So, the Witness is gone and the Light and Darkness Saga is finally over. For a minute there, it almost felt like we could catch our breath. But there’s no rest for a Guardian. A new call is echoing from the deepest fringes of the system, kicking off The Edge of Fate—a brand-new story that turns a new page for the universe, trading the cosmic war for a cosmic mystery. The quality of the writing in this new release feels like a step up, making it a great entry point for new and old players alike.
This guide is your complete playbook for tackling it. We’re breaking down every confusing puzzle, showcasing the meta builds and weapons that will make your life easier, and walking you through the Legendary campaign step-by-step so you can grab that sweet new Exotic armor without breaking a sweat.
Destiny 2 The Edge of Fate Campaign
The story of the new Destiny 2 Campaign begins with a bizarre and compelling invitation from The Nine: a 21st-century subway train car crashes on Earth, beckoning the Guardian to a new frontier. This leads you to Kepler, a planetoid in the vast Oort cloud where a dangerous singularity threatens the entire solar system. On Kepler, you’ll become entangled in a web of cosmic intrigue with a cast of crucial characters:
- Lodi: A man mysteriously displaced from mid-20th-century Earth. While he attempted to send a distress signal after being stranded, it was the Nine who truly orchestrated your arrival to answer their call. He acts as your initial guide and a moral anchor in this strange new world.
- Ikora Rey: The Warlock Vanguard, who joins you on this mission only to discover her own tragic past is deeply intertwined with the Nine’s manipulations—learning they even caused her first death to ensure her resurrection and path as a Guardian would lead to this exact moment.
- Orin: The former Emissary of the Nine. Now free from their service, her mind is fragmented and haunted, but she offers cryptic yet essential guidance on their motives.
- The Drifter: His shady Gambit-running past and the strange “Haul” he tows behind his ship are revealed to be part of a long-term, galaxy-spanning plan orchestrated by the Nine to revive one of their own.
- The Aeonians (or Aionians): A lost civilization of humans, led by scholarly characters like Dean Rebecca. They arrived on Kepler during the Golden Age and built a society around studying the singularity.
- The House of Exiles: A fanatical Fallen sect led by the zealous Archon, Levaszk. They have undergone a bizarre fungal symbiosis with Kepler’s dark matter, twisting their bodies and minds, and worship “the Giver,” a mysterious entity tied to the singularity itself.
- Maya Sundaresh (The Conductor): A powerful and brilliant Golden Age scientist who now commands a faction of Vex. She seeks to restore the past at any cost and remains a formidable, unresolved threat even after the campaign’s main story concludes.
Campaign Missions
The campaign features a non-linear structure, allowing you to choose the order you tackle the two main questlines: one against the House of Exiles and the other against the Vex. Your primary goal is to collect Strangelet capsules to power the Altar of Relativity and gain access to the singularity.
Introductory Mission: The Invitation
The campaign opens with a sense of disorientation. Your arrival on Kepler is chaotic, throwing you right into the action. This first mission has you fighting through the desolate, fungus-covered landscapes, battling the House of Exiles, getting a terrifying glimpse of their Archon’s power, and making first contact with the stranded time-traveler, Lodi. It sets a tone of mystery and danger that pervades the entire story.
Tips for Legendary Difficulty
Before diving into the mechanics, keep these tips in mind for the Legendary campaign:
- Play Cautiously: Enemy damage is significantly higher. Use cover, know your escape routes, and don’t rush into engagements.
- Match Your Shields: Elemental shields are common. Keep weapons of all three energy types (Solar, Arc, Void) handy to break them efficiently.
- Prioritize Survival: Invest in Resilience for damage reduction and Recovery for health regeneration. Mods that grant healing or damage resistance are invaluable.
- Focus Dangerous Targets: Eliminate snipers, grenadiers, and other high-threat enemies first before dealing with rank-and-file ads.
Core Mechanics
Throughout the campaign, you’ll need to master four new mechanics that are woven into both combat and exploration:
- Matterspark: This ability transforms you into a speedy, rolling ball of energy. It feels dynamic and fast, allowing you to zip through tight tunnels, ride along walls, and solve intricate traversal puzzles. It’s also an offensive tool—ramming into enemies can stagger them or kill weaker ones outright.
