How to get new Destiny 2 exotic trace rifle 'Ruinous Effigy': quest guide

Upon logging in after the latest weekly reset, Guardians were met with a notification that a new Exotic quest named ‘Growth’ could be obtained from the Prismatic Recaster near The Drifter. Purchase of the Season Pass is needed to obtain this quest.

This Exotic quest rewards the player with Ruinous Effigy upon completion which is a Void Trace Rifle. This Trace Rifle has some very interesting gameplay elements to it. Here are its perks:

Transmutation - “Final blows with this weapon collapse victims into Void Transmutation Spheres.”

Evolution - “Transmutation Spheres you create can be picked up and wielded as weapons by you or your allies:

• LMB/RB/R1 : Light Attack
• RMB/RT/R2 : Heavy Attack
• C/LT/L2 : Guard/Drain nearby enemies

Ruinous Effigy is certainly unique. This weapon is able to create void spheres that players are able to wield and use to attack nearby enemies.

The Heavy Attack is particularly powerful as it is a large area of effect slam that can take out Major enemies in one strike.

Step 1 - Missive

Visit the Prismatic Recaster in the Annex of the Tower to claim this quest

Step 2 - Gift

This step requires you to complete the weekly ‘Interference’ mission on Io.

Unfortunately you are not able to just jump in and do this mission, it requires a bit of setup. While at the Prismatic Recaster be sure to grab the ‘Means to an End’ quest as this is what’s needed to unlock the Interference mission.

‘Means to an End’ is fairly straightforward with its first step only requiring the player to participate in the new Contact public event, either on Io or Titan.

This step can be completed in as little as 2 completions of Contact if the Heroic version is activated.

In the second step of ‘Means to an End’ the player is tasked with collecting Umbral Traces by participating in either Escalation Protocol, Gambit, Gambit Prime, or the Reckoning.

The fastest way to complete this is to load up Reckoning Tier 3 as this activity contains a very large amount of boss enemies which will give a significant amount of progress towards the step.

Once the Umbral Traces have been collected then the player is able to head into the Interference mission on Io. This is a simple story mission so no need to stress.

Step 3 - Pendulum

This third step is the most time consuming part of the quest as it requires the player to collect 25 Calcified Light Fragments scattered across Io, Titan, Mars and Mercury as well as defeating 15 enemies known as ‘Savathun’s Marionettes’.

The fragments can be fairly simple to find as using the Ghost’s Nav mode with highlight nearby fragments with an objective marker on the HUD. Take note though that the fragment tracking has a range of 200m.

Here are the maps of the 4 Destinations and some markers for where the fragments are. The markers should get you close enough to the fragments for Ghost’s Nav mode to kick and give the exact locations.

Mars

Mercury

Io

Titan

Savathun’s Marionettes are large boss enemies that can spawn on Io or Titan and 15 of them need to be defeated in order to round out this step.

These enemies have a decent chance to spawn during the Contact public event but also have a fairly good spawn rate around the above Destinations.

From experience, The Rig on Titan seems to have the best spawn chance although this is just anecdotal.

You will know when a Marionette is spawning in as there will be a text notification on the lower left of the screen, similar to when High Value Targets spawn in.

This step can be a little frustrating as the enemies themselves are not that difficult but there can be a large amount of waiting between Marionette spawns.

Step 4 - Feed

The final step in this quest is fairly straightforward and has the following objectives:

• 18 Gambit/Reckoning completions
• 100 Void Kills
• 25 Precision Multikills

Gambit is probably the easier of the two activities to complete this step in as there are many minor enemies that can be killed for easy Void kills and precision multikills whereas Reckoning contains a lot of Boss enemies.

Gnawing Hunger is a great weapon to use for this step as it is a very well rounded Auto Rifle that also happens to deal Void damage.

Other good options include Recluse, Optative and Kindled Orchid, which all deal Void damage and are easy to achieve precision kills with. Remember only two precision kills are needed in a short amount of time for it to count as a multikill.

Step 5 - Shape

Head back to the Prismatic Recaster to obtain the Ruinous Effigy.