Destiny 2: Salvation’s Edge raid walkthrough (2024)

Salvation’s Edge is the raid for Destiny 2’s The Final Shape expansion, and it sees you and your Fireteam of Guardians storm The Witness’ Monolith inside The Pale Heart of The Traveler. You’ll need to charge energy, take down an overly familiar face once again, and do some geometry if you actually want to kill The Witness.

The recommended power level for the raid in 1945, but due to the Fireteam Power system, you’ll be all set as long as one of your teammates has 1950 power or higher. Finally, note that at least one of your Fireteam members must complete the campaign and the “Wild Card” quest in order to start the raid.

In this Destiny 2: The Final Shape guide, I’ll walk you through every step of the Salvation’s Edge raid, including how to complete each encounter, find both secret chests, and beat The Witness boss fight.

Salvation’s Edge raid walkthrough steps and mechanics

There are five encounters in Salvation’s Edge raid, with each getting you closer to the singular goal of The Final Shape expansion: defeating The Witness. Here’s a quick summary of the encounters:

• Substratum: Fight through a maze to collect and bank Resonance to unlock the rest of The Witness’ Monolith
• Dissipation: Fight the Herald of Finality — a Disciple version of Taniks.
• Repository: Race through three rooms that grow in complexity, dunking Resonance along the way.
• Verity: Free your fellow Guardians from the shadow realm by doing a lot of math.
• The Witness: Defeat The Witness and its hands to make it vulnerable ahead of the final mission.

Before we break down the individual encounters, it’s worth explaining the central mechanics for the first three: Substratum, Dissipation, and Repository. (Verity and The Witness boss fight lean on mostly fresh mechanics, so I’ll run through those when we get there.)

The first three encounters use a charging plate, some wires, Resonance, and conduits. All of them work in tandem, and you need to have a deep understanding of each to find success here.

How to activate charging plates and wires

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Every one of these encounters has between three and four pairs of plates, and the pairs are connected to each other with a wire.

When you unblock these plates — usually by killing a boss enemy of some kind — one of them will begin to glow. By stepping on a glowing plate, you’ll send the energy inside of it to its pair via the wire. If you or an ally then step on the receiving plate after the energy arrives (it’ll start to glow) and before it fizzles out (the glow disappears), you’ll rebound the energy back to the original plate again and spawn Resonance nearby.

How to create Resonance pickups

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Gaining Resonance buffs based on shapes is the central mechanic in Salvation’s Edge, and you’ll use it the entire raid — even in the last two encounters, although it behaves a bit differently there. In the first encounter, the only Resonance that spawns comes in a triangle shape (Pyramidal Resonance). In encounter two, you’ll also gain access to ones shaped like a circle (Spherical Resonance), and encounter three adds squares (Hexahedron Resonance).

You can use Resonance for a couple of different things. First, you need it to interact with conduits, and second you need it to regain time at the end of each phase.

How to activate conduits

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Sometimes, charging plates will have conduits next to them, which can either be awake or dormant. When dormant, you’ll need to supply energy to the system, which is the same thing that also awakens the plate. When a conduit is awake, you’ll see a shape in it (triangle, circle, or square) which denotes what kind of Resonance you need to activate it. Activating multiple conduits is how you spawn the Resonance bank, which you need to interact with in order to progress to the next phase of the fight.

Activating a conduit is a delicate process, and you need to do some things in order first:

1. Have a Fireteam member step on the plate not connected to the conduit, which will send energy via the wire to the conduit plate
2. Shoot the conduit while you have the proper Resonance shape buff
3. Step on the plate near the conduit once the energy arrives to lock it in place

If you do this properly, the conduit will expand and glow bright gold, and the person who shot the conduit will lose one stack of Resonance. However, locking the conduit will cause all the Resonance created by that plate pair to disappear. So make sure you and your teammates pick up the extra Resonance (no more than three or you’ll die) first.

Once you’ve filled three conduits full of energy, the bank will appear under The Witness’ time bomb.

How to stop and reset the timer

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Every encounter in this raid features a timer, which you can see at the top of your screen. If you do not complete the encounter before the timer ends, you’ll die and have to restart the encounter. But because The Witness doesn’t play fair, the timer is never long enough to complete the encounter, so you’ll need to extend or reset it. In the first three encounters, you’ll use the bank for that.

Once you respawn the bank, you need to take all the excess Radiance you collected before locking the conduits and put it into the bank. When you deposit your Resonance, the timer will gain additional time.

Keep all of these things in mind as you adventure through The Witness’ Monolith.

