the northwest corner of The Cistern. Halfway through this Lost Sector you need to access the high ground in the large room. Jump onto the main central pillar, scale that, and jump to the right towards another small room cut into the rock. Inside is the final node and interacting with that leads you to the 'Defragmentation' quest step.

This Divinity quest step requires 120 Decryption Core Fragments. You can get these from either destroying Vex on the Moon or by playing through the new Vex Offensive mode. After that you need 30 Phantasmal Fragments at Eris Morn's Lectern, which will then bag you an Empowered Decryption Core. Destiny 2's Phantasmal Fragments can be picked up from Nightmare enemies or purchased from Eris for Helium Filaments.

With that aside, it's time to get into the raid. There are seven puzzles to tick off here that require patience and teamwork to solve, so stick to your trusted clan mates to get it done efficiently. The puzzles are also best shown visually, so we've embedded Datto's video guide and skipped to the relevant point above. Start by jumping to the alcove below the platform where the raid starts and we'll see you on the other side.

Once the puzzles are done, there's the small matter of getting the raid finished. Your prize awaits you after you've dropped down past the final boss area and made a beeline for the reward room. Provided you've complete all the puzzles and pre-raid tasks correctly, the trace rifle will be all yours.

Destiny 2 speedrun clan Ascend have become the first players to finish Garden of Salvation, the raid from the shooter's new Shadowkeep expansion.

The Ascend team, made up of Antivist, Cyber, ExBlack, Monks, Narhzul and Pash, completed the complex, multi-part raid in 6 hour and 13 minutes, which is roughly in line with the first-time records for other Destiny 2 raids. It was a nail-biting finish: they completed the Garden of Salvation just 2 minutes and 33 seconds ahead of the second-placed team, according to the game's official Twitter account.

You can watch a 50-minute, condensed version of the raid from Monks' perspective above, or you can watch the full version, complete with voice comms and keyboard clacks, on ExBlack's Twitch channel. Naturally, the shortened version won't show all the time spent figuring out how to beat each encounter, but no doubt guides will flood onto YouTube over the next week. You can also join 20,000 others watching streamers try to beat the raid on Twitch.

Ascend will receive custom championship belts from Bungie for their triumph. For everyone else, finishing the raid within the next few hours (before 10am PDT) will bag you an in-game emblem. 

If you're new to Destiny 2 and hoping to take advantage of the shooter's free-to-play release on Steam, read our beginner's guide here.

Thanks, PCGamesN.

Xur is back, and so am I with the best guide in the galaxy to the pros and cons of all the exotic wares that ol' snake-face is selling. This week you will find Xur in the Watcher's Grave area of Titan. Spawn in and head straight for the floating barge. Our man is chilling on the top deck.

Reminder: Xur's main use these days is as a way for new players to catch up with exotics, but also bear in mind that the ones he sells come with a low stat roll—it's actually the same roll as the copy you can pull from your collections tab once unlocked. You can also buy the exotic engram he's selling, which costs 97 Legendary Shards and will contain a random exotic weapon or armor piece that your current character has not unlocked. 

Note that if this is an armor piece, then it will have a good stat roll. Also note that if you've unlocked everything on that character, then it definitely will be an armor piece (as there's no point acquiring duplicate exotic weapons, given they have identical stats). Still here? God bless.

Oh and if you are new to Destiny 2, check out our beginner's guide to help get started. 

Xur sells one specific armor piece for each class, at 23 Legendary Shards, and an exotic weapon for 29 Legendary shards. Xur is open for business from 8:00 am PST / 12:00 pm EST / 3:00 pm GMT, and leaves when the game resets on Tuesday. Here's what he has this week.

The Colony (grenade launcher) — maybe buy

Heavy grenade launchers very much remain the meta for doing boss DPS in PvE, but The Colony is rightly considered more of a PvP weapon thanks to its main selling point: homing 'nades. The weapon's munitions are actually insectoid robots (you can even see the moving around in the mag) which scuttle after targets, even tracking them around corners. What they aren't much use for, however, are targets in the air—so if you see the spiders coming, start jumping. 

The Colony is definitely one of Destiny 2's most unique exotics, so although you definitely don't need it in your load-out, it's still probably worth picking up for funsies. For serious damage dealing you're going to want a 150 RPM legendary grenade launcher, like Outrageous Fortune or Swarm of the Raven, that has the Spike Grenades perk. Alternatively, if you're set on using an exotic, then The Prospector is still an excellent choice for burst damage. But if you're struggling with grenade kills as part of the Mountaintop quest, The Colony could be your new best friend.

Lunafaction Boots (Warlock boots) — definitely buy  

Once considered the single best exotic for solar Warlocks, these boots previously automatically reloaded everyone's weapons while they stood in a rift or Well of Radiance. I say previously because that ability was nerfed as part of blanket changes to the way auto-reloading perks work, due to players spawn killing every boss in seconds. These days, Lunafaction Boots are still good, but you're less likely to be bullied into wearing them by teammates. The perk now gives a super fast rather than automatic reload. Given that you can use the Enhanced Rifle Loader perk from the seasonal artifact to boost the reload speed of meta snipers like Izanagi's Burden and Whisper of the Worm now, I prefer using more fun exotic armor like Sunbracers or Nezarec's Sin. Nonetheless, this is a piece of kit every 'lock should at least own, as it's never a bad pick for team-based activities.

Mask of the Quiet One (Titan helmet) — probably don't buy

Aesthetically, this is one of the sweetest helmets in the game. Unfortunately, the description makes it sound much better than it proves in practice. The exotic perk is called 'Dreaded Visage' and it reads: "Gain ability energy when you're damaged. When critical, heal on kills." What's not to like about bonus energy and healing? Well, turns out that getting damaged is generally undesirable, and Bungie's definition of 'critical' really does mean dying on your arse—so you're often screwed before you get a chance to proc the healing effect. I haven't experimented with it personally, but you could potentially use the Protective Light mod (acquired by reaching rank 10 on the Tangled Shore Obelisk) to enable your health to stay 'red bar' for longer without dying. Honestly though, it's probably not worth the effort to make an underwhelming perk slightly more viable.

Shinobu's Vow (Hunter gloves) — maybe buy

Here's another exotic that's primarily for PvP players. Shinobu's Vow grants arc Hunters an extra Skip Grenade charge, and also improves the grenades themselves. How? Well, they track enemies further and faster, plus return some grenade energy when doing damage. Which is good for tagging enemies in the Crucible so that you can then clean them up easily with your primary weapon. In PvE, it's a different story. Throwing Skip Grenades at a pack of slavering aliens feels like the equivalent of tossing magic beans at them. Use Liar's Handshake or Raiden Flux instead.