Destiny 2 Warlord’s Ruin dungeon guide and walkthrough

Warlord’s Ruin is the latest dungeon in Destiny 2, sending you to the mountains near the EDZ to take on a recently discovered Ahamkara threat. Warlord’s Ruin includes three lootable boss encounters and a ton of hidden secrets and traps for you to discover.

In this Destiny 2 guide, we’ll teach you how to navigate the Warlord’s Ruin dungeon and slay the final boss, Hefnd’s Vengeance, Blighted Chimaera, plus show you where to find both secret chests.

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How the Warlord’s Ruin dungeon starts

Unlike most other dungeons, you’re almost immediately dropped into the first encounter, but you’ll have to make your way up the mountain and into the stronghold first.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

The path is straightforward, but if you ever get lost, keep an eye out for red flags like this one above to help guide your path.

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Warlord’s Ruin first encounter — Rathil, Broken Knight Chieftain

Image: Bungie

Once you’ve made it into the stronghold, you’re ready to take on Rathil, Broken Knight Chieftain. This encounter has only a few steps to it, but it serves as a great teaching point for the primary mechanic of the Warlord’s Ruin dungeon.

The Scorn lanterns

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In each of the three encounters of Warlord’s Ruin, the boss or an enemy will drop Scorn lanterns onto the battlefield. The main thing that you’ll want to pay attention to is the small Taken Blight in the center.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Each lantern will have a white circle around it, denoting its radius.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Standing in that white circle will cause the Taken Blight to disappear and fade into a blue light with bones floating inside. This takes about five seconds but goes faster when you have more than one player in the circle. In every encounter, the goal is to do this before the “Imminent Wish” timer on the left side of the screen hits zero.

Coming out of the cage (and how to do just fine)

This first encounter has a very simple cycle. The boss will teleport you into one of the bird cages floating above the arena.

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You’ll see three Taken eyes around each cage containing a guardian. The door to the cage will open once you kill the three eyes around you — then you can jump back to the ground.

Note that, if you do not kill the three eyes fast enough, the cage will raise up into a spike and kill you. Once you and your team are out of the cages, activate the Scorn lanterns by standing in the radius. You only need to activate one before the wish timer runs out to get to DPS, but if you activate multiple, you get more time to deal more damage.

DPS

Once the boss’s shield is down, it’s time to do damage. He doesn’t have a lot of health, so you can use whatever you feel most comfortable with, but rockets are always a good strategy.

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You can damage him until the “Naeem’s Wish Empowerment” buff on the left-hand side of your screen counts down to zero. Once the shield goes back up, repeat the process until you defeat him.

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Warlord’s Ruin Cell Puzzle solution

After you defeat Rahil, you’ll be teleported into a prison where you’ll have to break out. You’ll find sets of Roman numerals etched next to a skeleton in two of the cells.

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These two numbers, let’s say X and Y, will add up to six.

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Around the prison, you’ll see six dials that you can shoot.

• If you shoot them once, they turn on and spin counterclockwise.
• Shoot them again, and they stop spinning.
• Shoot them again, and they’ll spin clockwise.

Your goal is to have X dials spin clockwise, and Y dials spin counterclockwise. So in this example, you’d want three dials spinning counterclockwise and three dials spinning clockwise.

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Once they are all spinning in the correct direction, shoot the glowing key in front of one of the cells, shown above, and the doors will open. Proceed through the maze and up the mountain until you reach the second encounter. And along the way you’ll find...

Warlord’s Ruin secret chest location 1

A ton of chests are hidden throughout Warlord’s Ruin, but only two contain loot. The others will spawn Screebs that will blow up and kill you. The first secret chest that contains loot will be in one of three possible locations after you escape the prison. The one that will contain loot for that run will be the one that doesn’t have the blue glowing effect. This effect can take some time to appear, so wait five to ten seconds before committing to that chest.

The first chest is located in the maze where you have to climb up over a small hallway of rubble.

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Once you walk down the large stairs pictured above, take a right, then another right. If you can see the chest through the gate, you’ve gone too far. Follow the path over the rubble until you see the first possible chest.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

The second possible chest is located in a room in the maze, right after the first chest.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

You’ll know you’re in the right spot because a group of Scorn will spawn in the room when you enter it.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

The third possible chest is located after you cross over the large bridge.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

Once you reach the large set of stairs just below the second encounter, head into the keep instead of continuing along the path to the left.

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You’ll find the first secret chest at the top of these stairs.

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Warlord’s Ruin second encounter, brave the tempest

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The second encounter requires you to brave a snowstorm to light pyres that’ll shield you as you fight a large Taken Ogre. You do this by activating four Scorn lanterns, which spawn four “Burning Desire” orbs. Take these orbs to four pyres around the front boss area to start the DPS phase.

