Destiny 2: Season of the Splicer – Solstice of Heroes basics
Let’s talk about the basics when it comes to the Solstice of Heroes event.
European Aerial Zone (EAZ): Bosses and chests
As usual, you’ll head to the European Aerial Zone which can be found as an icon when you click on the Tower. This destination has several minibosses (majors) for you to defeat, and they’re denoted by a star icon on your HUD. Since this activity has matchmaking enabled for up to three players, you shouldn’t have a tough time tracking down your foes and eliminating them.
The more bosses you defeat within the time limit, the more potential rewards you can earn at the end. Also, be on the lookout for Taken bosses that appear from time to time (you’ll know it when the screen goes dark and a notification about Prismatic Taken appears at the bottom-left corner of your screen). By killing the Taken, you can gain an elemental empowerment buff (more on this later).
Once the timer has elapsed, it’s time to do the actual boss encounter. In this case, you’ll be going up against several Cabal ultras who are pushovers. Just beat them down and be ready for what comes next.
Several treasure chests will spawn all over the EAZ. The number of chests that appear will depend on how many minibosses you killed earlier (the more the merrier, as they say). You have less than two minutes to find these, so try to be mindful of where your teammates are going. These chests contain Solstice Packages and Solstice Key Fragments given to the entire fireteam. The keys themselves are required to open the packages which have various types of loot.
Note: After your first clear, you’ll see a new pinnacle reward source for the EAZ. You do need to open 49 chests in total on a particular character just to get it.
Elemental orbs and empowerment
As for empowerment, this is a buff that you can get if you’re able to collect elemental orbs of a particular type (Stasis also counts). Try to make sure that it matches with the active elements in the EAZ and go collect up to 30 of those kinds of orbs. Once you do this, you’ll gain a temporary boost (alternatively, you can kill the Taken minibosses to gain the boost).
To be clear, elemental orbs will drop from kills:
- If you got a kill via an ability, it’s based on the current subclass that you have selected (i.e., Solar, Arc, Void, and Stasis).
- If you got a kill via a weapon, it’s based on that weapon’s element. Oh, and if you obtained the Cryosthesia 77K exotic sidearm, you can have a Stasis weapon for your primary slot so you can generate orbs with it as well.
Note 1: Elemental orbs can still be generated in other activities and areas (i.e., free-roaming, strikes, and the like). However, the empowerment mechanic does get disabled in certain pinnacle activities.
Note 2: If you want to maximize the usage of the empowerment buff and elemental orb mechanics, go pick subclasses and weapons that match (i.e., a Dawnblade with the Compass Rose shotgun and Lament sword).
Anyway, let’s talk about the stuff that you can get from Eva Levante in the next part of our Solstice of Heroes 2021 event guide.