- Rosetta: More than just a key, this ability allows you to interface with the ancient Aionian technology. You’ll use it to decipher glyphs and unlock sealed pathways. When a console is unresponsive, it’s usually because of a nearby Vex or Fallen jammer—look for a destructible, blinking object and shoot it to restore power.
- Relocator Cannon: This temporary weapon is a powerful repositioning tool. You pick it up, fire a projectile at a circular relay node, and a teleporter pad instantly spawns at your feet. The puzzles evolve from simple point-to-point shots to complex bank shots once you upgrade the cannon, requiring you to bounce its projectile off multiple surfaces to reach your destination.
- Mattermorph (Matter Realignment): The most reality-bending ability you’ll acquire. Gained from a strange dark-matter fungus, it temporarily replaces your melee with a projectile. Hitting an enemy will suspend them, making it a powerful crowd-control tool. Its primary use, however, is environmental manipulation: shooting glowing nodes will form bridges, rotate platforms, and open new passages, often under a time limit.
Puzzle & Mission Walkthrough
Here’s a breakdown of the trickiest puzzles and encounters, organized by the main questlines.
Exile’s Accord Questline (Missions: Transient, Saturnism, Gouge)
This questline pits you against the fanatical Fallen.
Transient: This mission introduces you to the core loop of combining mechanics. A key puzzle requires you to use the Relocator Cannon to shoot into a sealed, spherical room. Once inside, you must become a Matterspark and roll up the curved walls to activate two separate pylons to overload the station.
Saturnism: This mission contains one of the campaign’s most complex puzzles.
- The Three Rooms Puzzle: To kill three giant, shielded Shanks, you must navigate three distinct areas. Room 1 requires dropping into an undercroft tunnel. Room 2 opens via a new side passage. Room 3, the trickiest, has you use the upgraded Relocator to bounce a shot vertically up a shaft and past lasers to create a high-up teleporter. A crucial tip for fireteams: send one Guardian at a time through this teleporter, as trying to go together can get one player trapped behind the deadly laser grid.
Gouge: The final mission against the Exiles culminates in a boss fight with immune Servitors. To break their shields, you must understand the tether mechanic. The trick is isolation: you must lure the tethered Servitor into a separate, red-lit airlock room. Doing so breaks its connection to the shield generator, allowing you to destroy it. Repeat this process to make the final boss vulnerable.
Central Academy Questline (Missions: Fallow, Nostos, Commencement)
This questline is a cerebral shift, focusing on the Vex and the Aionian’s abandoned labs.
- Fallow & Nostos: These earlier missions serve as your introduction to the Central Academy. You’ll explore the eerie, silent campus, acquire the Rosetta ability, and upgrade it to bypass sophisticated Vex security systems.
- Commencement: This mission features a large Vex Hydra boss that becomes immune periodically. You must seek out and destroy Vex cubes to lower its shield. After the fight, the way forward is not obvious. Look for a hard-to-see Matterspark tunnel hidden in the ground. Ride it to its end, and when you see the lattice on the ceiling open up, pop out of ball form and jump up to continue. It’s a classic Bungie secret path.
The Outer Steppes & The Gorge Questlines (Missions: Charge, Disruption, Calculus, Quarantine, Criticality)
This is where the campaign’s mechanics begin to truly intertwine, testing everything you’ve learned.
- Charge: This mission features a high-pressure timed mechanic where you must use Mattermorph to create a temporary bridge and then quickly use the Relocator Cannon to teleport across it before it vanishes. For solo players, this is a true test of speed and coordination.
- Disruption: You’ll be stalked by invincible, patrolling Vex Minotaurs. You cannot fight them. To get past them, look for a red-lit vent in the ceiling. Jump up it, turn into a Matterspark, and navigate a bypass route down an adjacent vent.
- Calculus: Here you unlock the powerful Matterspark Super, which is charged by collecting glowing wisps of energy. You’ll first use it on large, piston-like Vex structures to power them up. Then, you’ll face two highly aggressive Wyvern bosses that you must defeat by using the Super at close range to shatter their immunity shields.
- Quarantine: A key puzzle requires you to use Mattermorph to rotate large, spherical Vex containers, which reveals vulnerable energy cubes inside that you must shoot to proceed.
