Destiny 2: How to Beat Atheon in the Vault of Glass | Game Rant
Destiny’s very first Raid activity, Vault of Glass, has been reprised and brought into Destiny 2 along with most of its iconic weapons. The final encounter of the Raid pits six Guardians against Atheon, Time’s Conflux, who is a gigantic Vex construct that can erase Guardians from time.
The Vault of Glass is a fan-favorite Raid, and Bungie hosted another World’s First race for the reprised version in Destiny 2. Along with the normal Raid completion, World’s First competitors also had to complete the Challenge Mode to be in with a chance of being crowned the winning team.
While over 200,000 Twitch viewers were watching Destiny 2 streams during the World’s First race, Contest Mode made the Vault of Glass extremely difficult on its first day. Now that Contest Mode has gone, the Raid should be much easier for most people to complete.
Atheon is the final boss of the Vault of Glass and has a typical raid boss cycle where Destiny 2 players must complete an objective in order to begin a short damage phase. Before starting, it is important that all players understand the layout of the Vault of Glass boss arena. On both the left and right sides of the arena, there is a Vex plate and portal. There is also a stone platform over a large gap in the middle of the arena, and Atheon will stand in the clear section towards the back of the arena.
The mechanics of this boss fight are fairly similar to the original version, so Destiny veterans will already be familiar with some of the terminology. This boss fight can also be broken down into two distinct phases: the Oracle Phase and the Damage Phase. Here is a basic rundown of all the steps that need to happen in order to defeat Atheon once the Vex cube has been destroyed to begin the fight:
- After some time, Atheon will open the timestreams and teleport three random players to one of two locations outside of the boss arena
- Teleported players call out which location they are in and one of these players must also grab the Relic shield and occasionally cleanse all teleported players to clear their vision
- All three teleported players head to the back area and wait for the non-teleported players to call out Oracle locations
- Meanwhile, two of the non-teleported players must listen for the location callout and then begin to open the correct portal
- The other non-teleported player must pay attention to the order and location of three waves of three Oracles each and call them out to the teleported players.
- The teleported players must shoot the Oracles in the correct order while the Relic holder periodically cleanses their teleported teammates
- Once all Oracles have been destroyed, all players get the Time’s Vengeance buff and can start damaging Atheon
- The teleported players must go through the portal to reunite with the rest of the team and be cleansed with the Relic as soon as they emerge
- All players damage Atheon until Time’s Vengeance runs out
- During the damage phase, all players need to be aware of Imminent Detain debuff and should destroy any detain bubbles to free trapped teammates.
- Repeat these steps until Atheon is no more
In this phase, all players are working together to destroy a series of Oracles in the corre0ct order to get a limited-time buff that is needed to damage Atheon. Once the boss fight begins, Atheon will spawn in followed by some clusters of Vex Harpies around the arena.
After some time, a message in the feed towards the bottom-left corner of the screen will say: “Atheon opens the timestreams” followed by “Atheon sends forth the Supplicants." At this point, three randomly chosen Guardians will be teleported to one of two new areas.
The three teleported players (Team Teleport) must call out which location they are in so that the players still with Atheon (Team Atheon) can open the correct exit portal. The two locations are often referred to as “Venus” or “Mars”, where Venus is the green, jungle-like area and Mars is the orange, desert-like area.
As soon as Team Teleport calls out where they are, the two of the Team Atheon players should head to the corresponding Vex plate to activate the portal and hold it open. Facing Atheon, Venus is on the right and Mars is on the left. Standing on the plate will cause a white ring to form over time, eventually causing the portal to open.
Exploding Harpies called Supplicants, as well as normal Harpies, will begin swarming the plates, so the two Team Atheon players need to destroy them before they get close or dodge the explosions. Each plate has a small pillar that the players can jump onto for some slight protection against the Supplicants. Healing Rifts are extremely useful for holding down the plates, but players do not need to be always standing on the plate to hold the portal open.
Meanwhile, the other member of Team Atheon must head to the entrance door of the arena and look towards Atheon to pay attention to the order and location of the three red Oracles that appear around the arena. This player must communicate the order and the location of each Oracle to Team Teleport as they will be destroying the Oracles.
There are six possible Oracle locations: Close Left, Far Left, Close Middle, Far Middle, Close Right, Far Right. The Left and Right Oracles will appear near the portals on each side. The Oracle caller does not need to call out the close/far positions if only one Oracle on that side appears. An example call out might go something like this: “Oracles are Close Left, Middle, Far Left” or “Right, Left, Middle”.
