Vow Of The Disciple Complete Raid Guide

Vow of The Disciple has landed, rounding out what many are calling the best expansion to ever come to the Destiny franchise. If you are looking to go in and tackle the crashed Pyramid of Savathun's Throne World, here is your complete guide.  

This next part of the Raid will be focused on the Darkness Barge that will appear once you reach the end of the entrance trail. Here you will need to usher the Barge forward by collecting what look like Darkness Splinters called "Knowledge." Truly here, Knowledge is Power, and you will need to collect nine of the Knowledge splinters to move the Barge forward. 

To get the Knowledge Splinters to appear, you will need to defeat yellow-bar abominations called Knowledge Bearers. Each Bearer will summon three splinters that you need to go out and get. These will be extremely obvious to see and will have an orange aura around them. You can only hold stacks of three Knowledge at a time so once you collect three, return to the barge and they will automatically deposit. Take note that whenever you are away from the Barge you will start getting Pervading Darkness stacks, once this hits x10 your character will die, so make sure to keep refreshing back by the barge. 

Acquisition is the first official encounter of the Raid and will be the first opportunity to obtain some loot. At first, the large room may seem overwhelming, but luckily, Reddit user /u/DependentLocation136 made a beneficial map to navigate the arena.

Once the encounter starts, enemies will start to flood the arena, and you need to defeat them before they have a chance to shoot your obelisk. If the obelisk is shot too much, it’ll wipe the team.

While enemies are coming out, one team’s obelisk will flash and put a symbol at the top of their totem pole-looking thing. It will either be the Pyramid or the Traveler symbol. If it is a Pyramid, a Taken Knight will spawn at one of the locations on the map above (L1 - L5); if it is a Traveler symbol, it will be on the right (R1 - R5). Make sure each Obelisk has at least one person defending and then have one floater from each obelisk on the correct side of the room find the Taken Knight and kill it.

Two things will happen when that Taken Knight is killed first the team with the Pyramid/Traveler symbol will get a second symbol on their totem pole. Secondly, one of the other two teams will now get their first symbol.

The team that just got their first symbol will need to call out either Pyramid / Traveler so the next Taken Knight will spawn. The other team that just got their second symbol will just need to take note of the second symbol, we will get to that in a second.

Once the second Taken Knight is slain, you can guess what happens next. That team now gets their second symbol, and the final team will now get their first symbol. Find the last Taken Knight, and destroy it so all three teams now have two symbols.

This next part seems chaotic, but trust me, you will get it in no time. Each floater from each team will now need to go to the room that matches their second symbol on their totem pole. If the door is shut, shoot the door control in the middle of the room but be aware this may shut the door for someone else’s room so make sure you announce when you are shooting it.

Once the floaters are in their rooms, the totems back at their obelisk will now show a third symbol. It is up to the Obelisk Defenders to tell the floaters what symbol there is, it will either be Light or Dark. If the symbol is Light the floater will kill the Glyphkeeper on the left side of the room they are in, if it is Dark they will kill the one on the right. The floater from each team will need to kill the correct Glyphkeeper and call out what symbol they were shown.

Have all floaters now go to each Obelisk until they find a singular Obelisk that has all of their symbols on it. The symbols do not need to be all on the same side, just on the same Obelisk. Have the floaters all shoot their symbol at the same time and you will see a message that your offering has been accepted. If your offering is rejected, don’t stress, you can get rejected a few times and it is okay, just like in real life. Reevaluate your team and make sure everyone is shooting the symbols at the right time and only shooting one of the correct symbols. The floaters don’t even need to shoot their exact symbol, all three symbols just need to be shot.

Once this is done, have everyone go back to their original Obelisks, and rinse and repeat.

There will be Unstoppable Champions in here so make sure a few people have the mod on. I recommend Salvager’s Salvo for add clear and Gjally for quick rinsing of the Glyphkeepers. Supers and Class setup don’t really matter here, just make sure whatever you are running, you stay alive and don’t drown your team in the deep.

Collect your loot and get ready for your first real fight of the Raid. 

On each floor, there will be a room with Glyphs in it that is accessed by shoot the cruxes on the outside. The job for the team of two will be to go in the room one at a time and collect those symbols while the other person stays on the outside to clear adds around the Obelisk outside the door and keep the door open. Collect three symbols, shoot those three symbols on the Obelisk quickly and then alternate. Just like the beginning, don’t let your Darkness stacks get to 10.