- Criticality: Tense, timed mission where you must prevent a reactor meltdown. The final boss fight requires a specific sequence: use your Matterspark Super on shielded Goblins to make them vulnerable. Killing the Goblins will lower the shields on other objects in the room. Destroying those objects will, finally, make the main boss vulnerable to damage.
The Message: The Finale
The final mission is a whirlwind of revelations and epic encounters.
- The Truth Revealed: You finally reach the heart of the singularity and learn the shocking truth: Three is dead, killed by Maya Sundaresh in her attempt to bargain for the Golden Age. The Archon, Levaszk, and the House of Exiles are now siphoning energy from its corpse to empower the singularity. Your entire journey was orchestrated by the other members of the Nine so you could receive a final message from their dead sibling.
- The Final Battle: You must fight your way to Archon Levaszk. The final battle is a culmination of all you’ve learned. You’ll need to use man-cannons to launch yourself into the air as a Matterspark, use your double jump to maneuver towards airborne Servitors, and unleash your Super to break their powerful shields. Only then can you deal damage to the Archon.
- A Dying Wish & A New Emissary: After defeating the Archon, the Drifter’s Haul—filled with years of banked Gambit energy—is used to temporarily revive Three. Through Lodi, Three delivers its final, chilling message: to prevent universal extinction, the Guardian must “Bind the Nine.” With this, Lodi accepts his fate and his unique position, becoming humanity’s new Emissary to the Nine, ready to help you fulfill this impossible task.
Final Shape: Evolving with Prismatic Builds
The Prismatic subclass, introduced in Final Shape, is central to success in this campaign. This focus on blending Light and Dark represents a new path for Guardians.
Build Synergy Explained: The Exotic class items introduced in this expansion (e.g., the Hunter’s Relativism cloak) are key. They can roll with perks that mimic Exotics from other classes, like “Spirit of Inmost Light,” allowing for unprecedented build-crafting synergy.
- Titan: A Prismatic spam build works because combining a Stasis turret with Void Shield Throw gives you constant crowd control and personal protection via overshields.
- Warlock: This build creates a devastating loop. Feed the Void keeps you alive with Devour, while Lightning Surge and Arcane Needles provide constant, high-damage melee output.
- Hunter: This build creates a near-perfect loop of safety and aggression. You’re constantly invisible thanks to Stylish Executioner, highly resistant to damage from Woven Mail, and jolting everything around you with Ascension.
Weapon Recommendations & Perks
To master this new chapter of Destiny 2, you’ll need the right gear and an understanding of how its systems have evolved.
- Primary: Third Iteration (Exotic Scout Rifle): A powerhouse primary for the entire campaign.
- Special: Tinasha’s Mastery: A great crowd-control weapon. Look for perks like Chill Clip to maximize its freezing potential.
- Heavy: Versus Chill Inhibitor: An S-tier DPS weapon. The god roll for boss damage is Envious Assassin combined with Bait and Switch.
Legendary Rewards!
Completing the campaign on Legendary difficulty allows you to choose one of the new class-specific Exotic armor pieces: the Moirai vest for Hunters, the Melas Panoplia gauntlets for Titans, or the Eunoia gauntlets for Warlocks.
How Edge of Fate Evolves the Destiny 2 Experience
This new campaign builds upon years of storytelling and design evolution. The intricate, puzzle-heavy nature of the Kepler destination feels like a spiritual successor to the clever level design seen in Savathun’s Throne World. The complexity of the Prismatic subclass, the multi-layered puzzles, and the character-driven plot stand in stark contrast to the simpler structure of early content like the Warmind Campaign, showing a clear and impressive evolution. While this guide covers the main story, this release also includes a host of associated content to explore afterward.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I start the Edge of Fate campaign?
To start the campaign, you first need to own The Edge of Fate expansion. Once you do, you can launch it directly from the Kepler map in the Director. The story begins with a mandatory introductory mission called “The Invitation,” which sets the stage by having you investigate a mysterious disturbance on Earth that leads to your chaotic arrival on the strange, new world of Kepler.
What is the story of Edge of Fate about?
The Edge of Fate campaign is a cosmic mystery that kicks off immediately after the war with the Witness. The Nine, a group of enigmatic and powerful beings, send a bizarre invitation that draws you to the planet Kepler. There, you discover a dangerous singularity that threatens to consume the entire solar system. You must team up with a man named Lodi, who has been mysteriously displaced in time, to navigate this new world. The story involves fighting against a fanatical sect of Fallen known as the House of Exiles and a rogue Vex faction commanded by the formidable Maya Sundaresh, all while unraveling a complex plot orchestrated by The Nine themselves.
