Destiny 2 DIM: How To Use Item Manager To Create Custom Loadouts

Celeb Highlights

DIM is one of the most popular and useful tools for Destiny players, but what is it and how do you use it to its full potential?

Destiny Item Manager, or DIM for short, is a third-party application that utilizes the Destiny API to directly interact with the game. It’s a great tool that can be used for things like equipping or transferring weapons and gear between characters as well as the Vault, building Loadouts, swapping between mods, and more. 

Originally released in early 2015 for Destiny year one, DIM is one of the longest-standing third-party apps available and constantly receives updates to help improve and stabilize the experience. While it does rely on the API being active and will not work during maintenance or any other times the API might go down, it is an incredibly useful tool. Let’s break down some frequently asked DIM questions and why you should add it to your bookmarks or your phone’s home screen. 

Table of Contents

Is DIM Safe To Use? 

Put simply, yes! DIM is incredibly safe to use. No third-party apps can do anything with your information. The Destiny API is secure and doesn’t allow for direct capture of any personal data, only data that allows the applications to control where an item is stored across your characters. Players must authorize DIM through Bungie.net in order to access anything, without authorization, DIM will not be able to access anything. 

On top of this, neither DIM nor any other third-party application has access to delete any item, not even in Bungie’s own Destiny 2 Companion App. All item deletion must happen via direct controller or keyboard input in the game itself. If you ever lose an item due to an issue with connection, you can go back and check the activity log on Bungie's website and find exactly where the API stored your favorite blinding ‘nades Grenade Launcher. Note that you must be logged into your Bungie.net account in order to view this page, otherwise it will direct you to create one. 

How To Clean Your Vault With DIM

DIM offers a robust suite of options for players to organize their own gear on a person-to-person basis. Fittingly, this tool is called Organizer and is used to help identify items based on your own discretion and with a suggestion from the community in the form of the Wish List column. A green thumbs up in this column means the community considers it to be a good role. 

In the Organizer, players can break down what category of items they want to view, such as weapons or armor. This can further be broken down by subcategories like Fusion Rifle or Auto Rifle for the weapon category, as well as helmet or arms for the Warlock, Titan, or Hunter categories. Using the Wish List column, players can easily take note of what the community has determined to be a meta weapon and lock it using the Organizer. That way, when viewing the item in-game, players won’t be able to delete it by mistake. 

DIM users also have the ability to Tag individual items. This is key when using DIM to help clean your Vault. Players can tag an item as Junk, and using DIM’s sort-by feature, can shove all of their Junk-marked items to the top of their inventory lists. Players can then transfer these items to their inventories, also using DIM, and delete the items manually. While this process can be time-consuming, it’s best to do things this way, rather than going into your Vaults in-game and trying to determine the best course of action from there based solely on reaction and trying to remember what’s good and what’s not. 

How To Find God Rolls In DIM

DIM has a great built-in tool to help you determine if a weapon is worth keeping around. This feature is especially helpful for newer players, but also useful if you're getting full on your postmaster and you don't want to sit through roll after roll of weapons to decide if it's better than the gun you currently have. 

This is determined by a blue Thumbs Up icon on the lower left-hand side of the weapon icon. In the image above, you'll see my favorite Mindbender's Ambition. This roll has the blue Thumbs Up icon, meaning that it's considered a good roll by the community. Whenever a new weapon is added to the game, a select number of Destiny streamers and mega fans get with the DIM team and automatically add specific rolls of that weapon to everyone's Wish List. With it inspected, you can see that my Mindbender's has recommended perks in all four perk columns and has a Range Masterwork. This, in my opinion, makes it a 5/5 God Roll. 

You will see that some weapons will have the Thumbs Up icon, but only have some of the recommended perks and Masterwork. This means that it is still a solid roll, but maybe not the perfect one. The way this reads to me is, "It's worth keeping until you get a better one." Doing this will also give you time to play with the weapon and get used to how it feels so that when you get the perfect 5/5 God Roll, you can slot it into your Loadout and get to slaying with it. 

How To Create Loadouts In DIM

Bungie recently added the ability to create in-game Loadouts at long last. While it may be fairly simple to do so, DIM offers some amazing information and additional features while putting together builds that you don't have easy access to in-game! Other than that, Destiny 2 only allows for 10 in-game Loadouts per character, while DIM has no limit! 

