Weapon

As a first-person shooter, Destiny features numerous weapons for the player to combat enemies with. Each weapon type contains exotic variants, which are given a unique name and which have additional abilities and/or effects. Such notable "exotics" include the Fate of All Fools, Thunderlord, Closing Time, Red Death, and Gjallarhorn, along with Thorn, Pocket Infinity, and Super Good Advice. ^[1]^[2] Scopes and various sights have also been seen. ^[3] Each Guardian will be able to carry a Primary, Special, and Heavy Weapon on their person, with the potential to store and access up to 12 additional weapons of each type. Pulse Rifles are Primary Weapons, while Hand Cannons, Shotguns and Fusion Rifles are considered Special Weapons and Machineguns are classed in the Heavy Weapons category.^[4]^[1]

Many of the weapons in Destiny carry "implied fiction," bearing details of its creator, where it came from and the sort of person who'd wield it.^[5]

Each player character has 3 weapon slots. The primary slot is for the weapon used most frequently, such as assault rifles and hand cannons. The secondary slot is for speciality weapons that are highly situational, such as shotguns and fusion rifles. The third slot is for heavy weapons such as rocket launchers and heavy machine guns.^[6]

Weapon Upgrades

Weapons in Destiny are capable of being upgraded by players. Each weapon has an upgrade path that allows certain capabilities and improvements to be applied to the weapon, at the cost of a certain amount of Glimmer along with a pre-determined number of weapon kits and the application of one or more talent points.^[1] Additionally, it has been revealed that while certain weapons will have a more or less "linear" upgrade tree, some weapon trees will diverge into different "branches", allowing for certain weapons to have more specialized applications as well as making it impossible to obtain all upgrades for that particular weapon.^[7]