Destiny 2 Deep Stone Crypt raid guide: How to beat every boss encounter

Raids have always been some of the best content on offer within Destiny, and the new Destiny 2 raid Deep Stone Crypt (which requires owning the Beyond Light expansion to access) is arguably one of the best raids ever made by Bungie. With its clever mechanics, intense boss battles, and awesome loot, the Deep Stone Crypt is yet another raid for the history books. If you're looking to learn each of the encounters but don't know where to go for guidance, fear not; we're here to help with a detailed and in-depth guide to each of the raid's four encounters, as well as the gear that you should have on-hand before going in.

Deep Stone Crypt: Loadout recommendations

In the Deep Stone Crypt raid, it's important to have the right gear so that you're able to kill enemies effectively, survive the attacks from the bosses and ads (general enemies), and deal sufficient damage to the bosses in the damage-per-second (DPS) phases. Make sure that you're using guns that have PvE-oriented perks, such as ones that boost damage after kills or speed up reloading. Here's a list of the types of weapons we recommend having at your disposal:

Primary weapons

• Well-rolled auto rifles are the best overall primary weapon.
• Pulse rifles are also good due to the medium range of many firefights.
• SMGs are strong in the first and third encounter specifically due to the close-range nature of them.
• In the second encounter, it may be beneficial for a player or two to use scout rifles.

Special weapons

• One person should use the Divinity trace rifle in the final boss battle.
• Shotguns are excellent for the entirety of the raid, with slug shotguns in particular excelling for final boss DPS as long as you're using Divinity and Well of Radiance with Lunafaction's Boots.
• The Witherhoard grenade launcher is also a very safe option.
• Sniper rifles are good in the second encounter, and can also be good for final boss DPS (especially Cloudstrike).

Heavy weapons

• The Xenophage machine gun is fantastic across the board.
• The Falling Guillotine and especially The Lament swords are the best options for the second and third encounter.
• Anarchy is the top choice for final boss DPS if you're also using a good special weapon.
• Whisper of the Worm, Izanagi's Burden, and One Thousand Voices work well with Divinity in the final encounter.
• A heavy grenade launcher with spike grenades is also excellent for final boss DPS.

Armor and weapon mods

• Arc resistance is excellent throughout the raid, as most Fallen attack with Arc damage.
• Sniper rifle resistance is strong in the second encounter, while melee resistance is great in the final one.
• Special ammo finder is important for players using special weapons for DPS in boss encounters. It's also important if you're using Divinity to weaken bosses.
• Use the ammo finder and reserves mods that correspond to your heavy weapon type.
• Encounters one and three have Overload Champions, so Overload mods are important.
• Make sure you put boss spec on weapons in boss encounters. Use minor or major spec during the first and third encounters.

Related: Destiny 2: Beyond Light guide: List of new Exotic weapons and how to get them

Best subclasses

In addition to having the right gear, you're also going to want to make sure you and your teammates are using the right subclass during each encounter. Here's what we suggest:

• For Titans, top-tree Sentinel is excellent across the board since the Ward of Dawn Super provides the Weapons of Light buff and can also be used to create safe spots in emergencies. In the final boss fight, a Titan could also swap to top-tree Sunbreaker and use Hammer of Sol for boss DPS if the team is lacking damage towards the end of the encounter.
• Warlocks should use Well of Radiance in all four encounters since the rapid healing and damage buff is invaluable. If someone else has Well of Radiance covered, bottom-tree Voidwalker can also be used as backup boss DPS since Nova Bomb does a lot of single-target damage.
• Hunters should use Arcstrider or top-tree Nightstalker for ad control in the first and third encounter. In the second and final boss encounter, Hunters should use bottom-tree Golden Gun with the Celestial Nighthawk Exotic helmet equipped for huge boss DPS. If you're not comfortable with Golden Gun, top-tree Nightstalker is also useful for debuffing bosses.

Related: How to get Stasis Aspects and Fragments in Destiny 2: Beyond Light

Destiny 2 Deep Stone Crypt Encounter Guide: Crypt Security

The first encounter in the Deep Stone Crypt is Crypt Security, in which your goal is to break six different security fuses (pictured above).

• First, you're going to want to orient your team into two teams of three. One team will go into the white room, while the other will enter the dark one. Also, take note of the basement room below that is accessible from the back of the rooms.
• Once you've split up into teams, designate one player on each team as a Scanner and an additional player in the light room as an Operator.

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• The goal of Scanners will be to pick up a yellow buff from a Hacker Vandal and to look through the glass floors around the pillars to identify which keypads in the basement area are glowing yellow.
• The job of the Operator will be to pick up the red buff from the terminal and go down into the basement and then shoot the keypads the Scanners tell them to shoot (nobody but a Scanner can see the yellow glow).
• The players who do not have one of these roles will need to focus on killing ads.

