Destiny 2 Deep Stone Crypt raid guide: How to beat every boss encounter
Here’s how to conquer the new raid experience in Destiny 2’s Beyond Light expansion.
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Raids have always been some of the best content on offer within Destiny, and the newDestiny 2raid Deep Stone Crypt (which requires owning theBeyond Light expansionto access) is arguably one of the best raids ever made by Bungie. With its clever mechanics, intense boss battles, and awesome loot, the Deep Stone Crypt is yet another raid for the history books. If you’re looking to learn each of the encounters but don’t know where to go for guidance, fear not; we’re here to help with a detailed and in-depth guide to each of the raid’s four encounters, as well as the gear that you should have on-hand before going in.
Welcome to Europa, Guardian…
In Beyond Light, players will encounter a dark Fallen faction, travel to new locations, and go beyond the Light to wield the power of the Darkness.
Deep Stone Crypt: Loadout recommendations
In the Deep Stone Crypt raid, it’s important to have the right gear so that you’re able to kill enemies effectively, survive the attacks from the bosses and ads (general enemies), and deal sufficient damage to the bosses in the damage-per-second (DPS) phases. Make sure that you’re using guns that have PvE-oriented perks, such as ones that boost damage after kills or speed up reloading. Here’s a list of the types of weapons we recommend having at your disposal:
Primary weapons
Special weapons
Heavy weapons
Armor and weapon mods
Related: Destiny 2: Beyond Light guide: List of new Exotic weapons and how to get them
Best subclasses
In addition to having the right gear, you’re also going to want to make sure you and your teammates are using the right subclass during each encounter. Here’s what we suggest:
Related: How to get Stasis Aspects and Fragments in Destiny 2: Beyond Light
Destiny 2 Deep Stone Crypt Encounter Guide: Crypt Security
The first encounter in the Deep Stone Crypt is Crypt Security, in which your goal is to break six different security fuses (pictured above).
When the Operator picks up their buff from the terminal, the encounter starts.
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The catch here is that there will only be one Scanner buff available and that the doors between all the areas close at the start of the encounter. Therefore, once the first Scanner has identified which keypads to shoot on their side, they need to use a terminal to send the Scanner buff to the other room so that the second Scanner player can do the same. Each room has a terminal.
Something important to note here is that periodically,Sentinel Servitors will spawn that prevent use of the terminals. The ad clear players need to kill these as quickly as they can so that the Scanners can successfully do their job.
The Operator can go into the basement at any time by shooting the controls to the basement door, but we advise not doing so until two of the correct keypads are known. This is because if the Operator is in the basement for over a minute, the floor will catch on fire. However, if you wait for all four of the keypads to be known, you won’t have as much time to do damage to the fuses later.
Here’s what the basement keypads look like:
Once the correct keypads have been activated, the fuses will become unshielded and will be exposed for the damage phase. However, shooting them in the incorrect order will cause a team wipe. Here’s how to find out the correct order to shoot them in:
If the shields go back up and you need to complete another cycle of the encounter, the player in the basement should put the Scanner buff back in the terminal for the Scanners on top. The basement player can also be saved before they burn by the ad clearer that picked the Operator buff up right before the damage phase since they can shoot the doors open. Then the old Operator becomes an ad clearer while the new Operator goes downstairs.
Destiny 2 Deep Stone Crypt Boss Guide: Atraks-1, Fallen Exo
The second encounter of the Deep Stone Crypt is a boss fight, and quite a tough one at that. You’ll be facing off against Atraks-1, a Fallen who became an Exo and is helping the newly-resurrected Taniks.
The encounter arena is split into two rooms: bottom and top.
The encounter begins when someone touches the purple orb floating near the pod slots.
Both teams should have noticed that four “clones” of the boss are in each room. In bottom room, there’s a boss on the top left, bottom left, middle, and right. Meanwhile, on top, there’s a boss at the front, left, right, and back of the room. Soon after the Vandals with buffs spawn in the rooms, all four of the boss clones in the top room will begin to charge a wipe attack. You need to damage them to stop it, but the issue is that hitting the wrong one will cause a wipe.
In total, you need to transfer the buff between rooms four times and kill four clones, two in each room.
There’s an added complication, however. When a clone dies in either room, it will drop apurple orb. This is essentially Atraks-1’s soul, and if it is allowed to sit for a few seconds, a clone will respawn at the orb’s location and wipe the team. Therefore, players need to pick it up (the timer players have before the team wipes is much longer at 45 seconds) so that it can be cleansed in the top room at one of the four airlocks on the walls. This is where the Operator comes in.
Each airlock can only be used once in each cycle, so it may be easier for consistency’s sake to have all of the orb players congregate at one airlock to all be cleansed at once. This is made possible by the fact that the Operator can reset an orb’s timer by shooting it off of the player holding it. Then the player simply picks the orb up again.
