Destiny 2 tonics explained: How to discover recipes and earn upgrades

Tonics are the upgrade system for Destiny 2's latest episode, Revenant. And much like last episode's Research Bays, they can seem overwhelming at first. The game does a reasonably good job at walking you through the process of actually creating a tonic, but not how to unlock new recipes—which you'll need in order to unlock the Fieldwork missions that reward some useful upgrades that make the whole process quicker. One day Bungie might properly explain the meta-structure it has created for its new release, but today is not that day.

Fortunately once you've learned the tricks to Destiny 2's tonics, and how to unlock new recipes, it's less bewildering than it might initially seem. Read below to discover how to unlock new tonics and see what each recipe can provide.

How to discover tonics

To discover new tonics in Destiny 2 you need to make more tonics. Each time you craft a tonic in the Tonic Types menu, there's a chance that you'll unlock a new recipe. However, there are a couple of thing to consider:

• Crafting Volatile tonics has a chance to unlock another Volatile tonic recipe. Same for Enriching tonics unlocking Enriching tonic recipes.
• Making tonics only seems to have a chance to unlock recipes of the rarity above. For example, crafting an Uncommon tonic has a chance to unlock a Rare tonic recipe, while crafting a Rare tonic has a chance to unlock a Legendary tonic recipe.

You don't actually need to brew the tonics in order to see any you've unlocked. As you select tonics in the Tonic Types menu, any new ones you unlock will appear there straight away. If you want to unlock tonic recipes even quicker, make sure to prioritise the Major Fieldwork II: Nessus quest from Eido, since this increases your chance of unlocking new recipes when you craft tonics.

Major Fieldwork rewards

Once you've completed some of the Minor Fieldwork quests you get from Eido, you can undertake a Major Fieldwork quest which provides an upgrade related to crafting tonics. 

The upgrades are:

• Blood Drive (Major Fieldwork I: Europa): Collecting Reclaimed Vitality has a chance to also give you Uncommon reagents.
• Extraordinary Tonics (Major Fieldwork II: Nessus): Increased chance to discover recipes for higher-tier tonics when brewing in Eido’s lab.
• Performance Bonus (Major Fieldwork III: Earth): Completing bonus objectives in Onslaught Salvation provides extra reagents and Eido reputation. 
• Bounty Harvester (Major Fieldwork IV: Moon): Completing daily bounties has a chance to award reagents with a low chance of providing rarer reagents. 
• Revenant Recycler (Major Fieldwork V: Neptune): Dismantling Revenant weapons rewards reagents.

How to get every reagent

Reagents are the ingredients you use to craft tonics and they each come from a particular activity. You can also get reagents as a reward from Eido for completing minor and major fieldwork tasks, or by claiming them from her seasonal reputation reward track. If you want to see the info below in-game, check the Tonic Capsule in your inventory.