The Destiny 2 Enigma Protocol activity sees you infiltrate the VexNet as the Vex within attempt to steal Golden Age data. It's a linear mission that sees you hopping across and sliding down blocky VexNet architecture, riding your Sparrow along digital racetracks, and completing various objectives to wreck the Vex operations in Destiny 2. It's also an excellent source of reprised Season of Dawn weapons which can't be crafted! Here's everything you need to know about Enigma.
Destiny 2 Enigma Protocol explained
The Enigma Protocol mission is a new three-player activity taking place within the Nessus VexNet. Disrupt their search for Golden Age data before time runs out and you'll be nicely rewarded. If you’re yet to unlock it, you need to complete the Destiny 2 Encoded Log quest from Failsafe in the HELM, then you can play it at any time via the activity node on the HELM map. There is also a second variant called Enigma Protocol: Corrupted Data though this is not available yet.
The mission itself generally consists of tricky platforming and Sparrow driving sections that eventually lead to a portal to an objective area – complete the objective then leg it to the next portal and so on until you find a loot chest. These objectives include charging a Radiolite Circuit in moving charging pools, blowing up shielded Harpies with exploding spheres, breaking pink pods and collecting the objects they drop, and killing Vex bosses.
Once you reach the loot chest, you have the choice to either keep going, or reset the activity to start over. If you want to keep going to get better Enigma Protocol rewards, jump through the portal and carry on as normal to eventually face a massive Vex boss and get another loot chest. Once you've looted this chest, the mission ends.
Alternatively, if all players activate the Force Reboot Network Instance button to the left of the portal, you'll restart the activity from the beginning, letting you farm Echoes loot easily. Enigma Protocol can be completed entirely solo, but having allies to help thin the Vex numbers will make it much easier, especially with the timer.
How to extend the timer in Destiny 2 Enigma Protocol
As soon as you begin your Enigma Protocol run, you'll have one minute on the clock, which you can see just below your health bar marked as Security Reboot. Note that the Security Reboot timer pauses its countdown when you're collecting loot. If the timer runs out at any point, your run restarts, but there are ways to extended time:
- Weakening security by destroying yellow nodes adds 30 seconds to the Security Reboot timer.
- Destroying an Archival Timekeeper enemy adds 30 seconds to the Security Reboot timer. A message will appear telling you that one has spawned in, so make sure you find and kill it quickly!
There's also the Intruder Trace Running timer towards the top-left of your screen, though this is effectively a stopwatch that tracks your completion time. It never pauses, so keep an eye on it if you're trying to set a quick time.
Destiny 2 Enigma Protocol rewards
Enigma Protocol is a very rewarding activity considering that it's not that hard to complete with a full fireteam, and it's also quite quick. As mentioned earlier, there are two chests you can loot, each offering roughly the same rewards but the second is slightly better. Here's what I've got from the chests so far:
- Chest 1: Echoes Engrams, reprised Season of Dawn weapons, Enhancement Cores, and Enhancement Prisms.
- Chest 2 (must beat final boss): Echoes Engrams, reprised Season of Dawn weapons, Enhancement Prisms, and Ascendant Alloy
There's also an emblem to get but it's a rare drop. You should also investigate the conflux towers in loot areas as you might be able to extract a query process from them. As far as I can tell, the Extracted Query Data you get in return can't be used for anything, but you can see a little code lines under your radar, giving you clues as to what the Vex might be after. Each strange query you extract will also contribute to the Packet Retrieval Triumph.
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