Destiny 2’s Root of Nightmares raid launched shortly after the Lightfall expansion, bringing players against the Final God of Pain himself. If you’re brave enough to venture into the Witness’ Pyramid ship, you’ll have to complete four encounters, with the promise of loot at the end of each—and even more drops if you can finish the raid challenges.
Like other raids in Destiny 2, Root of Nightmares has a weekly rotating challenge that rewards players with one extra drop if they complete the encounter under a specific set of conditions. For instance, clearing Vault of Glass’ Templar encounter without letting the boss teleport finishes the Out of Its Way challenge and gives players an extra chest with encounter loot.
Doing the challenges on the Master version of Root of Nightmares also brings a set of unique rewards: the elusive Adept weapons, available only to players who come out unscathed in pinnacle activities such as Master raids, Grandmaster Nightfalls, and making it to the Lighthouse in Trials of Osiris. Adept weapons gain two points to each stat after masterworked and, more importantly, can equip Adept mods. These mods can grant flat boosts to stats such as range, reload speed, or even blast radius, and players can obtain them by doing high-end activities.
If you’re struggling to get Conditional Finality, the Root of Nightmares Exotic, finishing raid challenges (and other assorted triumphs in the raid) will also increase the Exotic drop chance in the raid. Between the extra luck and double loot, there are plenty of reasons to engage with the Root of Nightmares challenge that week.
Here are all Root of Nightmares challenges and a short description of how to complete them. The raid challenges launched on March 28 and will change every week, bringing a new challenge to the mix. While we don’t know all raid challenges, here are the ones we know about. We’ll update this list whenever a new challenge becomes available.
How to complete all Root of Nightmares challenges in Destiny 2
- Illuminated Torment (Cataclysm, first encounter): Players should only kill the Tormentors if they have the Field of Light buff.
- Crossfire (Scission, second encounter): Players must shoot the pad-activating crystals on the other side. For instance, Light player activates the launch pad for the Dark runner and Dark guardian activates it for the Light runner.
- Cosmic Equilibrium (Macrocosm, third encounter): Players have to place the Light planets on the right side and the Dark planets on the left side (the opposite of what it’s meant to be in the normal encounter).
- All Hands (Nezarec, fourth encounter): Players have to shoot at least one node on each Light and Dark sides, and the final two nodes before the damage phase must be activated in quick succession.
In my experience, the Illuminated Torment challenge can be annoying since it adds a bit of an extra step to a timed encounter, but it shouldn’t be much of a hassle. The Crossfire challenge for the Scission encounter, on the other hand, doesn’t really add much of a threat, especially if your runners are on point. Since the add clear on that encounter isn’t terribly hard, taking a couple of seconds to shoot a node across from you is a breeze and is more of a bureaucratic step. When my team and I attempted this challenge, the launchers’ erratic pathing was the actual threat in it.
Macrocosm’s Cosmic Equilibrium and Nezarec’s All Hands challenges, however, are a bit trickier. Macrocosm requires you to invert the mechanics, aligning two sets of planets instead of one before heading to the middle plates. On Master, add clear becomes even more important, since the enemies you need to finish the mechanic are tied to how quickly your team can kill the Centurions.
Lastly, Nezarec’s challenge also adds a few extra steps, with all players needing to dip their feet into the role of runners. This could take some flexing when it comes to roles to ensure you’re not getting swamped by adds or bounced around by Nezarec’s Hatred.
All in all, the Root of Nightmares encounter challenges and triumphs present a much smaller hassle than some other raids, at least in the base difficulty. I had to slog through much harder triumphs and challenges when getting Enlightened, and some challenges from King’s Fall and Vow of the Disciple gave me a harder time than Root of Nightmares. This doesn’t mean the challenges will be an automatic win, but if your team is familiar with the encounters and their roles, it’s almost a free drop, even if it takes a few wipes.
