How do you complete Destiny 2 Salvation’s Edge raid? This tricky raid is stumping even the most experienced raiders. There’s no shame in seeking a little helping hand, especially if you want to get it finished within contest mode. We’re working our way slowly through it ourselves too, so this guide is a work in progress.
Destiny 2 has long been famed for its raid races, which sees fireteams of six gather together to try to complete the raid on “day one” which recently became two days to encourage Guardians to stay healthy, get rest, and not stick to their desks for 24 hours straight. With the complexity of Salvation’s Edge, this one could well take the full 48 hours to finish, even if you’ve got the best Prismatic build around.
First encounter – Substratum guide
- Encounter challenge: Touch and Go – In Substratum, complete the encounter without any player acquiring an additional stack of resonance before the rest of the fireteam has gained a stack of resonance.
This section will detail the first encounter, which you can reach after a short traversal section from the landing zone. We’ll update our guide with that information, including the secret and red-border chests, after contest mode ends.
The first proper encounter in Salvation’s Edge has several mechanics. You’ll end up in a large arena with several rooms and one larger central room in which you begin the encounter. There are doors leading between these rooms, but they won’t all be open straight away. There are also orange wires which connect eight plates that are scattered around the rooms, alongside a Resonance Conduit pillar.
To begin the encounter ensure everyone is in the main room, pick up the Pyramidal Triangle, and deposit it into the nearby box which reads “Deposit Resonance,” which will then despawn.
Stage one – Charge the plates
After depositing the Resonance, two doors will open. Stay clear to begin with as Supplicants will spawn, track towards you, and explode. You’ll also notice that a timer will begin counting down at the top of your HUD which says “Final Shape Looming.” When this counter reaches zero, the entire team will wipe.
Split into two teams of three and take a door each. The Witness’s hand in the center of the room will occasionally cast triangle zones that, if you’re in them when they expire, will likely kill you. Standing near them will hurt, but not kill. In each side room kill a Quantum Minotaur which will spawn a Keeper of the Monolith on the opposite side. Kill that Hydra enemy to open more doors on the opposite side. Kill the Overload to spawn a Threshold Sentinel Tormentor in the large center room.
You’ll know it’s time to kill that enemy because a message will appear in the bottom-left that reads, “You are being beckoned back to the center.” The closest doors to the center will open at that point to make it quicker to get there.
In short you’ll want to follow this pattern twice:
- Kill a Hydra to open another door on the opposite side
- Kill a Minotaur to spawn an Overload on the opposite side
- Kill an Overload champion to spawn a Tormentor in the center room
- Head to the center room and take down the Threshold Sentinel Tormentor to open more doors
While you can technically stand on a glowing plate after the first cycle, in the interests of being efficient with an ever-ticking countdown, it’s not practical to do it this way. Make sure you’ve killed two Tormentors before attempting the next stage. When you’ve killed a Tormentor successfully, you’ll see a message that reads, “Energy flows into the architecture,” which makes the plate in the same room that the Overload was killed become charged and start to glow.
Stage two – Collect Pyramidal Resonance
After completing the above cycle twice, you should have a glowing plate on each side. Two people on each team should run to each plate with one in the center, so you become three teams of two temporarily. One player on each side should locate near the glowing plate without standing on it yet. The other needs to find the room where the Resonance Conductor pillar is glowing. This will be the second plate in the sequence.
Step on to the first glowing plate which will bounce the current along the wire to the second plate, which will then glow briefly before a circle appears. Step on the plate while the circle is there to spawn Pyramidal Resonance – a small, glowing triangle at a random point around the room. Keep bouncing the current back and forth between the two plates until you’ve spawned triangles three times. The message “All resonance has been pulled forth,” will appear when you have spawned all of them.
If you break the chain by jumping on the plate too early or too late, or both players step on the plates at the same time, the plates will stop glowing and an Omen of the Witness Subjugator will appear on the first plate. Any Pyramidal Resonance that hasn’t been collected will also despawn. Kill the Subjugator to have another attempt if you have the time left on the Final Shape countdown. At the same time as passing the current back and forth, enemies will spawn in the rooms. Take them out efficiently or they’ll end your run.
When each player has collected three Pyramidal Resonance, or when the timer is around 40 seconds remaining, you will need to close the Resonant Conductor near the plate. The only way to do this is to have Pyramidal Resonance and shoot the triangle before stepping on the plate. Step on the plate at the right time as normal and the Resonant Conductor will close and stop glowing. This will also despawn Pyramidal Resonance if you haven’t picked it up.
