Destiny 2: Beyond Light’s Deep Stone Crypt raid went live yesterday and after nearly six hours fireteams began to emerge victorious, unlocking a bunch of new content for the entire game in the process.
If you logged onto Destiny 2 on Sunday, you would have been invited to attempt the game’s latest raid, a puzzle-riddled run through the most secret and dangerous portions of the Clovis Bray Europa facilities in order to stop them from falling into the hands of the House of Salvation Fallen. If you logged in again during the evening you would have been greeted by a new animated cutscene setting up the next phase of the current Beyond Light expansion, similar to two years ago when those who beat The Last Wish opened up the rest of the Forsaken expansion.
⚠️SPOILERS⚠️
“I’M IN SPACE!” – @TheTeawrex pic.twitter.com/Sy5v7sOw77
— Destiny 2 (@DestinyTheGame) November 21, 2020
This year’s raid, which helped push Destiny 2 to the top of the Twitch charts throughout the afternoon, was full of some great moments, including going up to a space station and then crashing it into Europa. Destiny clan Luminous has claimed victory as the first players in the world to beat the Deep Stone Crypt, and appear to indeed be the winners, though Bungie is currently sifting through results and checking for cheating before officially declaring the champions.
For everyone else, here’s the new content in Beyond Light that just opened up:
- A new quest from Variks.
- A new quest from the Exo Stranger.
- A new exotic quest for the Lament sword.
- The start of Eclipsed Zones on Europa.
- The unlocking of the rest of Variks’ Sabotage missions.
Those first two quests are pretty short an straightforward, but each rewarding in its own way. Variks’ takes place in a separate area and involves a bunch of platforming and some interesting dialogue. The Exo Stranger’s quest is more boring but unlocks the High Albedo sidearm, a welcome addition in these loot-starved times.
Eclipsed Zones, meanwhile, are new rotating regions of the Europa map where space station wreckage is falling out of the sky (more on that in a bit). While the zones play into some of the new quest steps, they also seem to have new activities associated with them, including at least one revolving around hacking consoles and killing drones that utilises similar mechanics to the raid.
The biggest additions are three new exotics. While one, a very powerful, multi-target rocket launcher called Eyes of Tomorrow, only drops from completing the raid, the other two can easily be earned right away. The exotic sniper rifle Cloudstrike is a random drop from an Empire Hunt playlist that opens up once you complete both the Europan Explorer I and II missions from Variks. The exotic sword Lament has its own, much more involved quest line. Again, without spoiling too much, it involves investigating Exo artifacts on Europa, learning more about Gunsmith Banshee-44’s past, and earning a really fun new weapon in the process. I wish every exotic questline was this equally interesting and rewarding.
Taken altogether, it’s exactly the shot-in-the-arm Beyond Light needed right now, and a great way to dive deeper into Europa, especially for those not ready to take on the raid itself while the contest parameters are still in effect. It doesn’t completely make up for the lack of new or refreshed loot pools overall, and Season of the Hunt’s Wraithborn hunts still feel a bit shallow at the moment, but exploration and story-wise, Beyond Light is delivering a lot.
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