Destiny is a game that's made to be played with friends. Sure, it's entirely possible to try and set up a team full of strangers to take on the Darkness, but there's really no comparison - playing with friends is easily the best (and most fun) way to play.

So, for anyone who's still trying to convince their friends to jump in and play, you're in luck: Bungie has just announced a new 'Refer-a-Friend' program, complete with incentives (a.k.a. new loot). It's about as self-explanatory as you can get: anyone who gets one of their friends to pick up Destiny and follow a few simple steps won't just have someone new to play with, but they'll be eligible for a whole bunch of new, exclusive gear.

Granted, fans have known that something like this was coming for a while now: details on the promotion leaked thanks to data miners who exposed the program's new quests. However, Bungie has now officially unveiled all of what the program has to offer - and there's a surprising amount of content tied to the promotion.

First and foremost, anyone trying to link up with their friends will need to send them to Bungie.net. It's the only way to actually generate the code to 'Link' with your buddy: thankfully, Bungie made the process relatively painful, and setting up the link (which you can find here) should only take a few minutes.

Getting a friend to sign up is only the beginning, however: once you and your buddy are both in the game together, you'll need to grab a quest called "A Tale of Two Guardians" from the Speaker in the game's main social hub. The quest itself doesn't contain any new content, but is instead made up of a series of different objectives: for instance, one objective will have Linked friends completing a story quest, while the another will ask that both players hit Level 40.

Once the quest is done, players will return to the Speaker for their first batch of rewards. From there, any Linked friends will continue to earn exclusive loot, including new emotes, icons, banners an exclusive Sparrow, and most importantly, a brand-new elemental sword.

There is one caveat, however: the Refer-a-Friend program is only available to players with new accounts. That means you won't be able to sign up with the person you've been playing with for the last year - in fact, the promotion is only available to those still within their first week of playing, so you better make sure to sign up before it's too late.

At first, it may seem like Bungie has picked a strange time to roll out such a promotion, but it actually makes a lot of sense. There's a good chance that Black Friday will bring in quite a few new players, and for anyone who's unsure about taking the dive, Bungie just gave them yet another incentive to pick up Destiny: The Taken King.

For anyone who wants to start earning their Friendship gear right away, the promotion is already live: just head on over to Bungie.net to get started.

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