Spawning the Scorn Lanterns

Once the fight starts, you’ll want to spawn the Scorn Lanterns. You do this by killing all of the Taken eyes that spawn around the boss. This will spawn two Scorn Broken Knights — one on each side of the arena. These enemies will drop one lantern when they die, and they can also spawn an additional one if you let them live long enough.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

When these enemies spawn, they will start the wish timer like the first encounter, and while this is happening, a snowstorm will start to fill the arena.

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“The bones call forth a freezing tempest” will appear in the combat log when this starts. This storm will start to give you stacks of the “Biting Cold” debuff. If those stacks reach 10, you’ll die. This will go away once the Imminent Wish timer runs out.

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You can remove stacks of Biting Cold by running near torches that are placed all along the backside of the arena.

Lighting the Pyres

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The number of Scorn Lanterns you activate determines how many Burning Desire orbs spawn in the middle, near where the rally flag is. If you’re efficient, you can spawn three or four of these, allowing you to get to DPS faster.

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Take each of these orbs to one of the pyres surrounding the boss. Once you activate all four, DPS will begin.

DPS

For DPS, you’re going to want to gather around the last pyre you activated. Each pyre will give you about 15 seconds of DPS, where you can hit the boss. You must stand near the pyres because the snowstorm will come back, and the pyres protect you from the Biting Cold. Once the timer runs out, you’ll need to rotate to the next pyre.

My team always rotated to the left to keep things simple. This boss has a lot of health, so optimize your DPS for a longer encounter. We recommend using rockets and a strong DPS secondary like the kinetic sniper rifle Succession, or the Solar Eremite fusion rifle. Linear fusion rifles are also a good option. Once you run out of time on the fourth pyre, repeat the process to relight the pyres until you defeat the boss.

Warlord’s Ruin secret chest location 2

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The second secret chest is after the second encounter. You’ll reach a point where there is a room with six chests. Open the one that is not glowing blue to collect your loot.

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Warlord’s Ruin final boss — how to beat Hefnd’s Vengeance

The final encounter of the dungeon pits you and your fireteam against the soul of a long-dead Ahamkara, taking the form of a taken Chimara. This fight follows the same basic cycle of the previous encounters, where you must activate the Scorn lanterns to remove the boss’s shield.

Spawning the Scorn Lanterns

Like the previous encounter, you spawn the Scorn Broken Knight enemy, which spawns the Scorn Lanterns, by killing the Taken eyes. Once all of the Taken eyes are defeated, the Scorn Broken Knights will spawn. As before, if you let it live long enough, it’ll spawn an additional lantern.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

You just need to activate one to lower the boss’s shield, but if you activate multiple, you’ll extend the DPS timer, represented by the “Naeem’s Wish Empowerment” buff on the left side of your screen.

Vengeful Corruption

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Instead of having to contend with a snowstorm while activating the lanterns, you have to remove a debuff called “Hex of Vengeful Corruption.” If you have this debuff when the timer runs out, you’ll die.

You can remove the “Hex of Vengeful Corruption” by meleeing an enemy called a “Corrupted Hex Drinker.” If they melee you back after you pass it to them, they’ll pass it back to you, so try to keep your distance once you remove the debuff.

Climbing the Arena

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If you deal enough damage to the boss, represented by the white portion of the boss’s health bar on the bottom of the screen, it will move up to the next section.

Repeat the process of spawning the lanterns and dealing enough damage to the boss to climb up again. Do this a total of three times, and you’ll reach the top and the start of the true DPS phase.

DPS

Once you’ve climbed all the way to the top, the full DPS phase will start.

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Deal damage until you see “My hide is thick, O vengeance mine” in the combat log. This means that the platform you are currently on will be covered in Taken corruption, and the boss will go immune.

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Rotate to one of the other large platforms. (There are three in total.) This will remove the boss’s shield and allow you to deal damage. You can extend the amount of time you have to damage the boss by killing the Taken eyes floating around the boss.

Once “My hide is thick, O vengeance mine” appears in the chat again, rotate to the final platform. Deal damage until the boss goes immune.

It’ll then teleport you to the bottom, where you’ll have to repeat the process until you deal enough damage to get the boss below the small health gate - this can happen while you climb. It doesn’t have to be during the DPS phase at the top.

Final Stand

Once you get the boss to the final stand health gate, it’ll teleport you to an open platform where you’ll have to kill the boss before it kills you.

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The eyes can be dangerous, so balance dealing damage to the boss and killing the eyes. You can also hide behind the pillars. Once you defeat the final boss of Warlord’s Ruin, you’ll get teleported to the roof where you can collect your loot.

If it’s your first run, you’ll get the “In the Shadow of the Mountain” quest, which tasks you with finding various collectibles across multiple runs of the dungeon. Our guide to all Warlord’s Ruin collectibles can help you track them down.