Lightfall has brought a lot of changes to Destiny 2, including an overhaul of the the vendor reputation system. Previously, ranking up with a vendor like Commander Zavala would reward the player with engrams which could be opened to receive vendor specific gear. Things work differently now, so let’s dive into how vendor engrams function in Destiny 2 Lightfall.
What Are Vendor Engrams in Destiny 2?
When you rank-up with a vendor in Destiny 2, you’ll notice a vendor engram appear in the top-right of their interface. This tells you how many vendor engrams you currently have with them. These engrams don’t take up inventory space and can’t be opened or accessed except at the vendor you earned them at.
If you like, you can simply open a vendor engram by clicking on the icon. This will give you a random piece of gear obtainable from that vendor. However, you can also spend multiple vendor engrams to “focus” a specific piece of gear.
The engram focusing system in Destiny 2 Lightfall works a little differently than it used to. Rather than focus Umbral Engrams, you go into the Focused Decoding Screen on a vendor menu to do it. You need to have already obtained a piece of gear to be able to focus it. Additionally, focused decoding costs one or more vendor engrams and some amount of other resources.
For instance, in the image below, getting a focused roll of the Prolonged Engagement SMG costs one Vanguard Engram, 25 Legendary Shard, and 5,000 Glimmer.
For players who have been playing Destiny 2 for some time, the instinct is to click through a vendor’s engrams until they’re cleared out. It’s important that you not do this if you want to focus engrams. Since vendor engrams don’t go into your inventory, collecting them from a vendor immediately turns them into gear. That means it can be worth letting them pile up at a vendor if you want to get specific weapons or pieces of armor from them.
Note that not all vendors in Destiny 2 use the new system. For example, you can’t focus Neomuna Engrams from Nimbus — all you can do is open them to get a piece of random gear. The main vendors that use the new engram system are those that run the playlist activities (Zavala, Shaxx, and The Drifter) and the seasonal center (on the H.E.L.M.).
What Happened to Umbral Engrams?
Umbral Engrams have been deprecrated in Destiny 2. If you had any old ones kicking around, you can still open them, but you shouldn’t see any more drop. The new vendor engram system in Destiny 2 was designed to fix the issue of having player inventories and mailboxes fill up with Umbral Engrams. Since vendor engrams are stored at their particular vendors instead of in your inventory, managing engrams is a little simpler now.
That’s about it for vendor engrams in Destiny 2. While you’re here, don’t forget to check out the rest of our guides for Destiny 2 Lightfall! We have resources on unlocking Strand, completing Exotic quests, builds, and more.
