Along with the Festival of the Lost, Haunted Forest, and Pit of Heresy dungeon, Bungie has introduced a new world activity into Destiny 2. Called the Altars of Sorrow, this mode tasks players with taking down waves of angry Nightmares and Hive. While it has some similarities to the Blind Well, the Altars of Sorrow switches things up by asking you to kill very specific bosses in a short amount of time. This can be quite tricky, especially with a small team, so here’s a rundown of how the activity works.
The Basics
To beat the Altar of Sorrows, you’ll need to take down several Nightmares per wave to advance up the ladder. Each Nightmare spawns out of the glowing, swirling energy barrier that is marked with a red diamond on your screen. Only one will appear at a time initially, so they are quite easy to kill.
Slaying one will immediately reset the timer and summon another one for you to kill. Once all the required Nightmares are slain, the next barrier will appear somewhere on the map for you to start. Remember, picking up the Unstable Essence on the ground dramatically boosts your damage output against Nightmares. Always make sure to grab it when you are participating in this activity.
There are five levels, six if you include the boss that appears if you’ve cleared every wave. If you fail to kill the boss, you will be sent back to the previous wave just like in Escalation Protocol.
The Shielded Wizard Wave
Occasionally throughout the activity, you will encounter a wave that asks you to kill numerous shielded Wizards around different energy barriers. They boast an invulnerable shield which can only be broken by using a Hive sword., When the round starts, head to the closest barrier near you and kill the Hive Knight carrying a sword. Once he’s dead, pick up the sword and strike the Wizard a few times.
Doing so will break its shield, leaving this foe open to damage. Since there will be numerous Hive Wizards, we actually recommend, focusing on breaking all their shields first and letting teammates without a sword kill the mini-bosses. If you do run out of energy in the sword, go hunt down another Knight and repeat the process. Keep in mind, this phase will not appear until Tier III.
Final Boss – Phogoth
At the time of writing this, the final boss for the Altars of Sorrow is the large Hive Ogre, Phogoth. We suspect that a new Nightmare will rotate each week, so if the strategy changes at all we will add that Nightmare to this guide.
When the battle begins, lay into Phogoth with as much damage as you can muster, but save your Supers and some Heavy. It’s critical that you have a quick way to kill enemies later on otherwise you’ll lose this encounter. After he sustains around 50% damage, the boss will go immune and a few Nightmares will spawn.
You will have a very short amount of time to kill these enemies, but slaying one adds 10 seconds to your timer. Inversely, if these Nightmares manage to make their way to the center energy barrier you’ll lose time, which will most likely end the encounter.
Break off into groups and lay into these Nightmares with your Supers or Heavy to ensure their demise. Once they are dead, go back to shooting Phogoth until he summons another round of Nightmares. There will be more this time, so be prepared to blast them apart as a team. Slaying the final wave of Nightmares will open up Phogoth to more damage, allowing you to kill him. Remember, Phogoth’s critical spot is the cyst on his stomach, not his head like normal Ogres!
For this encounter, single target supers such as Chaos Reach or Golden Gun are superb. Additionally, a Ward of Dawn or Well of Radiance can help you make quick work of the Nightmares he spawns.