The Festival of the Lost is Destiny’s spooky season event and now that it’s here, there is enough limited-time loot to fill a Jack o’ lantern. While the Festival of the Lost is not quite as much of a grind as the Solstice of Heroes event of the summer, collecting all that loot before the end of the event can be a challenge. Here are some tips for maximizing your Destiny efforts.
New players will need to have completed the opening quests of the game to unlock the tower and reach 770 power level to participate in the festival activities.
Equipping Festival of the Lost Masks
To add one of the spooky masks to your Guardian’s outfit, visit Eva Levante in the tower and pick up a Masquerader’s Helmet and the Festival of Masks quest which allows you to get Cypher Decoders. Once the new helmet is equipped, the masks from this year’s festival as well as masks from the 2019 and 2018 festival can be added to your helmet as an ornament. The helmet also allows you to pick up drops of candy in non-festival activities and equip special seasonal armor mods which buff Guardian powers but only in the Haunted Forest zone.
Unlocking the Best Rolls On Weapons
This is the most involved part of the festival for many players. As part of the Festival of Masks quest, you’re asked to visit the Spider on the Tangled Shore. The Spider in turn allows you to earn Cipher Decoders by completing tasks while wearing your mask helmet. You can earn your first Decoder for completing the Festival of Masks quest which tasks you with completing a Strike, Gambit Match, or Crucible Match while wearing a festival mask. After that, the Cipher Decoders will drop randomly from any activity completed while wearing a mask. You will ideally want to wait until you have six Decoders before making a run through the Haunted Forest because there are six chests to unlock at the end of each run. Each chest has a chance to drop either the Horror Story or Braytech Werewolf auto rifle with the new perk rolls created for the festival.
The actual Haunted Forest runs aren’t terribly difficult, but they are timed activities so an item that boosts sprint speed like the Stomp33s, Dunemarchers, or Transversive Steps is useful here. The whole activity is broken into six runs through the forest each with a different difficulty modifier and boss at the end. After that, there is one final, more difficult run with some tougher enemies added to the mix. You aren’t required to defeat all the enemies in the forest to advance though, so the ideal way to run the forest is to speedrun it so that there is a maximum amount of time on the clock for the tougher last stage. The weapons are not a guaranteed drop in every forest run either so it’s best not to waste much time on each run.
Getting Festival of the Lost Loot
Most of the Festival of the Lost loot is available for purchase from Eva Levante in the tower. You just need to earn candy and chocolate strange coins by defeating enemies while wearing their festival mask and by completing runs of the Haunted Forest event. These tasty currencies can also be earned by completing bounties for Eva. Most loot is available at 300 pieces of candy and 50 chocolate strange coins.
Unlocking Universal Ornaments
Universal Ornaments are Destiny’s cosmetic skins. They change the appearance of your armor without changing the stats. There is one ornament set for each class available for this year’s festival. All of the ornaments can only be found in the Eververse shop for the price of 1,500 silver each. This price translates to $19.99 for one set and $49.99 for all three. In both cases, due to the way silver is bundled, you will have some leftover for additional cosmetics purchases once you’ve acquired your spooky new costume. There is also a chance of unlocking the ornaments from the Bright Engrams that drop through the leveling process.
So there you have it. Complete the Festival of Masks quest, collect candy and Cypher Decoders from activities while wearing a mask, run the Haunted Forest, then buy loot from Eva with candy, that’s your Festival of the Lost loop. If this guide helped make sense of things, be sure to let me know. As well, be sure to share this guide so it can help others too. Good luck with the Festival of the Lost, Guardians!
