Destiny 2 guide: Dead Man’s Tale Exotic scout rifle

Bungie launched a surprise Exotic quest in Destiny 2: Season of the Chosen on Feb. 16. By discovering a secret in an old Strike, Guardians can unlock a new mission: Presage. Players who complete this new quest will pick up the Dead Man’s Tale Exotic scout rifle.

Here’s how to unlock the Presage mission and complete it.

Note: You must own Season of the Chosen to start this quest.

Finding the Distress Signal and unlocking Presage

Image: Bungie via Polygon

To unlock the Presage quest and go after the Dead Man’s Tale scout rifle, you need to find the Distress Signal inside the Arm’s Dealer Strike.

Open up the Director and select the Arm’s Dealer Strike node in the EDZ. When you land, clear the first room of enemies like you normally would. But instead of hacking the door and progressing with your mission, keep right and go through a newly opened door. You’ll find a beefy Cabal with a ton of turrets. Kill him and his turret friends. Move forward along the path and grab the Distress Signal from the crate on the final landing platform.

With the signal in hand, you can either complete the Strike like normal or leave immediately. Once you’re back in orbit, head back to the Tower and talk to Zavala. He’ll send you on a quest to investigate the ship.

Presage

Open your Director again and navigate to the Tangled Shore. You’ll see a new Exotic icon on the map. Select it to start the Presage mission.

Presage is a very cool mission, and it’s filled with backtracking puzzles that ask you to run from one side of a room to the other, flipping switches and changing the environment to your needs. None of the puzzles are complex, and is more of a daisy-chain of lever pulls than a puzzle.

We’re going to go over the mechanics here, to help you figure out what you need to do in each section, but we recommend you and your buddies run through as blind as you can. Discovery is half the fun here, so enjoy your first time through. We’ll give some vague direction on the puzzles to help you along, but won’t give exact locations.

If you get stuck and just want to figure out where to go, we’ve linked Esoterickk’s solo run above. Follow their perspective to see where every lever and shootable object is.

Before you start Presage, you should know that it’s a 1250 activity. . If you’re above Power 1230, you should be fine. But combat will be hard no matter how high your Power level is, as the mission forces you under level.

Outside

Image: Bungie via Polygon

You start Presage outside the Glykon ship, standing on an extended vehicle pad. The big door in front of you won’t open, so we’ll need to take the long way. Look left for some pipes along the ship. Jump on the pipes and follow the path. Just know that floating objects will block your jump, so shoot them out of the way if you can.

Follow the red lights until you get inside the ship.

The first maze

You’ll be in a small maze here. Walk forward along the only path, exploring the rooms locked behind the destructible vents. At the end of the path, you’ll find a vent that lets you explore the ship further. Enter it and proceed. Continue to follow the path until you reach the other side of that first big door. Pull the lever and give yourself a shortcut back.

The spores

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Now that you’re on the other side of the big door, you’ll face down the mission’s primary mechanic: spores and spore doors. There’s a blue wall of dust blocking your path forward, and you’ll burn yourself if you touch it. Look to your left and you’ll see a grouping of spores. Shoot them to gain a special buff called “Egregore Link.” The buff lasts 15 seconds, and you’ll be able to pass through the spore doors while you have it. .

Move forward and climb up the pipes, into the vents. Keep climbing through the vents until you reach an area with an electric fence.

The electric fence

Turn around from the fence and follow the path. Defeat The Scorn that spawn and pull the lever at the end of the area. The lever opens a nearby door, which contains some spores. You’ll be doing this for the rest of the mission: find a lever or shoot a glowing node, gain access to some spores, use them to breach the spore door.

Detonate the spores and jump the gap. Destroy the blue node to open the door and further explore the ship. Here you’ll need to bounce back and forth hitting levers, opening doors, and destroying nodes.

