Destiny 2 Content Vault: What is still available in 2022?

Destiny 2 is becoming an increasingly complicated game to get into. Be it for new players or lapsed players looking to come back.

There are several expansions to purchase, free-to-play content, and removed content. It’s not uncommon for MMOs to offer a combination of free-to-play content and expansions, but Destiny 2 is the only game to aggressively remove huge chunks of content.

In this post, we take a look at every piece of content in Destiny 2, and tell you whether it’s still available, what expansion it requires, and more.

Destiny 2 content: Premium, free-to-play, and removed

With entire planets and activities being routinely removed from the game and put into the “Destiny Content Vault” (or DCV), it has never been harder to keep track of what is still available and for how long it will remain so.

While our Beginner’s guide covers the basics, the following table tells you exactly what content is still available, whether as premium content or free-to-play:

Note that content listed as “Will be removed soon” shall remain available until February 22, 2022, when The Witch Queen expansion releases:

Beginning on February 22, the Forsaken campaign and the Tangled Shore destination will enter the DCV (Note: The Dreaming City destination will continue to be available), along with Year 4 Seasonal content, including the Presage and Harbinger Exotic missions.

You can read all about it here.

Destiny 2 free-to-play content: Getting started

One of the biggest complaints I see is that getting started with Destiny 2, and actually sticking around, is too difficult.

The current introductory New Light quest barely scratches the surface and leaves new players with absolutely no idea on what to do next. This is especially true for free-to-play players. If this is your case, read on.

Free-to-play activities

These are the free-to-play activities and Destinations available to New Light players:

Activity	Type	Difficulty
Vanguard Playlist	PVE	Easy
Prophecy Dungeon	PVE	Average
Vault of Glass Raid	PVE	Hard
Gambit	PVE/PVP	Average
Crucible Playlist	PVP	Average to Hard
Iron Banner	PVP	Average
Trials of Osiris	PVP	Hard

The secret to getting your friends (or yourself) hooked with Destiny 2 before having to pay for Expansions, is to properly tackle the right activities in the right order:

1. Do the New Light Quest and read our Beginner’s guide
2. Head over to the Vanguard Playlist and do some Strikes
3. Slowly work on increasing your Power Level by tackling the right activities
4. Once your Power Level is high enough, work towards playing with others as a Fireteam
5. Slowly work your way towards harder and harder Nightfall: The Ordeals
6. Your end game is to tackle the Prophecy Dungeon, one of the best pieces of content in Destiny 2.

Obviously following this list is not as easy as it sounds when you’re new to Destiny 2. But if you take it step by step, I promise you’ll make it.

Looking ahead: The future of Destiny 2

Bungie gives. Bungie takes away. But it wouldn’t be fair to focus only on the things that are leaving the game. In fact, according to Bungie, content has been removed to make room for new content.

This Destiny 2 roadmap covers all the biggest new features and pieces of content planned for the game. And if you want to get your information straight from the source, this post covers all recent TWAB (Bungie’s weekly blog post).

About the Destiny Content Vault (DCV)

When it was first announced last year, the DCV shook the entire community. In Bungie’s words:

Each year, usually at the expansion boundaries, we will cycle some destination and activity content out of the game (and into the DCV) to make room for new experiences.

Soon after that announcement, close to 50% of the game was “vaulted” and put into the DCV with the release of Beyond Light on November 10, 2020.

In other words, roughly half of the locations, activities, and gear were removed from the game and cannot be experienced anymore. This includes excellent story missions, narrative arc and timeless quotes are gone.  If you’re feeling like walking down memory lane, this post covers every season (and its top content) released since the launch of Destiny 2 in 2017.

The logic of the DCV (rant…)

Bungie claims the DCV is a necessary evil in order to improve the game, but it’s still hard to understand the logic. Half of Year 1 content was removed because everything had to be “reworked” and optimized in order to be functional for Beyond Light’s launch. With so much content available, removing half of it made that “rework” manageable for Bungie.

So far, so good. You may not like it, but you can understand the logic.

This means everything that was available with Beyond Light, was updated and fully functional. Therefore, why do they need to remove the Forsaken content, which is seen as the best campaign ever released in Destiny 2?

Even more confusing, why remove the two excellent Exotic quests that were introduced this year? They’re new and don’t even take place in the Tangled Shore.

There is no point in beating a dead horse. I just hope Bungie will someday provide more answers, as the systematic removal of content is slowly turning players against them.

Your Turn

Rants aside, hopefully, the above table will help you better understand and keep track of what is still available (and for how long) on Destiny 2.