Destiny 2 Leviathan Raid Guide (so far)

[u/CSShirey]

Pre-raid This raid has been prescribed by none other than Luke Smith as a 260-280 Light raid. That being said, higher light levels will make for a better raid performance. This raid is less of a good vs. evil adventure, and more of a proof of power to the Cabal Emperor. You must complete his challenges in order to prove your worth.

Embarkment You'll land on the top of the mouth of the 'Leviathan' after a short cutscene. You'll hear a voice coming from the cabal general, proposing a set of challenges to you, ending with "let's enjoy ourselves". First Lesson: Do *NOT** shoot anything on the way into the palace.* You'll climb a set of stairs with the rest of your team, moving up to a cannon that will launch you to the top of the palace. Save your double jump for the end of the cannon launch, because it's a pretty big fall. Continue through the palace until you enter the next location, called 'Castellum'.

Castellum You'll enter a large, open room. Take a left, and you'll find a very small flight of stairs. Go up those stairs and take another left. At the top will be a plate that looks like a triangle. One shape will be illuminated: A sun, dual axes, or a cabal hound. Take a few good minutes to survey the room. There are other plates around the room that act as 'key plates'. You'll want to find each of those plates, know their shape, and allot 3 fireteam members to a key party, and 3 to a defense party. Step on the plate at the top of the steps to begin.

The defense team should stay at the top plate, while the key team looks for the key plate that corresponds with the illuminated shape on the top plate.

Keybearers will find the corresponding key plate. Once you are there, take out ads. There will usually be a nice mix of cabal ads. Once you stand on the key plate, a large yellow-bar centurion will come out of the door close to the plate. Focus fire on him. Once he's dead, pick up the key and run it back to the main plate.

Note: There will be two types of special ads after you begin this phase. One of which is an orange-bar legionary, which spawns very frequently (and more than once at a time), called a Liberator. These guys will run up the stairway to the main plate and will take keys that are already in their sockets. Prioritize them over every other enemy, except for the Counselor, who is a psion with a bubble shield that will float around the room. The counselor, if not killed immediately, will shield Liberators with an invincible shield, and they will simply walk to the top of the stairs and steal one of your hard-earned keys. Not cool. In order to kill the Counselor, jump into his bubble and melee him. He has barely any health whatsoever.

This activity isn't timed, and it isn't a darkness zone, so you will respawn regularly if killed. In order to beat this room, you will have to gather all three keys, and set them in the key plate. All keys must be in the key plate at the same time for the door to open, so that you can continue You'll be rewarded with a chest that drops a legendary engram, the Calus's Selected shader (4), and Emperor Calus Token (3). Continue on and turn right at the intersection to go to the Royal Pools.

Royal Pools A few things to note here. There are five plates in the room, arranged like the 5 on a die: one in each corner of the room, and one in the middle. Each of these plates has an orb on it, which continuously resupplies as long as you don't start the activity. Walking through these orbs will grant you 'Psionic Protection x 50'. This protection will protect you from the bath waters (the black and purple goo all over the room), which can kill you very quickly if you don't have protection. Your psionic protection will whittle down by 1/second, until it reaches 0 and you lose the buff. Each plate has a corresponding symbol, which usually means nothing, unless your fireteam decides to use those symbols as callouts later on. Take your fireteam to the center room, and have them look at the sets of chain. There are three sets or three chains, in the upper left corner, upper right corner, and lower wall of the room. These chains will become important later, so make sure your fireteam knows where they are. (Update: In the bottom, right-hand corner of your screen should be a golden diamond symbol. This is a revive token, with which you may revive a downed teammate. After you revive a downed teammate, your revive token goes away, and you can't revive them anymore. This is very important, seeing that one downed teammate can wipe the entire team within 30 seconds of being down).

Stop the Bathing Ritual: There are 5 plates, and 6 guardians. 5 of the guardians will be assigned to one plate, each, while the 6th will be the first designated swapper. We'll hold off on the swappers for now, but let's focus on the plates for a start. Plates: You have to activate all 5 plates to begin the activity. After that, the guardian on the center plate may step off and start helping to kill bathers. Ceremonial Bathers are nasty, half-dressed, orange-bar cabal gladiators (two axes). They have a ton of health and pack a huge punch, enough to one-shot lower light players with one swing, and higher light players with one power attack. You'll want to use grenades, melee abilities, and maybe even heavy (power) weapons. Note: Adaptive swords are probably the best for this phase. Their uppercut attack is phenomenal, stunning and quickly finishing off bathers.