Substratum — how to complete the opening encounter

Image: Reddit user charl/chrlmain via Raid Secrets

Substratum takes place in a 9x9 grid, where each grid is a different room.

In the middle of the room, you’ll see a triangle (Resonance) floating above the ground. Grab it and put it into the bank — the box right in front of you. With the Resonance banked, one of The Witness’ many hands will spawn in the center room. Two random doors will also open up, and Vex Supplicants (the ones that explode) will come rushing into the room.

Clearing the rooms and opening doors

Image: Bungie via Polygon

This is where you’ll want to split into two groups of three for the rest of the fight. Pick a lead player for each team and have the other players in their squad follow them wherever they go. Deal with the Supplicants and direct one team go into the first Supplicant room and the second team to go into the other.

With the party split, you’ll need to work your way through multiple rooms together, as each room is connected to adjacent rooms by a door.

In the first room you enter, you’ll just find some Vex, so take them out and quickly move to the next open room. Here, you’ll find a Quantum Minotaur and a bunch of other Vex. Kill them all. When the Minotaur dies in your room, it will send a Vex Hydra to the other team’s second room. When the other team kills that Quantum Minotaur, it will send a Vex Hydra to your team’s second room. Killing the Vex Hydras will open doors for your teammates.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

In the third room, one team will find an Overload Minotaur Champion called the Devotee of the Witness. Kill the Champion to spawn a Tormentor in the central room called the Threshold Sentinel. Have the entire Fireteam return to the central room and kill the Tormentor.

When the Tormentor dies, you’ll see a prompt that says “energy flows into the architecture.” This means one of the two plate pairs and conduits you need will be active.

Charging the conduits

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Repeat what you did at the start of the encounter and send your teams into the doors that open, minding the Supplicants. But this time, one side will eventually run into an open conduit or a lit-up plate. The team with the charged plate and open conduit should start bouncing their energy back and forth and making Resonance while the other team kills enemies and their Champion.

While the team with the plate starts on Resonance generation, the other team should return to the middle and kill the second Tormentor that just spawned. This will charge another conduit-and-plate pair. That team should then generate their own Resonance.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

As the teams generate Resonance, some will appear in each room, while more appear in the central chamber. The two plate players should keep the energy bouncing back and forth until they get a prompt that all the Resonance has been spawned or the timer is getting low — under a minute or so. The non-plate holder in each team should collect some Resonance from the central chamber and help out the plate players when Subjugators appear in their rooms.

Once both teams are ready — everyone has gathered three Resonance max or as many as they can, permitting time — send the energy through the wires and lock both conduits by having a player with Resonance shoot it and then step on the nearby plate once it’s been filled with energy.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

If you do this correctly, you’ll lock in your conduit. If both teams lock both conduits before the timer expires, a big Subjugator will spawn in the central room. Work as a team to kill it, which will in turn spawn the bank. Deposit all your Resonance to extend the timer. If you insert enough, you’ll get up to four minutes and 15 seconds total on your clock — the same as the encounter starts with. If you don’t get the max, that’s ok, but you’ll need to go fast.

Repeat this entire process until you’ve done it three times. If you’re struggling with time on the third go-around, bounce the plates fewer times and don’t worry about generating or collecting as much Resonance. Just spawn the bank and deposit whatever you have as quickly as possible.

You’ll know you’ve finished the encounter when a massive staircase descends from the ceiling in the main room. Follow it up to continue to the raid’s first boss.

Dissipation — how to defeat Taniks, the Herald of Finality

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Now it’s time for the first boss fight, the Herald of Finality — or, as many old-hat Destiny players may know him, Taniks.

For this boss fight, you’ll be in close quarters, so you should bring a sword. The Lament works pretty good if you have one, but you can also use Falling Guillotine or anything else. If you’re not using an Exotic sword, and you have a player in your Fireteam with an Ergo Sum sword with Wolfpack Rounds on it, pair it with Legendary swords that match the weekly burn on Salvation’s Edge for some potent damage.

The idea here is very similar to the first encounter, but this time you’ll be splitting into three groups of two and dealing with a boss instead. Send each team to one of the three areas of the map: middle (where you spawn), left (with the big tower), and right.

How to break Taniks’ weakspot

Image: Bungie via Polygon

To start the fight, break the big Taken Blight in the middle of the room. This will spawn Taniks, Herald of Finality, into the center of the arena. Taniks will hang out down there and wait for you for the entire fight, and your goal is to deposit Resonance in a bank so you can break his immunity shield and fight him for real.

However, the bank disappears when the fight begins, and you’ll need to work to get it back.

