Destiny 2 Season of the Seraph: How it Works

Season of the Seraph has just begun in Destiny 2. This is the fourth and final season of The Witch Queen that will take us up to the release of Lightfall. This time, your Guardian must work alongside a strange group of allies ranging from the newly awoken Osiris, Ana Bray and the madman Clovis Bray himself to reactivate the legendary Warmind Rasputin. 

The new seasonal loop has a fair few moving parts and things to figure out, with an Exotic mission and more for players to uncover. Figuring it all out can take a bit of time if you’re not sure what’s what. 

Here’s how Season of the Seraph works in Destiny 2.

Want more Destiny 2 content and articles? You can find more here on KeenGamer:

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2. How to Complete Destiny 2’s Hands Off Raid Challenge
3. New Destiny 2 Stats Shed Light on the Current Subclass and Exotic Crucible Meta
4. Festival of the Lost 2022 Proves that Destiny 2 Events Still Need Work

How to Start

To begin your journey to rescue Rasputin, simply login to the game and you’ll be put on the path. You’ll see a small introductory cutscene featuring Ana and Osiris discussing how they can bring back Rasputin after the Darkness trashed him almost 2 years ago. They decide that their best bet is Clovis Bray, the insane madman many of us met back in Beyond Light. 

Following this, you get thrown into your first mission where you storm the Braytech facility on Europa to save Clovis from an onslaught of Xivu Arath’s forces, as the Hive God of War has come to take the knowledge of Rasputin for herself. Complete the mission and you will take Clovis back to a make-shift body aboard the H.E.L.M, where most of your interactions with him will transpire.

From here on, you’ll be let loose to explore the seasonal activities and loops that we will be tracing over for the next several weeks. If you want a more structured guide, follow the quest More Than a Weapon, which will take you through everything you need.

Frontal Assault

Seasonal Activities

Season of the Seraph has a few core elements that need to be explained. This includes 2 new Seasonal Activities (including a new Exotic Mission) and a returning feature from back in the Warmind Expansion. 

Heist Battlegrounds

Heist Battlegrounds will be your main forage into combat this season in Destiny 2. These are new 3-man matchmade activities that have you exploring lost Warsat bunkers to help recover the sub-minds of the Warmind Rasputin. Some of these areas are familiar areas that players previously explored in Season of the Worthy, only tuned up with new enemies and completely new locations.

Most Heist Battlegrounds begin with players fighting off waves of enemies at Hive Cryptolyths as Ana attempts to open the path to the Bunker. These Crypotlyths return from Season of the Hunt and will continually spawn enemies. This includes a new Deathsong Acolyte enemy which will buff those around it, unleashing Xivu Arath’s ‘War Song’ should it be left alive. Take care of those and you’ll be sent into the Bunker to save the sub-mind which involves fighting some more Wrathborn Champions, clearing out the innards from Hive magic and fighting a big bad boss at the end.

Hive Cryptolyth

You will want to come into the Heist Battlegrounds playlist (found in a node on the H.E.L.M) with another item in tow: specifically, you’ll want to bring Seraph Key Codes. You earn this currency from doing just about anything throughout the system, with Ritual Activities like Strikes, Crucible and Gambit offering the most. With 500 Key Codes, you will be able to unlock an additional chest at the end of each Heist Battleground which gives new seasonal weapons and armour. This chest also gives Resonant Stems, which we will use in a moment. 

The main loop for the Heist Battlegrounds is collecting enough Key Codes to enter the activity and unlock the chest at the end. There are 4 Heist Battlegrounds so far: one on the Moon, Europa, Earth and even one on Mars.

Normal and Seraph Chest

Operation: Seraph’s Shield

Alongside the Heist Battlegrounds is another new activity titled Operation: Seraph’s Shield. According to the Bungie.net website on Season of the Seraph, Guardians must gain access to the most impenetrable facility in the solar system: a Braytech orbital platform above the Last City. Break through layers of security each week and awaken Rasputin before it’s too late.

Once we have gotten deep enough in this quest, we will unlock the Exotic Weapon Revision Zero. This is a strange weapon said to have multiple Catalysts that can be unlocked each subsequent week from the Operation: Seraph’s Shield mission. This is a big highlight of the coming season.

However, the Exotic Mission (and access to Revision Zero) is seemingly locked until December 20th. Until then, players can complete the similarly named Operation: Archimedes to begin the chain of events which will unlock the Seraph’s Shield mission. 

Operation Mission

Resonance AMP

The final part of the seasonal loop that players will likely remember is the Resonance AMP. This is an item given to players by Clovis and can be accessed via the inventory tab. 

