Ever since the launch of The Witch Queen expansion, Crafted weapons have taken over a lot of Destiny 2. They have even overtaken the prized category of Adept weapons, thanks to their ability to sidestep luck and still have access to powerful Enhanced variants of regular perks. In comparison, Adept weapons are generally more difficult to obtain and, while they have some advantages, have fallen by the waist side for most players. The new Enhanced Weapon feature is one way to try and even the playing field in Destiny 2.
Adept Weapon Enhancing lets you modify your Adept weapons and turn them into pseudo-crafted weapons. You can combine the benefits of Adept mods with Enhanced Perks, memento sockets and more. There’s a lot to learn about Weapon Enhancing, though and a lot of materials to spend.
Here’s everything you need to know about the new Adept Weapon Enhancing feature in Destiny 2.
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What is Adept Weapon Enhancing?
Adept Weapon Enhancing (or more simply known as just Weapon Enhancing) is a new feature that aims to bring your Adept weapons closer in strength to your Crafted weapons. Despite having access to additional stats and exclusive mods, most Adept weapons in Destiny 2 have been power crept by Crafted weapons, which are (generally) easier to obtain and give you access to Enhanced Perks. The disparity in power between Adepts and normal weapons was already small, but it was enough to motivate high-tier players to try to obtain them: with Crafting, a lot of that incentive has disappeared.
Weapon Enhancing hopes to stunt this problem, at least somewhat. By paying a few upgrade materials, you’ll be able to turn your ordinary Adept weapons into Enhanced Adept weapons. This allows it to access a few key parts of the crafting system – namely weapon levels, Mementos and Enhanced Perks – which should make the balance between both systems much smoother.
The Enclave
There are a few caveats, of course. The biggest one is that your Adept weapon can only access the Enhanced Perks from your current roll of the weapon. For example, my Acasia’s Dejection (Adept) has Reconstruction and Incandescent and, after Enhancing it, I can then turn those two perks into Enhanced variants. What I cannot do is change those perks to different ones (such as Reconstruction to Rewind Rounds). This means that the original roll of your Adept weapon is still very important.
The other major thing is what guns Weapon Enhancing is available. Adept weapons are already relatively small in number but, as of the feature’s launch into Destiny 2, only the Root of Nightmares Adept weapons can be Enhanced. More Adept weapons are sure to join the list of available options in the following seasons, hopefully allowing you to Enhance everything from your Grandmaster Adepts to your Trials Adepts.
With that explanation out of the way, how do you actually Enhance your Adept weapons in Destiny 2?
Reshaping Adept Weapons
How to Enhance Your Weapon
To begin, you obviously need to have an Adept weapon that is compatible with the system.
As previously mentioned, the only weapons that are available to Enhance at the launch of the system are the Root of Nightmares weapons. Any Adept RoN weapon you previously acquired will have the ability to be Enhanced, even if you got it before the system went live.
To Enhance your Adept weapon, simply inspect the gun and you should see a new Enhancement slot, right next to the weapon mod slot. Hover over this and you’ll be able to apply to Enhance the weapon to Tier 1: this will cost 12 Spoils of Conquest, 23 Legendary Shards and 18 Enhancement Cores, so come stacked with materials.
Once you’ve completed this, the weapon will gain a fancy new icon and your weapon will now be considered a Tier 1 Adept Weapon.
Enhancement Socket
Enhanced Weapon Tiers
There are a total of 3 Tiers to an Enhanced Adept weapon. These Tiers each unlock new parts of the gun at the Enclave, allowing you to further customize your weapon as you continue to upgrade it. It is worth noting that Tiers are different from weapon levels, which are earned by defeating combatants and completing activities with the weapon equipped.
After spending the initial materials to Enhance your Adept, it will be Tier 1. This will give your Adept weapon the ability to gain weapon levels, a memento socket and a limited suite of upgrade options at the Enclave (this allows you to alter the barrels, magazines and other likewise parts of the weapon). The Masterwork will also be replaced by an enhanced intrinsic, just like those found on Crafted weapons: this will be the same Masterwork as what was originally on the Adept weapon, so a Stability Masterwork will become an Enhanced Stability intrinsic.
Once you have reached weapon level 11, you can unlock the next Tier. This time, you’ll need 15,000 Glimmer, 3 Enhancement Prisms and 1 Ascendant Alloy. By being at Tier 2, your Enhanced Adept weapon can gain the Enhanced Variant of the left column trait perk at the Enclave. Using our previous example of Adept Acasia’s Dejection, this would allow me to get the Enhanced Reconstruction perk.
Finally, Tier 3 unlocks at weapon level 17. This is similar to Tier 2 in that it unlocks access to enhanced variants of the right-column trait perks. For Tier 3, you’ll need another 15,000 Glimmer, 3 Enhancement Prisms and 1 Ascendant Alloy.
Weapon Tiers
Best Place to Farm Adept Weapon Levels
To unlock each of the Tiers on your Enhanced Adept weapon, you’ll need to earn up to 17 weapons to unlock everything. This can be pretty time-consuming, especially if you just want to pick up your shiny new Adept and go wild with it.
With that in mind, there are a few spots in the game to farm out some easy weapon levels. The first, and most obvious, is to just use the weapon while playing in general activities: as a rule of thumb, higher-level activities like Raids and Dungeons seem to give better weapon level exp. This is the slowest method, but it’s also the one that doesn’t require you to mess about.
If you’re trying to level a Primary Adept weapon and just want to mindlessly farm some levels, Grasp of Avarice is your best bet. You won’t even need to go very far in the Dungeon, either, as you simply need to farm the waves of Hive that come flooding out of the Loot Cave. These enemies spawn endlessly and give a decent amount of progress for your weapons: considering that you don’t have to worry about ammo with Primary weapons, this is the best way to level those.
In contrast, if you want to level Heavy or Special Adept weapons, grab a lot of Raid Banners from Hawthorne and head on over to the Last Wish Raid. Teleport to the Shuro-Chi encounter then place down a flag, load up on ammo and storm the gates. Your main foes will be swarms of shadow Thrall and Taken. When you run out of ammo, simply die and repeat the process until you hit the weapon level you need. This is the fastest and most efficient way of gaining levels on Special and Heavy weapons, though it will likely still take a significant amount of time.
Shuro-Chi Wish Wall
That was everything you needed to know about Weapon Enhancing in Destiny 2.