When the Operator picks up their buff from the terminal, the encounter starts.

The catch here is that there will only be one Scanner buff available and that the doors between all the areas close at the start of the encounter. Therefore, once the first Scanner has identified which keypads to shoot on their side, they need to use a terminal to send the Scanner buff to the other room so that the second Scanner player can do the same. Each room has a terminal.

Something important to note here is that periodically, Sentinel Servitors will spawn that prevent use of the terminals. The ad clear players need to kill these as quickly as they can so that the Scanners can successfully do their job.

The Operator can go into the basement at any time by shooting the controls to the basement door, but we advise not doing so until two of the correct keypads are known. This is because if the Operator is in the basement for over a minute, the floor will catch on fire. However, if you wait for all four of the keypads to be known, you won't have as much time to do damage to the fuses later.

Here's what the basement keypads look like:

Once the correct keypads have been activated, the fuses will become unshielded and will be exposed for the damage phase. However, shooting them in the incorrect order will cause a team wipe. Here's how to find out the correct order to shoot them in:

• The Operator player needs to return to the basement entrance and put their buff into the terminal there.
• Next, one of the ad clear players up top should pick that buff up.
• Then, the player with the Scanner buff needs to put their buff into the terminal.
• Finally, the original Operator will pick up that Scanner buff in the basement and become a Scanner. Above you on the side of a mainframe, there will be six cores — three on the left, three on the right. Cores on the left correspond to the light room, and the ones on the right correspond to the dark room. Communicate which core is glowing yellow, as this one needs to be damaged next. Keep going until the cores are all destroyed.

If the shields go back up and you need to complete another cycle of the encounter, the player in the basement should put the Scanner buff back in the terminal for the Scanners on top. The basement player can also be saved before they burn by the ad clearer that picked the Operator buff up right before the damage phase since they can shoot the doors open. Then the old Operator becomes an ad clearer while the new Operator goes downstairs.

Destiny 2 Deep Stone Crypt Boss Guide: Atraks-1, Fallen Exo

The second encounter of the Deep Stone Crypt is a boss fight, and quite a tough one at that. You'll be facing off against Atraks-1, a Fallen who became an Exo and is helping the newly-resurrected Taniks.

The encounter arena is split into two rooms: bottom and top.

• Start off by splitting your team into two teams of three, with each team committed to a room. You won't be able to up to the top room until the encounter begins, but the top team can wait near the slots for the pods that will take you to it.
• Make sure to take note of the locations of the three buff-trading terminals in the bottom area. There are four terminals in the top room that the top team should also make note of once they go up.
• You're going to want to designate one player in the bottom team as a Scanner, while you need to designate one player as Scanner and one as Operator in the top team.

The encounter begins when someone touches the purple orb floating near the pod slots.

• Immediately, bottom team is going to want to start killing ads while the top team takes the pods that arrive up into space (there are several buff terminals in space as well).
• After a minute or so, Sentinel Servitors will spawn in both rooms — just like in the Crypt Security encounter, these need to be killed quickly (since the Servitors will tend to stay near the boss clones, using scout rifles and sniper rifles is a good way to kill them safely).
• Alongside the Servitors, a Vandal with a Scanner buff will spawn in the top room while one with the Operator buff will spawn in the bottom room.
• The top team Scanner needs to get the Scanner buff right away, while the bottom team needs to hold the Operator buff temporarily.

Both teams should have noticed that four "clones" of the boss are in each room. In bottom room, there's a boss on the top left, bottom left, middle, and right. Meanwhile, on top, there's a boss at the front, left, right, and back of the room. Soon after the Vandals with buffs spawn in the rooms, all four of the boss clones in the top room will begin to charge a wipe attack. You need to damage them to stop it, but the issue is that hitting the wrong one will cause a wipe.

• The Scanner buff solves this problem by making the correct boss to damage glow yellow. Therefore, the Scanner up top needs to tell everyone which boss it is, and then they need to damage the boss at the same time (Falling Guillotine and The Lament are superb here). This will kill the clone.
• Immediately afterwards, the Scanner player needs to send the buff to the bottom team so that they can do the same thing since their four boss clones prepare their own wipe attack soon after.
• Right after the bottom Scanner player gets the Scanner buff, the player temporarily holding the Operator buff should also quickly send it up to the top for the Operator player to grab before bottom team's bosses prepare the wipe attack.
• After bottom team's first clone is dead, they then send the Scanner buff back up so the top team can kill a second clone.
• The buff then goes back down to bottom team so that a second clone can be killed there too. After the second clone at the bottom dies, the Scanner buff is sent back up since top always has to kill a clone first in each new cycle.

