It would not be a Destiny 2 release without some major bugs, but one has infected the new holiday event, Festival of the Lost, where it might not even be worth playing right now. The game softlocks at different points during the not-short mission, and can ruin an entire run. However, there are some ways to avoid this if you know how ahead of time. Here are three tips on that, and some more afterward.
1) Final Boss Softlock – This occurs when you damage the boss too quickly in the first phase, which can lock the second phase. The fix here, one confirmed by Bungie, is to wait until the Shriekers close after they break his shield before doing any significant damage. This can take about ten seconds. Not everyone in your group will know this, but if you just do nothing, you can hopefully negate some of the damage that could lock this.
You will know the boss is softlocked if more green circles do not appear immediately after he gets to half life. There is no other mechanic you just don’t understand (blowing up Cursed Thralls near him, etc).
2) Waves Softlock – This is a similar problem. This can happen during the part where you have to flip alignment, and make a Shrieker break the shield of a single Ogre per zone. This appears to be the same thing, just wait to kill the Ogre until the Shrieker closes. I’ve seen this lock less times even without doing that, but just be safe.
3) If You Do Softlock – Just wipe. Wiping does not take you to orbit, it restarts the wave or boss fight. Again, hard to coordinate among a group of six that may not know what’s going on, but it will reset things. Uh, sometimes…I have seen it where in the waves level, wiping keeps it locked as nothing will spawn. So it may not work there. I’ve always seen it work for the boss.
So, those are the softlock tips, but I have a few more about general gameplay.
1) Converge on the one miniboss – There will only be one miniboss live at a time and you should focus it in rounds two or three with multiple entry points rather than killing random crap at a location that isn’t spawning anything. It really does not matter if normal enemies get through, you’re not going to run out of time. But sitting in front of one of three portals makes you pretty useless.
2) Bring a sword – Follow the Drifter’s advice. This was always useful in normal Altars, and that’s true now. Blasting these minibosses down with swords is arguably the fastest way to kill them, as it will avoid normal enemies getting in the way.
3) You don’t need to max motes – Particularly in later stages, you may accidentally die at any given time with so many enemies around, and especially getting pulled by Dread enemies. If you have 10, 20 motes, go dunk them. You don’t have to wait until max. I’ve seen too many runs delayed because people sit around waiting for 30 and just end up dead.
So, uh, have fun, if you can finish runs, that is.
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