Gone are the days when Destiny 2‘s Festival of the Lost had one good auto rifle to chase, and it was not Horror Story. This 450rpm auto rifle got an overhaul in 2023, giving Horror Story new god rolls that put its old rival (the BrayTech Werewolf) to shame.
The old version of this weapon had an outdated perk pool that quickly lost its shine against the BrayTech Werewolf, especially after its reissue in 2022. With the overhauled Festival of the Lost, though, Horror Story is getting a shiny suite of new perks, and one vital change to give it even more utility.
With its reissue, Horror Story now deals Stasis damage, meaning it also has access to the Stasis-aligned Headstone perk. And if that wasn’t enough for those who use the dark-blue subclass, its new perk pool leaves little to desire.
Here are our recommendations for Horror Story god rolls and perks you should watch out for when getting this weapon.
Horror Story PvE god roll
- Barrel: Arrowhead Brake, Hammer-Forged Rifling, or Smallbore
- Mag: Flared Magwell, Tactical Mag, or Appended Mag.
- First perk: Demolitionist (Honorable mention: Enlightened Action)
- Second perk: Headstone, Adrenaline Junkie, or Frenzy.
Horror Story PvE best perks and recommendations
There’s a clear winner in Horror Story’s new perk pool, and that’s Demolitionist. This handy perk offers great utility regardless of subclass since it’s hard to rival the free grenade energy on each kill. There isn’t much that could potentially take this down for PvE here, so this takes the top spot on our god roll.
Enlightened Action emerges as a second contender. It’s seamless to integrate and makes any weapon feel much better, so we’re hoping it holds up as well as Perpetual Motion and Frenzy: a useful, easy-to-activate perk with a lengthy lifespan.
Envious Assassin could emerge as a third option, but we’re not too fond of this perk on primaries since they’ll do the brunt of the killing. As good as it is on Special weapons and godlike on your Heavy slot, its effectiveness doesn’t scale too well on a Primary.
For the fourth column, our weapon of choice is Headstone. It can offer some subclass-neutral benefits through freezes and shatter (though less than Demolitionist), and it’s essentially free crowd control. Headstone is a must for Stasis builds, though, since it can trigger the ubiquitous Whisper of Shards. It may also tie into other effects from Aspects and Fragments.
If Headstone isn’t your flavor, Horror Story also brings two excellent choices: Adrenaline Junkie and Frenzy. Adrenaline Junkie is good enough on its own, since it’s basically a grenade-focused version of Swashbuckler and grants max stacks on a grenade kill. With Demolitionist, though, you’ll get grenade energy back after each kill, and that’s not counting the synergy of Kickstart mods or ability regen from Orbs of Power.
On the flip side, Frenzy is a free buff to damage as long as you’re in combat for 12 seconds. Adrenaline Junkie gives a higher benefit, but Frenzy is easier to keep up. Frenzy continues to reign as a workhorse perk that is generally among the best choices for any weapon, but we’re more fond of Adrenaline Junkie in general. We’re more on the school of thought of using grenades whenever possible. Lord Shaxx would be proud.
As far as parts go, we’re aiming for Arrowhead Brake to push that recoil direction to max and Flared Magwell/Tactical Mag for more reload speed. If you have Enlightened action, you can probably take Appended Mag instead, since the perk will take care of the reload speed on its own.
