Planning to work towards earning the title “Savior” in Destiny 2? Here’s your guide to the triumphs necessary to claim the Seal and equip the title before it expires at the end of the Season of Dawn.

14 total Triumphs are necessary to complete the Seal. I’ve reordered them slightly below to group them by theme/location.

Obtaining the Triumphs

The Season of Dawn Collections Badge

You’ll need the following to complete this one:

  • The Global Resonance triumph, which is also included in this Seal. It drops the Timeswept Shell Ghost shell.
  • The Crucible Quests “Stronger Together” and “Fire Breather.”
  • The Gambit Quests “Tear It Up” and “Spitting Distance.”
  • The Vanguard Quests “Duty Driven” and “Shoot Fast, Tread Lightly.”
  • Collecting a full set of the seasonal armor. You receive this automatically if you have the premium track on the Season Pass.
  • Obtaining all three seasonal exotic weapons: Symmetry, Devil’s Ruin, and Bastion.
  • Acquiring one of each weapon available as a reward from the Sundial activity.

The most time-consuming bits of this will be the seasonal ritual quests, which require engaging with all three major playlist activities, and in half of them, using specific weapons to earn the ritual weapons for the season.

As long as you are engaging with the seasonal exotic quests as they appear during the season, you should receive the rest of this more or less naturally. You’ll need to make sure you pull at least one of each weapon from the Sundial activity.

EDZ Resonance: Increase the Resonance Rank of the EDZ Obelisk to 10.

Tangled Shore Resonance: Increase the Resonance Rank of the Tangled Shore Obelisk to 10.

Mars Resonance: Increase the Resonance Rank of the Mars Obelisk to 10.

Nessus Resonance: Increase the Resonance Rank of the Nessus Obelisk to 10.

Global Resonance: Increase the total Resonance Rank of all Obelisks to 40.

These will require engaging with the seasonal activity nodes on each of the four selected planets. To increase the Resonance Rank of the Obelisks, you’ll need to run weekly bounties that can be found at each Obelisk, or receive drops from running playlist activities, the Sundial, or the Menagerie.

The Tangled Shore and Mars Obelisks are available in the game now. EDZ and Nessus receive their Obelisks on 17 December.

Race Through Time: Complete the Sundial within a set amount of time. (Checkbox indicates this is for Niruul specifically.)

Inotam’s Ruin: Defeat Inotam, Oblivion’s Triune, within the Sundial.

Flayer Slayer: Defeat each of the Psion Flayers found within the Sundial (3).

I received the time trial triumph after my first run of the Sundial, so I have no idea how quickly you need to complete the activity. It’s possible this just requires not failing at any given section of the activity. If you are cycling it often enough, these should happen for you automatically.

Over time, Flayers are being added to the Sundial. It’s not obvious at this point whether they are being added to a rotation, or replacing each other. To be safe, I’d recommend running the Sundial as soon as you can when one is added, to ensure you receive the completions.

Ozletc is being added on 17 December, and Tazaroc on 24 December. Inotam is being added on 4 February.

Legendary Psion: Defeat Inotam, Oblivion’s Triune, on Legend difficulty or higher.

Legend Sundial is not available until 7 January, and Inotam is not being added until 4 February. It’s somewhat likely that running Sundial on Legend will require a pre-made fireteam, meaning this may not be possible to do solo.

Undefeatable: Complete a run of the Sundial without dying.

The hardest part of doing this at the time of this post is surviving the “cages” Niruul places on you during the boss fight. They require other players to shoot them to prevent you from dying. This would be significantly easier with a pre-made fireteam.

Saintly Savior: Save Saint-14 from the Infinite Forest.

The seasonal schedule indicates this will likely be completable starting on 17 December. This is a story progression quest found within Season 9.

Link Repair: Repair each of the fractured links found on the Tower Obelisk.

It’s unclear when this will be added to the game.

Torch-Bearer: Complete the Empyrean Restoration effort and light the beacon.

Empyrean Restoration is an event or quest on the seasonal calendar, and it’s scheduled to be released on 4 February. You won’t be able to complete this until then.

Devil’s Ruin: Travel to Twilight Gap and collect the materials required to repair Devil’s Ruin.