This continues until you get the boss' health bar down to the final chunk (represented by the part separated with a black line). When this occurs, all players in the bottom room need to come up to the top room.
This continues until you finish off the last part of the boss' health. The orbs players are holding go away once the boss is dead, so don’t worry about that. If you’re unable to do enough damage while stopping the attacks, the boss will eventually wipe your team.
Related: How to get Europa armor and weapons in Destiny 2: Beyond Light
Destiny 2 Deep Stone Crypt Encounter Guide: Rapture
Now that you’ve taken care of his second-in-command, it’s time to take on Taniks himself. However, you’ll need to stop him from nuking Europa first. To do that, you’ll need to bring his space station down with Taniks' own nuclear cores.
All three buffs are obtained from Vandals that spawn towards the start of the encounter, and all three of these jobs need to be repeated each time two cores are dunked. Also, if you’re not one of these three players, you will act as abackupfor one of them.
If you’re a backup and youdon’tend up having to fill in for your partner, your job is to ad clear and to carry the nuclear cores to the proper deposit zones when they spawn in. It should also be noted that the Scanner and Operator players can (and should) carry cores too, though you’ll always need the Suppressor player to focus on stunning Taniks so the cores can be dunked.
Carrying cores builds up aRadiation debuff that kills you when it gets to x10 stacks, so call out to a teammate to take it from you if necessary. Because of the Radiation debuff stacks, you’ll want to rotate core-carrying duties with other players to allow the debuff to wear off.
This entire cycle needs to be completed six times in total, and once you do this, a hatch in the floor will open. Drop into it as a fireteam and immediately sprint down the hallway as quickly as you can until you get to the end (Taniks will be chasing behind you). If you make it in time, the encounter will complete. Congratulations — you have successfully crashed Taniks' station into Europa and have prevented him from destroying the planet.
Destiny 2 Deep Stone Crypt Boss Guide: Taniks, the Abomination
It’s time for the fourth and final encounter of the Deep Stone Crypt raid — a showdown with Taniks himself.
As you exit the wreckage of the space station, you’ll find yourselves in a large, open area filled with various pieces of debris from the crash. In the middle, there’s a particularly large pile of it; this is where Taniks spawns from, so don’t go near it just yet. Take a second to look around this area, because there are three important locations here: the spawn area, the area with pipes and blue lights, and the “garage” lit up with orange lights.
You should also notice that each area has the same deposit zones that you used in the last encounter, as well as the same security drones and terminals for buff-swapping. This encounter mostly works the same as the last one:
The only difference is theOperator’srole, which we’ll touch on later.
You are now ready to start the encounter, which you can do by walking close to the middle pile of debris. Taniks in his new half-Eliksni, half-Shank body will pop out of it and ads will start to spawn. After 30 seconds or so of killing ads, a Vandal with one of the buffs will spawn at each area:
Immediately have all three players pick up their designated buffs. The Scanner should now figure out which deposit zones the team will be dunking at.
From here, the encounter repeats one more time. Then, the team needs to prepare for the DPS phase.
You have a total of three DPS phases to get his health to the final chunk. If you don’t knock his health down to that point in three DPS phases, your team will wipe.
Once youdoget his health down to that level, Taniks will make his final stand. He will become normally damageable and launch various attacks at you from one of the locations on the map before teleporting to another one. As he’s doing this, players need to be doing as much damage as they can so they can finish Taniks off. Taniks will teleport to a different location five times; if players don’t finish him off before the end of his fifth attack, he will wipe the team. However, if you do manage to land the killing blow, the fight will be over and you’ll have successfully defeated Taniks and the Deep Stone Crypt raid.
Related: Destiny 2’s Deep Stone Crypt raid completed, unlocking new Beyond Light content
Any questions?
Do you have any questions about the Deep Stone Crypt raid encounters? If so, ask us in the comments and we’ll be happy to help.
Destiny 2: Beyond Lightis available onXbox Series X,Xbox Series S, Xbox One consoles, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Windows 10 PCs. It costs $40 but is also available throughXbox Game Pass. If you’ve never tried out Destiny 2, I recommend doing so, as it’s easily one of thebest Xbox One shooters. There’s really nothing like a good Destiny raid in the shooter market.
Welcome to Europa, Guardian…
In Beyond Light, players will encounter a dark Fallen faction, travel to new locations, and go beyond the Light to wield the power of the Darkness.
Brendan Lowry is a Windows Central writer and Oakland University graduate with a burning passion for video games, of which he’s been an avid fan since childhood. He’s been writing for Team WC since the summer of 2017, and you’ll find him doing news, editorials, reviews, and general coverage on everything gaming, Xbox, and Windows PC. His favorite game of all time is probably NieR: Automata, though Elden Ring, Fallout: New Vegas, and Team Fortress 2 are in the running, too. When he’s not writing or gaming, there’s a good chance he’s either watching an interesting new movie or TV show or actually going outside for once.Follow him on X(Twitter).
