Destiny 2: Deep Dives [Objectives, Rewards & Loadout]

In the recently launched Season of the Deep, Bungie introduced the brand-new Deep Dives, an exclusive seasonal activity. It offers two different matchmade modes with varying objectives, rewards, and, most importantly, difficulty tiers that gradually increase after each consecutive tier’s completion. There are quite a few factors to note here before you tackle Deep Dives, such as a viable loadout, acquiring keys for the chests, and whether the activity itself will be worth your time grinding.

What Is The Deep Dive In Destiny 2

To go more in-depth, the Deep Dive is a 3-man activity in Season 21 that allows you and your fireteam members to dive under the oceanic depths of Titan and face enemies in a horde mode-like battle for treasured loot.

You start at the first tier, completing different objectives, slaying multiple enemies such as Hive or Taken, and racing against time. Successfully completing each tier will progress you to the next one and vice versa.

Before starting each encounter, you can choose between one of two of Ahsa’s gifts, as shown in the image above. These are essentially buffs that will either provide benefits such as increased grenades or class energy to even decrease the resistances of normal enemies. These gifts will be presented to you before moving on to every new tier in the Deep Dive activity.

Tiers

Tiers in the Deep Dive represent increasing difficulty levels, introducing progressively tougher enemies while maintaining changing objectives. Higher tiers offer better rewards from the final boss. Completing the required tier within a set time is crucial; otherwise, you’ll be instantly teleported to the current tier’s final boss.

• As you ascend through tiers, enemies gain more resistance, requiring strategic approaches to complete encounters.
• The tier range spans from Tier 1 to Tier 7, with rewards ranging from enhancement cores to Deep engrams, providing a diverse set of materials.

How To Get Deep Dive Keys

These keys are relatively similar to the Salvage ones in that they require you to complete different kinds of ritual activities throughout the world, but in layman’s terms, you can obtain these deep dive keys through the following:

• Obtain Deep Dive keys easily through weekly story quest missions, offering a choice between salvage or a deep dive key.
• Earn keys by completing playlist activities like strikes, Crucible matches, and Gambit.
• Some fish deposited in the Aquarium may occasionally yield Deep Dive keys, according to clan members.
• Regardless of the Annual Pass for the Lightfall expansion, you receive a few Deep Dive keys.

Collectibles

On the short end of the spectrum in Deep Dives, you can also collect a few resources as well as specific underwater plants to harvest for your aquarium in Destiny 2. First things first, you can find these familiar resources called Alkane Dust which formerly existed as resource crops on Titan, but now collecting these in Deep Dives will reward you with reputation XP.

Collecting all of these plants also ties in with a triumph called “Aquarium Vivarium.” I have listed each of the six flora you need for the triumph’s completion in the list below:

• Twilight plant
• Twilight flora
• Midnight plant
• Midnight flora
• Abyss plant
• Abyss flora

Rewards And Loot

Fair warning, the activity can last up to 20 minutes or longer if you are trying to get the highest tier 7 done with your fireteam. But, the loot is equally good for your efforts, well, in most cases.

It is mostly RNG on what you get, so despite completing Deep Dives on Tier 3 or even Tier 7, you might get the same rewards on Tier 7 as the former, making your hard-earned efforts feel a little pointless. That aside, here is the list of the possible and attainable rewards in Deep Dives:

• Season of the Deep Weapons & Armor
• Season of the Deep Engrams
• Deepsight weapon patterns
• Enhancement Cores
• Enhancement Prisms
• Exotic Armor

List Of Deep Dive Objectives And Encounters

Each Tier completion will require you to clear a specific encounter and objective at every activity level, which occasionally might repeat. For instance, you may face the same objectives as Tier 1 Deep Dive with Tier 3 and so on, with later encounters in Destiny 2.

The following are the known objectives so far in Week 4 of Deep Dive:

1. Defend the Egregore Drills: You will be tasked with defending two drills located on either side of the arena.
2. Egregore Vein Drill: Your primary objective will be to watch over a drill and make sure to refuel it timely using the fuel cells dropped by enemies.
3. Repair And Reboot the Extractor / Refit The Extractor’s Power Cells: You will be will required to fetch two different items and bring them over to a console located in the arena, which controls the extractor drills.
4. Defend And Reclaim Vanguard Machinery: You will need to activate four different consoles across the arena using your Ghost and defend them from enemies.
5. Clear Combatants And Collect Fossilized Coral: You will face off against a horde of enemies, along with major-type ones who will be guarding different Fossilized coral crystals, as shown in the image above.
6. Extinguish The Coral Siphoner: You must take down a mini-boss enemy called the Coral Siphoner, which will summon once you have defeated major-type enemies.

The Best Loadout And Weapons

Before I start, I am not an expert on Hunters or Warlocks, but from what I could gather from my clanmates and their load-outs, I strongly recommend using Well of Radiance on Warlocks due to the heavy survivability it provides, as well as Void Tethers on Hunters to easily defeat and control trash mobs and weaken bosses.

However, moving on to Titans, I personally used my Solar and Strand builds. The Solar one comprises of using Synthoceps and using it to create sunspots for my allies and to increase my melee damage using them so much that it can easily take out major-type enemies while keeping my Guardian’s HP constantly regenerating. Now moving on to the best weapons to use in this activity:

• Optimal kinetic weapons for Destiny 2 include Witherhoard and Forbearance, both excelling as grenade launchers.
• Ager’s Scepter and Wavesplitter stand out for ad clearing in the Deep Dive activity due to their constant uptime, making them one of the best PVE weapons in-game.
• For efficient boss HP reduction, heavy weapons like Hothead, Gjallarhorn, or Xenophage are highly recommended for DPS.
• LMGs like Corrective Measure and Commemoration shine in ad clearing, boasting high ammo reserves and powerful perks.
• Leverage new artifact mods, like Improved Unraveling & Strand Soldier, which synergize well with void, arc, and strand subclasses this season.

Is The Deep Dive Activity Worth Grinding in Destiny 2?

If you ask me, as someone who is strongly invested in the game’s seasonal content updates, then that answer is almost self-preference. The Deep Dive activity is great for farming the Deepsight weapon patterns for the new seasonal exclusive weapons in Destiny 2, and if you manage to complete it on the highest tiers from 5-7, then you have a good chance to receive exotic armor as well as random weapon patterns.

But aside from that, if you’re not a fan of any of these weapons, then you’re better off doing other weekly endgame content, such as raids or even Grandmaster Nightfalls, to farm for rare resources and high-stat exotic armor in a more conventional way. You’re also not going to reap most of the benefits from the chests at the end if you do not have a deep dive key, so it all comes down to your choice here.

This wraps up my guide to the Deep Dives and how the activity functions in Destiny 2. Season 21 is the latest content update with the Lightfall expansion, but despite moving onto more substory arcs, I personally hope Bungie addresses the controversial ending of the Lightfall campaign itself. On the brighter side, despite being shorter than expected, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the Root Of Nightmares raid.

If you have any other questions regarding the article, please comment below, and I’ll try to answer anything as quickly as possible. I hope you enjoy farming the Deep Dives and checking out the new overall updates with your friends and clanmates! As always eXputer wishes you luck!

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