Have everyone start on their respective sides and clear the first three waves of enemies. The third wave will spawn with a boss-level Taken enemy called a Trammel. The middle will get a Taken Phalanx, the left will get a Taken Wizard, and the right will get a Taken Ogre. Kill the Trammel to fill the architecture with energy — i.e., charge the plates and open the conduit. That said, the conduit will display a jumbled-up symbol, rather than the clean pyramid you previously saw. Ignore it for now.

Sometime during all this, three members of your Fireteam — one per side — will get summoned by Taniks to the middle of the arena and will receive the “Call to Reckoning” buff.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Once you kill the Trammel on your side, you or whoever was called by the Herald should jump into his arena and start shooting his forehead. It’s worth noting here that all players with “Call to Reckoning” should jump in and damage Taniks, otherwise the Blights seem to spawn slower or not at all.

After you’ve dealt a bit of damage, Tanik’s weakspot will start to glow, and he’ll summon a Taken Blight somewhere in the arena to shield himself. These can spawn on the sides where you’re stationed or in the arena with the boss. Have all the players look around and shoot the Blights. When the shield on Taniks’ head disappears, keep shooting until it pops. You’ll then get a debuff called “Stolen Favor.”

Jump out of the pit and head back to your side. If you look at the conduit, you’ll see one of two shapes: a triangle and a circle. This denotes which Resonance buff — Pyramidal or Spherical Resonance — you or your partner needs to have when you shoot the conduit to activate it.

How to charge and read the conduits

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Once you’re back on your side with “Stolen Favor” and have called out what your conduit needs, take one of the plates on your side and have your friend take the other. The plate furthest from Taniks always starts with the energy after you kill the Trammel, while the plate closer to Taniks has the conduit.

Repeat what you did in the first encounter, being careful to take down the nasty Stasis enemies and Taken Knights as quickly as possible. After every bounce of the plates, you’ll spawn a Pyramidal Resonance on one side of the arena and a Spherical Resonance on the other.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

For the back plate player: It doesn’t matter what Resonance type you pick up, as long as you leave at least one of the Resonance your side needs available for your friend.

However, if you’re the front plate player, you need to be very cautious with what you grab. A great tip here is to grab the opposite Resonance type that your conduit symbol is. This will give you one stack of the wrong Resonance, but you can then pick up the correct Resonance next to convert your one stack of wrong Resonance into two stacks of the correct Resonance.

There’s one more thing worth knowing about this section. If you miss a plate after the first bounce — as in you let the energy fizzle — the Trammel on your side will spawn again and lock your conduit. You can kill the Trammel, but by doing so you’ll reset your conduit, meaning it might have a different symbol then last time. You’ll need to check it again to be sure.

Once you’ve collected all the Resonance you need, lock the conduits and the bank will spawn over by the edge of Taniks’ arena, by the ticking bomb and The Witness’ hand. It’s time to get ready for damage.

How to damage Taniks

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Now that you’ve banked all your Resonance and regained some time, it’s time to kick Taniks’ ass. Run into the now-glowing arena and beat on him with your swords. Make sure Warlocks use Well of Radiance or Song of Flame to keep you all safe. A healing turret from the Speaker’s Mask Exotic is amazing here as well.

Keep beating on Taniks until he goes immune. When that happens, jump out of the arena and repeat everything you just did.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

When you deal enough damage to him that he reaches the final portion of his health bar, Taniks will go into a final stand. He’ll briefly become immune, so stop trying to damage him and preserve your ammo. He’ll summon the other three Trammel bosses to assist him, but don’t get distracted. These villains weren’t threatening on the very difficult Contest version of the raid, so they shouldn’t even touch you. Just ignore them and swing at Taniks until he dies.

Grab the loot from the chest and head back to the middle area. Turn left and you’ll see some massive green columns that will lead you to the next encounter. Follow the tricky path — watch for the lights — and you’ll eventually reach the third encounter ...

Repository — how to open the path through the Monolith

Image: Bungie via Polygon

If you’ve made it this far into Salvation’s Edge, you already know everything you need to do for Repository.

Much like the second encounter, the arena here is broken up into three sides, each with their own plate ecosystem. Assign the teams of two to a side of the room: left, middle, and right. Each team will be responsible for killing a Tormentor, a Subjugator, and a bunch of other enemies on their side. They’ll also need to spawn Resonance, collect excess Resonance, and lock a conduit.