The Devil’s Ruin quest is scheduled to open on 7 January.

Bastion: Acquire the Exotic fusion rifle Bastion.

The Bastion quest is scheduled to open on 28 January.

A Chronological List

Here’s what you can do when, if you want to start getting ahead.

  • Immediately
    • Begin increasing the Resonance Rank of the Tangled Shore and Mars Obelisks.
    • Finish the first steps in the Saint-14 Quest, which are available from Osiris.
    • Begin work on the Crucible, Vanguard, and Gambit seasonal quests and ritual weapon quests.
    • Run Sundial and collect each of the four weapons available. Defeat Niruul. Attempt to do so quickly to receive the time trial Triumph.
  • 17 December
    • Complete the Saint-14 rescue quest.
    • Begin increasing the Resonance Rank of the EDZ and Nessus Obelisks.
    • Defeat Ozletc in the Sundial activity.
    • Run the Sundial and collect the four remaining weapons now available.
  • 24 December
    • Run the Sundial and defeat Tazaroc.
  • 7 January
    • Complete the quest to obtain Devil’s Ruin.
  • 28 January
    • Complete the quest to obtain Bastion.
  • 4 February
    • Complete a run of the Sundial at Legend or higher, defeating Inotam.
    • Begin the Empyrean Restoration event/quest.
  • Unknown
    • Perform quest steps necessary to complete/fix the Tower Obelisk.

The earliest possible date to complete the title is likely 4 February, and the Season of Dawn concludes on 9 March. You must complete all necessary Triumphs before the weekly reset on 9 March.

The event becomes a tradition for Extra Life.

At the end of Destiny 2’s first year, my regular raid group had the idea to run all three of the Leviathan raids in one evening, as a challenge to ourselves for fun.

It was a pretty good time.

We didn’t get around to this last year, but in the last couple of weeks, what’s now grown to become Ethos (our Destiny 2 clan) started discussions around doing something similar once we’d completed Garden of Salvation. Schedules have magically aligned, and this Saturday, we run Raidapalooza 2019.

Raidapalooza 2019 will start this Saturday, November 30, at noon Central time, and will run for 12 hours maximum. Each raid will be limited to a two-hour hard cap.

It’ll be broadcast on Twitch here.

We’re raiding for a cause.

Since this will be a fairly long event, we’ll be streaming it on my Twitch channel, and hopefully raising some funds for Extra Life. I didn’t get to participate in Game Day this year, so instead, I’m running some longer streams between now and the end of the calendar year to raise those funds.

I’m hoping to raise $1,000 this year. Right now, we’re sitting at $50, and we could use your help.

There are things you can do to help, such as:

All of the proceeds from this fundraiser are forwarded to children’s hospitals in the St. Louis metropolitan area.

What are the Raids?

The first Destiny introduced the MMO concept of “raids” into the first-person shooter genre. Simply put, a Raid in Destiny is a six-player cooperative activity with higher challenge than much of the rest of the game.

Players are expected to master complex mechanics and tougher combatants than they’d experience in playing alone. They have cohesive themes and narrative importance to the Destiny experience.

As a whole, they are sharply-crafted and rewarding experiences—that many players of Destiny simply never get to see due to the six-player requirement and time necessary to learn the encounters.

As our team runs the raids, you’ll see clear and concise communication, or “calls,” throughout the experience, and witness the result of teamwork that’s been built over many attempts.

There are seven raids currently available in Destiny 2. We’ll be playing through them in release order, and limiting each raid to a maximum of two hours to ensure we can showcase as many of the raids as possible. We’re guaranteed to run at least the first six raids on Saturday, with a rotating cast of players.

Here’s what you can expect out of each raid.

Leviathan

Grow fat from strength.

Called by a mysterious invitation from the Cabal Emperor, Calus, the Guardians board his pleasure barge, Leviathan. Calus wishes to test the Guardians and their Light to see whether they are fit to serve as his Shadows: trusted operatives and elite forces.

As a raid, Leviathan relies more on mechanics than on enemy difficulty. The first three encounters are selected in a weekly random order. Players will face poisoned water in the Royal Baths, be hunted by Calus’s personal war hounds in the Pleasure Gardens, and run the Gauntlet’s obstacle course before confronting the Cabal Emperor himself in the Throne Room.

