Warmind guide: Campaign, quests, and Escalation Protocol

My series of past season guides continue with Destiny 2’s second expansion, Warmind. Much better received than the short and sometimes tonally awkward Curse of Osiris, Warmind saw us return to Mars, although a different region than Destiny 1’s Meridian Bay. Instead, we traveled to Hellas Basin, a frozen region near the Red Planet’s ice cap, which mysteriously began to thaw in the aftermath of the Red War, unleashing a long-dormant threat.

This will be the last of the guides covering Destiny 2’s first year, and with it, I’ll have covered most of the content that will soon be vaulted. There’s still some more stuff that will be going away from year 2, so I intend on continuing these guides in the weeks to come. But for now, let’s delve into the ice and help out Rasputin!

Campaign

Like the other legacy campaigns, you can begin the Warmind campaign from Amanda Holliday in the Tower Hangar. Once you pick up the quest from her, you can start the campaign from the Director. If you don’t already have Mars unlocked, starting the campaign will give you access.

The campaign begins with a cutscene of Ana Bray on the Martian ice cap, a rogue Hunter who was part of the famous Bray family in her first life. The scientific minds of Clovis Bray built much of the technology that fueled humanity’s Golden Age, and her research into her past has led her to the BrayTech Futurescape in Hellas Basin, the location of Rasputin, as well as a rogue sect of Hive that is awakening in response to the revived Traveler.

The first mission of the campaign, Ice and Shadow, sees you flying towards Mars. Rasputin’s Warsats are falling out of orbit, and the remnants of the Red Legion are scavenging whatever they can find. As you approach, you pick up a distress call from Ana, requesting backup to help protect Rasputin. Landing nearby, you make your way through icy caves, coming into contact with a new breed of Hive; their chitin has merged with the ice, bringing about some new behaviors, like Cursed Thrall that slow you down if you’re caught in their explosion. Once you emerge from the caves, you’re greeted with the sight of the Futurescape under siege by Xol, one of the Hive Worm Gods. After fighting through more of the Hive forces, you approach the gateway to the facility, where Ana meets up with you. Hacking the door open, you make your way through.

The next mission, Pilgrimage, picks up immediately afterward. You fight your way through Hive and Cabal forces towards the Futurescape, while Ana looks for a way into the facility. Once you’ve routed everyone standing in your way, Ana manages to use her ID to open the doors to the Mindlab, where Rasputin is housed. Hive are assaulting Rasputin’s core, but you manage to fight through them, with a little help from the Warmind in the form of the Valkyrie, a special weapon that can be thrown to deal massive damage in an area. As you approach the core, the door opens, as if Rasputin is ushering you inside. When you enter, you end up finding Zavala, who’s already there waiting for you. He chides Ana for chasing after Rasputin instead of helping out in the Red War, to which Ana argues for her belief that Rasputin can help humanity. The argument is cut short when the ground quakes with Xol’s continued attacks on the facility. You’ll have to deal with the Worm God before you can do anything about Rasputin, but Zavala has a plan for that.

You head to the EDZ in the next mission, Off-World Recovery. Zavala knows Xol won’t be able to resist a shard of the Traveler, and he has intel of such a shard splintering off during the Red War and landing in the EDZ. You make your way into the Sludge, destroying Taken Blights to clear up the signal to the shard. As you enter the Hallowed Grove Lost Sector where the shard is located, Ana insists that you’ll need Rasputin’s help to take down Xol, though Zavala is unconvinced. After clearing out the Taken and locating the shard, you find that the Taken have erected a shield around it. Ana asks Rasputin for help, and he fires down Valkyries from an orbiting Warsat, destroying the shield and allowing you to transmat it. Zavala still doesn’t trust the Warmind, but now that you have the shard, it’s time to lure out Xol.

It’s back to Mars for the penultimate mission, Strange Terrain. Ghost’s scans have identified a cavern deep in the ice that intersects with Xol’s tunnels, so that’s where you’ll attempt to lure him. Ana continues to insist on getting Rasputin’s help, but Zavala refuses. You begin to work your way down through the tunnels, though your comms are picking up some kind of interference. The tunnels are huge, suggesting Xol’s more powerful than you thought. The Hive within the tunnels are chanting about a heretical priest, Nokris, and his studies into resurrection. After defeating an Ogre that was being raised as a sacrifice to Xol, Ana informs you that the interference is the names of the other Worm Gods–Akka, Eir, Yul, and Ur–but her comms go dark shortly afterward. Making your way to the cavern, you find Nokris himself emerging from a portal, and you eventually defeat him in battle. You place the fragment of the Traveler, only to find yourself frozen as Xol coils around the room, taunting your hubris in challenging him and collapsing the ceiling in on you. You awaken later once Ghost heals you, and you find out from Ana that Xol is assaulting Rasputin. Zavala finally relents, authorizing you to assist the Warmind and enlist his help.

The final mission, Will of the Thousands, sees you entering the Warmind’s facilities to stop Xol’s attack. Ana has a plan: if you overload Rasputin’s core, the energy buildup can be funneled into the Valkyrie and supercharge it into a weapon that can defeat Xol. You work your way through the complex, opening cooling vents and firing into them to overload them. After the third one is overloaded, you make your way to the core, defeating more Hive before the Valkyrie is ready for you. Throwing it into the core supercharges it, made readily apparent when you use it to obliterate Hive in the next room. You finally emerge onto an exterior platform and face Xol, Will of the Thousands, who attacks with its contingent of Hive. With the aid of the Valkyrie, you manage to defeat the Worm God, its body crumbling to dust.

In the aftermath, you, Ana, and Zavala enter Rasputin’s core, and the Warmind speaks to you. Ana translates, saying that Rasputin will no longer be constrained by anyone, choosing to define his own existence. He begins launching a new Warsat network, claiming that no threat will go unseen, and that he will defend humanity on his own terms. Although Zavala has some trepidation over the Warmind’s power, Ana reassures him that it’ll all work out in the end. After a brief chat with each of them, the campaign ends.

Data Recovery

Initially, upon completing the campaign, you could head back to Mars to pick up the world quest Data Recovery. Post-New Light, it’s possible you don’t have to do the campaign to get the quest, but if you can’t get it from Ana, do the campaign to unlock it. It’s a fairly short quest, but it opens up a variety of other quests and content throughout Mars.

Head to Ana, who will tell you of a blank spot in Rasputin’s memory, not deleted but suppressed. She asks for your help in finding out what was hidden. When you start the mission, Ana will tell you of a set of coordinates to investigate; when you do, you pick up an energy signature that leads you to a DVALIN core, which references a storage chest you then investigate. The chest proves empty, so you head further into the facility to get the components back from the scavenging Red Legion. The code fragments you recover turn out to be Ana’s omni-key, which can unlock anything in Rasputin’s database. She asks you to upload the data components into Rasputin’s core, and after defeating another wave of Cabal, you’re rewarded with a special Forged Engram from the core.

In order to decrypt this engram, you’ll need to bring it to Rasputin himself. Ana asks you to upload her omni-key to a terminal in the Futurescape, though this draws the attention of the Cabal. When the upload’s done, you head back to the Mindlab, but Rasputin has put up barriers to protect himself from the Cabal’s advances. Ana sends physical copies of her omni-key to disable the barriers and let you pass. After you reach the upper level, more Cabal drop in, but luckily, you’ve got the Valkyrie to help you out. You then enter the Warmind’s chamber and give him the engram. Your reward is the IKELOS_HC_v1.0.1 hand cannon and the IKELOS Imperative emblem.

Returning to Ana, she thanks you for your hard work in helping her uncover her past. The blank spot in Rasputin’s memory pointed towards weapon designs that she worked on with her sister, Elsie. With the new IKELOS weapon in hand and the recovered blueprints, it’s time to reforge the past. You’ll also get the Specter of the Gun emblem for completing the quest.

Adventures

Once you completed the Warmind campaign, you would then unlock Adventures on Mars. Nowadays, I believe they’re unlocked by default as soon as you have access to Mars, similar to other destinations.

Unlike Mercury, you didn’t have to play through them in a particular order, with all four available immediately. Once all four were completed, you could then access Heroic versions of each at any time. This was changed after Forsaken with the addition of Heroic Adventures to other destinations, and now you can only play Heroic Adventures on Mars when there’s an active Flashpoint there.

The four Adventures are:

• Hephaestus: Destroy dangerous information before it falls into the wrong hands.
• Incursion: Stop the Cabal scavengers.
• Deathly Tremors: Investigate the strange Hive signals.
• Psionic Potential: Locate the stolen supplies.

Escalation Protocol

Mars has an activity unique to the destination called Escalation Protocol. This activity plays out somewhat like a horde mode, in which waves of increasingly more challenging enemies will spawn in and need to be defeated quickly enough to move on. If you get far enough, you’ll then be given a more complex and challenging boss to defeat for the best rewards.

Escalation Protocol can be accessed from either the Glacial Drift or BrayTech Futurescape locations on Mars. At various points throughout the area, you’ll find square platforms with orange Rasputin energy hovering above them. Interact with this platform to raise a tower that will draw Hive towards it, beginning the event.

Basic mechanics

The activity has seven levels of progressively higher difficulty, though it’s really not much of a challenge anymore with the increase in player power levels. While it used to be that you needed to organize nine players to have a reliable chance of completing the final boss, it’s now pretty easy to complete with just three or four players.

Each level plays out fairly similarly. You start out with a wave of adds that you’ll have to defeat within a limited amount of time. When enough are killed, the Hive will begin opening shadowrifts nearby; you can spot them by the floating crystals hanging around them. Head to each shadowrift and stand within it until the progress bar fills, then destroy the crystals around the rift to close it. After the rift is closed, a Severing Knight will spawn at the rift’s location; once defeated, it will drop its Cleaver, which you can pick up and use if you want.

When all rifts are closed, another wave of adds will spawn that you’ll need to defeat before your initial timer runs out. Once enough are killed, a boss or pair of bosses will spawn in and the timer will reset to two minutes; defeat the boss(es) before time runs out to complete the level.

Occasionally, a public event timer will go off while you’re doing Escalation Protocol. When that happens, the public event will activate when you complete your current wave, giving you an alternate encounter for the next level. Instead of the standard adds-rifts-adds structure, you’ll have to complete the heroic public event and the boss for that level within a short period of time. This generally isn’t too difficult, and it’s usually easier to complete than the standard encounters.

