Play through the first two missions of the Witch Queen campaign. These are free for all players, and will unlock the Enclave destination and allow you to craft the Enigma void glaive.

If you have not started these missions before, you should see a Witch Queen icon in your list of milestone objectives on the left side of the destinations tab, telling you what to do.

After that, you can freely enter and leave the Enclave and the Throne World. The Enclave features a shooting range behind the weapon crafting area. If you don't own the Witch Queen DLC, be sure you click the right icon when trying to go here.

The crafting tutorial quest at the Enclave will ask you to craft the void glaive The Enigma, level it to 3, and add enhanced perks. Leveling it up by spending materials will not count! You must level it up by getting kills or completing activities with the weapon equipped.

The relic is down some stairs in the Mars cliff face. You craft weapons from the middle. There is an option to Shape (create) a weapon, or to Reshape (edit) an existing crafted weapon.

To craft a weapon, you must have fully unlocked the weapon pattern, glimmer, enhancement cores, and depending on the weapon a crafting specific resource. Bungie's official weapon crafting guide can be found here and explains the crafting resources in more detail. [help.bungie.net]

When crafting or reshaping a weapon, from left to right you select the masterwork stat and tier, each weapon perk, and if you have one, an optional cosmetic Memento. This link shows what the mementos look like if you are curious.[docs.google.com]

As you use the crafted weapon to get kills or complete activities, it will level up. You can add different perks based on what level the weapon is. Hover over each option to see if there is a level requirement, and what materials and currencies it costs to put on the gun. You can spend glimmer and enhancement cores to level up a weapon without needing to use it, but this can be costly!

On the left side, you can pick up a short quest that will give you some craftable world drop weapons and aims to introduce the concept of extracting elements from a completed deepsight weapon.

You can also pick up an inventory item called a Relic Tether that tells you how much of the crafting element you have. This is the Relic Tether's only purpose. You can discard it and get another at any time if you need to free up inventory space.

If a weapon is craftable, it has a chance of dropping with a red border, known as "deepsight resonance." You can turn this deepsight resonance into crafting pattern progress by either dismantling the item or clicking and holding a button on the item details page.


Acquiring and extracting enough deepsight resonance versions of the weapon will unlock its pattern, allowing you to craft it. You can view your progress and which weapons are craftable from the Collections tab, in the Patterns and Catalysts section.


Once you unlock the Enclave, red border weapons can drop from anywhere the normal version of the weapon drops.

Some patterns require owning a DLC, some require a season pass, and some are free to play. It depends on where the items come from, since you need to be able to farm the item in order to unlock its pattern.

A new currency introduced in Season of the Deep (Season 21, summer 2023). These are an extremely limited resource. The intent is that you use them to clean up any "loose ends" to unlock patterns you have partial progress in, but of course you can play the long game and use them to unlock a pattern from scratch if you want. These are earned through the season pass rank up rewards, with half free and half requiring season pass ownership. You can apply them to a craftable weapon that doesn't have a red border to turn it into a red border. They are one use, so it consumes the Harmonizer and a weapon can only have this done to it one time, so you'll need another copy of the weapon if you want to use another Harmonizer.

If a raid has craftable weapons, any weapon drop has a chance of being red border. There are extra things you can do to guarantee a red border from each raid, known as deepsight puzzles. These are once per account per week. You can buy one guaranteed deepsight per account per week from the Spoils of Conquest chest at the end. Instead of a puzzle or Spoils chest, Last Wish has guaranteed deepsights from Hawthorne in the Tower.

Be warned, if you buy a raid weapon with spoils, you cannot use a Deepsight Harmonizer to make it into a red border!

Note that even if you have the pattern, you need to own the DLC in order to craft or reshape these weapons. This can cause frustration if you play on multiple platforms, since DLC ownership is not cross platform, or for the rare occasions when there is a free DLC limited time event.

After completing the Witch Queen campaign at any difficulty, you can craft Osteo Striga. This does not require owning Deluxe. It did for a few months after release, but ever since then is available to all owners of regular Witch Queen.

After completing the Evidence Board quests, you will receive a crafting pattern for a class specific glaive (Edge of Action, Edge of Concurrence, or Edge of Intent). After that, the crafting patterns for the other two classes' glaives can drop from Wellspring on any character, or can be purchased from the Evidence Board for a large amount of currencies.

A hidden Season of Defiance quest unlocks the pattern for Vexcalibur. This requires Season of Defiance now, but in the future will be available to regular Lightfall owners.

Note that if you bought Lightfall during Season of Defiance you have the Season of Defiance pass and can do the Vexcalibur quest. If you bought Lightfall Annual, you prepurchased every season pass so you have Season of Defiance.