Leviathan is a good showcase of clockwork raid mechanics, where each player in the group has a specific job that must be completed to prevent the entire team from losing and having to start over. The raid layout itself is non-linear, and you’ll see us taking secret passages to navigate from encounter to encounter.

The version we’ll run is the “Prestige” version, which adds mechanics to some encounters and raises enemy difficulty.

Grab your Rat King.

Eater of Worlds

In the belly of the beast.

Called back to Leviathan, the Guardians answer a pest control call from Emperor Calus. As the ship slowly consumes the centaur Nessus to create royal wine for Calus’s hedonistic lifestyle, it’s encountered some trouble: a Vex Mind was nestled inside the core of Nessus, it’s been eaten by the ship, and now it’s angry.

Leviathan didn’t have more than a single real “boss fight” throughout the encounter, but Eater of Worlds is essentially a jumping puzzle followed by nothing but a boss fight.

This is a shorter raid; the initial step is a jumping puzzle that requires coordination between all team members, followed by a brief onslaught. Once this is complete, the raid team is confronted by a boss with two phases: a puzzle phase to unlock the boss itself, and then the boss fight itself.

In Eater of Worlds, you’ll see fluid teamwork to deliver matched weapons to various parts of the arena, followed by a final encounter that requires quick field general work to ensure maximum damage to the boss.

Spire of Stars

On the wings of Icarus.

For the third time, the Guardians are called to Leviathan to assist Emperor Calus. The Cabal Red Legion, responsible for invading Earth and assaulting the Traveler at the beginning of the events of Destiny 2, are mounting a final assault to challenge the Cabal Emperor and threaten his position.

Spire of Stars is one of the fewer-run raids in Destiny 2, owing mostly to its combination of heavy mechanics and overwhelming enemy forces. The initial encounter is a challenge of timing and efficient enemy clearing, and it’s then followed by a jumping puzzle that requires teamwork to relay an object from tower to tower.

The final encounter is again in two phases, at the top of the eponymous Spire of Stars. Val Ca’uor is assaulting Leviathan itself, and both he and his warships must be dealt with. The boss encounter is a challenge that requires constant and tight communication, as well as precision when attempting to do damage to the boss himself.

Of all the raids we are running this Saturday, this is the most likely one to run into the two-hour time limit, owing mostly to a lack of recent practice at the encounters. Many of our clan members do not yet have a single completion of this raid.

Last Wish

O murderer mine.

At the heart of the Dreaming City, the home of the Awoken people, sits its greatest secret: Riven, the last known Ahamkara. Ahamkara grant wishes to those who entertain them, but at a price. And this particular Ahamkara has been Taken.

Charged by the Mara Sov, the Awoken Queen, to destroy the Heart of Riven, and thus rid the Dreaming City of a Taken curse, the Guardians enter the Keep of Voices.

Last Wish is the largest and most boss-heavy of all raids across both Destiny and Destiny 2. It ranges from a simple and unlimited-time arena boss fight, to a tightly-timed chase of another boss, to a high-damage fight and then a mechanics-based puzzle, to a complicated boss fight (that we’ll attempt to just out-damage), and then a relay race to cap the entire experience.

Its encounters are both curiously-designed and varied, and remains exciting throughout. If you want to see the greatest mix of Destiny encounter types and strategies, this is definitely the raid to watch.

Scourge of the Past

A vault, filled with the finest wares.

Siviks, Lost to None, a Fallen Captain, seeks to plunder the vast wealth of the Forges of the Black Armory and steal their secrets as his own. Ada-1, the Curator of the Black Armory, has reluctantly sought the help of the Vanguard in repelling this assault on her family’s legacy.

Scourge of the Past is our raid group’s absolute favorite to run when we have six people hanging around and a bit of time within which to complete an activity. It’s largely fun, it moves relatively quickly, and it’s generally easy to complete with a minimum of fuss.

(We’re also still trying to get the space motorcycle from the raid to drop for my son. 30 clears and counting!)

It’s also a very good example of the “introduce one mechanic first, then a different mechanic, then at the end, mash them together!” approach that makes some Destiny raids a joy to teach. It’s again some quick encounters, followed by a two-phase boss fight.