Close two Resonance Conductors to spawn a Harbinger of the Witness Subjugator enemy in the main centre room. Head there all together, and take it out as quickly as possible. This will close all of the side doors and spawn another Resonant Alter where you should quickly deposit your Pyramidal Resonance. Each one you successfully deposit will extend the Final Shape Looms timer by 20 seconds. You’ll need to repeat this three times to complete the encounter. After collecting your rewards you will want to run up the stairs until you find a large red pillar. This is a lift mechanic that takes you up and out. Follow the jumping puzzle to reach the next encounter.
Dissipation – Herald of Finality guide
The Herald of Finality is the first boss encounter that you will face during the raid. You’ll enter a wide open arena with a rectangular field in the middle and three Resonance Conduit pillars with plates on the left, right, and middle side (L, R, M). You’ll want to assign two players to each pillar. You will now notice there is Pyramidal Resonance as in the first encounter, but also Spherical Resonance.
Stage one – Obtain Stolen Valor
Shoot the Taken blights to start the encounter. The boss will spawn alongside Taken and Dread enemies. Yellow bar Taken Knights and orange bars will spawn on each side. If any of these enemies step on the plates your fireteam will wipe. The Final Shape Looming counter is also back.
Killing three orange bar enemies will spawn three Taken blights around the center. One person from each pair will get the Beckoned to Fight buff at the same time and should run forward to destroy the Blights and collect the Call for Reckoning buff. When enough Blights have been destroyed, a new smaller Blight will appear above the boss. If you have the Call for Reckoning buff, you can shoot this to convert it into a different buff called Stolen Valor. You can then use this to run back to the pillar and read which type of resonance needs to be deposited into each. You cannot read the resonance type without this buff. If you have the Call for Reckoning buff you must stay in the main area until it has converted to Stolen Valor otherwise the encounter will reset.
Stage two – Close the Resonance Conduits (again)
When the person with the Stolen Valor buff looks at the symbol on their Resonance Conduit it will either be a sphere or pyramid shape, depending on the type of Resonance that is needed to close the pillar. You will close the Conduit in the same way as in the first encounter, but there will now be Spherical and Pyramidal Resonance available and you must collect the right Resonance for your Conduit. Your entire stack of Resonance will convert to the type you pick up last, meaning you can’t collect both types and try to close two pillars with one player. If you break the charge chain this time, another orange bar enemy will appear and you can kill it to retry if you have the time left. When all three pillars have been closed, run the the center.
Stage three: Damage and Final Stand
After locking the pillars, the box will spawn in the center for the resonance to be deposited. Dunk everything to add time to the Final Shape Looming timer. When the box vanishes, the boss’s shield will be lowered and you should do as much damage as possible before he goes immune again. Repeat this until the final stand, where more ogres will spawn to make the final damage phase more difficult. You’ll also wipe if you don’t take the boss down within the time given.
After defeating the Herald of Finality, you’ve completed the second encounter. Collect your rewards and climb the white cubes to an area filled with relics and fossils. Another lift will appear, enter it and traverse upwards, killing the enemies near the Dissenters along the way. A Tormentor will spawn, you need to kill it to bring down a barrier that is preventing your way forward. Ascend the monolith as much as you can, and be wary of a Resonant Cylinder which will instantly kill you.
Repository – Carve a Path guide
The third encounter utilizes the same plates mechanic you’ve been using in the previous areas, only it introduces an additional two types of Resonance – Cubed and Hexahedral. The arena is laid out over three different levels, and you move up a level each time you deposit into a Resonant Chest – similarly to the Caretaker encounter during Vow of the Disciple, if you’ve completed that raid. There are three rooms which all follow the same rotation.
When you start the encounter a Threshold Sentinel Tormentor will spawn alongside other enemies surrounding each Resonant Conduit. Killing the Tormentor will unlock that Conduit’s plates and also spawns turrets. There are three Tormentors that need to be killed. The person with the final killing blow on the Tormentor will get a Stolen Valor buff, and can see the types of Resonance that each pillar requires.
Use the plates exactly as you have in the previous encounters – bounce the current back and forth to generate Resonance. Collect stacks of Resonance and close the Conduits with the correct type. This will again cause the Resonant Altar to appear in the center of the room. If you don’t close a pillar, a Harbinger of the Witness Subjugator will spawn which needs to be killed to try again. Killing it will also cause turrets to spawn again.
Once your entire fireteam has deposited their Resonance, more enemies will spawn alongside an Unstoppable Incendior, who will be near the back of the room, probably at the door. Kill them all to unlock the door and proceed to the next level. Killing the Unstoppable Incendior on the highest level will complete this encounter.
