Lodestar is the first primary ammo Trace Rifle, and this is a great exotic for your Arc builds. Today I’m going to check out Lodestar, how it works, why it’s good, plus how to get Lodestar in Destiny 2.

How to get Lodestar

Lodestar is a season pass weapon, meaning you can get it at rank 1 on the paid track and rank 40 on the free track. In the future, this will get put into the Monuments to Lost Lights, the exotic kiosk in the Tower next to your vault. If you’re playing during Episode Heresy then pick it up from the Season Pass, if you’re playing in the future then check Monuments to Lost Lights, and the section for The Final Shape.

Lodestar

Lodestar is an Exotic Energy Trace Rifle with a Starlight Beam meaning this weapon fires a low-intensity Arc beam with enhanced stability and accuracy.

Arc Alignment – Dealing Arc damage from any source aligns the battery’s coils. When alignment is complete, [Alternate Weapon Action] to disengage the safety and enable hip-fired Starlight Beam to apply Jolt to any targets damaged for a short time. Aim down sights to slow the rate at which the battery drains.

Looking at the stats we have Impact 6, Range 76, Stability 95, Handling 78, Reload Speed 65, Rounds Per Minute 1000, Magazine 74.

What does Lodestar do?

Lodestar is different from other Trace Rifles. It uses Primary ammo for one, and given primary ammo is now infinite in the game, you can pretty much run around with your Arc laser all the time.

Lodestar does have some interesting behaviour though. When you aim down sights it behaves more like a pulse rifle. The burst fire increases damage and also blinds arc debuffed enemies. Plus when you deal enough damage with Lodestar you can perform an alternate reload and power up the weapon with Jolt when firing from the hip. All in all, this is great for Arc builds.

Lodestar performance

Thanks to Athenau on Reddit for the breakdown here.

ADS is 540 rpm. Hip fire is 1000900 rpm.

Lodestar has the PvE damage multipliers of a trace rifle, rather than a pulse. This means that its base minor dps isn’t chart-topping (still high because it gets the exotic bonus against minors), but it also means that it loses much less damage when hitting beefier targets like champions or bosses.

Base crit dps in ADS mode is 110.7% lower than a special trace. The crit multiplier is 1.85x (like a heavy burst pulse) as opposed to the much more forgiving 1.34x of a special trace.

Base crit dps in hip-fire mode is ~15% lower than a special trace. However hip-fire is useful for killing things that don’t take precision damage, like blights, since it has the same (lower) crit multiplier of a special trace.

The special reload is quick (~.65 seconds), like most other special reloads.

You get a 30% damage bonus for hitting an arc-debuffed target in ADS mode.

Charging arc alignment is by hits, not damage. It takes 33 hits (11 bursts) to fully charge the bar from empty, in the ADS fire mode (the hip fire seems to take more hits). Enemy DR, damage falloff, crits, etc don’t matter. Arc damage from other sources fills the bar, but not nearly as effectively as hitting with the weapon itself.

When arc alignment is activated, a single hip-fire hit will inflict jolt. The optimal play-loop in most situations is, AFAICT, activate, tag targets with hip-fire, deactivate, and start killing things with the ADS.

You do not need to have arc alignment active to get the blinding explosions on arc-debuffed kills.

Let me know what you think in the comments.