Most of the mechanics are fairly light and rely on good communication and efficient enemy clearing. Some enemies are more dangerous than others in these encounters. If you want to see a raid that becomes super-tight with repetition, this is a good one to check out.

Crown of Sorrow

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Emperor Calus’s appetite for power has ensnared one of his lieutenants in a trap. Gahlran the Sorrow-Bearer has been entrusted with an artifact of great strength: a crown that links him to the evil Hive race and grants him use of their magics. But SavathĂ»n, Witch-Queen of the Hive, has used it as a cunning trap, and a Hive infestation now threatens Leviathan. The Guardians, Calus’s Shadows, are tasked with eradicating the Hive within the ship.

Crown of Sorrow is a return to the innards of Leviathan, and provides a timing-based initial encounter, followed by another jumping puzzle (Leviathan has a lot of bottomless pits, OK?), and then a two-phase boss fight: first with Gahlran’s Deception, and then later with Gahlran himself.

The initial encounters depend more on timing and rapid enemy clearing, while the final boss fight requires sub-teams of two players to control space in tight cooperation, while rotating one-minute timers threaten to kill players throughout.

I rather enjoy this encounter; I get to form a squad with my son to complete the boss fight, which is quite enjoyable. Our timing is almost wordless in most situations at this point, and it’s amusing to find that we are coordinating with fewer and fewer words spoken each time.

If you want to see boss fights utilizing clockwork precision and heavy multitasking to accomplish the correct outcomes, you should watch.

Garden of Salvation

The heart of darkness.

The Darkness is manifest in our solar system with the discovery of a Pyramid on the Moon. Hive there are worshipping the Pyramid, and Nightmares of enemies past roam the system, threatening all. Eris Morn, Bane of the Swarm, has traced the signal from a mysterious artifact to the Black Garden, which is tended by the Vex.

This raid may or may not happen this Saturday; with the 12-hour total time limit, if other raids run longer, we won’t have the time to get into this one. For what it’s worth, our group only cleared this raid for the first time last week, after a bunch of struggling with the boss checkpoint.

If we do get into it, you’ll see some of the most amazing environmental art in the game. Garden of Salvation encounters rely on causing boss damage during specific windows of opportunity. For the first half of the raid, the team chases down the Consecrated Mind, attempting to confront it.

For the second half of the raid, we then battle the Consecrated Mind and later the Sanctified Mind, using a combination of mechanics borrowed from the Gambit game type, and positioning-based puzzles. The puzzles demand careful planning, as when you are helping with that aspect, you are unable to defend yourself from waves of enemies.

By this point, I expect we’ll be mentally tired in any case, so if you are watching, I would not necessarily expect to see a clear on Garden and instead watch us hit either the single-raid 2-hour time limit or the full activity 12-hour time limit.

And then what?

Should we actually manage to complete this marathon within the 12-hour time limit, I’m totally switching from Destiny and just hitting a few shots in Everybody’s Golf.

I have a feeling I’ll deserve it. 🙂

In any case, especially if you have read all the way to the bottom of this post, I hope you’ll stop by this weekend and watch us run some of the most entertaining content that exists in Destiny 2. We’d love to have you along for the ride, and we’d love even more if you are able to donate to Extra Life on our behalf.

See you there. Saturday, November 30, at noon Central time, on my Twitch channel.

From the daily reset yesterday through the daily reset today, Bungie made a special preview of Gambit available for all Destiny 2 owners to play and experience. I won’t spend a bunch of time explaining the mode, but in very brief terms, this is how it works:

  • Two teams of four compete to defeat enemies, “bank” resources those enemies drop, and then defeat a boss that appears after enough of those resources have been collected and banked.
  • The teams play in maps that don’t physically connect to each other—your team of four has its own PvE space during the activity.
  • As you bank resources in specific amounts, this sends enemies to your enemy’s side to temporarily prevent them from banking their resources.
  • If you die without banking those resources (called “motes”), your team loses those resources completely.
  • At various points throughout the mode, each team can send over a single player from their team to the other side to engage in PvP and attempt to frustrate the other team and cause them to lose resources or progress.
  • The game is played to best-two-of-three rounds.

