How does Destiny 2's new Empyrean Foundation community event work? Well, it's sort of like a giant interplanetary ponzi scheme, except everyone gets paid in god roll guns. And the best part is that it's incredibly easy to obtain the weapons you want, provided you understand how the system works. Which is what I'm here to help with.
With the release of the Empyrean Foundation, players have found the holy grail of new loot caves in the form of the Tower Obelisk introduced in the Season of Dawn. So, here's what the Empyrean Foundation involves, how to get started, and how to farm and invest the resources you need most efficiently.
How to unlock the Destiny 2 Empyrean Foundation
Before you can get cracking, you’ll first need to unlock the Empyrean Foundation.
The initial step is fairly simple, all you need to do is visit Saint-14 in the Tower. After that you’ll need to complete a run of the Destiny 2 Sundial with Inotam as the final boss. Then you need to pick up 30 orbs of light—which is fairly easy with a full fireteam. Using masterworked weapons will help generate additional orbs, and having Wendigo equipped will even let you pick them up once your super is full. Just head to a lost sector or the Tribute Hall and start getting multikills. Once that's done, return to the Tower and insert the Empyrean Core into the Tower Obelisk.
Destiny 2 Empyrean Foundation rewards
This initiative lets you contribute towards a massive community pot that eventually unlocks... something. Datamined information suggests that it could pave the way for a Trials of Osiris return, but whatever it is, it’s locked behind an icon in the Crucible Destination tab for now.
More importantly, you can donate Polarized Fractaline to complete Timelost bounties. It’s a great way to earn experience and farm a lot of weapons. You can pick up Timelost Bounties from the Tower for 10 Polarized Fractaline and a donation costs 100 Polarized Fractaline. To complete a bounty you need to donate four times, meaning that it will only cost you 400 to fully complete all the Timelost bounties in your inventory.
Empyrean Foundation Stage 2: COMPLETEStage 3 Goal: 1,200,000,000 pic.twitter.com/84YcRpdXU3February 5, 2020
At time of writing, the community has reached staged three of seven, having amassed over 700 million Fractaline. Only the next resource target is known (in this case 1.2 billion Fractaline) but future goals will only be known when the community gets there. Live progress is shown on the Tower Obelisk.
To optimise the grind, pick up four Timelost Bounties and complete them by donating 400 Polarized Fractaline. For each 440 you’ll be able to get four of your chosen weapon. Although if experience is your aim, you can actually pick up seven Perfect Paradox Timelost Bounties. While this is dearer (but still only 30 Polarized Fractaline) you can get much more experience as a reward.
Note that if you're more interested in contributing to the community effort than grinding out weapon frames, then the most efficient way to donate your fractaline is to level up your planetary obelisks first. That's because each level you increase an obelisk by will add to the 'resonance' of the Tower obelisk. The reason you want to do that is that with each weekly reset, you'll receive back an amount of fractaline equal to the resonance of the Tower obelisk.
So in order to donate entirely optimally you should level up your obelisks as much as possible in the first two weeks, then collect the returned fractaline just before reset and dump it all back into the obelisks. Then for the remaining three weeks of the event, just go ham donating everything before reset. Honestly though, do it however you want. The total goal might be in the billions, but you can bet on the Destiny 2 community getting it done, so feel free to just focus on chasing weapon rolls. Speaking of which...
Aim for these god rolls
The following list should give you an idea of the best rolls of each available weapon. While rolls can be influenced and min-maxed with specific barrels, mags, and masterworks, it’s more important to aim for perk rolls: these will be the major influences on the viability of the weapon, whereas the aforementioned are incremental bonuses with a smaller impact overall.
- Martyr’s Retribution: Auto-Loading Holster and Demolitionist
- Steelfeather Repeater: Feeding Frenzy and Multikill Clip/Swashbuckler
- Line in the Sand: Rapid Hit and Firing Line
- Patron of Lost Causes: Rapid Hit and Explosive Payload
- Breachlight: Demolitionist and Rampage
- Gallant Charge: Demolitionist and Swashbuckler
- Bygones: Kill Clip and Outlaw
- Black Scorpion-4SR: Zen Moment and Rampage
- Last Perdition: Outlaw and Kill Clip
- Trophy Hunter: Triple Tap and Vorpal Break
- Pyroclastic Flow: Quickdraw and Clusterbombs
- Traveller’s Judgement: Feeding Frenzy or Rapid Hit and Dragonfly or Surrounded
- Jack Queen King 3: Subsistence or Demolitionist and Rampage or Dragonfly
- Infinite Paths 8: Demolitionist and Dragonfly
- Perfect Paradox: Slideshot and Opening Shot (PvP) or Field Prep/Demolitionist and 1-2 Punch (PvE)