To start the fight, pick up the square Resonance — Hexahedron Resonance — in the middle of the room and bank it in the nearby bank. This will spawn three Tormentors, one at the end of each plate. Work with your teammate to kill it, and have your allies do the same. Whichever team member gets the killing blow on the Tormentor will gain the “Stolen Favor” buff from the last encounter. This will allow you to see what kind of Resonance each conduit needs you to use to shoot it. It will also cause energy to flow into the architecture.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Send the player without Stolen Favor back to the home plate — closest to the door — which will be ready to send energy. Then stand on the plate near the conduit with Stolen Favor. Bounce the energy back and forth to spawn either circle, triangle, or square Resonance. Each Resonance type will spawn in a quadrant of the room, so coordinate with your team where the one you need is.

Once you’ve bounced three or four times, you’ll have plenty of Resonance on the floor. Let the plate energy fizzle out and run around to collect the Resonance you need. Any of your teammates without Stolen Favor should stay away from Resonance until all of the buffed players have what they need. Once you have three of your Resonance and you’ve allowed time for your allies to pick up any excess shapes, kill the Subjugator near your conduit and lock the conduit in place.

Once you’ve locked all three conduits, the bank will appear in the middle of the room — alongside some deadly turrets. Bank to get some time back, open the door ahead of you, and spawn an Unstoppable Champion. Deal with the enemies and soldier forth.

You have to do this three times in three rooms that get more elaborate with each run. Here’s a quick breakdown of the rooms:

How to clear the first room

In the first room, each side’s plate flows in a straight line, and it’s pretty open, so burning down enemies is easy. Just follow the instructions above to burn through this room as quickly as possible.

How to clear the second room

Image: Bungie via Polygon

The second room is where things get a bit spicier. First, the left plate’s wire now crosses over the middle plate, so your left plate conduit player will actually end up on a raised platform in the middle of the room. Your middle conduit player should stand on a plate on the left side near where the Tormentors spawn.

How to clear the third room

Image: Bungie via Polygon

The third room is very hectic. Not only are there pits everywhere, but three Tormentors spawn all together in the front. The wires are also crossed here, with left side’s conduit being the middle plate, middle conduit’s being the right plate, and right conduit’s being the left plate.

Don’t worry about excess Resonance here, as you won’t need it anymore. Just get the shape you need and complete the conduits as quickly as possible. Once you’re done, bank your Resonance for the third time and defeat the Unstoppable Champion. The door in the back will then open up and you’ll find your loot in a nearby chest.

Follow the path to reach Verity, the puzzle encounter.

Verity — how to dissect and move shapes

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Verity is reminiscent of The Vault encounter from the Last Wish raid, as it’s almost entirely puzzle based.

When the encounter starts, three members of your Fireteam will randomly be pulled into the shadow realm. While in the shadow realm, they’ll be in a copy of the main arena, but completely on their own. They’ll need to work with you and the rest of their teammates to solve a complex puzzle, which will allow them to escape the shadow realm and return to your Fireteam’s warm embrace.

All of that is a lot easier said than done, so let’s dissect the encounter once piece at a time.

How to reverse Catatonic Decimation

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Before you do anything else, your Fireteam needs to do a drip check. That sounds like a joke, but it actually isn’t. Being able to distinguish not only your fellow Guardians from one another but also their Ghosts is crucial to completing this encounter.

You’ll notice six Guardian statues near where you spawn in, all of whom are decimated and have been Final Shape-ized. If you look closely, you’ll see that all of these statues represent a member of your Fireteam, and are wearing the same armor set as the real player.

Have every member of your Fireteam change up their look and then write it down IRL (a notepad, Discord, Instagram DMs, you get the point). Next, make sure each player puts on a distinct Ghost Shell. Write it down next to their name. You need both pieces of information readily accessible to you at all times.

At two points per phase — so six times a fight — some or most of your Fireteam will get decimated by The Witness. This will kill them (kind of) and they’ll be frozen in place. If they’re in the shadow realm, their Ghosts will appear in the light realm with the rest of their allies. And if they’re already in the light realm — which happens during the intermission phase — their Ghosts will just appear near their bodies.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Any Guardians on your Fireteam who aren’t decimated will need to grab these Ghosts and run back to the statues at the start of the room, but all of the statues of decimated players will be missing. However, the decimated players can spectate through the eyes of non-decimated teammates. Through this spectate feature, each decimated player will be able to see one missing statue — although never their own — and can relay that information to allies so they can match the correct Ghost with the correct Guardian.

When paired back up with their Guardian’s statue, the Ghost can resurrect their decimated Guardian (without using a rez token).