The mode is a public matchmaking playlist, so if you don’t enter with a pre-made team of four players, the game will add players to your team in the same way that Strikes or Crucible matches are queued. Gambit has its own playlist slot next to those activities in the Director:

I’ll work on a guide for playing Gambit later, but in the meantime, while there are still a couple of days left before Forsaken launches and the mode is available to all, I’d like to talk about what I enjoyed and what I didn’t.

Continue reading “Thoughts on the Destiny 2 Gambit Preview”

With patch 2.0 to Destiny 2 this past Tuesday, the way weapons and ammo are organized within the game has fundamentally changed. It’s been confusing for some people, so I thought I’d try to explain it, if possible.

To start, here’s the easiest way to look at it:

  • The slot a weapon is in and the type of ammo it uses are no longer the exact same thing
  • The top two slots determine what ammo a gun uses based on the type of weapon, not based on the slot itself (white or green ammo)
  • All weapons in the third slot take the same type of ammo (purple ammo)
  • Ammo bricks now drop differently, with white ammo being most common, green being less common, and purple being the rarest

If pushed to write this in one sentence, it would be: weapon slots and ammo types have been decoupled.

Trust me: that’s the easiest way to phrase it I can come up with right now. If you want to learn more about the system, keep reading, and let’s talk about Destiny 1 and 2 and their weapon and ammo systems and how they have evolved.

I’d like to know more about this!

Hey, friends!

A couple of things I love are going to join forces in a Twitch stream this upcoming Tuesday, starting around noon Central time and extending until Whenever I Feel Like Stopping:

  • With Extra Life weekend coming up in a few months, I thought it a good idea to do some early fundraising and get the ball rolling
  • Destiny 2: Forsaken launches around that time and I’ve taken some time off to play through it right away with my son, live on stream

I would love it if you would stop by and support the stream! Load it up, hang out, chat a bit, and if you feel generous, donate to my Extra Life campaign for this year. All proceeds donated via my Extra Life page go directly to local children’s hospitals and are tax-deductible.

Watch us run through the story of Destiny 2: Forsaken, experience the new Gambit game mode new to the franchise, or just stop by and chat neat-o Destiny stuff with us while we explore!

If you can’t attend directly, if you would tell your friends and families we’re doing such a thing, it would be greatly appreciated. More eyes on what we are doing means more possible donations to help sick kids in the St. Louis area.

Here are the important links for the event:

Thank you so much for your consideration!

If you were looking for a Season Four info dump, this week’s update from Bungie has you covered. As always, you can find their original post here, and I’ll do my best to re-summarize the information for you and provide some commentary.

It’s a lot. Let’s get started.

Continue reading “Talkin’ TWAB: Weapon Changes, Economy Updates, Eververse…”

Solstice of Heroes is now a week old, and three weeks of earning special seasonal event drops, upgrading armor sets, and completing Moments of Triumph remain before we start transitioning to Season Four and Year Two of Destiny 2.

If you haven’t participated in a seasonal event in Destiny 2, or if the last seasonal event you participated in was The Dawning around the turn of the year, it might be unclear how the limited-time Solstice Engrams function. Let’s talk about what they are, how you get them, and how they work, so you can spend the rest of the event either optimizing for obtaining the stuff you want or ignoring that this grind exists.

Continue reading “Solstice of Heroes Engrams”

Bungie streamed out a look at changes to Destiny 2’s combat system today. It was a 90-minute stream and had two private PvP matches in it, so it takes a while to go through. You can watch it here:

Of course, you might not want to do that, so I’ll summarize the hits for you right here. I’ll try to split them up in general areas of discussion.

Continue reading “Bungie Combat Livestream Summary”

There’s not a ton to boil down for you out of this week’s This Week at Bungie, but what’s there may be significant for you. You can find Bungie’s original post here.

What we do have is a lot of statistics, and some data regarding Year One weapons as we roll into Year Two in four weeks. Solstice of Heroes is well underway at this point, and I hope this week’s update finds your armor grinding underway (or not, if you’ve chosen not to pursue it).

Continue reading “Talkin’ TWAB: Numbers—Numbers EVERYWHERE”