In total, you need to transfer the buff between rooms four times and kill four clones, two in each room.

There's an added complication, however. When a clone dies in either room, it will drop a purple orb. This is essentially Atraks-1's soul, and if it is allowed to sit for a few seconds, a clone will respawn at the orb's location and wipe the team. Therefore, players need to pick it up (the timer players have before the team wipes is much longer at 45 seconds) so that it can be cleansed in the top room at one of the four airlocks on the walls. This is where the Operator comes in.

• First off, the Operator needs to send each pod back down by shooting the keypads next to them so that players who collect purple orbs in the bottom room can go to the top room.
• Secondly, the Operator has to open each of the airlocks so that players with the orbs can run in. Then, the Operator shoots the orb off the player's head so it gets sucked out into space.
• FInally, the player runs out. Cleansed players can then return to their position (bottom team players can take a pod back down) and the encounter repeats.

Each airlock can only be used once in each cycle, so it may be easier for consistency's sake to have all of the orb players congregate at one airlock to all be cleansed at once. This is made possible by the fact that the Operator can reset an orb's timer by shooting it off of the player holding it. Then the player simply picks the orb up again.

This continues until you get the boss' health bar down to the final chunk (represented by the part separated with a black line). When this occurs, all players in the bottom room need to come up to the top room.

• There will be six different boss clones all preparing a wipe attack, and the player who has the Scanner buff at that time needs to call out which clone your team needs to hit. Unlike before, the bosses will continue preparing wipes repeatedly, so you need to be quick.
• While this is going on, the Operator also needs to make sure any players that have the purple orb are reset. Also, players need to pick up orbs spawned from each of the boss clone deaths in this phase, too.

This continues until you finish off the last part of the boss' health. The orbs players are holding go away once the boss is dead, so don't worry about that. If you're unable to do enough damage while stopping the attacks, the boss will eventually wipe your team.

Related: How to get Europa armor and weapons in Destiny 2: Beyond Light

Destiny 2 Deep Stone Crypt Encounter Guide: Rapture

Now that you've taken care of his second-in-command, it's time to take on Taniks himself. However, you'll need to stop him from nuking Europa first. To do that, you'll need to bring his space station down with Taniks' own nuclear cores.

• Split up into three teams of two. As you might expect based on the buff terminals and keypads in the room, the Scanner and Operator buff mechanic is back. This time around, though, there's a third buff to manage: Suppressor.
• In this encounter, players using the Scanner, Operator, and Suppressor buff all have to work in tandem to successfully dunk nuclear cores into deposit zones multiple times, all while fighting off waves of ads and surviving Taniks' attacks.
• Each group of two needs to have one buffed player in it and one player acting as a backup (more on why later).

• In this encounter, the Scanner needs to identify which of the four white deposit zones near the front of the room underneath Taniks are glowing yellow when nuclear cores spawn.

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• The Operator's role is to shoot one of the three keypads in the room that are glowing red. This stops all three nuclear cores from spawning and instead makes it so that only two do, which is important since there will only be two correct deposit zones each cycle.

• Finally, there's the new Suppressor buff, which is blue. Once the cores spawn, this buff allows you to power up when standing underneath each of the three ball-like security drones in the room. Look at the boss when doing this, and shoot him when he glows blue.
• Repeat this for the other two security drones and you will stun the boss, which is crucial since the core carriers cannot dunk their nuclear cores if the boss hasn't been suppressed.

All three buffs are obtained from Vandals that spawn towards the start of the encounter, and all three of these jobs need to be repeated each time two cores are dunked. Also, if you're not one of these three players, you will act as a backup for one of them.

• The backup role is important because for the first time in the raid, the Scanner, Operator, and Suppressor players can have their buffs deactivated once a pair of cores is dunked (this always happens to one of the three buffed players at random).
• The first step to getting around this is to have the deactivated player deposit their buff into a terminal.
• Then their backup player needs to pick it back up to get a working version of the buff.

If you're a backup and you don't end up having to fill in for your partner, your job is to ad clear and to carry the nuclear cores to the proper deposit zones when they spawn in. It should also be noted that the Scanner and Operator players can (and should) carry cores too, though you'll always need the Suppressor player to focus on stunning Taniks so the cores can be dunked.

Carrying cores builds up a Radiation debuff that kills you when it gets to x10 stacks, so call out to a teammate to take it from you if necessary. Because of the Radiation debuff stacks, you'll want to rotate core-carrying duties with other players to allow the debuff to wear off.