Here’s a quick example of how that works in practice:

1. You and your Fireteam are going about your business and working on the puzzle to free your allies.
2. The three Guardians trapped inside the shadow realm get decimated.
3. The three Guardians’ Ghost Shells appear in the light realm.
4. Each member in the light realm team takes a look at the Ghost they grab, checks their notes on the Guardian fashion. You call out, “Bunny Ghost Shell goes with dino Titan, can anyone see dino Titan?”
5. Holding the bunny Ghost Shell, you run back to the statues alongside the other three light realm members, who have all grabbed Ghosts and made similar calls (“Trials Ghost goes with sword Hunter, anyone see it?” or “shark Ghost goes with Root of Nightmares Warlock, where are they?”)
6. The decimated players look through the eyes of their teammates and call out the glowing statue they see and where it is. The dino Titan might say “Root of Nightmares Warlock is three,” meaning they can see that their ally who owns the shark Ghost is on the third podium from the left.
7. The Guardian holding the shark Ghost dunks it in the third podium, resurrecting the Root of Nightmares Warlock.
8. Following the same train of thought, the rest of the decimated Guardians are reunited with their Ghosts and regain control of their bodies.

You'll need to do this each phase as your players trapped in the shadow realm try to escape, and you’ll need to do it on a much larger scale during the intermission phase later.

How to escape the shadow realm

Image: Bungie via Polygon

When you start the encounter by hitting the “free Guardian” prompt on one of the statues, three random players will be sucked into the shadow realm. As previously mentioned, these three Guardians will all be in three solo instances of the normal arena, and will need to fend for themselves.

While your shadow realm teammates won’t be able to see each other, they’ll all be able to see three statues around the center stage of the room, one on the left, one in the middle, and one on the right. These statues are of the three shadow realm Guardians, and each is holding a shadowy shape. If you’re in the shadow realm, you’ll need to relay what shapes you’re seeing to your teammates.

For example, if the left shadow has a square, the middle shadow has a circle, and the right shadow has a triangle, you’d call out “SCT” to your allies for “square, circle, triangle,” left to right.

Once you’ve done that, you want to become lord of your statue’s shape and horde them in your room.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Look up at the big screen at the back of your room in the shadow realm. You’ll see it swap between two shapes with a little loading spiral in-between. This tells you which shapes are in your room, currently in possession of the two Hive Knights roaming around. If the two shapes on the wall match the two shapes on your statue, you’re golden. If not — which is far more likely — you’ll need to do some trading first.

Kill your Knights and pick up any shapes that don’t match your statue. So if your room has a square and a circle, and you’re the square Guardian, kill Knights until you find a circle and pick it up. Then run over to the circle Guardian statue and tell them you’re about to give them their shape. They should have one of yours as well. Wait for them to say they’re ready to trade and do a countdown. This isn’t technically mandatory, but shapes can get lost in some kind of limbo if players are too far ahead or behind each other, so it’s best to time it out while you’re getting a grip on the fight.

It’s also important to only pick up and dunk one shape at a time, as picking up two will create a 3D object. Dunking a 3D object in a Guardian will despawn all your shapes and send them back to the Knights in your room. This isn’t helpful in progressing the fight, but it’s a great way to reset yourself if you accidentally pick up the wrong shape.

Keep trading with your fellow shadow players until everyone has their own shapes. You should only need two or three trades for this, if you need any at all. Once all three of you have become lords of your shapes, it’s time to share. The ultimate goal of the shadow realm is to collect the two shapes that your statue isn’t holding. So if you’re lord of the squares, you need to give away your squares before getting a circle and a triangle to escape.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Now it’s time to do the same thing you did before with the trading. This time, grab one of your shapes and call that you’re ready for a trade. This, again, isn’t mandatory, but helpful for organizing new players. Agree on a trade partner and approach their statue. Do a countdown and then trade them. You should see the screen in the back of your room change. Repeat this until you have the shapes you need and your allies all have the shapes they need.

When everyone is ready, kill the Knights and grab both shapes at once this time, which will result in getting a new buff that’s a combination of the two shapes currently in your possession. With your 3D shape buff, run to the back of the room — which is normally blocked off by a barrier that looks like shattered glass. As long as your allies in the light realm are done dissecting the 3D shapes outside, you should all be able to walk through and join your friends.

One final thing to keep in mind here is that the Witness will hit you with Catatonic Detonation during the shape-trade game. If you have a shape in your possession when this happens, it’ll still be there when you get resurrected. But try to be conscious where you die, as it’s very possible to be attacked by Ogres and Knights the moment you regain control of your body. If you die in the shadow realm, someone else will be sent in to replace you.

