Destiny 2 weapon crafting promises a grind with rewards "far beyond Masterworking"

gamesradar.com:

Destiny 2: The Witch Queen is bringing some huge balance updates to go with its new, craftable weapons, and they're going to change the guns you use forever.

The latest blog post from Bungie – which was recently bought by Sony, if you haven't heard – outlines how weapon crafting will work in The Witch Queen and how the expansion's changing up weapons in other ways. 

Weapon crafting starts with a new ability called Deepsight which gives randomly rolled weapons a chance to drop with Deepsight Resonance. This unique property lets you extract the "essence" of guns and apply their traits to a craftable weapon. You'll also need collectible patterns to craft specific guns, and only a set pool of patterns will be available at launch, but more will be added over time. This being Destiny 2, obviously crafting also involves a host of other currencies, as evidenced by the screenshots Bungie shared today. 

To boil things down, once you have the pattern you need and the essences you want, you can forge a gun with any combination of perks provided they're supported by that weapon's archetype. After you make a gun, you'll have to put it through its paces by clearing activities and shooting aliens, and Bungie reckons "this is where the bulk of your crafting playtime will be."

"The more you use your weapon, the faster you'll unlock its full potential," Bungie says. As you level it up, its stats will increase, seemingly to a degree "far beyond what Masterworking could offer." And if you like a gun but eventually decide you want to change a perk or even a barrel option, you can always reshape crafted weapons without needing to start from scratch. Further customizations include cosmetic "mementos" that drop from core playlists and end-game