The team of four will have a very different job while this is going on. They will be tasked with stunning the Caretaker and keeping him pretty much immobilized till the team of two is done.

The Caretaker will be trying to move towards the Obelisk and if he makes it, you will wipe. To stop him, have one player run-up to his legs which will make him start a slam attack. Get out of the way, and then have one player shoot his face that will be glowing after the slam. Shooting it will stagger him, use a Glaive, and then his back will open which when shot will cause him to fall to the ground for a bit. The best position here will be to have one person on the bottom while the “back shooter” floats around the top of the stairs. The other two players can help but also make sure someone is killing ads.

Its important to note that if you’re the person that makes the Caretaker slam, you will get a debuff that makes him ignore you. So if you mess up the stun phase have someone swap with you quickly.

Keep this up until the team of two has shot all nine symbols on the Obelisk. Once they do head up to the Obelisk and stand in the orange glowing well that will appear closest to the stairs the Caretaker is coming up. These wells can be a little glitchy and sometimes they aren’t punctual with their timing.

As long as you are in the correct well the Caretaker will take damage until you get the text on the left of your screen saying “The current well begins to fade”. You will have three wells per damage phase and odds are you will only need two of three if you use my recommended loadout of Outbreak Perfected and Fusion Rifles.

For damage as soon as all nine symbols are shot, start laying Nanites into the Caretaker until he starts taking damage. If all six players are using Outbreak Perfected you will get insane damage numbers by the end of the phase. You should get most supers twice during the fight as well so full send those Hunter Tethers and Missle Titans. I do recommend having at least one Warlock Well to keep you alive against any leftover ads.

Damage is also able to be done with Izanagi’s Burden and Divinity but the ammo economy in this encounter is awful for some reason and Outbreak just gets the job done so well especially since there is a damage cap per floor.

You are going to do this for two more floors till you reach the final stand floor which will just have you advancing towards the Caretaker and shooting him from wells in a straight line. Use your Fusion Rifles here and Supers and he should go down by the second well.

Pick up your loot and get ready to run.

@Tenrouken on Twitter (https://twitter.com/tenrouken) made the best map to explain how this encounter goes. 

KILL HOBGOBLINS TO SPAWN GLYPHKEEPERS

KILLING GLYPHKEEPERS SPAWNS SYMBOLS

SCORN GLYPHKEEPER SYMBOL CAN ONLY BE READ BY NON RELIC HOLDERS

TAKEN GLYPHKEEPER SYMBOL CAN ONLY BE READ BY RELIC HOLDERS

KILL PRISM NIGHT TO RESTART TIMER TO 1:14

Seriously, remember those core rules and you will be just fine. So here is the objective:

In each room, you will need to shoot the symbol that matches between the sets given by killing the Scorn and Taken Glyphkeeper.

For the first room, there is only one set of symbols you will need to pair. Pick up the Relic to start the encounter. Have the Relic holder help kill the Taken Glyphkeeper while the others take down the Scorn Glyphkeeper.

The Relic holder will now read out the symbols they see and one person from the non holder team will figure out which symbol matches from their set.

Example:

The Relic holder kills the Taken Glyphkeeper and sees Savathun, Scorn, Drink.

The non Relic holders kill the Scorn Glyphkeeper and see Worm, Savathun, Witness.

The common symbol is Savathun, so shoot the Savathun symbol above the door to have the door open for the next area.

Not so hard, right?

Here comes the complex.

The person with the Darkness Relic will now need to deposit it, and someone separate will need to pick it up. This next area will now have the Aegis Relic from VoG as well as the last Relic and whoever held a Relic last time will not be able to do it this time. There will also be two sets of symbols you need to evaluate this time. Use the map and take note of where the Glyphkeepers spawn. You will need to send three people down the left and three on the right of this room.

Kill your first set of Glyphkeepers, match your symbols and then send the person with the Darkness Relic to the area on the map with the orange circle. There will be a Prism Knight here that only they can take the shield down of, and killing it will extend your time.

Once the time has been extended move to the next pair of Glyphkeepers and pair up the next set of symbols. I recommend killing the next Prism Knight that spawns before shooting the symbols above the door as it will give you more time to catch your breath before the next room.

Also while this is all going everyone will be stacking Pervading Darkness, the person with Aegis will be able to cleanse everyone and reset their stacks. My team likes to have the Aegis player stay static in the middle of the map, you can have them rotate around though that's up to you.