You can also earn Rasputin Armory Codes from completing various activities on Mars. These can be used on a vent near the currently active EP tower to remove a green Hive shield, giving you access to the Valkyrie for a short period of time. You can only hold three codes at a time, so try to save them for a difficult encounter like the final boss. Generally speaking, you probably won’t need it, but hey, the Valkyrie’s fun to use.

After a level is complete, another tower will activate somewhere else in the zone. An orange pillar of light will indicate which tower you need to go to. Interact with the tower to start the next level.

If you fail to complete a level, you’ll be forced to go back to the previous level and try again. This only really applies to levels 3 and on, since levels 1 and 2 will just take you back to the start. However, as long as you have at least two or three people around playing with you, you probably won’t fail.

If you manage to defeat the final boss on the seventh level, you’ll be given a brief window where you can restart Escalation Protocol from level 6. As soon as you see the message “The darkness holds steady…” in your activity feed, activate any of the towers to start the activity again, this time skipping the first five levels. This helps with farming for gear or cosmetics, saving about twenty minutes of work to get you back to the boss fight faster.

Levels

As mentioned, each level plays out rather similarly, though there are minor changes as you work your way up through the levels. Here’s a quick overview of how each level differs:

• Level 1: Three minutes to start, one shadowrift, boss is Shambling Torrent (Ogre).
• Level 2: Three minutes to start, one shadowrift, boss is Soaring Keen (Wizard).
• Level 3: Two and a half minutes to start, two shadowrifts, boss is Choking Blade (Knight with a Cleaver). This level doesn’t have the second add wave after the rifts.
• Level 4: Four minutes to start, two shadowrifts, bosses are two Deafening Blasts (Knights with Boomers). Beginning with this level, a Renewal Wizard will spawn in with the bosses, and it will slowly heal them over time if it’s near them. The healing is low enough to where you can basically ignore it.
• Level 5: Just over four minutes to start, three shadowrifts, bosses are two Shambling Torrents (Ogres).
• Level 6: Just over four minutes to start, three shadowrifts, bosses are two Deafening Blasts (Knights with Boomers).
• Level 7: Three to four minutes depending on boss, no add waves, just the boss fight.

Bosses

Each week, the final boss changes to one of five encounters. The bosses are on a fixed rotation, so you’ll be able to face off against each one if you play Escalation Protocol over the course of five weeks. Each boss plays a little differently, so here’s how to defeat them, in the boss rotation order:

• Nur Abath, Crest of Xol: Ogre with webs on its back. It becomes immune to damage if any Hive are near it; keep Hive out of the area marked by the white circle on the ground around it. Not too difficult as long as you’re keeping up add clear.
• Kathok, Roar of Xol: Knight with an immunity shield. You’ll need to defeat Severing Knights that spawn in regularly, pick up their Cleavers, and attack Kathok to remove its shield. The shield will stay down for a brief period of time before coming back up, so you’ll want to do as much damage as possible in that time. When it’s back up, get more Cleavers and repeat the process.
• Damkath, the Mask: Ogre with a big tumor on its back. The only spot it can be damaged is the back tumor, so you’ll want to have someone distracting it while the rest of your group lays into it from behind. Alternatively, standing in a Warlock’s Well of Radiance will bypass the immunity, letting you damage it normally. With a couple Wells, you should be able to defeat it without much trouble.
• Naksud, the Famine: Ogre with spines on its back. The boss itself doesn’t have much health, but when it reaches certain health thresholds, waves of Cursed Thrall called Naksud’s Fodder will spawn. If these reach the boss and explode, it will feed from them and heal up. If you’re able to put out enough damage, you can somewhat negate this effect, but it’s best to focus on killing them before they reach the boss.
• Bok Litur, Hunger of Xol: Knight with a dark coloration. The boss has a large health pool but no immunity or healing mechanics. Instead, you’ll want to take advantage of the Battery Acolytes that spawn in periodically; defeating them will drop a large amount of Orbs of Light for your team, letting you cast and re-cast your Supers constantly. Use everything at your disposal to take the boss down.

Rewards

Rewards for Escalation Protocol come from loot chests and the final boss itself, with different rewards having different sources.

You’ll get reward chests from Escalation Protocol after completing levels 3, 5, and 7. Levels 3 and 5 only contain standard public event rewards, though there is a low chance to acquire EP cosmetics listed below. The level 7 chest used to require a special key to unlock, and you could only earn one key per week. This was changed in a recent update to allow for easier farming of armor rolls.

The level 7 chest will give you a guaranteed armor drop when opened, as well as the best chance for earning an EP cosmetic. It’s still a low chance, but better than the level 3 and 5 chests. Your first five armor drops are guaranteed to give you a full set of the armor; after that, you’ll get a random piece every time you open the chest. The armor sets are:

• Titan: Midnight Exigent Suit
• Warlock: Yuga Sundown Suit
• Hunter: Abhorrent Imperative Suit

The final bosses are guaranteed to drop a couple copies of the GENOTYPENULL-ZERO shader, which gives your gear a carbon fiber appearance with metallic orange highlights. Each boss also has a low chance of dropping one of the IKELOS weapons. The weapons have a deterministic droprate, meaning that every time you don’t get a weapon to drop, the chances of getting it increase for your next kill, resetting once you get a drop. The droprate starts at 5% and increases from there, so keep farming until you get the weapons to drop. Three bosses will each drop a specific weapon, while the other two can drop any of the weapons. In rotation order, these are:

• Nur Abath, Crest of Xol: IKELOS_SG_v1.0.1 (shotgun).
• Kathok, Roar of Xol: IKELOS_SMG_v1.0.1 (submachine gun).
• Damkath, the Mask: IKELOS_SR_v1.0.1 (sniper rifle).
• Naksud, the Famine: Any IKELOS weapon.
• Bok Litur, Hunger of Xol: Any IKELOS weapon.

There are an assortment of cosmetics available from Escalation Protocol. Any of the loot chests can contain the Block-Z Shell for your Ghost, the Pacific Deception Sparrow, or the Groundswell Nullifier99 ship, with the level 7 chest having the best chances. I already mentioned the GENOTYPENULL-ZERO shader which is guaranteed to drop from any level 7 boss. Finally, you can earn three emblems from Escalation Protocol. Activate Escalation is awarded on your first level 7 boss kill, Return TYRANT++ is unlocked after 25 level 7 boss kills, and Apparatus Belli is unlocked once you’ve earned all four IKELOS weapons (the three from EP and the hand cannon from the Data Recovery quest).

Sleeper Nodes

Scattered across the Martian surface are Sleeper Nodes, floating octahedrons that remain dormant until accessed with the appropriate Override Frequency. Sleeper Nodes are involved in several quests, but they’ve also proven to be a bane for some players, for reasons I’ll get into below.

To access a Sleeper Node, you’ll need to generate an Override Frequency. To do that, you’ll need to acquire Resonate Stems; these come from most standard open-world activities on Mars, like public events, Lost Sectors, high-value targets, and patrol missions. Each activity will give one stem, with heroic public events giving two.

Once you have four Resonate Stems, you can use them from your inventory to combine them into an Override Frequency. You can only have one frequency at a time, so you’ll have to use it or delete it before you can get another. This frequency can then be used on a specific node to open it and obtain a reward. To figure out which node it opens, you can look at the frequency’s description to find hints as to where you need to go. The description will have three words, with the first telling you the overall zone you need to go to, and the second and third describing the node’s location in a bit more detail.

Head to the zone in question and wander around until you start to hear classical music. Your screen will also begin to glow orange, with the glow intensifying as you get closer to the node. The node will be open and glowing, spinning slowly around as you approach. Interact with the node to consume the frequency and get a reward.

Alternatively, if you don’t feel like hunting them down yourself, you can use maps on sites like Braytech or Lowlidev to help you find them, or watch Youtube videos like the one below where people have helpfully filmed each node’s location. It’s fairly easy to find the nodes anyway, but if you’re a bit lost, these resources will help.

Opening a Sleeper Node will give rewards similar to a standard loot chest: some Glimmer, blue items, and some exclusive shaders. The shaders you can get are The Mad Monk, Arctic Dreamscape, and Bray Innovation. The Mad Monk matches the Escalation Protocol armor sets, while Arctic Dreamscape and Bray Innovation match the BrayTech weapons described below.

Occasionally, you’ll also get a BrayTech Schematic when you open a Sleeper Node. You can take this item back to Ana to receive a Warmind Engram, which will automatically decrypt into one of four exclusive weapons: BrayTech Winter Wolf (auto rifle), Niflheim Frost (scout rifle), 18 Kelvins (sidearm), or The Frigid Jackal (sniper rifle). It also has a 4% chance of giving you the Polestar II Shell for your Ghost.

Opening your first Sleeper Node will give you the Data Mine emblem. Opening all forty nodes at least once will award the Warminded emblem. However, because there is no bad luck protection or knockout system for nodes, you might have to open way more than forty to get the last ones you need. Lots of people have been stuck at 38 or 39, spending hundreds of Resonate Stems trying to finish the emblem. There’s some evidence that creating Override Frequencies in certain zones will increase your chances of getting a node in a specific zone. Generally speaking, creating a frequency in one zone will point you to a different zone entirely, so you should create frequencies while standing in zones you don’t need them in. It doesn’t seem likely that Bungie will devote any effort to adding in bad luck protection for a destination that will be removed in a couple months, so if you want the Warminded emblem, you’re probably better off settling in for a long grind, rather than waiting to see if they make it easier.

Latent Memories

While you’re wandering around Hellas Basin, you might notice small holograms like the one above. These are known as Latent Memories, a side activity that gives a couple rewards once you complete it.

There are 45 Latent Memories across every zone on Mars, and you simply need to damage them to destroy them. However, each Memory can only be destroyed by a particular damage type, based on its color:

• White: Must be destroyed with kinetic damage.
• Orange: Must be destroyed with Solar damage.
• Blue: Must be destroyed with Arc damage.
• Purple: Must be destroyed with Void damage.
• Red: Must be destroyed by being hit with a Valkyrie. You can get a Valkyrie from Warsat Down public events or from using a Rasputin Armory Code during Escalation Protocol.

Long-range precision weapons like scout rifles and sniper rifles are ideal for destroying Latent Memories. If you have it, Borealis is an excellent weapon to use, letting you swap to whatever elemental damage you need. Pair it with a kinetic scout rifle for an easy time.

