Destiny 2: Warmind boss guide: Val Ca’uor part 1, destroying the fleet

After you’ve played hot potato in the Statue Gardens and jumped through a terrifying gauntlet of fans, it’s time to face the big bad of Spire of Stars: Val Ca’uor. But before the giant Cabal takes a real swing at you, you’ll need to take out three of his warships. This is the pre-boss fight boss fight, similar to removing Argos’ shell in the Eater of Worlds raid lair.

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to harness your knowledge from Spire of Stars to take down Val Ca’uor’s warships.

Destroying the war ships is broken up into three phases that we’ll repeat and add to in the official Val Ca’uor boss fight.

Phase 1: Scouting

Grid View

• Bungie, Vicarious Visions/Activision
• Bungie, Vicarious Visions/Activision
• Bungie, Vicarious Visions/Activision

Before the fight officially begins, you’ll need to clear out a room full of adds. This isn’t particularly difficult, so use it as an opportunity to gather extra ammo.

Once the wave of Cabal is toast, turn your attention to the four plates at the back of the room. For both this encounter and the next, we’ll refer to these as far left, center left, center right and far right. (If you orient yourself at the door into the room, look toward the big window, and this should make sense.)

Assign four of your players to the plates, one for each. Ideally, you should have your most powerful members assigned to the far plates, as they’ll face the most enemies with the least cover. Your other two players should be floating on either side, hanging out in the small rooms behind the far plates. Have all four plate holders stand in position to activate the tractor beam in the middle of the room.

Assuming you’ve done this correctly, a giant, orange pillar of light will shoot into the sky in the center of the room. Three of your players will also gain a very important buff: Superior Retainer. Without this buff, you cannot survive the tractor beam, so don’t try it no matter how fun it looks.

In an ideal world, one of your floaters will have Superior Retainer. If not, you’ll need to have one of your floaters trade positions with a buffed plate holder. Have all four players stay on the plates and send one of your Superior Retainer players into the beam. Once they reach the top and teleport out of the room, it’s safe for the plate holders to step off.

Once in space, the buff holder will be able to see three warships floating in the sky. One of these ships will have a black outline around it and a strange symbol. Ignore the symbol, and look for its outline. You’ll see either a square, triangle or a circle. Call out the symbol you see to your team.

Once all six players are back on solid ground, the second phase begins.

Phase 2: Arming

Grid View

• Bungie, Vicarious Visions/Activision
• Bungie, Vicarious Visions/Activision
• Bungie, Vicarious Visions/Activision

Now that you know the symbol, it’s time to arm an orb. There are three, smaller plates with shapes on them surrounding the central podium in the room. We’ll call these arming plates. Square is on the left, triangle is on the right and circle is the center. Assign three of your four plate holders to a symbol. The floaters and the odd-plate-holder-out should cover the backs of the arming plate holders.

In front of each arming plate is a small door, behind which is a receptacle for the ball. Standing on all three arming plates is the only way to open this door. A single ball, like the ones in the other Spire of Stars encounters, will be flung into the arena when phase two begins. The goal is to throw that ball into the specific doorway with the symbol the scout called in phase one.

Before you can arm the ball, it needs to be engulfed. Similar to the Statue Gardens, there are three platforms that fire white flames, each above a arming plate door. To empower the ball for most mechanics, a player will need to either engulf themselves in the flames and then pick up the ball or be holding the ball when engulfing themselves. You’ll know the ball has been engulfed correctly if the ball holder is gaining stacks of greed.

Just a friendly reminder: If the engulfed debuff’s timer hits zero or the greed debuff multiplier hits 10, you instantly die.

The ball should be picked up and passed to the arming plate holder standing in front of the scouted symbol. For example, if the scout called square, the ball should be thrown to the square arming plate holder on the left side of the arena.

The arming plate holder will then need to jump up to the tractor beam platform, locate the white flame, engulf the ball and return to their arming plate. Once all arming plate players are standing on their plates, the door will open and the ball holder can throw the engulfed ball through the door. You’ll know you’ve done this correctly if you see a “[SHIP WEAPON] armed” message on your screen.

Phase 3: Firing

Bungie, Vicarious Visions/Activision

Phase three is very similar to phase one. All four plate holders should return to their plates and the floaters back to their rooms. The difference here is that a ball will be flung into the arena. Have a player grab the ball and pass it to the scout from phase one, as the Superior Retainer buff should return to them.

Have all four players step on the plates to reactivate the tractor beam. This time, the scout will need to engulf the ball before going into space. Once the ball is engulfed, step into the tractor beam to be shot back into space. Once you can see the ships, throw the ball at the glowing symbol and watch it explode.

If everything has been done correctly, a “ship destroyed” message will appear on the left of your screen.

Reset

Bungie, Vicarious Visions/Activision

If you’ve gotten here, congratulations on running the very complicated gauntlet of the first three phases in this fight. You’ll need to do this whole thing again two more times. But before you can restart phase one, you’ll need to do some add clearing.

However, this is a bit more difficult than the add clear before the encounter began. We advise bringing a powerful shotgun like the Legend of Acrius to this fight to blow away the more powerful enemies in a single shot.

You’ll know that all the enemies are done spawning when the plates start glowing white again. Have all four plate holders step back on their plates to restart phase one. Note that the same players likely won’t be chosen for Superior Retainer again.

Once you’ve destroyed the final ship, a chest will spawn in the back of the room and Val Ca’uor will await his summoning.