Hey – it’s me! The person who didn’t own the deluxe version of Witch Queen and had to buy it so I could do this! Destiny 2’s new dungeon dropped Friday and we have beat it! We got physics’d into oblivion and figured it all out on our own… until the final boss room. Let’s talk about the new dungeon!

The leviathan space is largely unknown to me. My boyfriend and I never had the opportunity to beat the raid when it was around, but allegedly some components of the dungeon are reminiscent of it. The new dungeon keeps you on your toes as you traverse between the real world and the nightmare realm. Basically, you’re running around in Calus’s nightmare so what you encounter here are his hangups. Initially it is just changing the landscape to move deeper into the dungeon. Once you get to encounters, timers are introduced and nightmare realms will collapse on you, wiping your team if you’re not fast enough. Before that though, the only thing that will wipe your team is an overzealous fireteam member, like my brother, who follows a “shoot first, ask questions later” approach in every activity.

Allegedly, these are bells. When you’re in the “real” world, shoot it from anywhere to transport to the nightmare realm. To leave, however, you need to be in the circle around it or you die. When the timer is introduced, sometimes you have to make the decision to kill your team so that the run isn’t sacrificed. It gets pretty dramatic. Now, there is a caveat with the bells in the actual encounters. There are specific enemies called bellkeepers that you HAVE to kill or the bell is immune, meaning you cannot shoot the bell to leave the nightmare. Make sure you prioritize killing them so that the bell “opens” and you can shoot it to make quick escapes.

The first major encounter is one of those ghostly gladiators. You’ll use the bells to teleport back and forth as the timer is introduced here. Basically, when you go in the nightmare, this immune boss is running around trying to slash you to pieces while you check four rooms for war beasts and psions. There will be two rooms with the enemies in it. Find the room, kill the psion, and pick up the essence. Once you have them, run to the bell, GTFO, and deposit the essence at the corresponding location back in the “real world”. The goal is to get both, but if you can only get one, who cares. You just need to survive! From what I can tell, there was no “enrage” mechanic.

After depositing it, a door will open behind it and a bellkeeper spawns. Kill it, run inside (you can kill the enemies inside, but it isn’t actually necessary). You’ll need someone to shoot the bell to go back into the nightmare realm while you are standing in that room. Now, you’re in the nightmare version of the room with a bunch of those creepy gladiators. You’ll need to kill them in order to escape. If you have both done, the boss should become vulnerable at this point. Do what you can, but again, it’s more important to survive so keep an eye on the timer, kill the bellkeepers, and stay close to the bell.

You’ll do this repeatedly until you kill the boss. I really tried to run the dungeon as a solar subclass initially, but it is so underwhelming compared to void. Void keeps me alive. Here’s a video of us killing that ding dong just for fun.

Dungeons and raids aren’t complete without puzzles. You’ll be clicking switches and jumping on pillars to progress forward. I’m gonna be real; I don’t remember if the jumping puzzle or the statue puzzles comes next so… let’s just start with a video of everyone except me, the warlock, dying to the threateningly long drop down. Idk why this video seems like it’s clipping in the middle. It’s fine on my Xbox app, but looks weird here. Whatever, I lived and lol’d at them so I’m still posting it.

Anyway, the statue puzzle room. There is a chest in here so make sure you go hop up and explore the rooms in the “normal” state. You’ll find it pretty easily. Basically, there’s four statues that need to rotate and point their swords towards the middle of the room. You’ll go in the nightmare realm, activate the switches on the back of the statues, and their normal counterpart will turn. Go back and forth checking on them until you get them all pointing in the right direction to get to the next encounter.

The next room is phases of grabbing two essences and killing a nightmare. In the middle of the room, you’ll see what two symbols you’re looking for. There are four quadrants and each is home to one of those symbols. When you transport to the nightmare realm, you have to find them, but there’s no indicator where they are. Guess what though? In the normal realm, you’ll see on the back of a wall a picture of what symbol spawns in that quadrant. Check for that and stand near it before teleporting so you’re in the right place and able to move quickly.

We followed the same formula here that we did with the first boss. Two of us went and picked up an essence. The third kills the bellkeepers and hangs by the bell to keep it clear of adds. Once you deposit enough essences, the nightmare takes damage, you kill it, and keep repeating until the encounter is over. This might be a good time to mention while there is a timer in the nightmare realm, there isn’t one in the normal area so if you need to take some time to clear adds in order to safely deposit the essence, do it.

More hopping and jumping and dying until you reach the final encounter. The boss room is a nightmare because the adds are nonstop, the physics are insane, and the mechanics are opposite of what you’ve been doing this whole time – yay! We didn’t finish this fight on Friday night and had to revisit in the next day.

Okay, buckle up because it gets complicated. So, you’ve got the same mechanics of gathering the essence and depositing it. There will be two at a time. Find the two symbols that are lit up in the middle of the room and go to the corresponding ledge around the outside of the room. Teleport to the nightmare realm and you’ll be right next to the psion you need to kill to acquire the essence. This room is nuts. There are enemies EVERYWHERE and you will get blown up and off the map. While we did the same formula of one person clearing the bell while the other two grabbed the symbols, I did accidentally discover that one person can pick up both without any issue. Observe!

You need to get four of these total to start the damage phase. After you have deposited four of these you need to ring a gigantic bell. You do this by shooting chains to release basically a swinging log trap that transports you back to the nightmare realm with Caiatl.

Now here is where the mechanics get weird. You end up in the nightmare realm with a LOT of bellkeepers. There are three bells total. Caiatl will spawn in the room and begin running towards a bell. Basically, she is trying to escape the nightmare realm by hitting one. You want to stop her by hitting it before her. Here’s how this works:

Caiatl runs towards one of the bells, you need to kill the corresponding bellkeepers to “unlock” it. Once she gets close to it, you NEED TO BE STANDING NEAR IT, shoot the bell to close it, acquire a buff, and she becomes stunned. You can do a lot more damage now. While she can take damage this whole time, the buff makes it way better! She will eventually be able to move again and she will run to another bell. Beat her to it and do the same thing. If you get it right, you can have three phases in the room before she runs back to the massive bell and starts the cycle over. If for some reason she gets out at one of the little bells before you can stop her, who cares! Go back and start the whole cycle over. We had one person run around killing all of the bellkeepers up front so that we weren’t scrambling. Be careful not to accidentally close one preemptively if you do this.

Don’t get frustrated! It might take you a while to find your groove here. Again, I don’t see any kind of “enrage” mechanic here so it’s better to take your time. Keep at it and you’ll eventually crush her.

Phew! That was a mouthful! Overall, the dungeon can be brutal, but once you start understanding the mechanics, it’s not THAT bad. Plus, you get a cool emblem for finishing the triumph of completing it!

It’s still the first week of the new season, and as much as I love that warlock snap, solar is largely underwhelming compared to the void upgrade. Hopefully that changes as the season unfolds!

So, what are you thinking? Is solar everything you wanted it to be? Have you tried the dungeon yet? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!