Destiny 2’s raids often drop some of the best rewards available in the game, as their weapons generally have incredible perk pools and raid-exclusive armor pieces typically have high-stat rolls, too. You’ll get lots of great loot by beating them normally, but by completing raid challenges, you can get special bonus rewards on top of your usual drops.
Challenges for the Root of Nightmares, the game’s latest raid that came with the Lightfall expansion, are now available. Here’s a complete guide on everything you need to know about them, including which challenge is active this week, the bonus rewards you can get when completing them, and guides on how to beat each one.
Note that this guide assumes you understand how to complete the Root of Nightmares raid normally and understand how each encounter’s mechanics work. If you need a walkthrough for the raid’s standard mechanics, check out our full Destiny 2 Root of Nightmares raid guide.
Destiny 2 Root of Nightmares raid challenge this week
The active Root of Nightmares raid challenge this week is “Illuminated Torment,” which is available during the Cataclysm encounter at the start of the raid. You can find a guide that explains how to complete the challenge in the sections below.
Note that just like every challenge in Destiny 2’s other raids, the Root of Nightmares raid challenges rotate. The challenge rotation takes place every weekly reset, which is currently scheduled for every Tuesday at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET. The rotation order begins with the challenge for the first encounter and ends with the one for the final boss fight against Nezarec. After the end of the rotation is reached, it resets.
Destiny 2 Root of Nightmares raid challenge rewards
When you successfully complete a raid challenge in the Root of Nightmares, your fireteam will be rewarded with some extra and/or unique loot drops compared to what you’d get if you completed the encounter normally. However, what you get will vary depending on what difficulty you’re playing the raid on. Here’s what you can earn from both the Normal and Master Mode versions of the Root of Nightmares when you finish a challenge:
Root of Nightmares Normal challenge rewards
When you complete a raid challenge in the Normal Mode version of the Root of Nightmares, you’ll get an extra loot chest that drops a second piece of gear in addition to the one you’d get normally. This gives you an additional chance to get something you’ll be happy with, so if your fireteam is willing to attempt challenges, they’re worth doing.
It’s worth noting that this second drop will also be a piece of Pinnacle Gear, so consider doing the weekly raid challenge to increase your Power Level faster. Even if the item you get isn’t worth keeping, having it in your inventory will increase the Power Level of future Pinnacle drops. Alternatively, you could also use it for infusion to boost up weapons and armor pieces you enjoy using.
Root of Nightmares Master challenge rewards
If you complete a raid challenge while playing the Root of Nightmares on Master Mode, you’ll get an Adept version of one of the raid’s weapons. These have better base stats compared to regular Root of Nightmares weapons, and can also be outfitted with uniquely powerful Adept weapon mods. This week, players can earn the Adept version of the Mykel’s Reverence Sidearm.
In the future, Bungie plans to allow players to ascend their Adept Root of Nightmare weapons and make their perks enhanced — exactly like what you can do with Destiny 2’s weapon crafting system. This functionality will apply retroactively to Adept Root of Nightmare weapons earned now, so if you get a god roll, keep it.
Note that once you complete an encounter challenge on Master and get the Adept weapon associated with it once, you can use Spoils of Conquest to purchase additional drops from the chest that spawns after Nezarec is killed in the final encounter.
How to beat the Cataclysm ‘Illuminated Torment’ challenge
- Challenge objective: Tormentors must be killed by a player that has the Field of Light buff.
The Cataclysm encounter is the easiest encounter in the Root of Nightmares, so it’s not surprising that its raid challenge is also a walk in the park. To complete it successfully, all you have to do is make sure that players with the Field of Light buff land final blows against each of the Tormentors that spawn throughout the encounter.
Note that other players can still damage and weaken the Tormentors without failing the challenge. Doing this is important, as it ensures that your runners won’t have to spend much time finishing the Tormentors off and can primarily focus on completing their plate sequences. Alternatively, you could have players from the ad clear team stand on the glowing plates whenever the runner player returns to get Field of Light, as they’ll also get Field of Light when the runner shoots the orb above it. By doing the challenge this way, the runner can finish plates as fast as possible while the other Field of Light-buffed players can deal with the Tormentors.
Players are strongly recommended to use a well-rolled Legendary Linear Fusion Rifle or the Sleeper Simulant Exotic Linear Fusion Rifle to kill the Tormentors. These weapons will easily finish off weakened Tormentors in one shot, and since the crit spot on their chest is easy to hit, it’ll be an easy shot to land.
Scission ‘Crossfire’ challenge
Details about the Crossfire challenge available during the raid’s second encounter, Scission, aren’t known yet since it hasn’t been available before. With that said, we can speculate a bit since we do have the challenge’s name.
If we had to guess, we’d say that the Crossfire challenge will prevent runner players from using either the Field of Light or Frux of Darkness buffs to activate plates twice in a row. If this is true, it’d mean that runners would have to alternate which buffs and plates they get and run to.
Once the Crossfire challenge becomes available and we know for sure what you have to do to complete it, we’ll update this section.
Macrocosm ‘Cosmic Equilibrium’ challenge
The Macrocosm encounter’s Cosmic Equilibrium challenge also hasn’t become available yet, so we don’t have concrete information about how to complete it. Based on the challenge’s name, though, there’s a good chance that your team will need to move all four out-of-place planets to their correct side in one Planetary Shift phase.
If this ends up being the case, this will likely be the easiest Root of Nightmares raid challenge for many teams. This is because most groups already move all four planets in one Planetary Shift since by doing this, you can get to a damage phase and complete the encounter faster.
We’ll update this section with the challenge’s exact requirements once it becomes available and we figure them out.
Nezarec ‘All Hands’ challenge
Since raid challenges only recently became available and the Nezarec encounter’s is the last one in the rotation, we won’t know what its requirements are for a few weeks. Again, though, we have the challenge’s “All Hands” title to speculate with.
Most have assumed that the All Hands challenge will require each player in your fireteam to complete a plate on both the left and right side of the arena using the Field of Light and Flux of Darkness buffs. Since there are six plates in each side’s sequence, it’s the most likely requirement. This wouldn’t be too difficult, though since these restrictions would slow the encounter down, your team would need to use the refuge mechanic more than normal.
Once we know exactly what you have to do to complete the All Hands challenge, we’ll update this section with all the details.
Destiny 2: Lightfall is available now on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One consoles, Windows PCs, and PlayStation systems. In it, you’ll take the fight to Emperor Calus, get access to Strand subclasses and their unique abilities, and more. It also unlocks the Root of Nightmares raid, allowing you to challenge the deadly forces within.
