Destiny’s second year contains fundamental changes to the original game, including a new raid, new sub-classes, new strikes and much more. Are you ready, guardian? You will be if you bookmark our evolving guide.

Destiny: The Taken King guide and walkthrough

The Taken King, Destiny’s third expansion and the beginning of Bungie’s shooter-RPG’s second year, is almost upon us. Launching on September 15, this update is by far the largest addition to the original game, featuring new story missions, four new strikes, three re-worked strikes and a new raid, which, while not included for launch, promises to be Destiny’s longest yet. The Taken King forms the basis for another full year of play. There’s a lot to consider. You should bookmark this page right now.

This is our complete guide to The Taken King, the next part of our exhaustive Destiny guide and practically a full game in itself. Bungie’s making some huge changes to Destiny with this expansion, including updates on levelling, exotics and much more. Below, you’ll find everything you need to know to hit the level cap, beat the content and, when it appears, smash the raid. Good luck, guardian. Quite frankly, you’re going to need it.

Editions

You won’t be able to play The Taken King unless you’ve already installed the previous two expansions, The Dark Below and House of Wolves. There are four different options, and prices, to getting up and running with Destiny’s latest content. Be sure to think carefully about how you’re going to enter The Taken King: the various editions contain unique digital and physical items, some of which will only be available with pre-orders. If you’re reading this after September 15, you may well have missed out on those emotes. Sorry about that.

Sub-classes

One of The Taken King’s most important and anticipated changes is the addition of three new sub-classes, taking the total for each class to three. Titans get hammer-tastic with Sunbreaker; hunters finally take on a support role with Nightstalker; and warlocks go full Palpatine with the amazing Stormcaller. Get everything you need to know through the link.

Story missions

Little is known as yet about The Taken King’s story missions, but we do have the basics of a plot. Destiny’s second year begins with the Vanguard intercepting a Cabal distress signal on Phobos and dispatching guardians to investigate. They discover that Oryx has assembled an army called the Taken in an effort to take revenge for the killing of his son, Crota.

The Taken King’s first mission is called The Coming War. We played this at Gamescom in Germany this summer. We’ll bring you a full walkthrough of all the story content as soon as we’re able.

• The Coming War

Strikes

The Taken King includes four brand new strikes, as well as three existing strikes reworked with Taken enemies. Keep this page bookmarked for full walkthroughs of all the new strikes after launch.

• New strikes
  • Fallen Saber
  • Shield Brothers
  • Sunless Cell
  • Echo Chamber

• Revised strikes
  • Dust Palace
  • Cerberus III
  • Undying Mind

Raid

The Taken King’s new raid, King’s Fall, is, without question, the most anticipated aspect of the entire update. It won’t be included on day one, instead launching on September 18. We’ll bring you a complete guide to Destiny’s third raid, its loot and various foibles as soon as it hits the game.

• King’s Fall

The Court of Oryx and Runes

The Taken King includes a completely new patrol activity named The Court of Oryx, a system that allows you to spawn your own public events which grant loot upon boss-kill. A new consumable, the Rune, is used to trigger events withing the Court. Hit the link above for everything you need to know about the Runes, the various tiers of event and the varied bosses you’re going to be fighting.

Exotic changes and transfer list

The Taken King will make sweeping changes to the exotics you’ll be using. Some year-one exotics will be upgraded to the new defense and damage levels and some won’t. Included on the list of the guns not making the cut are, almost incredibly, Ice Breaker and Gjallarhorn, while SUROS Regime, Red Death and The Last Word will all be brought forward.

You’ll find the full list of all known exotics changes through the link. We’ll upgrade this to a definitive version once The Taken King launches on September 15.

You should also watch the video above to get up to speed on the new exotic blueprints system, which will allow you to grab a new exotic weapon or piece of armour at any time after you’ve discovered it in-game.

This guide is part of our complete Destiny guide. Be sure to check it out for everything you need to know about Destiny’s year-one content.