Once again, maps on sites like Braytech or Lowlidev will help you track down pesky holograms you’re missing, but for this one, I think a video walkthrough is easier to follow. Datto’s video below goes into each Latent Memory location, taking you on a fairly logical path through each zone. It also shows the location of the two caches that you’ll get your rewards from:

You’ll unlock rewards at two thresholds. After destroying 35 Latent Memories, you can access Cache ANSERIS, which is located in the Core Terminus Lost Sector (timestamp 12:15 in the video above). Opening this cache will reward you with the Worldline Zero exotic sword.

After you’ve destroyed all 45 Latent Memories, you can open up Cache PAVONIS, which is tucked down in a cliffside in the Olympus Descent zone (timestamp 13:00 in the video above). Opening this cache will reward you with the G-335 Anseris Overdrive exotic Sparrow, as well as the Wormslayer destination emblem.

I’ll also briefly mention how to acquire and complete the Worldline Zero exotic catalyst. Once you’ve unlocked Worldline Zero, you can get the catalyst from any sword kill, including unpowered kills when you run out of ammo; so long as you have your sword out, you can punch enemies and still get the catalyst to drop.

To complete the catalyst, you must hit every level 7 Escalation Protocol boss with Worldline Zero until you see an item pop up in your loot feed called “Worldline Ideasthesia: [x],” where [x] is a different word depending on the boss. The drop rate of the progression item seems completely random; you might be done after a few swings, or you might be forced to repeat the boss fight numerous times. You don’t have to do heavy attacks, light attacks will work fine, but you must actually be doing damage to the boss for it to count. For Damkath, the Mask, who can normally only be damaged on his back, you’ll definitely want someone to drop a Well of Radiance at his feet to help you bypass that mechanic.

With five bosses rotating weekly, that means it will take a minimum of five weeks to complete the catalyst and masterwork your sword. When your sword is upgraded, you can activate the Tesseract heavy attack after only a brief sprint, as opposed to a couple seconds of sprinting without the masterwork.

I highly recommend keeping track of which bosses you’ve hit somewhere, such as a written note next to your computer/console. The catalyst description unfortunately does not specify which bosses you’ve successfully gotten the Worldline Ideasthesia from, simply showing a 0-100% progress bar that ticks up 20% with each success. If you’re not keeping a log yourself, you might end up in a situation where you’ll spend hours hacking away at bosses you’ve already done, with no indication that you’re wasting your time.

If you’d rather not deal with this, the catalyst will undoubtedly have new objectives sometime in the future. But again, Bungie being Bungie, there’s no telling how long that might take. If you’re starting fresh, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, but if you have no idea which bosses you’re missing, maybe you’re better off waiting.

Exotic quests

After taking a break in Curse of Osiris, Warmind brought back exotic quests, with two of them available to complete. One unfolded over the course of five weeks, while the other was available from day one. Both could be acquired after completing the Data Recovery world quest, though I’m not sure if you still have to do the quest first after the New Light changes. Simply put, if Ana doesn’t have these quests for you when you talk to her, go do the Data Recovery quest; if you can’t access that quest, do the Warmind campaign.

The first quest is The Machine’s Gun, which rewards the Sleeper Simulant exotic linear fusion rifle. A classic Destiny 1 weapon, the revamped version is pretty much identical to its original incarnation, firing a massive burst of Solar energy that can ricochet off hard surfaces and deal more damage. Unfortunately, it’s been nerfed repeatedly since it was first reintroduced, so it’s not quite the powerhouse it once was. Hopefully, it’ll get its chance to shine again soon.

To complete the quest, complete the following steps:

1. Equip any IKELOS weapon, then get precision kills on Hive and Cabal in Hellas Basin. You need 250 Hive kills and 100 Cabal kills. Note that you do not need to get kills with the IKELOS weapon itself, just have it equipped. The IKELOS hand cannon you get from the Data Recovery quest or any of the IKELOS weapons from Escalation Protocol will work.
2. Defeat 50 powerful enemies with an IKELOS weapon equipped. This means orange-bar or higher. You should get this naturally just by playing the game, although Escalation Protocol is a pretty decent way to grind out these kills; the higher levels are chock full of majors and ultras to kill. Again, you don’t need to get the kills with the IKELOS weapons, and you’ll get credit as long as you have them equipped.
3. Complete five strikes with an IKELOS weapon equipped. Regular strikes or Nightfalls will work here.
4. With an IKELOS weapon equipped, complete three levels of Escalation Protocol and open fifteen Sleeper Nodes. The nodes will require a total of 60 Resonate Stems, so you may have to grind out a few of those before you can move past this step.
5. Replay the Will of the Thousands story mission with an IKELOS weapon equipped. You’ll be able to pick up the mission from a quest flag in the BrayTech Futurescape. There’s no change to the mission from the campaign version, so just run through the whole thing again.
6. Return to Ana to obtain Sleeper Simulant.

The other questline is the Nascent Dawn series. This quest previously unfolded over the course of five weeks, but it can now be completed in full at any time. You’ll get different rewards for each step of the questline, eventually giving you the Polaris Lance exotic scout rifle. This Solar energy rifle returns ammo to the magazine on each precision hit; landing four precision hits in a relatively brief timespan will charge up a powerful round that will deal a delayed explosion on hit.

Here’s how to complete each quest:

Nascent Dawn 1/5

1. Complete three patrol missions on Mars. Any will do.
2. Complete a Lost Sector on Mars. Either one works.
3. Using the Resonate Stems you earned from these activities, create an Override Frequency and use it to open its associated Sleeper Node. The guide above goes into more details if you’re confused.
4. You retrieve a diary entry from the Sleeper Node. Take it to Ana, who will give you a Warmind Engram in return for collecting data from her past. This will give you one of the BrayTech weapons listed in the Sleeper Node section above.
5. Socket the diary entry into the server indicated nearby. You’ll get a transcript of the entry that you can inspect to read. You don’t have to save your personal copy if you don’t want to, and it can be safely deleted from your inventory.

Nascent Dawn 2/5

1. Get 25 Valkyrie kills on Mars. Warsat Down public events are easiest to get this done in due to the many free Valkyries you’ll get during the event, but if you have enough Rasputin Armory Codes, you can do this during Escalation Protocol as well.
2. Complete the Psionic Potential Heroic Adventure. You’ll be able to access this Adventure whether Mars has an active Flashpoint or not.
3. Head to the Ma’adim Subterrane Lost Sector and open an active Sleeper Node there. The relevant node is about halfway through the Lost Sector, in a cave as you work your way up towards the boss. You do not need an Override Frequency to open this node; simply approach it and open it to complete this step.
4. You’ll recover another diary entry; socket it into Ana’s personal server at the Futurescape to receive your own copy.
5. Return to Ana; she’ll give you the BrayTech RWP Mk. II scout rifle. It’s not a bad scout rifle even today, with Triple Tap and Zen Moment making for a stable rifle with prolonged damage potential.

Nascent Dawn 3/5

1. Complete ten levels of Escalation Protocol. Any ten levels will work, though if you have a good group going, you can farm even the highest levels without much challenge.
2. Complete three strikes. Regular or Nightfall strikes will work.
3. Head to the Olympus Descent zone and open an active Sleeper Node there. The node is all the way on the other side of the tunnels, back where you first landed in the start of the Warmind campaign. Again, no Override Frequency is required.
4. Once more, you’ll get another diary entry; socket it into Ana’s server like the others.
5. Return to Ana; she’ll give you a masterworked version of the BrayTech RWP Mk. II scout rifle.

Nascent Dawn 4/5

1. Using the BrayTech RWP Mk. II, get five precision multikills without reloading, and get twenty kills in total. Not too challenging overall; the first add wave of Escalation Protocol is a bunch of Thralls, making for an easy way to get kills and multikills.
2. Head to Io and complete the campaign mission Fury. You can access this mission from a quest flag in The Rupture. The mission is unchanged from the original campaign.
3. Head back to Mars and go to Mindlab: Rasputin to open another Sleeper Node. This one is all the way on the upper level just before you get to Rasputin’s chamber, on the upper level in the back of the area. Like the others for this quest, you do not need an Override Frequency.
4. You get another diary entry, so you guessed it: socket it into Ana’s server.
5. Return to Ana; she’ll give you the Polaris Lance exotic scout rifle.

Nascent Dawn 5/5

1. Get 15 multikills with the Valkyrie. Again, you’ll need to do this during Warsat Down public events or Escalation Protocol.
2. Complete three Crucible matches. Any playlist will do.
3. Replay the Strange Terrain story mission. You can pick this up from a quest flag in Glacial Drift. No changes from the original campaign mission.
4. Head to the Alton Dynamo zone, where you’ll find an active Sleeper Node to open in the middle of a server room. Progress through the zone like you’re doing the Will of the Thousands strike, and after the first vent, instead of going left, take a right to enter the server room. As with the others, no Override Frequency is needed.
5. The node contains the final diary entry; socket it into Ana’s server like the others.
6. Return to Ana, and she’ll give you the Polaris Lance catalyst.

The Whisper

One final exotic mission did not launch with Warmind itself, instead added to the game a couple months afterward in a secret update. This mission, called The Whisper, served as an epilogue to the Warmind campaign while also bringing back another classic Destiny 1 exotic in a new form.

First, a little background. In the Crota’s End raid that shipped with Destiny 1’s first expansion, The Dark Below, one particular weapon stood head and shoulders above the rest: Black Hammer, a legendary sniper rifle. Black Hammer had a unique perk, White Nail, which completely refilled the magazine if you landed three precision shots in short succession (the Mulligan perk would occasionally give you some leeway there if you missed a shot). This sniper rifle was insanely good for pretty much every PVE activity in the game, putting out massive damage and more or less removing the need to worry about ammo. And because it was a legendary weapon, that meant you could use exotics in your other slots, like the ever-popular Gjallarhorn.

Well, Black Hammer proved to be so good that its perk was nerfed, refilling the magazine from reserves instead of generating more ammo. It did eventually make a comeback in a secret mission in The Taken King; by going down an alternate route in the Lost to Light heroic story mission, you could access an alternate timed mission that required you to clear out a Fallen Ketch of Taken enemies. Successfully doing so would award the Black Spindle, identical to the Black Hammer post-nerf but exotic quality, forcing you to choose between it or other exotic weaponry. It also had an updated darker skin by default.

