Destiny 2: The Witch Queen is a major expansion for Destiny 2, a first-person shooter video game by Bungie. Representing the sixth expansion and the fifth year of extended content for Destiny 2, it was originally planned for release in late 2021, but due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the expansion was delayed by three months and was released on February 22, 2022. Prior to release, Bungie reported that The Witch Queen had over 1 million pre-orders, "on track to becoming the most pre-ordered expansion in Destiny 2 history".
The expansion revolves around Savathûn, The Witch Queen, the sister of Oryx, who was the antagonist of the original Destinys (2014) first major expansion, The Taken King (2015). The expansion added weapon crafting to the game where players can obtain weapon patterns of existing weapons to craft their own versions with chosen perks to fit to their own play style. Other new content across the game includes new missions, Player versus Environment locations, Player versus Player maps, player gear, weaponry, and a new raid. Two new dungeons and a reprised raid, "King's Fall" from The Taken King, were released over the course of the year. The Witch Queen had four seasonal content offerings for Year 5 of the game: Season of the Risen, which was available alongside the expansion, Season of the Haunted in May, Season of Plunder in August, and Season of the Seraph in December, which ran until the launch of the next expansion, Lightfall, on February 28, 2023. With the release of Lightfall, this seasonal content was removed from the game with the exception of the respective battlegrounds activities from Season of the Risen and Season of the Seraph, which were incorporated into the Vanguard Operations playlist. The Expeditions from Season of Plunder were re-added in September 2025 as a fireteam ops activity, while Nightmare Containment from Season of the Haunted and Ketchcrash from Season of Plunder were re-added as arena activities in December 2025.
The seasons bridged the events of The Witch Queen to the next expansion, Lightfall. Immediately following The Witch Queens campaign, Season of the Risen centered on an uneasy alliance between the Vanguard and Empress Caiatl's Cabal to combat Savathûn’s Light-bearing Hive. Season of the Haunted saw Empress Caiatl and the Vanguard team up with Eris Morn to stop Caiatl's father, the exiled emperor Calus, with the Guardian returning to an Egregore-infested Leviathan ship, now in the orbit of Earth's Moon, where the Guardian severed Calus's psychic connection to the Lunar Pyramid ship. In Season of Plunder, the Kell of Darkness Eramis escaped her Stasis prison and gathered rogue Fallen pirate crews to plunder the system for powerful relics of the Witness, with the Guardian teaming up with Mithrax, his daughter Eido, The Drifter, and The Spider to stop her. Season of the Seraph then saw the Guardian help Ana Bray, Osiris, and the Exo Stranger rebuild the Warmind, Rasputin, as they raced against Xivu Arath and the Witness, who were trying to hijack the orbital Warsat network to destroy the Traveler.
Gameplay
The Witch Queen introduces a new location, Savathûn's Throne World, above Mars within the Ascendant Realm. In addition to world activities, a new raid, "Vow of the Disciple", was released on March 5, 2022. Two additional dungeons were also added over the course of the expansion, but requires the purchase of a dungeon key. The "King's Fall" raid from the original Destinys (2014) The Taken King expansion was added on August 26, 2022, during Season 18 and is free for all players to access. It features the same story as the original, but accounts for differences in Destiny 2, such as gameplay mechanics and Champion enemies, as well as a new starting instance to replace the absent Dreadnaught destination that had been present in The Taken King (players begin the raid in the Court of Oryx area like the original, but cannot explore the Dreadnaught beyond this area). New and existing story content was expanded with a new "Legendary" difficulty, designed to be challenging for single players but with improved rewards for completing. At the same time, some content from the Forsaken (2018) expansion was removed from the game and placed in the Destiny Content Vault; this included the full Forsaken campaign, the Tangled Shore destination and its activities, but not the Dreaming City, the Last Wish raid, the Shattered Throne dungeon, or the strikes. Ahead of this, Forsakens campaign was made free-to-play for all players on December 7, 2021, with a bundle pack available to purchase to access the endgame content for players who did not already own Forsaken. While the other seasonal activities from Beyond Light (2020) were removed with The Witch Queen, the Battlegrounds activity from Season of the Chosen (Season 13) was merged with the existing strikes under one playlist, named Vanguard Operations.
Savathûn's Lucent Brood, Hive warriors that carry the power of Light, is a new major enemy within The Witch Queen. They have similar Light-focused abilities within the Arc, Solar, and Void classes as the players' Guardian characters as well as their own Ghosts that can resurrect them unless the Guardians can destroy the Ghost within a limited window.
Beyond Light introduced Stasis as a power of Darkness which, unlike the other three powers of Light which each had three subtrees that could be selected, used customizable Aspects and Fragments to give the player more customization of how Stasis could be used. Over the course of Year 5, Bungie brought similar Aspects and Fragments to the original Light powers, starting with Void at the launch of The Witch Queen, followed by Solar in Season of the Haunted (Season 17), then Arc in Season of Plunder (Season 18). These changes maintain the basic abilities but allow players to modify and mix effects atop these powers. Bungie stated that additional Darkness powers would be introduced after they had completed the Light power conversion within The Witch Queen (the next Darkness power was introduced with the next expansion, Lightfall, the following year).
