The Witch Queen and Lightfall are the best Destiny 2 expansions to buy in 2024

As a hardcore Destiny 2 player and content creator who has sunk over 1,000 hours into the game, I get asked constantly – "which expansion should I buy?" With mammoth worlds, complex systems, and endless loot to chase, it can be downright intimidating for new lights and returning veterans alike.

But if you want to experience Destiny 2‘s absolute best content in 2024 and beyond, the answer is clear: pick up The Witch Queen and the upcoming Lightfall expansions. Everything else has either been relegated to Destiny‘s content vault or fails to match up with these two titans of PvE and endgame excellence.

The Witch Queen: Destiny‘s New Gold Standard for Campaigns and Raids

Releasing early last year, The Witch Queen set a bold new vision for what a Destiny 2 expansion could be. Centered on Savathun‘s long-awaited Lucent Brood, this expansion built out an almost completely self-contained mini-Destiny focused on fundamental questions of good, evil, and the moral grays in between.

And where story and themes delivered in spades, so too did The Witch Queen‘s bread and butter – innovative activities, builds, and never-ending grinds.

An All-Timer Story with Incredible Replay Value

Destiny veterans will recall past campaign criticisms – too short, narratively underwhelming, limited replayability.

The Witch Queen shattered all those critiques into dust. Featuring 8 lengthy, densely-packed missions spanning 5+ hours, this campaign landed as an absolute triumph. Mysterious investigative threads dove deep into Deepsight and Hive arcana. Massive setpieces pitted players against Xivu Arath‘s wrath and the endless Hive nightmares of Savathun‘s throne world. And punctuating this journey, two genuine candidate for Destiny‘s best boss fights ever against The Caretaker and Savathun herself.

Beyond its narrative heights, Witch Queen‘s campaign also offered the first-ever Legendary difficulty in Destiny – imbuing these missions with genuine challenge and reason to re-run while chasing craftable weapon patterns. Even now in my 10+ playthroughs, I still get tense showdowns and eureka discovery moments throughout.

Vow of the Disciple: A Raid for the Ages

While Witch Queen brought a killer narrative, its crown jewel for hardcore players was undoubtedly the Vow of the Disciple raid. Building on lessons learned from past cornerstone raids like Last Wish and Deep Stone Crypt, Vow weaved focus on team coordination and execution into spectacular alien vistas and presentations that live rent-free in my mind months later.

The excitement across my regular raid crew for world‘s first Vow run was palpable – sleepless nights of theorycrafting builds and puzzle solving that ended in cheers, shouts, and pure adrenaline as we etched our names into Destiny history books.

And even now on farm runs, Vow retains its crisp mechanical challenges. Acquisition‘s platforming still delivers sweats. The third encounter‘s relay defense breathes fresh innovations into the raid format. And that final boss stands tall as an all-timer, demanding near perfect play across all six players to emerge victorious.

Destiny has dropped some great raids before, but Vow of the Disciple stands poised to still wow and reward guardians even years into the future.

Innovative New Systems Anchor the Endgame Grind

Beyond an stellar stand-alone experience contained within Witch Queen, a host of fundamental systems innovations also dropped that still anchor my daily play. The new weapon crafting functionality offers incredible long-term chase potential for that absolute god roll Found Verdict or Come to Pass. Deepsight resonance and extraction continue to offer intriguing, almost rogue-like opportunities out in world exploration. And Void 3.0‘s fundamental subclass rework paved the way for build diversity and ability synergy I utilize constantly in PvE and PvP alike.

Bungie knocked it out of the park on all vectors – campaign, story, raid, endgame pursuits – with Witch Queen. This expansion marked a genuine new golden age for Destiny 2 after a few years of uncertainty, and still delivers countless hours of phenomenal content both new lights and veterans should play.

Lightfall: Doubling Down on Momentum with Strand and Cloud City Neomuna

If Witch Queen marked Destiny 2‘s triumphant return to form, then 2023‘s Lightfall looks poised to keep momentum rolling with an eclectic mix of science fantasy flavor. Early marketing and reveals have focused heavily on the mysterious Utopian city of Neomuna on Neptune – a retrofuturist metropolis brimming with hover bikes, verticality, and gorgeous alien vistas. This patrol area already sparks my theorycrafting brain, and will undoubtedly keep dedicated players like myself grinding bounties and open world content for months on end.

But Neomuna itself plays second fiddle to what all veteran players really clamor for in a new expansion…a badass new subclass. And Strand, Lightfall‘s grappling hook and weaving focused powerset, looks like an absolute gamechanger specifically for high difficulty PvE content. Area control abilities open new build paths for endgame crowd control. And cheeky maneuverability conjures fond memories of my Nightstalker floating above King‘s Fall encounters plinking away for hours with my Black Spindle.

Early Strand‘s energy recalls Stasis‘ debut and renewal of the ability sandbox – so here‘s hoping Bungie continues delivering innovation and balance to carve out a fun new playstyle rather than falling into the all-too-familiar trap of overpowered flavors of the month.

And content roadmaps suggest Lightfall is just the tip of the iceberg entering Destiny 2 Year 6. Season 20 kicks off shortly after launch, and 2024 will bring a conclusive Final Shape expansion to mark the end of this ongoing "Light and Darkness" saga in Destiny‘s lore. I‘d stake one of Calus‘ opulent weapons that Bungie continues this hot streak through at least the Final Shape drop – meaning new and returning players buying into Lightfall get both an incredible onboarding now with Strand and Neomuna alongside confidence that the Destiny train still moves full steam into the foreseeable future.

Is It Still Worth Buying Older Expansions in 2024?

With two stellar expansions anchoring Destiny 2‘s present and future, you might wonder – what about the past? Should I grab 2019‘s Shadowkeep or 2020‘s Beyond Light to help catch up on the backstory?

Here‘s my frank opinion after replaying older Destiny 2 content – don‘t bother.

The honest truth is Destiny 2 aging isn‘t always graceful. I adored Beyond Light at launch for the Stasis shakeup…only to suffer through painfully unbalanced Crucible and unrewarding loot sunsets for much of Year 4 until Bungie righted the course. And grand experiments of the past like Mercury or Mars have long since been resigned to the infamous DCV – nice ideas at the time, but not worth future upkeep.

If you absolutely need context for current story beats, YouTube recap videos tell Shadowkeep and Beyond Light‘s tales better than in-game tours ever could. Spend those precious hours and dollars instead immersed in Destiny 2‘s current best-in-class experiences with Witch Queen and Lightfall that don‘t carry dated baggage or content removals.

As a player since Day 1 Destiny 1 with over 5,000 hours between both games under my belt, I feel confident saying this:

The Witch Queen and Lightfall represent a Destiny 2 in its prime and at the very top of its game. Commit to grinding god rolls through sublime gunplay, conquer the mattress-flipping challenge of day one raid races, or just relax through hours of bounties and beautiful alien panoramas. For players both brand new and from veteran like myself, Destiny 2 enters 2023 remarkably fresh, innovative, and ready to tackle another thousand hours of adventure.