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

In the recently launched Season of the Deep, Bungie introduced the brand-new Destiny 2 Deep Dives, an exclusive seasonal activity. It offers two different matchmade modes with varying objectives, rewards, and, most importantly, difficulty tiers that gradually increase the after each consecutive tier’s completion. There are quite a few factors to note here before you tackle Destiny 2 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.

Despite that, Deep Dive has a number of different aspects associated with it, such as how the Tier system works, how to get the keys for extra loot, the randomized objectives, as well as collectibles and other miscellaneous factors like the special Wrathful Predator enemies.

Tiers

Tiers are essentially like increasing difficulty parameters for the activity as you will slowly face harder enemies while following the same relatively changing objectives. The higher the tier, the better rewards you will gain from the final boss of the Deep Dive. You will need to finish the required Tier in a set amount of time, or else you will be instantly teleported to the final boss at the current tier level.

However, with each increasing tier, the enemies will get more resistance, and overall, you will need to strategically complete each encounter to reach the highest tier possible. Currently, you can start from Tier 1 and work your way up to Tier 7 for rewards, which may range from materials such as enhancement cores to Deep engrams.

How To Get Deep Dive Keys

The tricky part for anyone entering the Season for the first time will be to acquire the Destiny 2 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:

• The easiest way to obtain Deep Dive keys is by completing the weekly story quest missions, and as shown in the image above, had rewarded me with the option to choose between a salvage or a deep dive key.
• As stated in-game, you can earn these keys by completing various playlist activities, including strikes, Crucible matches, and Gambit.
• According to my clan members, any fish that you acquire through fishing and dumping them in the Aquarium may also sometimes reward you with Deep Dive keys.
• You will also get a few of these keys regardless if you have the Annual pass for the Lightfall expansion, as shown in the image provided above.

Collectibles

On the short end of the spectrum in Destiny 2 Deep Dives, you can also collect a few resources as well as specific underwater plants to harvest for your aquarium. 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.” We 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 Destiny 2 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 of Tier 1 Destiny 2 Deep Dive with Tier 3 and so on with later encounters. The following are the known objectives so far in Week 4 of Deep Dive:

Defend The Egregore Drills

1. Upon reaching this level, you will be tasked with defending two drills located on either side of the arena.
2. You will need to defeat the three sets of enemy waves, which will constantly be damaging the drills, so ad-clearing builds and sub-classes will be highly beneficial.
3. The Drills will have a shield icon above them, indicating how much damage they can actually take before the enemies destroy them.
4. Coordinating between the two drills with your fireteam members as well as quickly taking out the Wrathful Predators, will allow you to complete the encounter without any hitches.

Drill: Egregore Vein

1. In this stage, your primary objective will be to watch over a drill and make sure to refuel it timely using the fuel cells dropped by enemies.
2. Hive Sword Knights will tend to spawn at various intervals throughout the arena, so your best course of action will be to either evade them when carrying a fuel cell or take them out quickly.
3. The Fuel Cells will be dropped by defeating special enemies throughout the encounter, so you must carry and drop them into the drill.
4. Hive Wizards can also tend to spawn here, so try your best to dodge their burst projectiles.

Repair And Reboot the Extractor / Refit The Extractor’s Power Cells

1. Both of these objectives have similar goals or tasks as they will require to fetch two different items and bring them over to a console located in the arena, which controls the extractor drills.
2. First of these items are power cells, which you will need to refit into the console to make sure the extractor is running non-stop.
3. The other ones are these large wrenches, dropped from glowing special enemies, which you will need to bring over to the console so that the extractor can be repaired to function again.

Defend And Reclaim Vanguard Machinery

1. Defending and Reclaiming the Vanguard Machinery is pretty straightforward, as you will need to activate four different consoles across the arena using your Ghost and defend them from enemies.
2. Each console will require you to defend it while the Ghost analyses it to reclaim it.
3. The objective will be completed once you have successfully recovered all four different machine units.
4. Team formation doesn’t matter too much here but be ready to dump DPS quickly on incoming major-type enemies since they have tanky HP.

Clear Combatants And Collect Fossilized Coral

1. Here 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.
2. You and your fireteam members will need to collect 6 of these Fossils in order to complete the encounter successfully.
3. You and your teammates will need to first defeat the major-type enemy in the vicinity so that you can collect the Fossilized crystal.
4. On harder tiers, you can have one person designated to collect the Fossils while the rest of the Guardians take down the incoming trash mobs.

Extinguish The Coral Siphoner

1. Another straightforward task involves taking down a mini-boss enemy called the Coral Siphoner, which will summon once you have defeated major-type enemies.
2. The encounter can get pretty intense if you are not actively killing the majors or controlling any of the additional trash fodder enemies in the fight.

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:

• You cannot go wrong using weapons such as Witherhoard or Forbearance, as both of these grenade launchers are the best kinetic weapons in Destiny 2.
• SMGs and Trace Rifles such as the Ager’s Scepter and the Wavesplitter are superb in ad clearing due to their constant uptime, making them one of the best PVE weapons to use for the Deep Dive activity.
• In terms of DPS, heavy weapons such as the Hothead, Gjallarhorn, or Xenophage will work tremendously great here to take down the HP of bosses as efficiently as possible.
• LMGs, such as the Corrective Measure and Commemoration, are great for clearing ads as they boast high ammo reserves and some insane perks, making them the best legendary weapons.
• Lastly, it is worth mentioning that the brand-new artifact mods heavily synergize with your void, arc, and strand subclasses for this season, so it doesn’t hurt to use them, such as Improved Unraveling & Strand Soldier.

Is The Deep Dive Activity Worth Grinding

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, 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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