Creating Loadouts in DIM can be easier than you might think. Loadouts are hand-crafted kits that you make for your characters composed of items that you’ve acquired and have access to, either in your current character’s inventory or across the others and your Vault. DIM provides a lot of information that can feel overwhelming at first glance when you begin building your Loadouts. Once you’ve seen how the sausage is made, you’ll be a pro in no time. 

Clicking over to the Loadouts tab at the top left of your screen, you’ll see a page for all of the loadouts you have built out, as well as your currently equipped gear. Starting from scratch, you’ll only see that top “Equipped” section, for now. 

There are a few buttons that can help you along the way here. First, is the Save Loadout button. If you’ve already put together your perfect monster-slaying machine in-game, then that’s it! Click that button and a lower third will appear giving you the option to swap out weapons, gear and cosmetics, as well as your ghost, ship, emblem, and sparrow. This will also show you what mods you currently have equipped and allow you to make changes to your subclass selection, as well as its Aspects and Fragments. 

Note that while in the lower third, you can click the X that appears in the top right when mousing over icons to remove that item from your loadout entirely. Doing so will ensure that DIM doesn’t switch out whatever you already have equipped at the time to something that would have been saved in that loadout slot itself. For example, my Void loadout in the image above has no weapons currently assigned to it, so it will not switch my equipped weapons, only my armor, mods, and subclass. 

Once you’ve confirmed you have all of the mods, weapons, armor, and general items you’d like to be added to your loadout, you can rename it by clicking on the text that says “Equipped” at the top of this lower third, and give it any name you wish. After that, you can click Save Loadout at the bottom and there you go! You’ve saved your first loadout. 

If you’re watching along with a Datto video and he’s explaining exactly what mods he recommends and you want to make sure you get everything completely perfect, I’d recommend clicking the Save Loadout button as we did at the beginning and once the lower third appears, use the Optimize Armor option. This will bring you to a new screen that allows you to choose what armor you want to equip based on the stat requirements you choose and equip mods to your heart’s content. Here, you can also choose your Subclass, the Exotic armor you’d like to build your Loadout around, and more. 

After all is said and done, you can select your Loadout from the Inventory screen by clicking on your active character’s emblem. This will drop a menu down where you can choose which of your newly hand-crafted Loadouts you’d like to roll with. 

We recommend equipping your DIM Loadouts and then going in-game to save them as actual in-game loadouts. While Destiny 2 only allows you to have a total of 10 Loadouts in the game right now, DIM has no limit, so go nuts! 

One final note on Loadouts, however, as with the Destiny 2 Companion App, DIM cannot equip items for you unless you are In Orbit or visiting The Tower or the H.E.L.M. If you are in the middle of a Strike, Crucible game, Raid, etc, DIM will not be able to equip a loadout and will throw an error message, though it should still move those items to your current inventory if they’re not already there in the first place. This is important to note, because DIM doesn’t change the Mods on Loadout gear until it has been equipped, which it will also not do if you’re in an activity. 

Tips and Tricks for DIM

Some last-minute things to consider while using DIM:

  • Use Farming mode! This is chosen from the Character menu dropdown we talked about in the Loadouts section and will guarantee you always have at least one item slot to pick up drops so they don’t go to the postmaster. This will send items to your Vault, so make sure you have some room! 

  • If you’re not sure if your character is the highest Power Level it can be, just click Max Power from that same dropdown and there you go! All highest Power Level items are now equipped!

  • Use the Progress tab to track your exact Strike, Crucible, or Gambit progress! In here, you can see how many ranks you have left before a reset of a Ritual Vendor, check up on tracked Triumph progress, and track Bounties. Not sure if you did a specific Raid on this reset rotation? Check in the Progress tab! 

  • The Vendors tab will show you what items each vendor has for sale, including Xur when he’s around! Just click the Vendors tab at the top of the screen, and get a move on! 

  • You can easily search for items if you can’t locate them by their icons. Go up to the search bar and read its prefilled info, it wants to be helpful for you! 

That’s everything you need to know about Destiny Item Manager. Now is a perfect time to start using DIM to help you put together some amazing builds like the Solar Warlock builds we have put together!

For more Destiny 2 news, be sure to check out our dedicated section or take a look at some of our Guides & Tutorials just below:

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Best Hunter Builds

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