The rifle made its triumphant return with The Whisper mission, whose final reward was Whisper of the Worm. Canonically, Whisper is actually the Worm God Xol, transformed into a weapon to feed off of our destructive potential. Now with an updated Taken-themed skin, Whisper also regained the original White Nail perk that regenerated ammo on precision hits. With the Forsaken weapon changes, Whisper remained in the heavy slot due to its huge boss damage potential, and it proved to be a solid option for a variety of boss fights. Eventually, however, the perk was nerfed once more, and it now reloads ammo from reserves again. It’s still a solid option for some boss fights due to the autoreload nerfs in Shadowkeep, and well worth adding to your collection.

Starting the mission

Update: I don’t know when this was changed, but it seems that you can apparently access The Whisper even on normal difficulty without having to use the original unlock method. Check the Io map in the Director for the quest icon on the left side and select that to start the mission. The original method to access the mission is left here for posterity.

To access The Whisper mission, you’ll need to wait for a Taken Blight public event in the Lost Oasis on Io. Due to the Contact public event that was added with Season of Arrivals, you will need to do this on a week where Contact is active in The Rupture; the Contact event will override the normal public event rotation in the zone it’s active in, so you’ll be unable to get a Taken Blight event if it’s in Lost Oasis.

Previously, this mission was only available on weekends (from the Friday reset to the weekly reset on Tuesday), but this was changed in Forsaken, and it can now be accessed at any time.

You may want to get a fireteam together, especially if it’s your first time. While the mission can be soloed, failing will force you to wait for another public event to have another go at it. Trust me, it’s really frustrating to get Cabal Excavation over and over. Check the companion app (or the Destiny 2 LFG Discord server if you’re on PC) for fireteams, or make your own.

When the event starts, head over to it to start the event, but instead of completing the event as normal, you’ll need to track down one of three Taken bosses that have spawned somewhere in the zone. Check each location on the map below; if you don’t see a boss there, head to another one. Only one boss will be up, so when you find it, kill it.

When the boss is defeated, head over to the platform indicated on the map above, near the entrance to the Grove of Ulan-Tan Lost Sector. You should now see a Taken portal there that you can interact with; do so, and you’ll start The Whisper mission.

Normal difficulty

The mission has a twenty-minute time limit; failing to complete it before the time runs out will send you back to Io, and you’ll have to wait for another public event to try again. The mission will begin in the aforementioned Lost Sector, though no enemies will be spawned in. You’ll need to jump up to a ledge high above you to the right, where you’ll find a Taken Blight at the back. Destroy this blight and hop down the hole.

The next section of the mission is a platforming section. It’s fairly straightforward, but if you’re lost, you can generally follow the red lights to know where to go next. Having a sherpa who knows the way will also help. I’ve included Datto’s original video guide to the mission here since he shows the complete pathway; note that he made this video before the shortcut in the “green room” was well-known, so check the description for a clip of the shortcut:

In the room with a bunch of holes in the wall, you’ll want to go to the upper hole on the far right, all the way in the back of the room. Drop down this tube and you’ll be in the “green room;” there’s a shortcut right nearby that you can go through to get to the next section faster.

After a little more straightforward platforming, you’ll begin the actual fighting. There will be several rooms ahead, each filled with Taken enemies. Defeat all enemies within the room to open the way to the next room. You’ll need to watch out for Taken mines and launchers scattered throughout each room; they’re not usually deadly, but they’re definitely annoying. Use Supers and heavy weapons as needed; with a full fireteam, it shouldn’t be too hard.

Eventually, you’ll come to a triangular hole that you’ll need to drop down. This will bring you to the final boss arena. Some more Taken will spawn in, and there will be a bunch of Blights around. Take this opportunity to move forward and destroy as many of the Blights as you can; the bosses will not spawn until most of the Taken in the room are dead, and destroying the Blights will make killing the bosses easier.

When most of the Taken are dead, the boss encounter will begin. Each of the three Taken bosses from the map above will spawn in, one after the other. Drevis, Aspect of Darkness (Taken Captain) will spawn first; after she’s lost a third of her health, Urzok, Aspect of Hate (Taken Knight) will come in as well. When the two bosses have lost a combined third of their health, Ta’aurc, Aspect of War (Taken Centurion) will join the fray. Each boss will also spawn more adds when they enter, a variety of Taken of all kinds.

You do not need to kill everything to complete the mission. All you need to do is defeat the three bosses; when the third is defeated, the other Taken will despawn and the mission will complete. You’ll then obtain Whisper of the Worm!

Heroic difficulty

After completing the mission once, you’ll permanently unlock access to The Whisper (Heroic), a slightly harder version with additional rewards. You can access the mission at any time from an icon in the upper left of the Io Director.

Aside from slightly tougher (but otherwise identical) enemies, the only change between normal and heroic is an elemental singe that rotates each week. Otherwise, it’s exactly the same: same platforming, same add clear, same boss encounter.

For your first completion of The Whisper (Heroic), you’ll gain the Whisper of the Worm exotic catalyst. In order to complete the masterwork, you need to collect 50 Blighted Essence from the mission. You get 12 essences from each completion, so this would normally take five weeks to complete. However, you can also track down bonus loot chests scattered throughout the mission for an additional essence per chest. There are five chests in total, giving you a maximum of 17 essences. This means you can complete the catalyst in three weeks instead of five.

Here are the chest locations:

• Shortly after dropping down the hole at the beginning, in the first open area, the wall on the right will be slanted. Look for a crack in this wall, then jump in to find the first chest.
• In the room with all the holes in the walls, head to the upper hole on the far left and jump inside; you’ll drop down a short tunnel and land right in front of the chest. You can also access this chest from a narrow ledge on the far wall, which is also how you get back out.
• In the “green room,” head immediately to the left upon entering and go into the first crack in the wall you see. Bear left, then go all the way to the end to find the chest.
• Also in the “green room,” you’ll need to climb the narrow ledges around the room, slowly making your way up until you come to a thin crack in the wall high above where you first entered. Look for the green grass atop the ledges to help you identify where to jump. Fall into this crack and crawl into a hidden passageway for the next chest; you can then drop down to proceed through the mission.
• The final chest is found immediately after the “green room.” Instead of going left around the pillar, jump across the long gap to your right and follow the ledges around to find the fifth chest tucked away.

Blighted Essences actually make The Whisper (Heroic) a little easier as you go along. The mission has a second modifier, Blighted Hunger, which increases your damage in the mission based on your fireteam leader’s catalyst progress. Despite not stating this outright, it seems as though this only affects Whisper of the Worm’s damage, not all damage in the encounter. Still, it’s a nice bonus if you feel like using your new gun!

There’s one additional reward that you can complete over the same time frame. If you open all five chests in one run, you can access a sixth bonus chest after completing a short puzzle. This puzzle hearkens back to the Vault of Glass raid, where rumors of a secret bonus chest abounded for years, players combing the raid from top to bottom to ferret out its location.

Once you’ve opened the fifth chest, return to the platform with the Vex gate on it. If you look through the gate, you’ll actually see a view from a similar gate within the Vault of Glass, a little Easter egg related to the puzzle. Shortly after stepping onto the platform, Oracles will begin to appear in front of you, green holographic projections that were part of various encounters in the old raid. A group will chime in a particular sequence, and then all seven will reappear. To complete the puzzle, you’ll have to “answer” the sequence by destroying the Oracles in the order of the next sequence from the original Vault of Glass raid. If you never played the raid, don’t worry, I can guarantee nobody actually remembered the sequence off-hand, and the first people to solve this assuredly had to look it up. If you number the Oracles 1-7 from left to right, then the three sequences you’ll need are:

• First sequence: 1, 3, 5
• Second sequence: 4, 6, 7, 3, 1
• Third sequence: 7, 3, 1, 6, 4, 2, 5

Once again, I’m including Datto’s video here, showing all chest locations and the Oracle puzzle, as well as a comparison showing how the puzzle references the Vault of Glass:

You’ll have a limited amount of time to destroy the Oracles (in addition to the mission timer ticking down still), but the timer isn’t ridiculously strict. Scout rifles or sniper rifles are ideal for destroying Oracles because of their long range. If you have the Revoker pinnacle sniper rifle, it’s the perfect weapon to use; one shot will destroy an Oracle, and you can use its Reversal of Fortune perk to constantly regenerate your ammo and never worry about running out.

After completing the third sequence, the sixth chest will spawn in front of you; opening the chest will give another Blighted Essence and the quest Enigmatic Blueprint. Despite this chest containing an extra Blighted Essence, don’t feel like you need to go through all the hassle of opening it every week to speed up your masterwork completion; a couple extra essences won’t save you another week. Do it once for the quest, then only open the normal chests in subsequent weeks.

The Enigmatic Blueprint quest requires you to complete The Whisper (Heroic) three times, once for each elemental singe. Since it also takes three weeks to gather enough Blighted Essence if you’re opening the chests, you should finish the quest at the same time as you finish the masterwork. Your reward for completing this quest is the exotic ship A Thousand Wings, a Taken version of the Agonarch Karve ship from the King’s Fall raid in Destiny 1.

If you have an experienced group, you can complete all objectives in as little as five runs. However, you might be cutting it a bit close with the Oracle puzzle, so it might take an extra run. To save the most time, here’s the order in which you’ll want to do the various mission activities:

• Week 1:
  • Complete The Whisper mission on normal difficulty to get Whisper of the Worm and unlock heroic difficulty.
  • Enter The Whisper (Heroic) and complete the mission to get the Whisper exotic catalyst. You’ll want to do this first so you can get the Blighted Essences from the chests.
  • Enter The Whisper (Heroic) again, open the five chests, and complete the Oracle puzzle for the Enigmatic Blueprint quest. If you have enough time, complete the mission for an additional twelve essences.
  • If you ran out of time in your second heroic run, enter the mission again and head straight to the boss for the essences.
• Week 2:
  • Enter The Whisper (Heroic), open the first five chests, then skip the Oracle puzzle and go straight to the boss. Since you’re not doing the puzzle, you should have enough time to finish the mission normally.
• Week 3:
  • Enter The Whisper (Heroic) one more time, open the first five chests, then go straight to the boss and defeat it. Doing so should complete your exotic masterwork and the ship quest at the same time.

Strikes

Warmind added a total of three strikes to the game, although one was a PS4 exclusive until the launch of Forsaken. The two strikes available to everyone were reprisals of the final two campaign missions, Strange Terrain and Will of the Thousands. This was a bit of a letdown after Curse of Osiris’s “new” strikes proved to be campaign mission reprisals too, but at least they have some fun boss fights. The actually new strike, The Insight Terminus, took place on Nessus and involved traveling deep into a new area of the planetoid to stop a Psion Flayer from appropriating Vex technology for the Red Legion’s use.

