Destiny 2 guide: Ruinous Effigy Exotic trace rifle guide, Growth quest

Destiny 2: Season of Arrivals has a new Exotic weapon quest. As of July 7, players can start the quest for the Ruinous Effigy, a new Void trace rifle. This quest is only available during Season of Arrivals, which ends Sept. 22, and players need to own the Season Pass to acquire Ruinous Effigy.

The Ruinous Effigy is a unique weapon in Destiny 2. It’s only the game’s fifth trace rifle — which uses special ammo and shoots a continuous beam of damage — and it turns defeated enemies into orbs. It’s also the only weapon that can destroy Savathun’s Eyes, which are blue orbs floating around the world during Season of Arrivals — and destroying them all will net players the weapon’s Catalyst.

Here are all the quest steps for Ruinous Effigy and the Growth quest.

Step 1: Missive

Visit the Prismatic Recaster in the Annex of the Tower near the Drifter.

To start the Ruinous Effigy quest, you need to visit the Prismatic Recaster in the Tower. Pick up the normal Means to an End weekly quest near the Drifter.

Step 2: Gift

Complete the mission “Interference” on Io.

Complete the weekly Means to an End quest by following the instructions: completing public Contact events and collecting dark essence in various game types. Once you complete the mission, play the Interference mission on Io, which you can launch by navigating to Io’s director and looking in the upper left corner. Grab the branch near the Seed at the end of the quest.

Step 3: Pendulum

Collect Calcified Light fragments on Io, Titan, Mars, and Mercury using Ghost’s Nav mode. Defeat Savathûn’s Marionettes on Io and Titan. Eris believes the Pyramids offer a gift in a form we will understand: weaponry. But the branch seethes with an unstable Darkness.

For this part of the quest, you’ll need to do some collecting.

To pick up the Calcified Light Fragments, teleport to the various landing zone’s on Io, Mars, Mercury, and Titan. There are 25 Calcified Light Fragments scattered around these four locations. Thankfully, your Ghost will show you where. So hit your Ghost button and look for little grey diamonds to guide you. There are five on Titan, five on Mars, five on Mercury, and 10 on Io.

Here’s a map to show you where you should look for each Calcified Light Fragment.

Titan

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Mars

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Mercury

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Io

Image: Bungie via Polygon

For Marionettes, you need to visit the locations on Titan and Io where the Contact Public Event isn’t. So look around in either Lost Oasis, The Rupture, The Rig, or Siren’s Watch for Taken Blights. If you see random Taken Blights or Taken bosses, destroy them, and it should spawn a Marionette Champion. Look for the phrase “Taken Blights materializing nearby” to pop up in your notification center.

The most we could get to spawn in a single area was two. So kill two Marionette Champions and then move your group to the next non-Contact zone on Titan or Io.

Step 4: Feed

Defeat targets with Void damage, chain precision multikills, and complete Gambit or Reckoning. Higher tiers of Reckoning and defeating invaders/defeats as an invader grant additional progress. The branch, though tempered and bound, still has a ravenous emptiness at its core. Find power on which it can feed.

Once you’ve defeated the Marionettes of Savathun and collected the Calcified Light Fragments, you’ll need to get some kills and complete some activities.

Jump into either Gambit or the Reckoning and use a Void weapon like Gnawing Hunger or Reckless Oracle. You will need to get some headshots as well, so we’d recommend grabbing a Void hand cannon for those, like the Kindled Orchid or Optative.

Using Kindled Orchid and playing Reckoning Tier 2, we finished this step in a little less than an hour.

Step 5: Shape

Decrypt your Gift at the Umbral Decoder. The branch is sated and bound within an engram formed from Eris’s incantations. The Gift is ready to take its true shape.

When you’re finished with your matches and your kills, head back to the Tower and the Prismatic Recaster. Turn in your new engram at the Umbral Decoder to pick up the Ruinous Effigy.

What does Ruinous Effigy do?

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Ruinous Effigy is genuinely one of the strangest weapons we’ve ever seen in Destiny. Its primary perk, Transmutation, turns enemies into Void orbs on a killing blow. The Evolution perk then lets you or allied Guardians pick up the orb and use a light, heavy or “drain” attack on nearby enemies.

Ruinous Effigy also has a Catalyst, which causes the weapon to deal double damage against enemies recently damaged by a Transmutation sphere. To complete the catalyst, you can either get 5,000 kills with the Ruinous Effigy or destroy all 50 of Savathun’s Eyes, located around the world of Destiny 2 this season.