Xûr is Destiny 2’s Exotic gear merchant. He appears every weekend to sell the game’s most coveted items in exchange for Legendary shards, but if you’re a casual player with limited shards to spend, it can be hard to know which of his wares is most worth your investment. That’s where we come in.

Xûr appears every Friday at 17:00 GMT (09:00 Pacific), and will stick around until the Tuesday reset. We’ll update this guide shortly after he arrives, so if you’re reading this, you need only read on to learn where he is, and which are the best items he’s selling this week.

Ever since the Forsaken expansion, Xûr’s icon no longer appears on your director, so he’s not quite as easy to track down as he used to be. That said, his appearances in the EDZ, Titan, Nessus, Io, and The Tower have so far been in the same places he frequented in vanilla Destiny 2. When he appears in the Tangled Shore or Dreaming City (as he surely will) we’ll be sure to let you know exactly where.

Xûr is back on Io this week, hanging out at the Giant’s Scar. He is selling:

Skyburner’s Oath, an Exotic primary auto rifle, for 29 legendary shards
Young Ahamkara’s Spin, Exotic Hunter gauntlets, for 23 legendary shards
Skull of Dire Ahamkara, an Exotic Warlock helmet, for 23 legendary shards
Helm of Saint-14, an Exotic Titan helmet, for 23 legendary shards
A Fated Engram, which guarantees a non-duplicate Exotic, for 97 legendary shards.
Skyburner’s Oath is an Exotic scout rifle adapted from Cabal tech – with a satisfying heft and kick to match. It is fully automatic, though if you’re finding the recoil hard to manage, aiming down sights will lower the fire rate while upping the damage, so there’s no loss in DPS. It does extra damage to Cabal, and even penetrates those annoying Phalanx shields. This is definitely one of the better Exotic weapons, and a great pick for any Cabal-heavy strike. Skyburner’s Oath shouldn’t replace Coldheart when it comes to chucking out damage in the raid, but when killing Cabal mobs is more important – like in the Castellum or the Gauntlet, or if you’re on add control in the Baths – it’s a great choice. Keenly recommended.

Young Ahamkara’s Spine is a Hunter glove made from the bones of a space dragon. They increase the duration of your tripmine grenades and will tag enemies they damage. I guess this is nice to track enemies down and finish them in the Crucible, but neither this glove nor tripmine grenades really offer enough to demand your Exotic slot. Side note: in the original Destiny, this glove gave a second tripmine charge, and the grenades themselves did a lot more damage. Then these were tempting. As it is, you can probably skip them, unless you’ve got a thing for dragon bone.

Skull of Dire Ahamkara is a Warlock helmet that provides additional damage resistance while casting Nova Bomb, and will cause Nova Bomb kills to grant super energy. Community testing suggests that each enemy killed will regen roughly 10% of your Super (here’s a video showing five kills equals half the bar, which is a pretty decent boost in PvE. Pair with the Bloom perk tree for extra explosions. It’s harder to recommend in PvP simply because you’ll be killing fewer enemies in each cast, but the extra damage resistance should at least guarantee you get it off. Overall it’s a nice boon for your Super in regular or solo PvE, but in the raid you shouldn’t need any extra help to get your Super up for damage phases and so on – your team should be making enough orbs for that. If you’ve got Nezarec’s Sin or even Eye of Another World, Skull of Dire Ahamkara falls more into the ‘nice to have’ category.

The Helm of Saint-14 offers a boost to the Ward of Dawn super, meaning that it’s only useful if you’re speccing for the Defender subclass – but if you are, this is a PvP monster. With Starless Night, Ward of Dawn blinds enemies and gives an overshield to teammates, and makes Sentinel Shield blocks blind foes as well. That means you can lock down areas nearly effortlessly with the Helm equip, making it an excellent choice in all zone control game modes – and it’s a terrific pick in Gambit, too.