Like other strikes, each of these strikes has its own Nightfall-exclusive loot, with the same bad luck protection as the rest. Failing to get a drop in one run will increase your chances of getting it on the next. Since The Insight Terminus couldn’t be a Nightfall until Forsaken, its Nightfall loot has random rolls and thus can’t be pulled from your Collections, unlike the loot from the other Warmind strikes. The Nightfall-exclusive loot for these strikes are:

• Strange Terrain: BrayTech Osprey rocket launcher.
• Will of the Thousands: Worm God Incarnation transmat effect.
• The Insight Terminus: The Long Goodbye sniper rifle.

You can also obtain a variety of emblems from these strikes, one on your first clear and alternate versions after hitting a particular score threshold (50,000, I believe). Strange Terrain and Will of the Thousands each have four emblems to acquire, while The Insight Terminus only has two, like all post-Forsaken Nightfalls.

Leviathan, Spire of Stars

Leviathan, Spire of Stars is the second and final raid lair added to the Leviathan raid, a little longer than Eater of Worlds and considerably more challenging. Technically, Crown of Sorrow could be considered a third raid lair since it also takes place on the Leviathan, but Bungie kept referring to it as an actual raid, so I dunno. It’s all semantics anyway.

As the name suggests, instead of traveling to the depths of the Leviathan, you’re instead ascending to the highest levels, where the Red Legion is mounting an attack to claim the enormous vessel for themselves, presumably to use as a warship to attack the City again. Calus requests your assistance in stopping the Red Legion and saving the Leviathan once more.

To get to Spire of Stars, follow the same directions to access the other Leviathan raids: open your Director, head to Nessus, then select the Leviathan (Nessus Orbit) from the bottom of the map. When you have the Leviathan “map” open, select the icon on the right to launch Spire of Stars.

Spire of Stars consists of three main encounters: the Statue Garden, the Celestial Observatory, and the final boss, Val Ca’uor. In between the Garden and the Observatory is a jumping puzzle in the Power Conduit, which also contains two bonus loot chests.

Like the other Leviathan raids, Spire of Stars has a Prestige difficulty, and it’s actually the last raid in Destiny 2 to have a higher difficulty setting so far. Spire’s Prestige difficulty is similar to that of Eater of Worlds; there are no encounter changes, just the addition of two modifiers to increase the challenge. These modifiers are shared between Eater and Spire each week. I covered the modifiers in my Eater of Worlds guide, but I’ll go ahead and copy them again here.

The first modifier is Armsmaster, which limits your loadout to specific weapon types for each slot. For example, you might be limited to wielding a kinetic scout rifle, an energy shotgun, and a sword for your heavy slot. Occasionally, a slot will be completely unrestricted with the “Any” modifier, but this doesn’t always happen. Exotics are allowed as long as they fit within these restrictions; in the example above, you could use MIDA Multi-Tool in your kinetic slot, but you couldn’t use Polaris Lance in your energy slot, nor could you use non-scout rifle kinetic exotics. You can also swap between applicable weapons throughout the raid lair, most useful if you’re swapping to a particular exotic for boss damage.

The second modifier rotates each week and adds a different challenge to the mix. The possible modifiers are:

• Prism: A particular elemental damage type has its damage greatly increased, while the others are decreased. This rotates between Void, Solar, and Arc on a set timer, and you can view which one is active in your buffs list. If you’re able to time it right, you can get massive damage with heavy weapons or Supers if the right element is active.
• Arsenal: Weapons do not have reserve ammo, and ammo bricks will not drop. Instead, emptying the magazine on your kinetic weapon will refill your energy weapon’s magazine. Emptying your energy weapon will then refill heavy, and emptying heavy will refill kinetic. This can be negated with raid banners and ammo finder perks, which came out after the Prestige modifiers were designed.
• Gladiator: Melee kills will reload your currently equipped weapon and buff weapon damage. Weapon kills will refresh your melee charge and buff melee damage. This modifier encourages you to swap between melee and weapon kills, since the buff only lasts until your next kill. If possible, try to get a melee kill before boss damage to greatly increase your weapons’ damage against the boss.

Like Eater of Worlds, Spire of Stars does not have a separate loot table for Prestige difficulty, instead giving you a second drop from the normal loot table. However, it does have its own ornament set to acquire, which I’ll go into later. Like the other Leviathan raids, if you complete Prestige difficulty before completing normal that week, you’ll get both loot drops at once.

Here’s a quick overview of each encounter:

The Statue Garden

Objective: Charge an orb and throw it into the flaming shrine in the center of the area, after lowering its shield by keeping four pillars raised.

• The opening encounter is designed to teach you the orb-throwing mechanics that you’ll use throughout the rest of the raid. It’s comprised of four columns arranged in a trapezoidal shape around the central raised shrine. In the back of the area is a machine that will spit out an orb at regular intervals.
• Before you begin, assign one player to each of the four columns. A fifth player will do add clear and pick up the orb when it spawns in the back of the area. The sixth player doesn’t have any responsibility aside from add clear, so they can hang around in the front. If you have an inexperienced player, this is the role you’ll want to assign them to.
• To start the encounter, someone will need to pick up the orb and jump on one of the pillars, then toss the orb into the shrine. When the encounter starts, a shield will form over the shrine, preventing you from tossing more orbs in. The goal is to lower the shield by standing on the columns long enough, then throw a charged orb inside.
• You’ll notice a swirly translucent cloud above each column; stepping in these clouds without holding an orb will give you the Engulfed debuff, which will kill you fifteen seconds later unless you’re tossed an orb. If you’re Engulfed while holding an orb, you’ll instead get the Greed debuff; this debuff stacks up to ten times, killing you instantly if it goes beyond ten stacks. Throwing the orb while you have Greed will cause the stacks to slowly tick away until they fade entirely. Greed will also be applied if another player has charged it with the Engulfed cloud and tosses it to you.
• Because the clouds are on each column, you can’t safely stand on them without an orb. You’ll need to toss the orb to each player in turn so they can stand on their column long enough to raise it up before passing it to the next player.
• Typically, groups do this in a clockwise order. The back player will pick up the orb when it spawns and toss it to the back right player. That player will jump on their column, stand on it until it rises up completely, and then toss it to the front right player. This process then repeats with the front left and back left players. If needed, the back left player will need to toss the orb over the shrine to the back right player.
• The whole time this is going on, waves of pretty much every Cabal enemy in the game will spawn in around the area. If you’re not holding an orb or waiting to catch it, focus on add clear. Players on the front plates should watch out for a Centurion that will spawn on the outside walls.
• If a column remains fully lowered for too long, your screen will begin to turn red. A short while later, your raid will wipe. This is why you need to keep the orb moving constantly so that everyone can keep their columns up.
• After a period of time, the shield will lower, and whoever’s holding the orb can toss it in. Some groups choose to wait until the orb’s at the back left column again so that the rotation can pick up at the start. Check with your group to see what they want to do.
• Once the orb’s successfully thrown in, a new orb will spawn in the back, and the whole process repeats. You need to throw a total of three orbs into the shrine to complete the encounter.

There is a glitch associated with the orbs that I’ll go into here. Normally, you can only reset your Greed stacks by letting them fall off over time. However, if you toss the orb to the ground, then activate your Super just as you’re running into it, you’ll reset your stacks and still keep your Super meter full, letting you repeat the process as many times as needed. This glitch can be used in various encounters throughout the raid lair, helping to make some of the mechanics more easily manageable.

The Power Conduit

Objective: Get across this enormous area to reach the Celestial Observatory, opening a couple loot chests along the way.

• After completing the Statue Gardens encounter, you’ll progress into another set of maintenance corridors, eventually emerging in the Power Conduit area. This is a platforming section that isn’t too challenging.
• In the room to the right of where you enter is a switch. You’ll need at least three people nearby to activate the switch, which will cause a walkway to swing into position, allowing you to move through the area. You’ll find more of these switches at various checkpoints along the way; once three players make it that far, you can activate the switch and proceed to the next section. Once a checkpoint is activated, you’ll respawn there if you die.
• There are two loot chests available in this area. The first one is after the second checkpoint, hidden on an upper platform that you’ll need to jump up the fan blades to reach. This chest can contain Legendary or Exotic Engrams, as well as a chance for an emblem, an exotic emote, and an exotic catalyst.
• The second chest is a bit more complicated to acquire. If you head to the right past the room with the first switch, you should see a small black “circuit breaker” above you, with flashing blue lights. Shoot this and you’ll create one of the Engulfed clouds on the ledge nearby. Above this cloud is a vent that an orb will fall out of; you may need to shoot the vents to free it.
• You’ll need to take this orb, Engulf it, and carry/throw it to each checkpoint along the way. Position your team at various points along the walkways and fans, and pass it along until you reach the checkpoint. Inside is a “plus sign” with a purple ball in the middle; toss the orb at this ball and you’ll make a new orb spawn at this checkpoint, as well as a new Engulfed cloud.
• Repeat this process with each checkpoint until you reach the final one. You’ll need to carry the orb one more time as you make your way towards where the final boss room is located, but instead of turning right when you go inside, take a left. At the end of this hallway is one final “plus sign,” so throw the orb at this one to unlock the door to its left. Inside this room is the second loot chest, which will contain a raid loot drop, a chance at a different emblem from the previous chest, and a chance for the exotic emote and catalyst.
• When you’re done (or if you didn’t bother with this chest), head to the right-side path from where you entered the building. In the circular room, shoot the small red glowing lights at the base of the central pillar, and you’ll be launched upwards to the room for the final encounters of the raid.

The Celestial Observatory

Objective: Charge up the Leviathan’s defenses to destroy three of the Red Legion’s ships.