How to dissect 3D shapes

Image: Bungie via Polygon

When the encounter starts, and three players get pulled into the shadow realm, the encounter will leave three others in the light realm. Here, divide yourselves into two enemy slayers and a single dissector. Keep in mind that because the teams sent in are random, you’ll need to call an audible on this, meaning that at least four people on your team need to understand how dissecting works in order to proceed.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

When your allies go in, your job as an outside player is to help them escape. To do this, you need to create the same 3D objects for their statues that they’re collecting in the shadow realm.

As enemies start to spawn into the room, the three statues at the front of the light realm arena will transform into the three Guardians trapped inside. You’ll also see that each of those statues are holding a 3D object, which are a combination of two of the shape buffs we’ve been dealing with all raid. Let’s go over the terminology on those before we go any further here:

• Cube (square + square)
• Sphere (circle + circle)
• Pyramid (triangle + triangle)
• Cylinder (circle + square)
• Cone (circle + triangle)
• Prism (triangle + square)

As these shapes appear, your allies inside will call out the order of shadow shapes they see in their realm from left to right. These will be the simple shapes and not the 3D ones. For example, your teammates might call “circle, square, triangle,” which is them telling you who is lord of what shape and what order they appear in.

With that information, it’s time to get to work. You need to dissect the pre-existing 3D objects in each statue’s hand to remove all shapes that they are lord of from the 3D object. In the example above, circle is the left-side call. If their light realm statue has a sphere, cylinder, or prism — all 3D shapes with a circle in it — you need to remove a circle from that shape or your teammate won’t be able to get out, even if they get the key.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

To do this, you need to dunk some shapes. Kill the Knights that spawn in the room — there are three in the light realm, and each drops one shape. Following the example above, take the circle and drop it into the left-most statue so you can dissect a circle from that 3D object. This will cause the left side statue to glow, meaning it’s ready for dissection. To complete the dissection, however, you’ll need to dunk a different shape in one of the other two statues. This will cause the two shapes you dunked to trade places, removing them from their original 3D object and adding them to the other. Note that you can’t dunk a shape into a statue where that shape isn’t present, so it won’t let you dunk a circle in a statue holding a cube.

The most efficient way to do this is to dunk the first of each of the three shapes in the order your team called, left to right. So in the “circle, square, triangle” example, dunk a circle left, then a square middle, and a triangle right. Doing this will guarantee that you pull at least one shape out of the left and middle statue, and it’ll prepare the right statue for the next dissection.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Whenever you run out of Knights — as in you kill all three of them — two Unstoppable Ogres will spawn on the left and right sides of the arena. Help kill these if you’re the dissector, but they should really be the job of your bodyguards, the other two players in the room. Once they’re dead, three more Knights will spawn. You can perform this loop in perpetuity.

Once you spawn your second set of Knights, look to see what shape your right statue still needs and go dunk it in the other incomplete 3D object. Most of the time you can complete the 3D objects you need in just these two dissections, so you should be good at this point.

To check your work and make sure your teammates are ready to come out, go through the original call and make sure those shapes do not appear in the 3D objects you’ve listed.

As a dissector, focusing on these shapes should be your only job. The only exception here — other than helping stun Ogres if you have time — is to help reunite Ghosts with Guardians when your shadow realm teammates get decimated.

Here’s a complex example. Your team calls STC — square, triangle, circle. Your starting 3D objects are:

• Cube (square + square)
• Pyramid (triangle + triangle)
• Sphere (circle + circle)

This would be your exact order of operations:

1. Dunk square in the left statue
2. Dunk triangle in the middle statue
3. Verify that both left and middle change to prisms
4. Dunk circle right
5. Kill Unstoppable Ogres
6. Make sure you don’t need to revive decimated allies
7. Dunk square left
8. Verify that left changes to a cone, and right changes to a cylinder
9. Dunk triangle in middle
10. Dunk circle on right
11. Verify that middle changes to a cylinder and right changes to a prism
12. Double check that your objects read: cone (no square), cylinder (no triangle), prism (no circle)

Alternatively, Reddit users seratne and interxenon made a handy dissection tool that can help you parse the process.

How to continue to the next phase

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Once you finally reunite your Fireteam, the timer for the current phase will disappear, signaling that it’s time to run to the back of the room and prepare for an onslaught. Two Unstoppable Ogres will spawn on either side of the room (and, if you’re unlucky on timing, you could get two in the back of the room around the same time). Wipe out all of the enemies and then spread out in the spawn area.

The Witness will proceed to decimate five of the six members of your fireteam, freezing all but one of you in place. If you’re the one alive, wait for your allies to tell you the first Guardian they see, and then pick up their Ghost and match it. Once you revive them, work together to keep resurrecting your allies. You only have a minute to do this, but that should be plenty of time with the help of your teammates.