This is a legendary item that players can slot Resonant Stems into to create an Override Frequency. The AMP will then display a message detailing the location of a hidden Warmind Cache. Said message will look something like this:

EUROPA. EVENTIDE. DOME. CATWALK

If you figure out the location of the cache and head to the correct location, a familiar-looking Rasputin diamond will be waiting for you. Activate it and one of the newly reprised IKELOS weapons will be yours (which can be Deepsight and can be crafted). This system works nearly identically to the old Override Frequency mechanic from the Destiny 2 Warmind expansion. 

Seasonal Loop

Overall, here is how the seasonal loop will look for Season of the Seraph.

1. Earn Seraph Key Codes and Resonant Stems by playing anything – Ritual Activities offer more
2. Get 500 Key Codes and then play a Battleground: Heist in the Heist Battlegrounds Playlist
3. Use Fragment Key Codes to unlock additional chests at the end of Heist Battlegrounds which gives seasonal gear
4. Use 4 Resonant Stems to create a Resonance Amp to unlock unique chests around the system which award IKELOS Weapons
5. Rinse and Repeat

Alongside that, each week players will be diving into Operation: Seraph’s Shield (or its preliminary missions) to unlock the Revision Zero Exotic Weapon or its Catalyst. 

Fightin’ the Hive

Prototype Exo Frame

Back in the H.E.L.M., players will be interacting with the mobile Exo Frame of Clovis Bray. This will be where you come to get your Seasonal Upgrades, unlock reputation rewards and focus your Umbral Engrams.

This is a very familiar loop at this point. If you’ve played previous seasons, you will know what to do. 

The Exo Frame

Upgrades

Speaking to Clovis allows you to access the Upgrades board. You can buy upgrades on the board with Exo Frame Modules. You earn these from weekly story missions and from completing the More than a Weapon and Heist Battlegrounds weekly challenges. 

This time, there are two main rows of the grid, both of which contain 7 upgrades in total. The first set is the Focusing Upgrades while the second is the Efficiency Upgrades. The bonuses and boons these upgrades give you include:

• Gaining the ability to focus on individual high-stat Season of the Seraph armour pieces and weapons.
• Completing raids, dungeons, Dares of Eternity and non-Seasonal playlist activities have a chance to reward Seraphic Umbral Energy.
• The first IKELOS or Season of the Seraph weapon you focus on each week will have a Deepsight Resonance
• Your first locked Seraph Chest in playlists each week will award you a Pattern for a Deepsight Weapon you haven’t unlocked.
• Defeating combatants has a chance to reward Seraph Key Codes.

There is also a third row of upgrades called Infiltrator Gear. These are currently locked and seem to function similarly to the Expunge upgrades from Season of the Splicer. They will likely help aid in the Operation: Seraph’s Shield Exotic mission.

Upgrades Screen

Seraphic Rank

Seraphic Rank is the reputation you will gain throughout the season. Gaining higher levels will unlock new rewards at the Exo Frame as well as bonus Umbral Engrams containing Season of the Seraph gear. 

Each Rank up gives you an Engram containing any of the Warmind’s Avatar Seasonal Armour set, or one of the 6 Seasonal Weapons: 

• Disparity Stasis Pulse Rifle (450 Aggressive Burst)
• Tripwire Canary Arc Bow (Lightweight Frame)
• Path of Least Resistance Arc Trace Rifle (Adaptive Frame)
• Judgement of Kelgorath Solar Glaive (Aggressive Glaive)
• Retrofit Escapade Void Machine Gun (Rapid-Fire Frame)
• Fire and Forget Stasis Linear Fusion Rifle (Aggressive Frame)

Each major level-up offers you a Powerful Seraphic Engram to help boost up your Light Level. The reward track for Seraphic Levels awards Enhancement Cores, Enhancement Prisms, an Ascendant Shard and an Engram containing a Powerful weapon and armour piece of Seasonal gear. 

Rank Up Menu

Umbral Focusing

After you’ve unlocked certain upgrades, you can focus Umbral Engrams into Seasonal armour and weapons. The upgrades you’re looking for are Seraphic Armour Focusing, IKELOS Weapon Focusing and Seraphic Weapon Focusing.

Upon unlocking said upgrades, you can spend Seraphic Umbral Energy that you gain from Heist Battleground activities on focused drops of seasonal gear. The cost of each of the Umbral Focusing is: 

• Random IKELOS Weapon: 4 Resonant Stems
• Fixed IKELOS Weapon: 4 Resonant Stems + 30 Seraphic Umbral Energy
• Random Seraphic Weapon: 15 Seraphic Umbral Energy
• Fixed Seraphic Weapon: 30 Seraphic Umbral Energy
• Random Seraphic Armour: 7 Seraphic Umbral Energy
• Fixed Seraphic Armour: 10 Seraphic Umbral Energy

Umbral Focusing

That is how everything you need to know about the seasonal loop of Season of the Seraph in Destiny 2.