This entire cycle needs to be completed six times in total, and once you do this, a hatch in the floor will open. Drop into it as a fireteam and immediately sprint down the hallway as quickly as you can until you get to the end (Taniks will be chasing behind you). If you make it in time, the encounter will complete. Congratulations — you have successfully crashed Taniks' station into Europa and have prevented him from destroying the planet.

Destiny 2 Deep Stone Crypt Boss Guide: Taniks, the Abomination

It's time for the fourth and final encounter of the Deep Stone Crypt raid — a showdown with Taniks himself.

As you exit the wreckage of the space station, you'll find yourselves in a large, open area filled with various pieces of debris from the crash. In the middle, there's a particularly large pile of it; this is where Taniks spawns from, so don't go near it just yet. Take a second to look around this area, because there are three important locations here: the spawn area, the area with pipes and blue lights, and the "garage" lit up with orange lights.

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You should also notice that each area has the same deposit zones that you used in the last encounter, as well as the same security drones and terminals for buff-swapping. This encounter mostly works the same as the last one:

• The Scanner tells the team which two of the six deposit zones are the right ones to dunk at.
• The Supressor stands under each of the three security drones when the cores are active and shoots the boss to suppress him.

The only difference is the Operator's role, which we'll touch on later.

• Once again, split your team up into three teams of two.
• In each team, one person will pick up a buff first, and another will focus on ad clearing, core carrying, and being a backup for the buffed player if necessary.

You are now ready to start the encounter, which you can do by walking close to the middle pile of debris. Taniks in his new half-Eliksni, half-Shank body will pop out of it and ads will start to spawn. After 30 seconds or so of killing ads, a Vandal with one of the buffs will spawn at each area:

• The one with the Scanner buff spawns in the blue area.
• The one with the Operator buff arrives near the spawn area.
• The one with the Suppressor buff shows up in the orange area.

Immediately have all three players pick up their designated buffs. The Scanner should now figure out which deposit zones the team will be dunking at.

• Soon, Taniks will head towards one of the three areas and will start raining down Void explosives on you.
• While he does this, you should notice that each of his four thrusters are glowing brighter; the team needs to shoot two of these until they are destroyed and nuclear cores drop from them.
• Then, two players need to pick up the cores and carry them to the deposit zones while the Suppressor stuns Taniks. Since the run to the deposit zones is longer distance than in the last encounter, each carrier should have a partner go with them to take the core if needed.
• Like with the Rapture encounter, the Scanner is encouraged to help carry cores. However, the Operator should never do this.
• This is because occasionally, Taniks will trap the core carriers in a purple bubble; the Operator's role in this encounter is to shoot one of the "spots" on the bubble and free the core carriers.
• If everyone does their job, the cores will be able to be dunked without much trouble.
• At this point, one of the three buffed players will become deactivated just like they were in the Rapture encounter, and they should give their buff to their backup with one of the buff-swapping terminals.

From here, the encounter repeats one more time. Then, the team needs to prepare for the DPS phase.

• When the DPS phase starts, Taniks will teleport to the middle of the arena and spawn a bubble around himself with debris swirling around the outer edges of it.
• Players should jump over this debris and begin to damage Taniks with heavy weapons. Divinity is recommended to make this easier. Don't get too close to Taniks, though, or the small ring of Arc energy surrounding him will kill you.
• After a few seconds, Taniks will knock you up and out of the bubble. Jump back in and continue doing damage until the bubble goes away, signaling the end of the DPS phase.

You have a total of three DPS phases to get his health to the final chunk. If you don't knock his health down to that point in three DPS phases, your team will wipe.

Once you do get his health down to that level, Taniks will make his final stand. He will become normally damageable and launch various attacks at you from one of the locations on the map before teleporting to another one. As he's doing this, players need to be doing as much damage as they can so they can finish Taniks off. Taniks will teleport to a different location five times; if players don't finish him off before the end of his fifth attack, he will wipe the team. However, if you do manage to land the killing blow, the fight will be over and you'll have successfully defeated Taniks and the Deep Stone Crypt raid.

Related: Destiny 2's Deep Stone Crypt raid completed, unlocking new Beyond Light content

Any questions?

Do you have any questions about the Deep Stone Crypt raid encounters? If so, ask us in the comments and we'll be happy to help.

Destiny 2: Beyond Light is available on Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, Xbox One consoles, PlayStation 4 and 5, and Windows 10 PCs. It costs $40 but is also available through Xbox Game Pass. If you've never tried out Destiny 2, I recommend doing so, as it's easily one of the best Xbox One shooters. There's really nothing like a good Destiny raid in the shooter market.