• The Celestial Observatory is where you’ll finish up the raid. There are a few locations you’ll want to get acquainted with: four big plates towards the front of the room; three small plates on the floor in the middle, each in front of a door; the raised middle platform where Engulfed clouds can spawn on triangular plates; and the tractor beam’s location a bit higher up, identified by the glowing orange ring.
• Before you begin, you’ll want to assign one player to each of the four big plates, with the other two being floaters, one on each side of the room. Floaters may need to swap with a plate player depending on what happens in the encounter, but these are your default positions. Ideally, you should have a couple players on each side who know how the Superior Retainer buff works and the mechanics of the fight.
• This encounter teaches you the Leviathan weapon mechanics that you’ll be using in the final boss fight. Each set of plates does a different thing as long as there’s a player standing on all of them at once: the big plates will activate the tractor beam, and the smaller plates will open the doors in front of them, allowing you to throw an orb in and charge a Leviathan weapon.
• The encounter begins shortly after you finish clearing out the initial set of adds in the room. At this point, the large plates will activate, letting you start the fight.
• When the encounter begins, three players will have the Superior Retainer buff. You must have this buff to go up the tractor beam; if you don’t, you’ll die as soon as you leave the room. Ideally, at least one of your floaters will have it so that you don’t have to swap positions, but if you do need to, coordinate with your team so you know which floater is swapping and which plate holder is going up.
• Have all four plate holders stand on the big plates to activate the tractor beam. A Superior Retainer player will then go up and find themselves in a holographic display of the Red Legion fleet outside. They will need to call out which symbol they see over one of the ships. Because the symbols themselves are Cabal glyphs, it’s easiest to use the outline of the symbol in your callout: square, circle, or triangle.
• After the player has made their callout, everyone should get off the big plates and move to the smaller plates. One player should be standing on each one, which will then open the doors in front of them. Do not have multiple players standing on small plates, only one; multiple players on a small plate will activate a force field in front of the door. An orb will get launched to one of the big plates; any player should grab the orb, take it to a cloud and Engulf it, and then throw it into the corresponding “plus sign” behind the door. Square is on the left, circle is in the middle, and triangle is on the right.
• If you did this successfully, you’ll see a message in your activity feed that the particular weapon is armed. Throwing it at the incorrect receptacle won’t wipe you, but you’ll lose some time. If the ship stays alive too long, it will fire on the observatory and wipe you, so you’ll need to be relatively quick. Note that arming a weapon will cause some majors to spawn, so be ready for that.
• As soon as the weapon is armed, players should return to the big plates to activate the tractor beam. Another orb will shortly get launched to one of the big plates. A Superior Retainer player (usually the same one who went up the first time) needs to get the orb, Engulf it, and go up the tractor beam again. Once they’re back in the hologram, they simply need to throw the Engulfed orb at the active ship to destroy it. In the real world, this gives the Leviathan weapons their target, and the actual Red Legion ship will be destroyed.
• This entire process needs to be repeated two more times to destroy three ships in total. If you’re successful, you’ll get a loot chest, and you can then proceed to the final boss encounter.

Val Ca’uor

Objective: Charge up the Leviathan’s defenses again to destroy more of the Red Legion’s ships, giving you enough time to break Val Ca’uor’s shield and defeat him.

• The final boss encounter plays out in the same room as before, with the same layout and the same plate functions. Mechanics from the first encounter here such as Superior Retainer, the tractor beam to the hologram, and charging and firing the Leviathan’s weapons make a return, along with additional mechanics to deal with.
• Once again, you’ll want to assign a player to each big plate, with the remaining two being floaters. It’s easiest to keep everyone in the same positions they had before.
• To begin the encounter, a player will need to get close to the destroyed Calus robot on the upper platform, but get away pretty quickly. Val Ca’uor will drop in from the ceiling shortly afterward, so make sure you’re not underneath him when he does.
• The fight begins with an add phase, with most of them spawning from the two rooms in the back. Focus everything down quickly, then have everyone get to their plates. Floaters can hang out in the center between the middle two big plates.
• Shortly after the adds are dead, Val Ca’uor will unleash a wave of energy that will give everyone the Engulfed debuff, and an orb will get fired to one of the big plates. Your fireteam must quickly pass the orb to each player to remove their Engulfed debuff, then the final player must throw it at Val Ca’uor to go to the next phase. If the orb lands on one of the far left/right plates, simply throw it to each player in order across the room. If it lands on one of the middle plates, toss it to the far player on your side first, then they’ll toss it to one of the middle floaters, then to each player in order.
• At this point, three players will get the Superior Retainer buff like in the first phase. Ideally, both floaters will have the buff, but if one doesn’t, they’ll need to swap with a plate holder on their side. Quickly communicate and coordinate who’s going up the tractor beam.
• Another wave of adds will spawn, and four Cabal drop pods will land on the big plates, preceded by an orange targeting beam. A major Gladiator will appear on each plate; kill them quickly, then have the plate holders hop onto their big plates so that one of the Superior Retainer players can go up the tractor beam and make callouts. This time, two ships will be highlighted with symbols that will need to be called out. If you’re quick, you can actually activate the tractor beam and send a player up before the Gladiators spawn, but if you’re having trouble, don’t chance it.
• Once the callouts are made, everyone should get down to the little plates to open the doors. Two orbs will get launched out and land on two of the big plates; a player should grab each, Engulf it, and use it to arm the appropriate weapons (remember, square is left, circle is middle, and triangle is right). If you’re successful, you’ll see the “weapon armed” message in the activity feed. If you arm an incorrect weapon, another orb will spawn, but you’ll be cutting it close on time.
• After both weapons are armed, plate holders should return to their big plates. Two more orbs will get launched at the big plates; toss them to the Superior Retainer players that will be going up the tractor beam. These players will need to Engulf the orb, go up the beam, and throw each one at one of the Cabal ship holograms to destroy it. Be sure to call out which you’re throwing at so that the other player doesn’t waste theirs!
• Once the ships are destroyed, Val Ca’uor will fire out three more orbs at the big plates, one after the other in ten second intervals. These orbs have to be Engulfed and tossed between the players in your group to save them long enough to prevent the raid wipe mechanic. When the first orb fires, one player should grab it and Engulf it, then they and two other players should head to a corner of the back of the room, taking turns tossing it between each other to avoid dying to Greed stacks. The second orb will need to be tossed between two players, and the final orb can be held by one. If you’re not holding an orb, clear adds that are spawning out of the back rooms.
  • The Super reset glitch works really well here, if you have players that are good at performing it. This way, other players can be freed for add clear.
• When the Calus robot lifts into the air, its hand will raise and begin to glow purple. When that happens, throw each of the orbs at its hand to drop Val Ca’uor’s shield and begin the damage phase. If you’re not quick enough or you miss the target, you’ll wipe and have to start over.
• The damage phase will last for a brief period, during which you should deal as much damage as possible. Normally, I’ve refrained from discussing particular loadouts, but I’ll make an exception here. The current meta strategy (at least for normal difficulty) is for all players to use The Wardcliff Coil exotic rocket launcher for damaging Val Ca’uor. Drop a Well of Radiance nearby if you have one and keep firing your rockets at him; you’ll deal considerable amounts of damage and can practically guarantee a single damage phase to defeat him.
• If you’re unsuccessful at bringing his health down to zero, the fight will return to the initial add phase, and you’ll start over from the beginning. There are a total of six ships that can be destroyed, which means you have a total of four damage phases to defeat Val Ca’uor.
• If you do bring down his health all the way, Val Ca’uor will begin his final raid wipe attack. He’ll gain a shield again and fire six charged orbs across the room. Players will need to collect these orbs quickly before they despawn and throw them at his shield to take it down; if you’re successful, he’ll finally be defeated and you can collect your loot from a chest that spawns nearby. Alternatively, if you do enough damage of any kind to take down the shield, you’ll still manage a victory. If you’re using the Wardcliff strategy, you should have enough rockets between your fireteam to take down his shield after you finish off his health, so you can ignore the orbs and just keep shooting rockets.

Rewards

There are a total of five loot drops in Spire of Stars: the Statue Garden, two chests in the Power Conduit, the Celestial Observatory, and Val Ca’uor. The Statue Garden and the first chest in the Power Conduit will only contain Legendary or Exotic Engrams, while the second Power Conduit chest and the two chests in the Observatory will contain raid loot. Like the other Leviathan raids, each encounter will also give a few Emperor Calus Tokens, which can be traded to Benedict 99-40 in the Tower Annex or Werner 99-40 on the Pleasure Barge on Nessus for raid loot.

Similar to the opening encounters of the other Leviathan raids, completing the Statue Garden will also give a few shaders. Normal difficulty gives Praetorian Visage, a white and bronze shader. Prestige difficulty gives Calus’s Shadow, a vibrant gold shader.

Like Eater of Worlds, Spire of Stars has only two weapons from the raid lair: Last of the Legion (sidearm) and The Emperor’s Envy (fusion rifle). Because they’re year 1 weapons with fixed rolls, you can pull them from your Collections at any time once acquired.

Also like Eater of Worlds, there is only one armor set per class from Spire of Stars, and it can be acquired on normal or Prestige difficulty. You can also unlock a set of ornaments for this armor set by completing Prestige Spire and the original Leviathan raid challenges. The normal set matches the Praetorian Visage shader, and the Prestige ornaments match the Calus’s Shadow shader. Just like the other Leviathan raid sets, the 2.0 Spire sets have an Opulence mod slot and can take season 7 or 8 armor mods. 1.0 sets pulled from your Collections have the same Leviathan mods as the other 1.0 Leviathan sets.

The armor sets are:

• Titan: Turris Shade Suit
• Warlock: Insigne Shade Suit
• Hunter: Equitis Shade Suit

And here are the requirements to unlock the ornaments; when the objectives are complete, you’ll unlock the ornaments for all classes on your account:

• Helm: Defeat Val Ca’uor on Prestige difficulty and complete the Throne challenge
• Arms: Defeat Val Ca’uor on Prestige difficulty and complete the Gardens challenge
• Chest: Defeat Val Ca’uor on Prestige difficulty and complete the Pools challenge
• Legs: Defeat Val Ca’uor on Prestige difficulty and complete the Gauntlet challenge
• Class Item: Defeat Val Ca’uor on Prestige difficulty

There are a few cosmetics available from Spire of Stars. In addition to the shaders from the first encounter, you can also acquire four emblems from the raid lair. You’ll get the Spire Star emblem for your first normal completion, and the Atop the Spire emblem for your first Prestige completion. You can also acquire two variants of the Spire Star emblem from chests in the Power Conduit section. The Grind Underfoot emblem can come from either chest, while the Together, For Glory! emblem can only come from the second chest that you have to unlock through orb throwing.

Two emotes come from the Spire of Stars raid lair, the only raid thus far to have emotes as a reward. You’ll get the rare-quality emote I’m Open from your first completion of the Statue Garden encounter, poking fun at all the orb passing you’ll be doing throughout the raid. The exotic emote Luxurious Toast is the flashiest reward from the raid lair, and it can come from any loot chest in the raid on either difficulty. The droprate is 5% on normal difficulty, and 10% on Prestige. This emote has you mimicking Calus in the original Leviathan raid, plopping down on a holographic throne and sipping from a holographic chalice; when you stop the emote, you’ll toss the chalice aside and rise to your feet as the throne disappears.

