• Key Concept: Runes
• Key Concept: Deepsight
• Key Concept: Water
• E1: Opening Ritual
• Phase 1: Kill the Ogre
• Phase 2: Run around the map
• Phase 3: Drag a statue into reality
• Interlude: Down into the Deep
• Secret Chest 1
• E2: Ecthar
• Prework
• Phase 1: Ogre
• Phase 2: Split
• Diving
• Dunking
• Phase 3: DPS
• Interlude: Down Even Deeper
• Secret Chest 2
• E3: Prevent the Resurrection
• Prework
• Phase 1: Finding Symbols
• Phase 2: Dunking
• Phase 3: DPS

Pretty Map References: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2981474048 (the nice maps below courtesy of this post by pryanie#2536)

Key Concept: Runes

This encounter uses a subset of the Hive Runes found throughout the rest of the game. Unlike newer symbology, Bungie did not give us canonical names, so we use folk names. Here’s some of ours:

Key Concept: Deepsight

Like most Witch Queen-related content, this dungeon relies on Deepsight to allow visibility and/or access. Interact with the slightly translucent grey-black orb to get the Deepsight buff, which allows you to see or interact with otherwise hidden things.

Key Concept: Water

Like the rest of the Season of the Deep content, there’s underwater sections with limited air. You’ll have a pressure gauge UI element that slowly ticks down. After it expires, you’ll hear large cracking sounds and quickly lose overshield. When you lose the last of your overshield you die (notably, not the last of your health, the last of your shield).

Unlike some other Season of the Deep content, air bubbles will only refresh the gauges of people close to the bubble. The radius of this effect is the inner circle of your radar. Count down when you need a bubble, and take it when people are in the inner circle of your radar. In some situations you’ll need to take bubbles as you fall, in that case just claim bubbles before you get close.

E1: Opening Ritual

Make your way to the center-back of the arena. Shoot the kneeling hive to start the encounter

Loadout

• Ad clear
• Something to take down yellow bars quickly
• No boss DPS

Points of Interest

• the statue points around the main ritual site. 2 are “real” initially, the remaining 4 are invisible. You’ll be trying to make the invisible ones “real”
• the 3 “lanes” around the main ritual site
• the smaller ritual sites scattered around the map

Phase 1: Kill the Ogre

Kill ads, and look for an Ogre in one of the lanes. Kill it to reveal a green trail similar to those in Season of the Hunt in one of the lanes. Follow that trail to start phase 2.

Phase 2: Run around the map

After the trail fades, you’ll eventually come to a smaller ritual site with a Hive rune floating above it. Take note of the rune and announce it out loud. Kill the Wizards to reveal a new trail, rinse, repeat. The rune will disappear once the Wizards are gone. If you miss the rune, check the next site; the same rune is preset at all 3 sites. On the third site, a Hive Lightbearer will spawn. Kill it, and cronch its ghost. Whoever cronches the ghost will get a buff. Take note of this, then head back to the main ritual site to start phase 3.

While the map above details the exact path options and site locations, there’s no need to memorize these. You’ll start to notice the patterns and sites eventually. When you start out, tho, follow the green path until it runs out, then find some high ground to look for the large symbol if you can’t already find it. You’ll get the layout and cadence down eventually.

Phase 3: Drag a statue into reality

Return to the ritual site, leaving your sparrows a good distance away so they don’t blow up and wipe people. The buff bearer should hang back so they don’t die and ruin a cycle. The other guardian(s) should head forward, taking care not to get flattened by yellow bar knights. You’ll see a yellow bar Wizard; kill the Wizard (and call out that it’s dead for your fireteam-mates sake) to drop a Deepsight orb. Hit the orb to show the statues and their corresponding symbols.

At this point, the buff-bearer can come forward, and anyone who sees the statue with the symbol you observed in Phase 2 should call it out. The buff bearer should then dunk the buff at that statue.

Rinse and repeat, bringing all 4 imaginary statues into reality.

Interlude: Down into the Deep

The theme of the dungeon is “go down deeper”. You’ll need to drop down through the facility, sometimes through flooded arcology facility and sometimes just outside it. The secret chest is just after you’ve descended past the last bit of arcology.

After the chest, you’ll eventually end up in the lower bit of E2 with Ecthar chasing you. Ignore him, and go up into the upper part of E2.

Secret Chest 1

After you’ve gotten out of the last bit of arcology, you’ll be jumping down to the ocean floor underwater. However, just above the ocean floor will be a platform with an ocean-floor-platform (i.e. not arcology architecture) with a large water exit. Go through there, and you’ll find yourself at the next chest. You’ll also be in the right room to continue onwards, so just head forward after collecting the chest.

E2: Ecthar

Getting close to, or shooting, the kneeling hive will start the encounter.

Loadout

• One person will need a shield-break weapon. Arbalest is excellent here
• Decide on a single boss DPS strategy with the fireteam and stick with that. Ecthar moves around a bit, but any of precision, swords, or non-precision should work
• Well is useful for non-sword DPS. Ecthar’s wandering makes Well a bit less useful for swords.
• Healing grenades or Healing Rifts are useful to help keep the shield breaker alive

Points of Interest

• the three altars (left, right center) at the back of the room
• the large central “surface” point
• the 4 small “dive” points
• the (blank) symbol plates to the left and right of the center of the room

Prework

• split into 2 teams: one diver, and two dunkers
• designate a shield breaker

Phase 1: Ogre

Kill ads & Knights. Once you kill all three Knights, an Ogre will appear. Kill it to start Phase 2

Phase 2: Split

Killing the Ogre will spawn a Deepsight orb. The diver should head down and hit the orb to reveal 3 symbols scattered across the plates to their left and right. Take note of them (and read them aloud to help remember/in case things go screwy), then the diver should dive.