When everyone is unfrozen, repeat this entire process two more times for a total of three phases. After the final revive on the third phase, you’ll get some sweet loot, the hole in the middle of the room will become an elevator, and you’ll finally be ready to confront The Witness.

Head up, climb the roots up to the fortress, jump on the columns by the door, and into the arena for the final boss of Destiny 2’s Light and Darkness saga.

The Witness — how to beat the final boss

Image: Bungie via Polygon

As soon as you arrive for the final fight, you’ll see The Witness standing patiently at the back of the room. The arena is split into two sides, with a massive pit in the middle, which leads to a root-based platform.

Best loadout for The Witness

Image: Bungie via Polygon

To start the fight, you just need to run up close to The Witness. But don’t do that just yet, as we should talk about how you want to set your team up first. The Witness has a lot of health in this raid, so you’ll need to do a bunch of damage if you want to kill it. It also has a pretty tight window for a final stand, so you need burst damage.

Hunters are obviously the class of choice here, as they offer the highest burst damage in the game. Pair Celestial Nighthawk with Marksman Golden Gun and the Still Hunt sniper rifle to chain shots over and over again on The Witness.

For the other two classes, your options are a bit more limited. You can use precision weapons like linear fusion rifles, but you’ll need to move around a lot during the boss fight, so I recommend Microcosm, the heavy trace rifle from The Final Shape. This thing not only deals a lot of damage, it also deals even more damage after you cast your Super. So Warlocks should be on Well of Radiance or Song of Flame, and Titans can just use Twilight Arsenal or another quick Super.

Other than that, you want a machine gun if possible to deal with all the enemies, and a weapon like a pulse rifle that can deal with targets at range.

How to break The Witness’ glyphs

Image: Bungie via Polygon

As the encounter starts, you’ll notice The Witness has six little buttons on its jacket. These are the protective glyphs keeping its weak spot sealed away. If you want to damage The Witness — the entire point of this fight — you’ll need to get rid of those buttons. And to break the buttons, you’ll need the Glyphbreaker buff.

First, split your team into two groups of three: Glyphbreaker players and enemy slayer players.

The enemy slayer players should split up so one of them is on the left, one is on the right, and the other switches between the two sides as needed. The primary threats here are the Subjugators, but they only spawn in occasionally, so be prepared for them. The more common threats are the Screebs, which will blow up you and your teammates if you don’t kill them immediately. Focus on keeping the field clear for your hand team and wait for damage to start.

For the Glyphbreaker players, you shouldn’t really worry about killing enemies unless you have downtime. Instead, your job is to deal with The Witness’ many hands that you’ve been unable to damage this entire raid. Now their time has come, as you can use their power against them.

There are three kinds of hands in this encounter, and you should assign each Glyphbreaker player to each hand type just to keep it simple:

• Down hand, which comes down from the ceiling, gives the Pyramidal Resonance buff, and shoots the triangle bomb from the first encounter.
• Up hand, which comes from the floor, gives the Spherical Resonance buff, and shoots the circular airstrike from the second encounter.
• Wall hand, which comes out of the wall, gives the Hexahedron Resonance buff, and shoots a beam across the arena from the third encounter.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Each player will start the phase by locating their hand type and standing in the area that their hand is targeting — i.e., stand in the circle for the up hand before the attack hits. While inside, shoot the Resonance bangle on your hand. This will cause it to pop, revealing a green (Pyramidal Resonance), red (Hexahedron Resonance), or yellow (Spherical Resonance) bangle underneath. This tells you which buff you need to destroy this hand.

Now that you know your symbol, quickly find the hand that can give you the buff you need. So, if you shoot wall hand and see that you need the Pyramidal buff, go stand in the attack area of the down hand for a brief moment. After a second or two, you’ll gain the Pyramidal Resonance buff. Take that buff back to your own hand, stand in its attack aura, and immediately shoot the bangle. If done properly, you’ll destroy the hand and gain the Glyphbreaker buff.