The Witch Queen introduces a new weapon type, the glaive, which has both melee and short-range attacks as well as defensive capabilities. Unlike most other weapon drops which have randomized perks, glaives have abilities that can be customized by the player through a new weapon crafting system, which can also be used to craft other types of weapons. Game director Joe Blackburn stated it would not be similar to weapon crafting in massively multiplayer online games, it would not favor experienced players with numerous existing resources over novice players, and would not have pay to win-style mechanics. Blackburn stated this crafting system would allow players to customize a weapon to their playstyle or to shift a weapon within the game's changing meta without having to "farm" for a new version of the weapon. The new Deepsight ability also plays a role in the new weapon crafting system. Players craft weapons at a new location called The Enclave, located on Mars (accessible from within the Throne World location). To craft weapons, players need to obtain weapon patterns (blueprints) from the world or through in-game activities or quests, as well as find and use special "Deepsight Resonance" weapons to unlock and extract crafting materials. Crafting materials can also be purchased from Master Rahool and obtained from Banshee-44 upon accumulating specific amounts of "gunsmith reputation", which is gained from dismantling weapons and armor. Once a weapon has been crafted, it can then be further upgraded and modified through use in gameplay, unlocking new and enhanced perks. Players also have the ability to further customize their crafted weapons by obtaining cosmetic "Mementos" from certain activities. A weapon can be crafted and modified indefinitely, so as long as the weapon patterns, crafting materials, weapon perks and other necessary resources are obtained and unlocked for use. Bungie stated that the initial weapons from The Witch Queen and its raid and seasonal content, including some exotic weapons, would be the only weapons that can be crafted, but plan to include legacy weapons from previous releases in future seasons. For example within Season of the Seraph, weapons from the Deep Stone Crypt raid, introduced in the prior expansion Beyond Light, became craftable.
Other significant gameplay changes include: The seasonal artifact, which provides unique mods and bonus power levels across all characters on a player's account for a season as introduced in Shadowkeep (2019), continued to be used in The Witch Queen, but players could unlock all 25 mods instead of only being able to choose 12, though each mod beyond the 12th had an increasing experience cost to obtain. The cost to switch element type on armor was significantly reduced to primarily glimmer (the normal in-game currency) and an upgrade module. This change was intended to reduce the need for players to keep a range of armor in their inventory and vaults to cover the different elements. Orbs of Power are no longer generated from performing multikills with a masterworked weapon, but instead are generated by a set of helmet mods that generate orbs when a weapon of the same element or type as the mod is used to create multikills. This was to tie into the new weapon crafting system. Once the player reaches the "soft limit" power level with The Witch Queen (which was 1500 at the start of the expansion), rare quality (blue) engrams that drop from playlist activities automatically convert to in-game currency (glimmer), rather than flooding the player's inventory. Rare quality engrams still drop before the soft cap is reached to help with leveling. Starting with Season 17, Bungie streamlined the weapon crafting system by removing the Ruinous, Mutable, Adroit, Energetic, and Drowned Element crafting materials. Creating and modifying weapons then only required Neutral Element (renamed as Resonant Element), Drowned Alloys (renamed as Harmonic Alloys as of Season 18), Resonant Alloys, and Ascendant Alloys. Starting with Season 17, Bungie introduced raid and dungeon rotators. While the most recent raid and dungeon continue to remain a source for pinnacle gear, the rotators cycle through the older raids and dungeons still in the game on a weekly basis, with the opportunity to earn pinnacle gear from that activity. Furthermore, for the current raid or dungeon in rotation, the normal per-weekly lockouts on gear are removed to allow these to be farmable. Also in Season 17, the Iron Banner competitive PvP mode was reworked, based on narrative changes to Lord Saladin's character from Season of the Risen, in which he had become part of the Cabal War Council and named as Valus Forge, bringing ideas from his time with the Cabal into the event. It now uses a reward-based progression system similar to Vanguard Ops, Crucible, Gambit, and Trials of Osiris. Furthermore, Iron Banner was changed to only be featured twice per season, while the base game mode (formerly Control) rotates each season, with Season 17 starting with the capture-the-flag game mode Rift from the original Destiny (which was put into rotation in Season 18). Power level advantages were also disabled. Zone Control (also from the original game) also returned as part of the Crucible Labs playlist during Season 17. A separate Triumph Seal was also added for Iron Banner. Also with Season 17, seasonal event challenges and Triumph Seals were introduced for each seasons' respective limited-time event, starting with Solstice in Season 17. One overall Triumph Seal was also added for completing a minimum of 16 challenges from each seasons' respective event.