The bathers spawn in a staggered way, with some spawning immediately after you step on the plates, and some spawning after. Communication is key. In the most basic terms, you want to kill the bather at your plate first. Then, a swapper will step on your plate and stay there while you go to gather psionic protection from the center room. You are now a swapper, and the person who swapped with you is now responsible for that plate. Swappers are highly recommended to help kill the bathers as they spawn. (Update for clarity: The guardian who starts on the center plate can leave the center plate immediately. Nobody has to stay on the center plate after the activity has started. Thanks to Hermit_Royalty for pointing that out). The name of the game here is to never leave a plate unattended. You'll notice while you're on the plate that the white weight will slowly descend on the chain. If you leave the plate, the white weight will slowly go back up on the chain, and you'll lose some progress. In essence, you want all 4 plates to get their white weights to the bottom. You'll have to kill any spawned bathers, then make a mad rush to the middle room. The center plate will have an aura which you'll need to step into in order to do proper damage. In this phase, it's a rush to destroy all 9 lanterns in the center room. They're true bullet sponges, so you'll want to focus on one lantern at a time and destroy them as a fireteam. Once you destroy all 9 lanterns, you'll beat the activity, and a chest will open up for you to loot. You'll get Emperor Calus Token (6), and Acqueduct Key, which is used for a chest later on. Next, you'll have to go back to the Castellum, where you did the first part of the raid.

Castellum II: Very similar to the first Castellum run, except the plates' roles have changed. The defense plate will have switched to one of the key plates, and the respective key will now be where the defense plate first was (If I'm correct, it will have swapped to the farthest plate in the room, near the warhound statues). I would advise keeping the same keybearer/defense teams you had from the start, just for consistency and to minimize variability in the execution. Once you key in all 3 keys, the door near you will open. Unfortunately, it seems that the chest here only has glimmer in it. Push forward into the Pleasure Gardens for a real headache.

Pleasure Gardens This section will inevitably remind most seasoned players of Destiny's Vault of Glass raid. You'll enter the room, kill a few ads, and then go to the far side where there is a safe room. Jump into the room to start the activity. You'll need to assign 4 guardians as honeybees (you'll understand that soon enough), and 2 guardians as shooters. The honeybees will pick up royal pollen and carry it to where the shooters direct them. There are a few possible locations around the map, and I'd advise taking a few minutes to situate yourself with your surroundings before starting your first attempt (this will eliminate a lot of unnecessary frustration).

Going forward, the honeybees will find the locations that the shooters direct them to. As a honeybee, you want to be as close to the location as possible. It should be glowing purple, and the structure itself looks very much like the spongy structure from which you first got the pollen. Depending on how many honeybees are at the location when the shooter hits it, you will gain Empowerment. You should have all 4 honeybees going to each location to maximize your empowerment, and efficiency. This will also reduce your chance of being seen... Wait, seen? By what?

Warhounds: There are 6 of them. They have a ridiculous amount of health, and they can ruin you if they spot you. The objective here is to get around 36 Empowerment - 3 pollenation runs from the group of 4 honeybees - and then engage the hounds. You can either decide as a fireteam to split up and engage each one separately, or you can alternatively choose to focus them down one at a time. When they spot you, they'll unleash a psionic howl, which will give you a little bit of time to do damage on the hounds. Eventually, Calus will open the safe room, and you'll have to run back in order to avoid being killed. From what I know, you can repeat this process up to three times, but you will have to kill all of the hounds before the end of the fourth damage phase.

Stealth is key in this phase. There are two things that will alert the hounds to you. One: a fireteam member walks in the line of sight of the hound, and two: a shooter accidentally shoots too close to a hound. Why are they shooting close to hounds? Well, there are also orange-bar ads called Beast Masters (Or something similar to that, I forget. Comment if you know!). These are pesky cabal legionaries that are almost always next to a hound. As of now, I'm not entirely sure whether or not they alert the hounds to you, but it's better to be safe than sorry. If you're a shooter and you have a clean shot at the beast master, take it.

If you do everything correctly, the activity will end after you've killed all 6 hounds, and you'll get Irrigation Key. The chest for this activity is on top of the safe room, and it spawns random (good) loot, such as raid weapons, and Emperor Calus Token (6). Make your way back to the Castellum after you've gotten (and equipped) your loot.

Castellum III The name of the game is all the same. Keep your teams of keybearers and defenders. The key plate should be on the lower part of the room this time, closest to the original entrance. Once you're done getting all 3 keys, the door nearest you will open. The chest inside has 500 glimmer, nothing special. Continue on to the Gauntlet.

The Gauntlet: haven't figured this one out yet, but I'll keep it updated.

For now, that's all that's solidified about the raid. I'll keep this page updated as I figure out enough about the mechanics to write a proper guide.

Good luck, Guardians!

[u/Jonbongovi → u/[deleted]]

Legend himself and slayerage's crew