How to make the most of Destiny 2's new seasonal event

The Season of the Hunt is here in Destiny 2 and with it comes a new way to chase that good loot. Much like the just-finished Season of Arrivals, Season of the Hunt adds a new repeatable activity and an ongoing episodic story to the game. Here are some tips for getting the most out of the new season.

Opening quest

First, you’ll need to complete a story intro and tutorial before the new Wrathborne Hunt activity becomes available. The story mission shouldn’t be too tough for anyone who has finished or is most of the way through the Beyond Light expansion story. Just be ready to fight whenever you pop out of a portal and you’ll be fine. Once that’s out of the way the new Wrathborne Hunt activity will become available.

Unlike last season’s Contact public events which were all open-world activities the new activity takes place half in the open world and half in a private instance. As part of the tutorial you will get a hunting lure that charges up when other activities, like Strikes, Gambit or Crucible are completed. Getting the best loot out of these Hunts revolves around how you upgrade and customize this lure.

Preparing the lure

Preparing the lure

The lure needs to be prepared before each hunt and can be upgraded by visiting the Crow on the tangled shore. The upgrades govern aspects of all hunts and the way the lure is prepared controls rewards from one specific hunt. So the Improved Seeker 1 upgrade unlocks the ability to activate Hive hunts in the Dreaming City while the various Trophy Perk Veto Mods let you eliminate a given set of perks from the reward for one specific hunt.

The Upgrades are limited by your reputation with the Crow, a new-ish character for this season, which you can improve by turning in the Recon Data currency when you visit him on the Tangled Shore. You should do this as often as possible until you've unlocked the second and third upgrades, Improved Seeker 1 and Power Hunter. Improved Seeker effectively doubles the amount of Hunt targets you have access to and the target of the hunt determines the reward you get at the end. More reward options increase the likelihood that something you need for leveling or the one specific item you’re chasing a god roll-on will show up as a reward. Power Hunter doubles the number of powerful drops you can get from hunts each week and adds a Pinnacle reward to the weekly Hunt challenge. The rest of the upgrades are nice to have but these two are worth grinding out as soon as possible since they vastly improve your ability to get the good gear out of the activity.

Lure Mods, on the other hand, have less clearly advantageous choices. Most of the mods allow you to fine-tune the reward from the hunt by changing its masterwork stat or excluding certain perks from the random roll for weapons or boosting stats in general for armor. Perk rolls in Destiny 2 are mostly a matter of personal preference so you’ll need to read the fine print on each Perk Veto mod to find the one that best fits your playstyle. The armor stat boosts, on the other hand, are probably not worth investing too much effort or in-game currency in. They drop with stat levels in between random world or vendor drops and endgame activity drops. Raids and Dungeons are still the best way to get armor with good stat rolls. This makes Hunt drops mostly useful for preparing for those activities as opposed to getting armor to keep.

Going Hunting

Once your lure is configured to get the reward you want it’s time to go hunting. You’ll need to place it near one of the new Hive obelisk, growth, things that popped up on the Tangled Shore and Dreaming City when Beyond Light launched. The hive growths are scattered around but the one you’ll need to place your lure at will be marked on your map. Once you find the spire for your monster, place your lure and a boss will spawn along with several adds. The boss will have a special shield that can’t be broken unless you have the wrathful buff. To get the wrathful buff you’ll need to kill one of the tougher adds with a green aura and stand in the puddle that drops where they die. Two of these special adds spawn with each wave and the sickly green aura makes them pretty easy to spot. Be careful not to kill them in a spot where there isn’t a line of sight to the boss because the wrathful buff doesn’t last long if you step out of the green Hive goop. Once you’ve taken down the boss’s health to about a fifth of its total the boss will flee leaving behind a floating green orb.

Interacting with the orb will begin the second half of the hunt. A new trail of more green Hive goop will appear in the open world. Summon your sparrow and follow the trail to another, smaller hive artifact where you can start the second half of the hunt. This will load you into a private instance so there’s no hope of having a random fireteam wandering by to save you if you get into trouble. Follow yet another green slime trail to another Hive obelisk thing and activate it. At this point, the boss will reappear with the same amount of health it had when it fled and will have no shield. Once you take it down the real boss of the hunt will spawn with a wave of adds. Follow the same process as before for this fight, clear out adds, stand in goop, shoot boss. The enemies in the second half of the hunt are tougher and more aggressive than the first half so it’s a good idea to save power ammo and super for the second part of these Hunts.

Now, if you could please be vewy, vewy quiet, I’m hunting the High Celebrant of Xivu Arath.