Finally, you can obtain an exotic catalyst from Spire of Stars. The Sleeper Simulant catalyst can drop from any loot chest in the raid on Prestige difficulty. The catalyst has the toughest requirements of any masterwork in the game thus far, requiring you to collect all Escalation Protocol IKELOS weapons, get thousands of kills with them, complete the Oracle puzzle in The Whisper (Heroic), and finally get several hundred kills with Sleeper itself. Considering how all of this content will be vaulted in the fall, it’s guaranteed that Sleeper will have new, hopefully easier objectives to complete its catalyst, as well as a new source. It’s up to you if you want to try and grind it out now; we don’t know yet how long it will take Bungie to update the catalyst, and it could be a while before they do.

Collections

You’ve only got a couple months left to add items from Mars or the Leviathan to your Collections before they’re vaulted in the fall. With the upcoming transmog system (coming Soon™), you’ll likely need to have the armor sets unlocked if you want to use their appearances. Since I’ve already discussed the loot Spire of Stars above, this section will focus on items from Mars, as well as wrapping up two Collection Badges from last guide.

Ana Bray

Ana Bray is your destination vendor on Mars, setting up shop in the lobby of the BrayTech Futurescape. She acts in a similar function to all the other destination vendors. You can trade Seraphite to her for destination engrams, which can contain BrayTech armor pieces and various year 1 weapons. Also like other destination vendors, you can directly purchase BrayTech armor after buying a specific number of engrams: class items at two engrams, legs at four, arms at six, chests at eight, and helms at ten. In addition, she has a set of three daily destination bounties you can complete.

As mentioned in the section above, Ana will accept any BrayTech Schematics you acquire from opening Sleeper Nodes. This will give you one of four BrayTech weapons, as well as a low chance for the Polestar II Shell. She’s also your point of contact for the various exotic quests you can acquire from her.

Ana used to have an additional function of providing you with Encrypted Cache Keys for use in Escalation Protocol. You would need to collect seven Rasputin Key Fragments from various activities and turn them in to Ana for an Encrypted Cache Key once per week. You’d then have to decrypt the key by completing seven levels of Escalation Protocol; assuming no failures and starting from the beginning, you’d have it done after a complete run. Then you’d use this key to open the final chest after the level 7 boss was defeated. To make farming Armor 2.0 rolls easier, the key requirement for the chest was removed, and you can now farm the final chest to your heart’s content.

Mars cosmetics

Warmind has a pretty large amount of cosmetics added, many to be acquired from Mars world content and Escalation Protocol. Most of these are considerably easier to acquire than they first were, so you should be able to fill out your collection pretty easily.

First, here’s a list of emblems from the Warmind expansion, not including the ones from Spire of Stars:

• Hellas Basin: Available for free from Ana Bray.
• Three additional variants of this emblem (Cradle of Invention, Warmind’s Fortress, and Relic of the Golden Age) can be acquired through opening chests on Mars.
• A fourth emblem that used to be a variant (Wormslayer) can be acquired after destroying all Latent Memories and opening the two Warmind caches.
• Technological Singularity: Complete the Warmind campaign.
• Specter of the Gun: Complete the Data Recovery world quest.
• Cold Comfort: Acquire any of the BrayTech weapons from BrayTech Schematics.
• Arctic Arsenalist: Acquire all four of the BrayTech weapons from BrayTech Schematics.
• Data Mine: Open any Sleeper Node.
• Warminded: Open all 40 Sleeper Nodes.
• IKELOS Imperative: Acquire any IKELOS weapon.
• Apparatus Belli: Acquire all four IKELOS weapons.
• Activate Escalation: Defeat a final boss in Escalation Protocol.
• Return TYRANT++: Defeat 25 final bosses in Escalation Protocol.

There are four shaders you can acquire from Mars content. Three of these–The Mad Monk, Arctic Dreamscape, and Bray Innovation–are acquired from opening Sleeper Nodes; you should easily get some of each while opening nodes for other quests. The fourth, GENOTYPENULL-ZERO, is a guaranteed drop from any final boss in Escalation Protocol.

You can also acquire a few equipment items from Mars content, a welcome change from the seasons prior where they solely came from Eververse (although that didn’t last, sadly). Here’s a list of those items and where you can get them:

• Polestar I Shell: Initially acquired from Ana Bray’s engrams, but seems to drop from any planetary destination vendor’s engrams. Should likely remain available after Mars is vaulted.
• Polestar II Shell: 4% chance to acquire from turning in a BrayTech Schematic to Ana.
• Block-Z Shell: Low chance to acquire from any Escalation Protocol chest, with the level 7 chest giving the greatest chance.
• G-693 Orchestral Maneuver (Sparrow): Can be obtained from opening any Sleeper Node.
• G-72 Classical Sepheid (Sparrow): Like the Polestar I Shell, can come from any planetary destination vendor’s engrams, so it should remain available.
• Pacific Deception (Sparrow): Low chance to acquire from any Escalation Protocol chest, with the level 7 chest giving the greatest chance.
• G-335 Anseris Overdrive (exotic Sparrow): Guaranteed from opening Cache PAVONIS in Olympus Descent after destroying all 45 Latent Memories.
• Alpha Umi (ship): Random chance to acquire from any chest or Sleeper Node on Mars, including public event and Lost Sector chests.
• Groundswell Nullifer99 (ship): Low chance to acquire from any Escalation Protocol chest, with the level 7 chest giving the greatest chance.
• A Thousand Wings (exotic ship): Complete the Enigmatic Blueprint quest from The Whisper (Heroic) mission.

Destinations: Curse of Osiris and Warmind

As mentioned in the Curse of Osiris guide, this badge tracks your acquisition of items associated with the Curse of Osiris and Warmind expansions. Since I’ve already covered the former expansion, I’ll go over the Warmind items here.

The Warmind items for this badge include all BrayTech and IKELOS weapons, the BrayTech and Escalation Protocol armor sets, and the two quest exotics, Polaris Lance and Sleeper Simulant. Since the weapons come from a variety of places, here’s what you’ll need to do, summarized:

• Four of the BrayTech weapons (BrayTech Winter Wolf, Niflheim Frost, 18 Kelvins, and The Frigid Jackal) come from BrayTech Schematics that are acquired from opening Sleeper Nodes. Schematics have a good chance of giving weapons you don’t already have unlocked, so you shouldn’t need more than a few. Farm Resonate Stems and open nodes until you get these unlocked.
• A fifth weapon (BrayTech Osprey) is the Nightfall-exclusive drop for the Strange Terrain strike. Wait for a week when it’s up as a choice for Nightfalls and farm the strike until you get it. However, if datamining is to be believed, you may get it from a quest later in Season of Arrivals, so you might not need to farm it.
• The sixth weapon (BrayTech RWP Mk. II) comes from the Nascent Dawn 2/5 quest, so you’ll get it on the way to unlocking Polaris Lance.
• For the IKELOS weapons, the hand cannon comes from the Data Recovery world quest, while the shotgun, sniper rifle, and submachine gun are drops from various Escalation Protocol final bosses. It’s easiest to farm the bosses that drop specific weapons instead of the bosses that drop all three, since you know you won’t get duplicates of weapons you already have.

Beyond these, you’ll just need to do the exotic quests for Polaris Lance and Sleeper Simulant, turn in Seraphite to Ana for BrayTech armor, and defeat Escalation Protocol bosses five times to get a complete set of EP armor.

Exotics: Curse of Osiris and Warmind

As previously mentioned, this badge tracks your acquisition of exotics introduced in seasons 2 and 3 of Destiny 2. Since I’ve already covered season 2, I’ll list the season 3 exotics here.

Warmind exotics include two weapons from quests, one weapon from Latent Memories, two weapons from random drops, and four armor pieces for each class. Aside from completing the quests and destroying enough Latent Memories, the rest of the badge will need to be completed through obtaining exotics from their various sources. Buy everything Xûr has in stock each week, and then be sure to buy his weekly exotic engram. You can also run Leviathan raids for additional chances at Exotic Engrams that are guaranteed to decrypt to year 1 exotics.

The Warmind exotics in this badge are:

• Weapons: The Huckleberry, SUROS Regime, Polaris Lance, Worldline Zero, Sleeper Simulant
• Titan: Eternal Warrior, Ashen Wake, Wormgod Caress, Armamentarium
• Warlock: Apotheosis Veil, Verity’s Brow, Claws of Ahamkara, Sanguine Alchemy
• Hunter: Wormhusk Crown, Sealed Ahamkara Grasps, Ophidia Spathe, Fr0st-EE5

Triumphs

Like the rest of year 1 content, Triumphs were added in Forsaken to cover the Warmind expansion and its activities. If you want to add these to your records or work on related Triumph Seals, you’ve got a limited amount of time to finish them up.