What are the rewards for beating the Legendary campaign?
The rewards for completing the campaign on Legendary difficulty are substantial and designed to give you a significant power boost. You will receive a full set of 1960 Power level gear, a bundle of eight Upgrade Modules to help infuse your other equipment, an exclusive Triumph to commemorate your achievement, and a unique emblem. Most importantly, you get to choose one of the new class-specific Exotic armor pieces: the Moirai vest for Hunters, the Melas Panoplia gauntlets for Titans, or the Eunoia gauntlets for Warlocks.
What are the new gameplay mechanics in this campaign?
The campaign introduces four new core mechanics that are integrated into both puzzles and combat. You will need to master them to progress:
- Matterspark: Allows you to transform into a high-speed ball of energy for traversal through tight tunnels and to solve environmental puzzles.
- Rosetta: An ability you acquire to interface with ancient alien consoles, deciphering their language to unlock doors and pathways.
- Relocator Cannon: A temporary weapon that acts as a personal teleporter. You fire it at a specific node to create a teleportation pad at your feet.
- Mattermorph: A powerful ability that temporarily replaces your melee. It can be used offensively to suspend enemies in mid-air or to manipulate the environment by shooting glowing nodes to create bridges and move platforms.
I’m stuck on a puzzle. How does the Relocator Cannon work?
The Relocator Cannon is a temporary weapon you pick up in specific areas. You use it by aiming at a large, circular relay node and firing. This doesn’t damage the node; instead, it instantly creates a teleportation pad right where you are standing, which will transport you to the location of the node you shot. Early puzzles are simple point-to-point shots, but later in the campaign, you receive an upgrade that allows the cannon’s projectile to bounce off glowing yellow surfaces, requiring you to line up complex bank shots to hit otherwise inaccessible nodes.
How do I break the shields on the Servitors in the Gouge mission?
Those Servitors are protected by a powerful immunity shield because they are tethered to a nearby shield generator. You cannot damage them directly while this tether is active. To defeat them, you must sever that connection. The solution is to lure the tethered Servitor into a separate, adjacent room that is often lit with red warning lights (an airlock). Once you trap it in the airlock, its connection to the generator is broken, allowing you to destroy the generator and finally make the Servitor vulnerable to damage.
How do I defeat the special immune enemies like Goblins, Wyverns, or Minotaurs?
These formidable enemies are often protected by a special immunity shield that makes them invulnerable to all normal damage. The key to defeating them is the Matterspark Super. First, you must charge your super by moving through the arena and collecting the glowing wisps of energy that appear. Once your super is fully charged, you need to get close to the immune enemy, unleash the Matterspark Super’s powerful energy blast to shatter their unique shield, and then quickly switch to your weapons to finish them off while they are vulnerable.
What’s the best weapon loadout for the Edge of Fate campaign?
The guide recommends a loadout that allows your abilities to handle crowd control while your weapons focus on high single-target and boss damage. The ideal loadout based on the guide is:
- Primary: Third Iteration (Exotic Scout Rifle) for its high damage output for a primary weapon.
- Special: Tinasha’s Mastery (Rocket Sidearm), ideally with the Chill Clip perk to slow and freeze groups of enemies.
- Heavy: Versus Chill Inhibitor (Heavy Grenade Launcher), ideally with the god roll perks of Envious Assassin and Bait and Switch for top-tier boss DPS.
What is a good Titan build for the Legendary campaign?
A highly effective and durable option for Titans is a Prismatic ability-spam build. The synergy comes from combining a Stasis grenade (specifically the turret from Bleak Watcher) with the Void Shield Throw melee. This setup allows you to constantly lock down areas with Stasis turrets for crowd control while your Shield Throw provides personal protection by granting Void overshields on hits, making you incredibly tanky.
What is a good Warlock build for the Legendary campaign?
The guide suggests a potent Prismatic build that focuses on an aggressive melee loop. You should use Arcane Needles (the three-charge Strand melee), the Feed the Void Aspect (for the Devour buff on Void ability kills), and the Lightning Surge Aspect (the sliding Arc melee attack). This creates a devastating cycle where Devour constantly heals you, while you spam powerful, area-of-effect melee attacks that clear out entire rooms.
