Destiny 2 The Final Shape Legendary campaign rewards, solo difficulty explained

Destiny 2’s The Final Shape expansion offers another Legendary campaign.

Not only is this useful for players seeking an additional challenge, but you’ll also receive additional rewards for your efforts — including a Power level boost to give you a welcome leg up as you enter the endgame.

Here’s what you need to know about the starting difficulty choice, the Legendary campaign rewards, and how feasible playing the Legendary campaign solo is.

Be Brave or Become Legend choice and how to change campaign difficulty

Upon starting The Final Shape campaign, you’ll be asked whether you want to “Be Brave” or “Become Legend.”

This is asking what difficulty you want to play the campaign on — either Classic or Legendary.

Know this choice isn’t final, as you can change your mind later — whether that’s increasing or decreasing the difficulty mid-campaign, or replaying the entire thing on Legendary another time.

To change difficulty in the The Final Shape campaign, find the campaign node on The Pale Heart’s director screen and select the drop-down in the lower right corner.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Destiny 2 The Final Shape Legendary campaign rewards

By completing The Final Shape campaign on Legendary difficulty, you will receive the following rewards:

• Gear set fixed at 1960 Power level (20 above the soft cap, 30 below the Powerful gear cap)
• Exotic armor

As well as the above, like The Witch Queen and Lightfall, it’s also you’ll receive a second chest after each major campaign encounter, which will grant you additional loot to help get you to the soft cap faster — useful if you want to break away from the campaign at any point to play other activities.

In summary, by completing the Legendary campaign will give you a healthy Power level advantage, both from bonus rewards earned during each mission, and a fixed Power level set once the credits have rolled.

How difficult is the The Final Shape campaign, and can you play Legendary solo?

For solo players, these harder story missions are designed to scale with your Fireteam

— meaning the difficulty will adjust to the number of players, allowing you to run the campaign solo if you choose.

The elephant in the room — whether you’re playing in a Fireteam or not — is the difficulty of the Legendary campaign for Lightfall, which was criticized by fans for being more difficult than The Witch Queen. The good news: The difficulty appears to have been scaled back — in part due to ‘raid-lite’ puzzles replacing demanding combat challenges.

“I was able to solo the missions I played on the max difficulty without any real struggle, despite playing at a different mouse sensitivity than I’ve been aiming with for years,” explained service writer Ryan Gilliam in our hands-on preview with the campaign ahead of release. “I’ve soloed the other Legendary campaigns as well, but there are some spikes in a few of those missions that had me sweating a bit, even in the comfort of my own home. It feels like Bungie has taken some of that combat difficulty and injected it into the puzzles instead — which is great for non-raiders, but might disappoint some endgame players.”

Image: Bungie

Even with the adjusted Legendary difficulty this time, it’s worth coming prepared with a build prepared to help you survive more challenging encounters. Hunters, for example, could consider using equipment and mods focused on boosting invisibility so you can hide from enemies to recover your shields.

For returning Destiny 2 players, it’s likely you’ll also have a range of crafted or god roll weapons and high-stat gear to give you the upper hand. For new players, the challenge of Legendary will be more significant without a decent loadout. If you cannot join other players who can help “carry” you through the campaign, it’s worth considering doing a Legendary run at a later time.