In the Legends node on the destinations tab, there is an exotic mission available for you to play. Which mission it is rotates weekly. None are free to play. You will get the crafting pattern for the mission's exotic weapon from normal difficulty. This Bungie news post goes into more detail about what each mission can drop.[www.bungie.net]

Dead Man's Tale, Dead Messenger, and Revision Zero come from these missions.

Once you have crafted a weapon, it is identifiable because it has the red square crafting system symbol on the lower left of its icon. On its details page, there is a level bar on the right side of the screen. Hover over this level bar and it will say that getting kills with a crafted weapon, or completing activities with the weapon equipped will grant xp to that weapon. Higher levels are needed to add different perks.

Here are some popular places to kill lots of enemies for leveling crafted weapons or completing catalysts.

• Free to play: Altars of Sorrow, normal difficulty lost sectors, Dares of Eternity (infinite heavy ammo if you succeed in the jump puzzle), Golgoroth in the King's Fall raid.
  
• Forsaken pack: In the Last Wish raid, use the wish wall to teleport to Shuro Chi. This is by far the most popular. The "thrallway" in Shattered Throne no longer works.
  
• 30th pack: Grasp of Avarice entrance. No setup required, lots of enemies, but each kill counts for half progress.

Public event flags fill up all your abilities and ammo. Raid banners can be purchased from Hawthorne or Petra, and are used in raids and dungeons at set points to fill up abilities and ammo.

Reference spreadsheet for weapon XP gain per activity.[docs.google.com]

You can spend some in game currencies to level up crafted weapons, but I don't recommend relying on this unless you are sitting atop a mountain of materials.

I've noticed a lot of confusion when it comes to words, and people using the same words totally differently which just adds to the confusion. Be aware that some players say "crafted" when they mean buying gear using in game currency.

• Ascendant alloy: A crafting material used for enhanced perks. Enhanced perks are incredibly minor upgrades.
  
• Craftable weapon: A weapon that has a pattern and can be crafted if you get enough deepsight resonance to complete the pattern.
  
• Crafted weapon: A craftable weapon that a player made at the Relic. It has a red square icon in the lower left corner and can be leveled up.
  
• Deepsight: When you interact with gray spheres in the Throne World to unlock secrets or create shortcuts. The lore term for how we are able to craft weapons now.
  
• Deepsight Harmonizer: An extremely limited currency that lets you turn a craftable but not red border weapon into a red border weapon.
  
• Deepsight Resonance: A weapon with a red border. Craftable weapons can randomly drop with red borders, and the red border means you can gain progress toward the weapon's pattern. This is referred to as extraction.
  
• Enclave: An area on Mars accessed from the Throne World icon. The Relic is here.
  
• Pattern: The ability to craft a weapon. View this from the Patterns & Catalysts page in the Collections tab.
  
• Pattern unlocked: When you have performed enough red border extractions, you can now craft the weapon. View how many extractions are required and which patterns you have unlocked from Patterns & Catalysts in the Collections tab.
  
• Pattern progress: Most patterns require multiple red border extractions to unlock. You can progress a pattern without unlocking it because it requires multiple extractions in order to unlock.
  
• Relic: A room using Darkness-affiliated technology to let us craft weapons.
  
• Reshape: Editing a crafted weapon.
  
• Shape: Crafting a weapon. Most players do not use this word even though it is what the game uses.

A record of changes to the weapon crafting system, in case anyone is curious about the "growing pains" this new system went through, or is confused by outdated sources.

Upon launch, red border deepsight guns would also give ruinous, energetic, adroit, and mutable elements. Different types of perks used each element. This was scrapped for being overly complicated, leaving us with only neutral elements. Source[www.bungie.net]

Around season 18, dismantling a craftable weapon would extract its pattern. Hovering over the weapon now tells you whether a pattern can be extracted (meaning, if it's craftable). You no longer have to use the weapon to fill up the deepsight bar and then extract the pattern. Now, the only way not to get the pattern from a deepsight weapon is to use it for infusion.

As of Lightfall launch, non-craftable weapons will no longer drop with deepsight. You no longer need to get kills to extract the pattern, and can simply extract as soon as it drops. The crafting elements and most resources have all vanished, drastically simplifying the system. The Patterns and Catalysts tab was moved from Triumphs to Collections.

Raids released before weapon crafting was added to the game are gradually being updated to have craftable weapons with new perk pools.

In August 2023, Season of the Witch, they added the ability to level up crafted weapons by spending in game currencies. Harmonic and Resonant alloy, crafting materials that come from dismantling raid weapons and from dismantling non raid weapons, were removed. Those of us who have some can exchange it with Rahool for glimmer. Normal difficulty campaign missions no longer give weapon xp.[www.bungie.net]