Weapon

As a first-person shooter, Destiny features numerous weapons for Guardians to use in combat. 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 have 3 weapon slots to 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. The primary slot is for the weapon used most frequently, such as auto rifles, scout rifles, pulse rifles, and hand cannons. The secondary slot is for specialty weapons that are highly situational such as shotguns, fusion rifles, and sniper rifles. The third slot is for heavy weapons such as rocket launchers and heavy machine guns.^[4]^[5]^[1] Ammo for the weapons will be color coded by slot type; white for primary, green for special, and purple for heavy. ^[6] Purple is the rarest ammo to find, encouraging Guardians to use heavy weapons sparingly.^[7]

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.^[8]

Rarity of the weapon as well as armor is color coordinated into four tiers: Basic (white), Uncommon (green), Rare (blue) Legendary (purple), and Exotic (gold).^[9]

Certain weapons are infused with different energies - thermal damage, arc damage, and void damage.^[10]

It should be noted that while Guardians are able to switch their weapon selection at any time through the menu, this comes at the penalty of losing both special weapon ammo and/or heavy weapon ammo for the switched guns. This encourages Guardians to plan their weapon selection in advance before entering a firefight.^[11]

Weapon upgrades

Weapons in Destiny are capable of being upgraded by Guardians. 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.^[12]