Destiny 2: Season of the Deep – How to Complete the Salvage Activity

Salvage is the six-person activity in Destiny 2 Season 21, Season of the Deep, and it follows the formula set down by previous seasonal iterations. You’ll complete five tasks, then fight a boss to unlock a standard loot chest and a Salvage chest. This guide will cover how to complete each section of Salvage, so you and your fireteam can farm it as efficiently as possible.

How to Complete Salvage in Destiny 2: Season of the Deep

Salvage is split across five steps. There will be a progress bar beneath each objective showing how close you are to progressing to the next step, and each objective requires a different set of tasks to complete properly.

There’s also a countdown timer called Xivu Arath’s Attention that, when it reaches zero, sends you straight to the end boss, and you can expect fewer rewards as a result.

Objective 1: Begin the Salvage Operation

All you need to do here is clear the enemies in the area and hit the button on the large machine on the right side of the laser turnstiles. Once activated, you can proceed through the doorway at the room’s far end. Sadly, you can’t go through the multicolored crystal to the right of the device, which, despite my best efforts, would not move.

Objective 2: Site Reliability

Here, you need to repair a set of six terminals using six oversized tools. The first two tools are trapped in blocks of Hive chitin. Both will be marked on your HEAD with a white and grey diamond.

The remaining tools will come from enemies that spawn in the area at the far end of the terminal room. Enemies will spawn infinitely, and the ones you need to kill for repair tools will be marked with red circles. Tool enemies appear two at a time and only respawn once both previous tools have been used.

While holding one of the oversized wrenches, you’ll move incredibly slowly, but you can jump and press the melee button to “slash” the air and propel yourself forward.

Once all the terminals are repaired, you can proceed.

Objective 3: Site Security

This is a wave-based task. There will be three salvage piles to protect, and you’ll need to defeat three waves of enemies and ensure that the salvage pile health bars don’t completely empty. Their bar is the blue outline around their shield symbol. Enemies spawn in massive numbers here and come from three directions, so have two Guardians per spawn direction with Heavy Machine Guns, and other add clear weapons.

Objective 4: Ordnance Disposal

It’s bomb defusal time. There are two rooms in this section, left and right; time bombs will appear in both. For best add clear, divide the fireteam into two groups of three. The bombs will appear randomly in both rooms and in any areas attached to the main room, and you’ll have thirty seconds to find and defuse them. Each defuse awards five extra seconds on the Xivu Arath’s Attention and progresses the bar. You’ll need to defuse twelve bombs across both rooms to progress.

Objective 5: Azshradat, Celebrant of Xivu Arath

There are two phases of this fight. The first is dropping the shield around the boss, and the second is killing the boss. To take down the shield, you have to defeat four Runekeepers. To do that, you need to stand on the plate whose floating green rune matches the larger rune in the center of the room. Doing so will give you the Heinous Rite buff, letting you damage their shields. One caveat: only one person can have the buff at a time, so only one person should stand on the plate at one time. Don’t be like me and try to stand on the plate with another Guardian. Once someone’s on the right one, let them go.

Defeat all four Runekeepers by standing on the appropriate plates to drop the boss’s shield. It will have another shield you take down like the Runekeeper’s shield: one player stands on the correct plate to break the shield. Then, once the barrier is down, nuke the boss with Supers and Heavy ammo.