However, there are a few things you need to know about this phase:

1. Standing in your own hand too long can get you a stack of its buff, which you don’t want, so be quick when checking the bangle.
2. If you take too long and your hand leaves and re-enters somewhere else in the arena, its bangle will change and you’ll need to start again, so you have to be quick. You can reset the hand’s timer by having an enemy slayer player shoot the Resonance bangle like you did earlier, but doing this too many times can cause The Witness to summon more hands.
3. Only stand in an enemy hand’s attack aura to get the buff if they’re not about to attack. These attacks can kill you if you’re in them when they go off, so the idea is to quickly dip in, get the buff, and get out before the attack happens.
4. Destroying a hand will give you a stack of that hand’s buff, and you can’t ever have more than three Resonance at once. That means that you need someone else to shoot your hand for you if you already have three Resonance.
5. Stacking your Resonance too high can drastically alter the flow of the fight, so be deliberate with your movements and be careful not to stand in another attack by accident or you’ll override your buff and gain another stack.
6. Destroying a hand can trigger a trap from The Witness, which I’ll explain more in the next section.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

When all three players have Glyphbreaker, jump over to the root platform together and each destroy a button. You can do this while anywhere in the arena, but popping a glyph on the platform will cleanse your buffs and give you a fresh start. If any of your allies accidentally have some Resonance on them, have them join you on the cleansing plate.

Repeat this entire process again and destroy all six glyphs. When the sixth glyph pops, you and your team will enter the damage phase, so make sure everyone is ready and the enemies on the sides are mostly dead.

How to survive The Witness’ trap

Image: Bungie via Polygon

As mentioned, once per phase — as in once per every six glyphs popped — The Witness will devise a trap for you when you destroy one of its hands and gain Glyphbreaker. This can’t happen on the first or sixth hand broken, though.

The moment you break the hand, you’ll see a prompt that says “The Witness tests you.” The moment you pop a hand, you have to check to see if you got the prompt or not, as the last hand destroyed is the key to foiling The Witness here. If you pop two hands too close together, you can make it hard to tell what the solution will be.

Determine the hand type that spawned the test and then have your Glyphbreaker players look to the middle of the room. This mechanic — like dissection — is easier the fewer people you have messing with it, so limit it to three players. In front of The Witness, you’ll see a bunch of Resonance crystals floating in mid-air. You need to create a shape — square, circle, or triangle — that matches the hand type that was just destroyed.

Check out the great map from Mactics above for the shapes you’re trying to make.

Here’s a quick example. If you break the wall hand and it spawns the trap, you’ll need to destroy all of the Resonance crystals that aren’t part of the square shape. If you shoot any of the wrong symbols, you’ll get killed by the trap, so be very careful. When the remaining crystals are in the shape of a square, leave them alone. If you get the correct shape, you’ll get a prompt that says “The Witness’ trap is foiled.”

However, foiling The Witness’ trap doesn’t mean you’re safe. When the trap ends, The Witness will rear back and push its hands forward, creating a shockwave that travels along the entire arena. This will kill anyone touching the ground, so the entire Fireteam needs to jump. The tell here is when The Witness’ eyes glow and you hear a noise akin to a sword getting drawn. Jump when you see that and don’t touch the ground until after the attack ends.

How to damage The Witness

Image: Bungie via Polygon

There’s a rhythm to the damage phase you’ll need to get used to. If you have a player with a keen eye — or one that’s using Divinity and can get a wider picture of the battlefield — have them give the team callouts on where to go and how to move.

The Witness’ crit spot is the glowing slit in its chest, and it’ll open up once the platform reaches its max height. As soon as it opens, start shooting, but keep an eye on The Witness’ hands and eyes. It will shoot massive beams that cover half of the platform at a time, so you’ll need to shift left to right as you go. It’ll also do the wipe mechanic from the trap and shine its eyes, so you’ll need to be ready to jump as well. Sometimes it’ll even do both at once, which is pretty tough to avoid. Healing grenades are amazingly effective for this, as you can throw one at your feet if you get clipped by a beam and still survive.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

The Witness will tire for a few seconds after it attacks three or four times. During this very short downtime, all you need to focus on is damage. Before long, The Witness will be at it again, slinging beams and blowing up the floor. The old MMO adage “dead DPS is zero DPS” is very apt here, so play your life above everything else.

Eventually, The Witness will look annoyed and do a slow rear back to slam the plate down. Jump off the back and immediately start killing enemies or The Witness will kill you. Repeat this entire process until you reach the final stand, but keep in mind that you only have three phases to do this, so you need to hit hard when you get the chance.

For the final stand, The Witness will briefly become immune. Its chest will open back up, allowing you to continue damage, and it will keep slinging attacks at you. After 15 to 20 seconds, it will kill everyone unless you kill it first, so push as hard as you can and use everything you’ve got.

If you manage to “kill” the Witness, it will retreat and give you a very big loot chest as your reward. Now it’s time to chase the boss down with some fellow Guardians in the campaign’s final mission, “Excision.”

All done with Salvation’s Edge? Here’s how to get the Khvostov Exotic, collect Motes of Light, and locate all of the Visions of the Traveler.