What is a good Hunter build for the Legendary campaign?
For Hunters, a top-tier Prismatic build revolves around the Ascension Aspect. This build creates a near-perfect loop of survivability and offense. By combining Ascension with Stylish Executioner (for invisibility) and an Exotic class item with the “Spirit of the Cyrtenae” perk (for Woven Mail on grapple grenade use), you are constantly invisible, highly resistant to damage, and jolting all nearby enemies every time you use your class ability in the air.
Who is the final boss of the Edge of Fate campaign?
The final boss you will confront at the climax of the campaign is Archon Levaszk, the fanatical and powerful leader of the Fallen House of Exiles. The entire final mission, “The Message,” builds up to this confrontation.
What happens at the end of the story? What is the final message?
The ending contains several major revelations. You discover that “Three,” the member of the Nine who invited you, was killed by Maya Sundaresh. In the final moments, the Drifter uses his Gambit Haul, which has been storing energy for years, to temporarily revive Three. Through Lodi, the dying entity delivers a cryptic but crucial message: to prevent a universal extinction event, the Guardian must “Bind the Nine.” Following this, Lodi accepts his destiny and becomes humanity’s new Emissary to the Nine.
So, this campaign is about The Nine?
Yes, completely and fundamentally. The Nine are not just a side element; they are the architects of the entire story. They orchestrate the events that bring you to Kepler, they have manipulated the pasts of key characters like Ikora Rey and the Drifter to suit their needs, and their final message provides the central conflict for the future of the Destiny 2 story.
How does this story connect to Final Shape and the Witness?
The Edge of Fate campaign takes place in the immediate aftermath of the final battle with the Witness, but it marks the beginning of a brand-new, separate saga. It intentionally shifts the focus away from the epic Light and Darkness war and pivots towards the deep, cosmic mysteries surrounding The Nine, their origins, and their influence on the universe.
How hard is the Legendary campaign compared to Witch Queen?
The guide notes that the Legendary difficulty of Edge of Fate is a true test of skill and is very comparable to the challenging and highly-praised Witch Queen campaign. Players can expect similarly tough encounters, intricate level design, and a rewarding experience that demands tactical play and optimized builds.
How do I solve the “Three Rooms Puzzle” in the Saturnism mission?
This puzzle requires you to kill three giant Shanks in three separate, locked-off rooms. The first two rooms are relatively straightforward to access after the previous one is cleared. The real challenge is the third room. To reach it, you must use the upgraded Relocator Cannon to bounce a shot vertically up a shaft and past a series of deadly lasers to create a teleporter high above. A crucial tip for fireteams is to send only one Guardian through the teleporter at a time, as going together can cause one player to get stuck behind the lasers.
Who is Lodi and what is his role?
Lodi is a key character who was mysteriously pulled from mid-20th-century Earth into the present day by The Nine. He initially serves as your guide on the strange world of Kepler, helping you make contact with the local Aeonian civilization. As the story unfolds, it’s revealed that his arrival was no accident; he was chosen by The Nine to be their new voice. By the end of the campaign, he accepts his fated role and becomes humanity’s new Emissary to the Nine.
What’s the best way to deal with the timed bridge puzzle in the Charge mission?
This puzzle is a test of speed and your ability to quickly switch between mechanics. The solution is to follow a precise sequence:
- Use your Mattermorph ability on the glowing node to create the temporary bridge.
- Immediately switch to the Relocator Cannon.
- Without hesitation, fire the cannon at the target node across the gap and step on the pad to teleport before the bridge disappears. This is especially challenging for solo players and may take a few tries.
What is Mattermorph and how do I use it?
Mattermorph (also referred to as Matter Realignment) is the final and most complex mechanic you unlock in the campaign. It temporarily replaces your melee ability with a powerful projectile that has two main functions:
- Offensively: Hitting an enemy with the projectile will suspend them in the air, similar to a Strand effect, making it an excellent tool for crowd control.
- Exploration: Its primary purpose is to interact with the environment. You must shoot specific glowing nodes to manipulate the world around you, which can form temporary bridges, rotate massive platforms, or open new pathways.
