The final week of Destiny 2’s Festival of the Lost has kicked off, and with it comes the last big piece of the three-week Halloween-themed event. It’s a murder mystery quest line Bungie teased at the start of the Festival, in which players are tasked with figuring out what happened to Master Ives, the Cryptarch formerly seen in the Reef back in the first Destiny.
Ives’ death is both a story point and, some Destiny 2 players suspect, a quest to get a new Exotic weapon. That gun is Thunderlord, a lightning-slinging machine gun from the original Destiny that hasn’t shown up yet in the sequel, which recent datamining leaks have suggested is going to pop up in the Festival. There has also been some suggestion from leaks that the quest might take three weeks to complete-the first step unlocked on October 30, but players are still waiting to see when the second step will become available.
So far, the quest to find Master Ives’ killer does have the hallmarks of an Exotic quest line. To start it, head to Amanda Holliday in the Tower, where you’ll receive Master Ives’ journal. The pursuit item is colored gold, like other Exotic weapons quests, and requires players to search out the missing pages from Ives’ diary out in the world.
Clearing that first step is actually pretty easy to accomplish. There are 10 pages to acquire, and players can get them either by finding Legendary engrams in various activities-including Gambit, the Crucible, Strikes, and everything else you already do in Destiny 2-or from killing tougher Fallen enemies in the EDZ on Earth.
Actually snagging all the pages is an easy feat to knock out if you head to the EDZ. You’re looking for Fallen with orange-colored health bars, which are otherwise known as Elite bad guys. You need the orange enemies in particular; you won’t get pages from Majors, who have yellow health bars, like the ones designated as high-value targets, for instance.
The quickest way to find Elite Fallen to kill in the EDZ is to find a public event and join it. The Glimmer Mining event that takes place in various places in the EDZ is a solid bet, especially if you knock it up to its Heroic level. You won’t get a page for every Elite you kill, but the drop rate is pretty high-one or two public events should do it.
If you don’t feel like messing around on Earth, you can also spend some shards at the Cryptarch in the Tower to quickly gather up the Legendary engrams you need to complete the step. That method will cost you 250 Legendary shards if you buy 10 engrams to get all 10 pages. Given how easy it is to get the pages in the EDZ or by earning Legendaries organically, though, you probably don’t need to waste the shards.
Once you’ve completed that step, you’ll have to wait. According to the description on the pursuit, Holliday needs time to decrypt the pages Master Ives created in order to find out what happened to him, and she’ll contact players when that’s done. Since the next step didn’t unlock with Destiny 2’s daily refresh on Wednesday, October 31, it may well be that we’ll have to wait until the November 6 weekly refresh for the next piece of the puzzle. We’ll follow up with more information on how to track down Master Ives’ killer (and maybe get Thunderlord) once the next steps become available.
