How to unlock Destiny 2 Tonic recipes and how Tonics work

Brewing Destiny 2 Tonics recipes and swigging them during activities buffs you with extra combat abilities and bonus chances to get Revenant loot. These Volatile and Enriching Tonics are also a vital part of getting Revenant loot in Destiny 2, so it’s important to understand the ins and outs of brewing. However, it’s a slightly confusing system at first as it’s not obvious how you get ingredients for each Tonic or how you go about unlocking better recipes. To help you become a master apothecary, here’s everything you need to know about Destiny 2 Tonics, from how you unlock all the recipes to how you use them.

How to unlock Destiny 2 Tonic recipes

To discover Tonic recipes in Destiny 2, you’ve just got to brew other Tonics and hope that you randomly unlock a new recipe during the process. Essentially, whenever you hand over some reagents at the Table to brew, there’s a small chance that you’ll discover a new and similar recipe too.

With 45 Tonic recipes to discover in Destiny 2 and only seven to start with, that’s a lot of brewing to do. So, to help you unlock Tonic recipes, I highly recommend the Extraordinary Tonic upgrade as this increases the chances of you randomly discovering new recipes while brewing. More Tonic recipes also mean you’ll unlock more Destiny 2 Fieldwork quests, which’ll help you get more reagents and even more Tonic upgrades. If you’re a bit confused as to how brewing Tonics in Destiny 2 works, and how best to use them, I’ve explained in detail below.

Destiny 2 Tonic brewing and gathering reagents explained

Brewing Tonics is a vital part of the activity and reward loop in Revenant, adding new ways to not only get more loot but also choose what you want to chase too. They come in two broad flavors with very different uses:

• Volatile Tonics: Consuming these temporarily grants you an extra power in combat – usually a new way to benefit from or apply one of the many Subclass keywords – and improves one or two Artifact Perks, effectively supercharging your build.
• Enriching Tonics: Drinking one of these temporarily increases the chances of you getting certain rewards from killing enemies or completing activities. They’re split into the following categories:
  • Onslaught: Tonics that increase the chances of you getting Onslaught Salvation or Vintage Onslaught weapons.
  • World Gear: Tonics that increase the chances of you getting weapons from the world loot pool.
  • Shadestalker: Tonics that increase the chances of you getting pieces from the Revenant Shadestalker armor set.
  • Resource: Tonics that increase the chances of you getting valuable upgrade materials such as Enhancement Prisms and even Ascendent Shards.

If you’ve got plenty of reagents, you can head to the Tonic Table next to Eido in her Last City lab and choose which Tonics you want to brew – you can choose as many as you want, so long as you have the reagents. Once you’ve chosen your tonics, head over to the Eliksni Apparatus near the repurposed walker tank to create the brews, give them a taste test, then deposit them into the walker to imbue them with Light. After that, they’ll spew out and you can collect them, ready to use.

To brew any Tonic recipes you’ve unlocked, you need various reagents, with each Tonic specifying the type and quantity of reagents needed. You can reagents from just killing enemies and completing Revenant activities, but Destiny 2 Tonic Upgrades will help learn additional ways of gathering these necessary ingredients.

How to use Destiny 2 Tonics

To use any Tonics you’ve brewed, you need to open your character inventory menu and then select the Tonic Capsule item under the Accessories section. This reveals a screen with two slots, one for all your Volatile Tonics and one for all your Enriching Tonics. Hover over these slots and pick a Tonic to activate it, immediately starting its timer and providing its effect. You can have one Volatile and one Enriching Tonic active at once but sipping another Tonic of the same type entirely replaces the one you just had, so don’t waste Tonics by doing this.

So, with a Tonic or two active, you should now try and complete as many activities as you can for the duration of the Tonic buffs, particularly with Enriching Tonics as this’ll help you get the most loot. Since Enriching Tonics have a chance to grant loot on kills as well as activity completions, it’s definitely worth just focusing on PVE activities with a high enemy density, such as Strikes and Onslaught, to maximize your loot.

Finally, when you’re Tonics have expired, you can apply more to keep the loot grind going or you can visit the Tonic Table again to craft more with the reagents you hopefully just collected. If you’ve got surplus Tonics, you can check Eido’s requests in to see if she’s asking for any Tonics you’ve got in exchange for a bit of reputation and a piece of Legendary gear!

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