Once you open the door, watch out for screebs and have the two people deposit their Relics. There is no easy way to put this, this next area now has three Relics and no one from the last room is allowed to hold a Relic this time.

The new Relic is a Taken Relic similar to what you see in the Last Wish Raid. The roll here will be for the person with the Taken Relic to use their “grenade ability button” to explode on Taken Blights and clear off the immunity shields the enemies are being given by the Taken Blights.

Use the map to determine which way each Relic holder needs to go, it will be dependent on where the Taken Blight spawns at the beginning of this room.

There will still only be two sets of symbols you need to match but you will need to work efficiently to kill Glyphkeepers, read symbols, and kill the Prism Knights to keep your timer up. Follow the map for the best way to move through this room and once you get your symbols shot move forward to the last and final room.

Here is why I said everyone would be doing a job initially. Because now the last three will bank their symbols, and the remaining three players will now need to pick up the three relics.

This room is just like the last room but in a different layout. Use the Taken Relic to get rid of Taken Blights, kill Glyphkeepers, read symbols, and get out of there. Make sure all the Relics are banked before the time is up because even if you clear the room you will still wipe if they are not all placed in time.

You will need to split up into two teams of three. One team will be tasked with shooting crystals and sharing Leeching Force. At the same time, the other team will be focused on giving call-outs to the other team and clearing ads.

At the start of the encounter, Rhulk will summon a darkness shard. Everyone will start accumulating Pervading Darkness until one player from the Leeching Force team shoots the crystal. That player who shot the crystal will now have Leeching Force.

The Leeching Force buff is needed for a player to absorb one of Rhulk’s laser beam attacks to turn it into Emanating Force. You will need to bank six Emanating Forces to get to the damage phase, but if you straight-up bank this one, you will just lose the buff entirely. So here is what you do. Instead of having the original player turn their Leeching Force into Emanating Force, you are going to have them share it with the other two players on the Leeching Force team.

Have the player with Leeching Force stand on the Give Symbol on the floor. The other two will shoot the Darkness crystals in the back of the room. They are now given the Leeching Force and the player on the Give symbol will lose it.

Now don’t go and run willy nilly into the lasers because, like I said, you don't want to lose this Leeching Force buff. Have ONLY ONE of the Leeching Force players run into Rhulk’s laser attack and transform it into Emanating Force.

The person with Emanating Force can go into Rhulk’s Orange Dome and deposit the Force into one of six pillars. There are three pillars on the left and three on the right. You will know which pillar to deposit Emanating Force into because the non-Leeching Force team will kill Glyphkeepers to reveal a strand of symbols that will correlate with a pillar they will call out.

Deposit the Emanating Force into the correct pillar, and then Rhulk's Dome will shrink. You will go back and have the remaining player with Leeching Force now split their Leeching Force buff by standing on the Give symbol and sharing the buff with the other two, just like last time. Rinse and repeat this till you bank into all six pillars.

Rhulk Damage

This next part is a little weird, and to make it worse, Rhulk will be trying to drop kick you the whole time. Literally.

Once you are at the top of the stairs, the game is on. Rhulk will be charging at you, shooting beams, and trying to kick you all while you have one person shooting his Glaive to get Leeching Force.

This time only one person will need to worry about Leeching Force while the other five just try to stay alive and shoot at Rhulk in areas we will cover in a bit. When the player shoots Rhulk’s Glaive it will leave behind a symbol that everyone but that player will see.

The person with Leeching Force will need to absorb a laser shot from Rhulk and then deposit Emanating Force in the pillar that correlates with the symbol left behind from the Glaive.

Once deposited, a part of Rhulk's Twizzler styled body will glow gold and need to be shot by everyone until it goes immune. Do this cycle four times, and then Rhulk will finally be damageable.

I recommend using your Supers, Izanagi’s Burden, One Divinity, and all the Rocket Launchers you can spare for DPS.

After DPS is over sprint back to where your Rally Flag was because Rhulk will be trying to throw you out by expanding his dome all over again.

Rinse and repeat this encounter until you make it to Final Stand, where you will just need to simply kill Rhulk with everything you have.

Do this, and you will have officially conquered the Vow of the Disciple.

Rhulk will become a loot tree (hehe Giving Tree) at the end, and you can purchase one weapon as a guaranteed Resonance drop at the end.

Good luck chasing that exclusive Exotic and like always if you have any questions feel free to DM me on Twitter, Twitch or Discord!

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