Verity – See Beyond walkthrough
This encounter stumped the most prestigious Destiny 2 streamers for eight hours or more, so we’ll try to explain it as thoroughly as possible. You’ll enter an arena with a large, white room with six red statues. If you look closely, you’ll see these resemble your own Guardian! One statue will have a yellow base and a message reading “Free Guardian.” Interact with that statue to start the encounter. The remaining statues, when you get close enough, will say “Dissect” when you interact with them. When the encounter starts, an “Imminent End” countdown will appear.
The person who started the encounter will be separated from the rest of the fireteam. At the back of the main room is a wall with symbols that shift and change between square, sphere, and triangle. The player that has been separated from their fireteam will need to complete the symbols that appear on the wall. For example, a player with a circle and a triangle on the wall will need to end the phase with a Spherical and Pyramidal Resonance collected, which will drop from a nearby Knight enemy.
The players outside need to know the order of the shapes for the Guardian statues. For example, if the left statue is holding circle, middle statue is holding square, and right statue is holding triangle, that is what should be called out or typed in the in-game chat to keep a note. This refers to the shapes that cannot be in the statues outside. You will need to collect a 2D shape collected by a Knight and place it in the corresponding statue. You can do two of these at a time.
After dunking these successfully, look at the remaining two statues. One will show a combination of two true shapes. You will need to find this statue and put in the corresponding shape which presents as a blood-red item e.g. Sphere = Circle, Pyramid = Triangle, Cube = Square. Doing this successfully will exchange the final two statues and Ghosts will spawn in. Grab these to rescue them.
You now need to identify which player’s Ghost you have got – so knowing which Ghost shell your fireteam uses is important. We found it helpful to change our Ghost shells to something easily identifiable – for example, mine is the Ghost shell which has multiple Pyramid ships surrounding it, while one of my fireteam uses the Ghost shell that resembles a small car.
You’ll need to take the shell to that Guardian’s statue and deposit it. Kill the enemies and repeat the phases. On the next stage, only some players will be able to see specific statues, so communication is more important than ever in this encounter. You’ll need to repeat the process a total of three times (are you noticing a pattern here?) until the encounter has been cleared. After that, you’ll traverse a small platforming section until you ascend to the very top of the Spire where you’ll face off against The Witness, and its many, many arms. We’ve included a brief description of the encounter below and how to clear it, although plenty more detail remains to be added as we figure it out ourselves.
Zenith – The Witness boss fight guide
In short – we’re unsure. It seems like you need to shoot the band on the arms sticking up from the ground while watching for the attacks, each of which have certain shapes. Step inside the trajectory of the attack before it hits to collect that shape’s resonance. The Witness will, from time to time, slam the ground with an attack that encompasses the entire arena – the only way to survive that attack is to jump. This could be triggered by killing the Subjugators that spawn each side. On the wrists of the arms symbols will appear – you may need a specific buff to see those symbols, as has been the case throughout the rest of the raid encounters. Shooting that symbol will grant you the Glyphbreaker buff, which is needed to break the buttons on The Witness’s jacket. Each glyph that is shot will summon a Subjugator.
After removing all of the glyphs, a DPS phase will be triggered. You need to head to the center platform and watch for the weak spot opening on The Witness’s abdomen. Stay towards the back of the platform and dodge its attacks. It seems to attack one side, then the next side, then turns the entire floor dangerous requiring another jump to survive. Repeat this until the Final Stand occurs.
After defeating The Witness we strongly suggest jumping straight into the new twelve-man activity, Excision, to finish off The Witness once and for all, and watch some of the most incredible cinematics I’ve ever seen in a game.
Destiny 2 Salvation’s Edge Exotic weapon and loot table
The loot for Salvation’s Edge is as follows:
- Photonic armor set (Hunter set pictured)
- Euphony Linear Fusion Rifle – This weapon’s intrinsic trait is Unwound which spawns Threadlings when dealing sustained damage.
- Summum Bonum Sword
- Critical Anomaly Sniper Rifle
- Imminence Submachine Gun
- Non-Denouement Combat Bow
- Forthcoming Deviance Glaive
- Nullify Pulse Rifle
- Turmoil Engine Vehicle
- Resonant Cellweave Shader
- Timeless Bond Ghost Shell
- Edfication Emblem
Raid mods
The raid mods you can get from Salvation’s Edge are:
- Electrified Conductor – In Salvation’s Edge, receive a large amount of Special ammo when charging a conductor.
- Stacked – Final blows have an increased chance of spawning Heavy ammo while in possession of Resonance.
- Persistent Resonance – Create orbs when depositing Resonance.
- Arm’s Reach – Unknown at this time.
- High-Tier Elimination – Gain bonus ability energy when defeating challenging combatants or higher.
This guide is a work in progress and will continue to be updated as we clear more encounters. While we’re in contest mode, we’re heads down trying to get everything completed, so bear with us.
