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Eris Morn has turned herself into a Hive God inDestiny 2’sSeason of the Witch, hoping to beat Xivu Arath at her own game. Powering Eris in this state is going to require millions of slain Hive, but that’s where this season’s activities come in. Through the Altars of Summoning, players can pit their strongest builds against a near-infinite sequence of combat encounters.
Related:Destiny 2: Season Of The Witch - Savathun’s Spire Activity And Rewards Guide
Altars of Summoning is similar to Deep Dive from Season of the Deep, giving players a lengthier matchmade activity that places a great deal of stress on buildcrafting, coordination, and overall skill. This guide will cover how the Altars of Summoning activity works, how its unique difficulty model works, and we’ll cover the unique rewards and deckbuilding system tied to this season’s activities.
Hive Offerings And Difficulty
The Altars of Summoning feature an opt-in difficulty system that’s typically reserved for open world activities like Blind Well or Escalation Protocol.Before each encounter, you may select the difficulty of the encounter by interacting with a specific altar.Each difficulty requires a specific type of Hive Offering, a currency earned from Season of the Witch reward chests. The difficulty variants are as follows:
The offering you provide will determine how much damage your enemies deal, and it also impacts how much progress you make towards your next reward chest.The more powerful your offerings, the fewer encounters you’ll need to complete before you receive a reward.
Beyond Hive Offerings, this activity also features global modifiers that are similar to Vanguard Ops and Nightfalls. Gameplay modifiers such as Attrition, Martyr, and Galvanized can appear in this playlist, so plan your loadouts accordingly. Finally, it’s worth noting thatPower Level is disabled in this activity;overleveling through the Artifact will not increase your damage output or survivability in this activity.
Completing An Encounter
The encounters in Altar of Summoning are quitesimilar to those found in Savathun’s Spire, the other activity tied to Season of the Witch. Most encounters revolve aroundHive crystalsthat must either be destroyed or attacked to start the boss DPS phase.
Unlike Savathun’s Spire, nearly every enemy type in Destiny 2 can appear in this activity, not just Hive. Some notable encounters include:
A thorough breakdown of each encounter will be added in a future update once all encounters are available. For now, every encounter requires you topresent an offering, complete the listed objective, then kill the boss before the timer runs out.
Beating the encounter will grant progress towards your next reward chest.The harder the encounter, the more progress your fireteam will receive.Most groups will need to complete three encounters to receive a reward.
Related:Destiny 2: Every New Weapon In Season Of The Witch
Rewards And Difficulty Scaling
When you’re slain enough foes for Eris Morn, she will arrive and collect their energy as tribute, spawning a reward chest shortly afterward.Unlike most activities, you can choose to either leave the activity or stay for greater rewards.The chest itself seems to offer the same rewards as Savathun’s Spire, providing seasonal weapons, Hive Offerings, and Opaque Cards when opened. Additional rewards can be earned if any Witch Keys are in your inventory, earned from ritual activities.
Staying within the same match will buff the rewards you earn, but it will also cause your enemies to grow in strength. When your fireteam decides to stay, a new arena will be selected to continue the ritual. Offerings will be presented, the same as before, butthe Power Level of your foes will increase.It’s unclear how high this can scale to, but if Deep Dive is anything to go by, expect a -15 Power delta for staying multiple rounds—comparable to Neomuna patrol or Legend Lost Sectors.
Opaque Cards And Decks
To help counteract the difficulty increase of this activity, Altars of Summoning featuring a unique buff system calledOpaque Cards.Earned by playing Season of the Witch activities, these cards can be used in activities such as Altars of Summoning to greatly buff your character. Card effects range from buffing all of your Solar weapons with scorching rounds or providing Guardians with an escalating damage buff as they kill targets. These buffs are game-changers and can greatly ease the difficulty of this activity.
These cards are earned by playing any of this season’s activities, and they can be configured at the Lectern Of Divination in the H.E.L.M. With at least five cards owned, you’re able to interact with pedestals surrounding the Athenaeum to configure your deck of cards to fine-tune the buffs you’ll receive in your runs. Create a deck that complements your build, get a good fireteam together, and try your odds at completing as many Altars of Summoning encounters as possible