The trash compactor

Image: Bungie via Polygon

If you’ve ever seen Star Wars, this new room should feel very familiar. Drop down the shoot and pull the lever. Some enemies will spawn and you’ll need to kill them quickly. As you may have noticed, the walls of the trash compactor are slowly starting to close on you.

Look into the floor, through the grates. You’ll notice the same blue nodes you shot off the pipe to get down here. Destroy all the nodes and a door will open in the floor. Jump through before you get smooshed.

Follow the vents until you reach the first major combat area. You’ll get a brief glimpse of the boss here, but don’t focus on him. Kill the Scorn and move into the next combat zone in the hangar. Kill this group and get ready for more jumping.

Back outside

Image: Bungie via Polygon

With the Scorn dead, jump outside onto the glowing platforms. After a brief spacewalk, jump into the next hangar and climb up to the top. Go through the open door and into the research room. Pull the lever in here to reveal some spores, and use them to exit through the nearby spore door.

You’ll face some more enemies in the next room. Find another lever and destroy a node to deactivate the electricity above you. Jump up and follow the path to reveal another group of spores. Use them to get through the door ahead.

Defeat some more enemies here, look for a lever, destroy the turret, and break another node. You’ll find some more spores here, which you can use to drop through the floor.

The second maze

This maze is much trickier than the last, but there’s an easy solution. Run around until you find the spores. Once you do, activate them, turn around and run forward. Take the second door on your left to reach the spore door before your timer runs out. Pull the lever to get a shortcut back to the research room.

There’s a new door open on your left. Blow up the nearby research spores and take the new door.

You’ll need to pull another lever in here, which reveals a node hidden in the wall. Destroy it to gain access to more spores. Use them to clear the door.

The platform room

This room looks more involved but is quite simple. Push forward until you reach a spore door and its nearby lever. Pull the lever to open a door mid-way between the end spore door and where you started. Return to the start of the room. Shoot the spore and then go to the mid-way room. Before your buff drops off, shoot the mid-way spores to refresh it. Make your way to the end of the room spore door and make your exit.

The Locus of Communion boss

Image: Bungie via Polygon

You’ve officially made it to the boss fight. He can be pretty challenging if you aren’t careful, so take it slow.

There are two floors in this room, the upper floor and the boiler room below. The boiler room is too hot to get to at the start, so you’ll need to cool it down. Clear the enemies on the first floor and start looking for the levers. The first two switches are easy, they’re across from each other in the main area. The third one is a bit more difficult. There’s one hot room on the upper floor, and you’ll burn whenever you’re in there. Wait until you have full health and run in to pull the switch. You want to do this one last, as the heat will turn off as soon as you’ve pulled the switch.

With all three switches flipped, drop down to the boiler room. Use whatever weapons you have to attack the Locus of Communion. If things get too hairy, jump back up to the upper floor. Once you’ve dropped the boss’ health to two-thirds, the boiler will heat back up. Head back upstairs and repeat this process until you’ve killed the boss.

With the Locus of Communion dead, exit the room and discover what remains of the Guardian. Interact with them and head back to Zavala to pick up your Exotic scout rifle.

What does Dead Man’s Tale do?

Image: Bungie via Polygon

The Dead Man’s Tale is a 120 RPM scout rifle, making it unique to Destiny 2. The Dead Man’s Tale is Kinetic.

Its Exotic perk is Cranial Spike, which causes multiple precision hits in a row to deal increased damage and improve reload speed. The Dead Man’s Tale also has the Transformative perk, similar to Hawkmoon. This is a placeholder perk, and players need to run the Presage mission again to re-earn Dead Man’s Tale with random perks like Outlaw or Vorpal Weapon. It looks like you can get two Dead Man’s Tales with random roles per-character per-week.

Dead Man’s Tale also has a Catalyst in the game files, but it’s currently unavailable. It’s unclear when Bungie will unlock the Master version of the mission — a higher difficulty — but it seems likely the Dead Man’s Tale Catalyst will come from that.