Destinations

Mars has a total of nineteen Triumphs associated with the destination, covering pretty much all activities on the Red Planet. The Triumphs are:

• Data Recovery is the Triumph for the Mars world quest, which was originally picked up after completing the Warmind campaign. As mentioned above, you might not have to do the campaign to get the quest due to New Light changes. If you can’t pick up the quest from Ana, do the campaign to unlock it.
• There are two Triumphs for completing public events, one for completing 50 normal public events and one for completing 20 heroic public events. Since heroics count for both, you should unlock both Triumphs after doing fifty public events.
• Adventurous requires you to complete all four Adventures on Mars. You should be able to pick these up and complete them at any time; look for the orange flags to start them.
• Heroically Adventurous requires you to complete five Heroic Adventures on Mars. Like Mercury, you used to be able to access Mars’s Heroic Adventures at any time, but they are now only available when Mars is the active Flashpoint.
• Flashpoint requires you to complete the Flashpoint challenge on Mars. As with Heroically Adventurous above, wait for it to be the active Flashpoint and then complete enough activities to earn the powerful reward. Make sure you claim the reward to get the Triumph!
• Region Chests requires you to open all Region Chests on Mars. There are six in total, and none are in locations that are only sometimes accessible like Mercury’s.
• Lost Sectors – Alpha requires you to discover the Core Terminus Lost Sector. Its entrance is in the BrayTech Futurescape zone; head inside and defeat the boss to unlock this Triumph.
• Lost Sectors – Bravo requires you to discover the Ma’adim Subterrane Lost Sector. Its entrance is in the Glacial Drift zone; head inside and defeat the boss to unlock this Triumph. No, I do not know why they made a separate Triumph for each Lost Sector.
• Bounty Hunter: Mars requires you to complete twenty bounties from Ana Bray. You can complete three per character per day, so this will take a minimum of three days to complete.
• Patrols requires you to complete twenty patrol missions on Mars. Strangely enough, this is the only year 1 destination that has a Triumph for patrol missions.
• WANTED – Lost Sectors requires you to defeat the bosses in both Mars Lost Sectors. You’ll complete this Triumph at the same time as the Lost Sector Triumphs.
• WANTED – Lost Sectors (Bounties) requires you to purchase the Eye in the Dark WANTED bounty from the Spider in the Tangled Shore for five Ghost Fragments when it’s available; one of the highest-tier bounties will be available at random per week. When you approach the Core Terminus Lost Sector, it will have an Adventure flag in front of it; interact with this flag to start the special version of that Lost Sector. Keresh, Champion of Xol will be replaced with the Eye in the Dark boss; defeat it to complete the bounty and this Triumph.
• Sleeping Beauty requires you to open Sleeper Nodes with Override Frequencies. The complete Triumph unlocks when you open all forty unique nodes. Again, since there’s no duplicate protection, this will be a difficult Triumph to complete.
• Lost Memory Fragments requires you to destroy Latent Memories across Mars, with the complete Triumph unlocking when all 45 are destroyed. Use a map or video guide to help you find them all.
• Cache ANSERIS requires you to open the Warmind cache within the Core Terminus Lost Sector, which will unlock after you destroy 35 Latent Memories.
• Cache PAVONIS requires you to open the Warmind cache within the Olympus Descent zone, which will unlock after you destroy all 45 Latent Memories.
• Extermination Expert requires you to complete different levels of Escalation Protocol. I don’t know if it’s any seven levels or if it tracks your highest level completed; either way, completing a full run of the activity should complete it.
• Escalation Expert requires you to defeat ten final bosses in Escalation Protocol. The Triumph says “full runs,” but it only tracks the boss kills, so you don’t have to go all the way from level 1 each time.

Vanguard

Like the rest of year 1, a lot of Vanguard Triumphs related to the Warmind expansion will become unavailable in the fall when Mars and the Leviathan are vaulted.

Campaign

In the General section, each mission of the Warmind campaign has an associated Triumph, and there’s an additional Triumph for completing the entire campaign.

In the Companions section, you’ll unlock two during the campaign: one for meeting Ana Bray at the beginning and one for meeting Rasputin at the end.

Finally, there are two Triumphs associated with heroic Warmind story missions. Xol: Heroic requires you to defeat Xol in a heroic strike, not a heroic story mission. Because Will of the Thousands is not part of the heroic story mission playlist, you can only face Xol again in the strike version of the mission. This has to be done in playlist strikes, and it can not be completed by selecting it manually through the Director. Heroic: Warmind requires you to complete 25 heroic Warmind story missions in total. Because there are only three, you don’t have many options; however, Ice and Shadow is by far the fastest since you can run straight through the majority of the mission and only kill a couple enemies to complete it. Pilgrimage isn’t quite as fast, and you should avoid Off-World Recovery as it’s a fair bit longer.

Strikes

In the General section, there is a Triumph for completing each of the three Warmind strikes: Strange Terrain, Will of the Thousands, and The Insight Terminus. Of these, only The Insight Terminus is sticking around, so you’ll need to do the other two once before they’re removed. WANTED: Destiny 2: Warmind Strikes requires you to defeat wanted enemies in each of these strikes; you’ll know the enemies have spawned when the message “A WANTED enemy has begun to escape!” appears in your activity feed. Here’s where to find each:

• Strange Terrain: Devoted of Nokris
• Will of the Thousands: Supplicant of Xol
• The Insight Terminus: Bracus Ghir

In the Nightfall section, each of these strikes has a Triumph for hitting a minimum score of 100,000. As always, regular Nightfalls are easier to accomplish this in, due to higher potential modifiers and a lack of Champions. Like other strikes, each of these has a Triumph associated with completing the Nightfall in a special way:

• Don’t Take Five: In Nightfall strike “Strange Terrain,” don’t hold on to relics for more than 5 seconds after picking them up. I believe this applies to all relics you use over the course of the strike, not just the ones in the final boss encounter. As long as you know where the crystals are located and throw the relics quickly, you should be able to do this without issue.
• Three and Out: In Nightfall strike “Will of the Thousands,” stun Xol with the Valkyrie three times. Whenever Xol opens his mouth wide, you’ll be able to see the weak point in the middle very clearly. You’ll need to throw the Valkyrie at his weak point to stun him; a charged throw will go in almost a straight line and make this easier. I had this one bug out on me a little bit, and I unlocked the Triumph after stunning him once. Your mileage may vary; if you don’t get it on the first stun, keep trying until it unlocks. Your fireteam will need to go slowly on damage to give you ample opportunity to stun him.
• Capture Completionist: Complete Nightfall strike “Insight Terminus” without abandoning a Vex plate until it’s fully captured while you’re fighting Kargen. Fairly simple to complete this one. Make sure that when you or someone on your team is standing on a plate, you don’t step off of it until it’s captured. Dying alone on the plate, aside from being sad, will also cause you to fail the Triumph. You’ll need to do this four times in total: once at the beginning of the fight, and then all three plates halfway through Kargen’s health bar.

Raids

Like the other Leviathan raids, Spire of Stars has only two Triumphs: one for completing it on normal difficulty and one for completing it on Prestige difficulty.

Lore

There are a few lore collectibles across the Martian surface that you’ll want to collect if you’re a lorehound. Pages for the Ghost Stories, The Forsaken Prince, and The Awoken of the Reef books can be found in various locations on Mars; check maps or video guides for their exact locations.

Triumph Seals

Finally, here’s what you’ll want to complete from Warmind content for relevant Triumph seals.

For the Destinations seal, you’ll need to complete the Destinations: Curse of Osiris and Warmind Collections Badge, five Heroic Adventures on Mars, and both Mars Lost Sectors. Remember that the badge requires items from Curse of Osiris as well, so check the previous guide for details on what you’ll need to complete there. Aside from that, complete the various activities listed in the Collections Badge section above to finish the badge, and remember to do five Heroic Adventures when Mars has an active Flashpoint!

For the Lore seal, you’ll need to pick up all lore collectibles on Mars. Again, use a map or a video guide to help you find these items.

What’s going away?

To wrap up, here’s an at-a-glance list of everything from the Warmind expansion that’s going away in the fall. It’s pretty much everything covered in this guide, but like I’ve said before, it’s nice to have a summary you can read through quickly.

With Mars and the Leviathan headed to the vault, this is what will definitely be removed in the fall:

• The Warmind campaign
• The Data Recovery world quest
• The exotic quests for Sleeper Simulant and Polaris Lance
• The Whisper mission and the quest for the ship A Thousand Wings
• Escalation Protocol and its associated loot/cosmetics
• Sleeper Nodes and their associated loot/cosmetics
• Latent Memories and their associated loot/cosmetics
• All adventures on Mars
• Strange Terrain and Will of the Thousands strikes and associated Nightfall loot
• BrayTech armor sets
• The destination emblems for Mars, and other cosmetics from Mars content
• All destination Triumphs for Mars
• Various lore collectibles on Mars
• The Leviathan, Spire of Stars raid lair, along with its loot and Triumphs

And some things to work on before September:

• As I’ve speculated in other posts, the Heroic Story Mission playlist might go away when Beyond Light launches, due to all three year 1 campaigns being vaulted. A playlist just for Forsaken missions might not make a lot of sense, so you might want to finish up those Triumphs while you have the chance.
• The Chronicler title has a few lore collectibles on Mars that may or may not be moved to new locations. Best to go ahead and get them now if you want the title.
• The Wayfarer title will take some time to complete due to the Escalation Protocol boss rotation. If a boss that drops any weapon is active, then in theory you can farm all three IKELOS weapons in one week. However, it’s easiest to farm each individual weapon from the bosses that only drop that weapon, so you may need to do this over multiple weeks. You probably won’t have to farm for the BrayTech Osprey from the Strange Terrain Nightfall if datamining is correct, since you’ll get it for free from a quest later in the season. Aside from these, make sure you do the Heroic Adventure Triumph when Mars has an active Flashpoint!
• If you’re going to try and complete the Worldline Zero catalyst, remember that it will take a minimum of five weeks to complete, so it’s best to start on that early. Don’t forget to keep a record of which bosses you’ve successfully gotten progress from!
• The various rewards from The Whisper (Heroic) will take a minimum of three weeks to earn. Again, better to start on that sooner than later.
• The Warminded emblem for opening all forty Sleeper Nodes is probably the toughest piece of content to complete in the expansion, due to the lack of duplicate protection. If you’re going to try going for it, good luck to you. You’re probably going to need to farm a huge amount of Resonate Stems, and every spare moment you have will likely be spent on Mars. If you’re not close to finished, it’s probably not a good idea to try and start now; even then, you still might not have it done by the time Mars gets vaulted. If you’re insistent on trying, godspeed.
• If you like the appearance of the BrayTech, Escalation Protocol, or Spire of Stars armor sets and want to use them for transmog, be sure to acquire them in your Collections before they go away in the fall. We don’t know the specifics of the feature, nor do we know if these appearances will be made available again, so it’s a good idea to get them now so you won’t have to worry about missing out.

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Okay, glad that’s all out of the way! I wanted to at least get the year 1 guides out as soon as possible since there’s a ton of content here going away in the fall, but I’ll likely take a bit more time on future seasons’ content. Not too much longer, but a little bit! Next up is Forsaken/Season of the Outlaw, which I might end up splitting into two parts: one part for the initial campaign and the Tangled Shore, and one part for the Dreaming City and its content.

With Bungie Day tomorrow, there’s bound to be some new stuff to talk about, so I’ll probably have a post up about that before any Forsaken guides. Moments of Triumph will begin the same day, so expect a guide for that soon too.

How are your goals coming along? Finished up anything on your to-do list? Still grinding away? I finished my Warlock’s Escalation Protocol set finally, and I even got one of the remaining EP equipment items too! All I have left is the Sparrow and I’ll be done with that activity. Didn’t make much progress on anything else this week, but hopefully I can do more next week.

Until next time!