Destiny 2’s new Crown of Sorrow raid came out two weeks ago, and players have already mastered the new encounters. For players looking for a greater challenge, however, Bungie offers a flawless version of Destiny 2’s raids. If any player dies in the flawless version, the entire team has to start over at the beginning. But the final encounter in the Crown of Sorrow raid is currently bugged, making the flawless run nearly impossible to complete.
But Destiny streamer Gladd and his raiders not only bypassed the bug to complete the flawless raid, they did it with only half the players.
The Crown of Sorrow raid revolves around balancing a buff called Witch’s Blessing between two groups of players. In the final boss fight, players need to use an item called the Witch’s Vessel to swap the buff between players before it runs out and kills the buffed player. This swap is something players will usually do multiple times during a fight, with the Vessel respawning every few seconds.
But, for some reason, the Vessels won’t respawn if players don’t all die and reset the room after the pre-final boss encounter. Unless players get the “game over” screen, the Vessels won’t spawn in the final fight. This poses a major problem for players who want to complete the flawless raid.
Gladd’s crew only used three players, rather than the six players that usually make up a raid crew. Because they had fewer players, they didn’t need to swap as frequently, but they had to kill the same amount of enemies that six players usually do.
A key part of the fight is having a blessed and non-blessed player attack an enemy simultaneously to remove a shield. This takes the buff away from a blessed player, which Gladd’s crew used to their advantage.
When no players have the Witch’s Blessing, a pool of it spawns somewhere in the boss’ arena for someone to pick back up. This usually doesn’t happen with six players, since someone will almost always have the Blessing. Gladd’s team carefully managed when they needed to use one of their three Vessel swaps and when they could pick the buff back up off the ground.
To make this strategy work, the team also had to kill the boss in only one damage phase, even though it takes most six player teams two phases to do so. Despite their reduced numbers, Gladd’s team managed to beat the final boss using creative buffs to deal very high damage in a short period of time.
Gladd posted the entire video of his team beating the raid to his YouTube channel, which you can see above. He also posted a short guide on how to circumvent the bug.
The bug is currently listed under the “Emergent Issues” category in the Season of Opulence known issues thread. It’s unclear when the team at Bungie will fix the issue.