While this is happening, one player in Team Teleport needs to grab the Relic shield. The Relic spawns exactly where Team Teleport arrives, so it can be picked up immediately. The Relic can be dropped for a few seconds, but it will be lost forever if it is dropped for too long which may result in a team wipe.
The best strategy for Team Teleport seems to be having all three players run in a straight line to the far end of whichever location they are in, ignoring the normal route to the exit portal. The three players then need to turn around to face the Vex enemies in the center and can use Healing Rifts and Barricades to protect themselves.
When Team Teleport is away from Atheon, they will suffer from the “Marked by the Void” debuff which slowly narrows their vision until their screen is entirely black. The Relic holder needs to periodically press the aim button to briefly create a bubble that temporarily cleanses marked Guardians and clears their vision.
Team Teleport’s players also need to be listening to the Oracle caller’s instructions. After a few seconds, the three red Oracles for the first wave will appear, and Team Teleport needs to destroy them as quickly as possible to prevent a party wipe. The Exotic Machine Gun Xenophage can destroy an Oracle with one shot, so it is a very good weapon to use for this phase and the boss fight in general. Once Team Teleport destroys the first three Oracles, this cycle of having the Oracle caller instruct Team Teleport on what to do repeats twice more, so nine Oracles will have been destroyed in total.
As soon as the final Oracle is destroyed, a message saying “Guardians make their own fate” will appear in the feed and all players will be given the “Time’s Vengeance” buff with a 30-second timer. All Team Teleport players need to move quickly and go through the exit portal. Once all three players are on the other side, the Relic holder must cleanse them to permanently remove Marked by the Void.
Team Atheon players will have a bit of a head start in this phase since they are already with Atheon. During this time, all three players need to head to the middle platform as this offers all players a good view of Atheon and protects them from Supplicants. A Well of Radiance Warlock should place their Well on this platform too. A Ward of Dawn Titan could also place their Ward near the exit portal so that all players can quickly get Weapons of Light, and a Shadowshot Hunter can Tether Atheon to lower its damage resistance. All six players need to get on this platform as quickly as possible to make the most of Time’s Vengeance and must use all they have to damage Atheon.
However, players need to watch out for the “Imminent Detain” debuff which may appear on the left of the screen. During a damage phase, one person will get this debuff and will be trapped in a large bubble, unable to do anything. The only way they can be freed is if the other players destroy the bubble. The Imminent Detain player must call out that they are going to be detained and must get away from all the other players to avoid trapping them inside the bubble as well. If all players get detained, there is no way to escape, and all players will die. Once the detained player has been freed, they can re-join the team on the platform.
Time’s Vengeance also massively buffs Super regeneration so players should use their Supers early to try and get at least two uses in a single damage phase. Titans can do massive damage with Thundercrash and Cuirass of the Falling Star.
Warlocks can use Chaos Reach with Geomag Stabilizers or Nova Bomb for damage, but Well of Radiance with Phoenix Protocol or the new Exotic Boots of the Assembler is also great for team healing and damage boosting. Hunters can be supportive and use Shadowshot for the enemy debuff or opt for extra damage with Celestial Nighthawk Golden Gun.
In terms of weapons, Xenophage is a great heavy weapon choice, as well as Deathbringer with its new catalyst. Repositioning closer to Atheon can also make the Anarchy and double slug shotgun loadout work too, although this will require an experienced and coordinated team to pull off.
As soon as Time’s Vengeance is over, Atheon will become immune, and everything will reset. Players should get off the middle platform and spread out around the portals to destroy any Harpy and Supplicant stragglers. Players need to repeat all these steps until Atheon is dead. However, if players fail to kill Atheon on their fourth damage phase, it will become enraged and will wipe the team.
Once Atheon is no more, players can run over and collect their loot. Some lucky players may even get the new Destiny 2 Vex Mythoclast Exotic Fusion Rifle which has a few new tricks over its iconic original design. There is also the Cache of Kabr console that allows players to trade Spoils of Conquest for more Vault of Glass loot.
Bungie has already said that Vault of Glass will eventually be getting its own Master difficulty mode which seems like it will be offering improved Timelost variants of the Raid’s weapons.
Destiny 2: Beyond Light and the new Season of the Splicer are available now for PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
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