Diving

Under water, proceed to each of the symbols in turn, using your interact key to activate them, calling out as you do. Once you’ve hit all three, you’ll get a killfeed message. Head back above water via the center point.

Keep an ear out for the other guardian(s) getting overwhelmed above. If you need to, slow down and chill a bit underwater before hitting the next symbol, and/or pop back above water to help.

As you learn the symbol positions, you’ll be able to optimize your path by choosing which pool to dive in. Don’t stress about it for the first few times, tho.

Dunking

Meanwhile, up above, the dunkers should kill ads. Each symbol will spawn a Wizard. Kill it, and cronch the ghost to get a Vestige of Light like E1. Dunk the buff at an altar, calling out which one as you do so that your fireteam can keep track of the count, and not repeat an altar.

Repeat for the second Wizard, but wait on the 3rd dunk until the diver is above water. After the 3rd Wizard is down, the other dunker and the breaker should head over to spawn to prepare for DPS. Once they’re there, dunk, and join them to start DPS.

Phase 3: DPS

A miniboss will spawn shortly after DPS starts. Kill it immediately. Once it’s dead, it will drop a pool that will allow you to strip the boss’s overshield. The breaker should stand in the pool and damage the boss until the overshield is gone. Until you strip the overshield, the boss will be immune.

After the overshield is down, wail until the boss goes immune again.

Rinse and repeat until Ecthar is dead.

Interlude: Down Even Deeper

Head back under water on the right side of the room. One of the small side passages that used to be blocked off will be open and have a water exit. Follow it.

Eventually you’ll come to a large open-air room with Wizards and Shriekers. Proceed towards the back of the room, but do not drop down until you’ve gotten the chest.

Secret Chest 2

The chest is on top of the large pagoda in the back of the room.

E3: Prevent the Resurrection

They’re doing what with Oryx?

Loadout

• Similarly to E2, one person will need a shield-break weapon. Arbalest is excellent here
• For DPS, you’ll need range and tolerance of float/teleports. Swords will not work. The boss is floaty and teleports, so rockets may have issues. Similarly anything that can miss and reset your damage substantially can have issues. Prefer weapons like machine guns, Microcosm, and Leviathan’s Breath.
• There’s a lot of flinch, so be prepared to either solve that (e.g. by killing adds passively), or ignore it (by using weapons that don’t care about flinch)
• A full-auto primary (this is one of the few places a PVE auto rifle makes sense) is useful for shooting moths.

Points of Interest

• the 5 parts of Oryx: left hand, left foot, right hand, right knee, chest, and head (the game has slightly different terminology that’s somewhat illogical, ignore it)
• the 3 pairs of water-gates that lead to back rooms (and each pair connects to each other)

You can use the water gates to navigate the room without taking ad fire, since each pair is connected. The rear gates are particularly useful for this since they connect Oryx’s left and right sides.

Prework

• Decide on a breaker. They’re less important here than in E2, but it’s nice to have them optimize for overshield-break.

Phase 1: Finding Symbols

Start the encounter by cronching the central ghost. Then, find the Deepsight orb and activate it. This will show a triangle connecting 3 body parts, one of which will always be the chest.

Call these out. Then, proceed to each of these three, in any order.

Go near/into the body part, into the soon-to-be glowing green circle on the ground. While in the circle, you’ll have a buff called Ritual Conductor. Now, find a yellow bar named Vorlog and kill him while you have the buff. Don’t kill him unless you have the buff.

If successful, the kill feed will announce it, and a forced perspective puzzle will show up with a green circle and a green Hive V-shaped symbol. One guardian should call out “going to look”, and look through the circle at the V, aligning them until they disappear. This will respawn Vorlog.

Rinse and repeat 2 more times.

If you accidentally kill Vorlog without the buff, he’ll respawn in a bit. You may have to lure him over if you can’t get an angle tho.

Phase 2: Dunking

First, decide on your DPS spot from the 3 active body parts, and note its symbol. You’ll want to dunk that last.

Choosing a DPS spot

• Always choose head if available
• Favor right knee if not
• Probably right foot if not that
• Never choose chest for DPS

In general, you’ll want to optimize for arena visibility since the boss can teleport around.

Then, proceed to each of the side rooms in turn, via the water gates around the room. There’s 3 room: spawn, right, and rear, and two gates per room.

Check the symbol and call it out as you enter the room. It will disappear once the lightbearer is cronched so note it now.

If the symbol is your DPS spot, leave and come back to this room last. Otherwise, kill the lightbearer and cronch the ghost. This will give you a Vestige of Light buff. Head back to the main room, and head towards the matching body part. You’ll have a limited amount of time to dunk. It’s not short, so no need to rush it, but don’t tarry too long.

A non-buff-holder guardian should then go and find the Deepsight orb and activate it. This will cause a dot to appear and allow the buff holder to dunk. The buff holder cannot dunk without deepsight. Dunk the buff, and repeat for the second room.

For the third room, hold your dunk until everyone is in position, then dunk to start DPS.

You can split up instead of sticking together if each guardian can reliably kill and Hive Lightbearer and survive to dunk.

Phase 3: DPS

Dunking will spawn a pool that will allow you to strip the boss’s overshield. Do so using shield break weapons (esp the breaker). After this, you are free to move around. This’ll be important if you don’t have a Well, but otherwise it’s fine to stay in one place. Keep in mind the ads unless you have a well.

Wail on the boss until she goes immune. She’ll teleport around a bit, so make sure if you’re using slow-moving projectiles that you don’t fire just before she’s about to teleport.

Rinse and repeat till she’s dead.