Destiny 2’s dungeons are a fantastic endgame activity for anyone struggling to get five other friends together to tackle the game’s Raids. With a mix of combat and puzzles, they’re some of the most fun you can have in the game, and have been around for six years (since Forsaken).
Consider this a timeline of sorts, with updates coming out as Bungie pushes out new dungeons following The Final Shape. Also, at the end of the chronological list, we’ve included a ranking of the dungeons in order of difficulty. Here are all of the Destiny 2 dungeons in order of release.
All Destiny 2 dungeons in the order of release
#1: The Shattered Throne – September 25, 2018
The original Destiny 2 dungeon, Shattered Throne made its debut with the Forsaken DLC to immediate acclaim from the players. What’s particularly interesting is that the Shattered Throne did not have its own dedicated loot pool at the time, featuring a selection of Dreaming City gear instead. The dungeon was also tightly interwoven with the remainder of the Forsaken DLC, as it was only available for playing every third week when Savathûn’s curse upon the Dreaming City was at its strongest. The Shattered Throne would end up getting several major loot pool updates over the course of the next couple of years, bringing it roughly up to par with the rest of Destiny 2‘s dungeon content roster.
#2: Pit of Heresy – October 29, 2019
Arguably the highlight of Destiny 2‘s Shadowkeep DLC, alongside a crucial moment in the campaign’s opening mission, the Pit of Heresy took players on a wild ride through the depths of the Scarlet Keep on Luna. The whole operation was the Vanguard’s attempt to stifle a powerful Hive champion, Zulmak, from ascending as the new leader of the Scarlet Swarm. Much as was the case with the Shattered Throne, this dungeon, too, scored high marks with the community early on. More importantly, though, its release signaled that the Shattered Throne wasn’t a one-off and that Bungie would invest more resources into dungeons as time went on. You can find a complete Pit of Heresy farming guide right here.
#3: Prophecy – June 9, 2020
Traversing through strange, anomalous areas is nothing new for the Guardians, but when the Nine get involved, stuff gets weirder still. Enter the Prophecy dungeon, a particularly wild and wacky piece of content that plunges players into an abstract hellscape designed specifically for the Nine to communicate the future to the Guardians. Did the plan work out? That remains to be seen, depending on one’s interpretation of the dungeon’s lore, but there’s no shortage of loot to be found here. Prophecy is a mind-bender and one of the more challenging dungeons in Destiny 2, and its stark visual style means it easily sets itself apart from any other piece of the game’s content.
#4: Grasp of Avarice – December 7, 2021
Launched as part of Bungie’s 30th anniversary DLC for Destiny 2, the Grasp of Avarice dungeon is in a class all of its own. It is, more or less, a completely contained tongue-in-cheek side-adventure that the Guardians set off to complete when there wasn’t a world-ending crisis knocking on their doorstep. As such, Grasp of Avarice feels like a refreshing change of pace compared to most other Destiny 2 content. Not only is it fun and challenging, but it’s also positively loaded with loot, and the majority of players reported enjoying it a lot. A particular highlight, for one, was the dungeon’s many, many hidden traps, leading to unexpected hilarity between every encounter.
#5: Duality – May 27, 2022
By the time the Duality dungeon came out, Bungie finally kicked its dungeon-producing facilities into high gear with an all-new type of microtransaction: the Dungeon Key. Dungeon Keys are a hotly contested topic even today, as they essentially lock dungeons away from players who don’t want to splurge a premium to access them. This immediately painted Duality with a negative brush, but the community managed to look past these issues to discover a compelling new piece of content. It being locked away behind an extra purchase option meant that Bungie could dedicate more resources to its loot pool, leading to some neat weaponry, some lovely Häkke exploration suits, and an underwhelming, albeit awesome-looking Exotic sword. For fans of the Cabal, it’s also a must-have from a lore point-of-view, which is worth considering.
#6: Spire of the Watcher – December 9, 2022
Given that the archetypal high-caliber hand cannon is one of Destiny2‘s most notable weapons, it should come as no surprise that the Spire of the Watcher’s cowboy aesthetic proved instantly popular with the community. Sadly, Watcher was also remarkably punishing in all the wrong ways, its challenging parkour sections being marred with exceedingly long respawn timers, and with bosses that had immense health pools. Over time, Bungie did manage to tone its difficulty down a bit, and Spire of the Watcher settled into its niche of being a short, fun, and momentarily annoying dungeon. A small price to pay for some sweet cowboy armor sets from Tex Mechanica, no?
#7: Ghosts of the Deep – May 26, 2023
As the first major piece of non-seasonal content after Destiny 2: Lightfall fell flat on its face, a lot was riding on Ghosts of the Deep to pick things up a bit. Sadly, the community wasn’t as thrilled with it as it was with some of the older dungeons. It’s a solid piece of content, to be sure, but a prolonged and ridiculously floaty underwater “swimming” section combined with punishingly long boss fights meant that the initial impressions weren’t as positive as they could’ve been. Still, Ghosts of the Deep has excellent Hive lore with none other than Oryx, the Taken King being its highlight. Notably, Savathûn’s brood of Lightbearer Hive had been trying to force a Ghost into reviving Oryx, and though their plan wasn’t really going anywhere, the Guardians had to put a stop to their experiments and learn a disturbing fact or two about the Hive God’s corpse along the way.
#8: Warlord’s Ruin – December 1, 2023
Featuring a ruggedized set of Dark Age gear worn by Iron Lords of old, Destiny 2’s Earth-set Warlord’s Ruin dungeon stands out purely due to how much more normal it feels than most other Destiny 2 dungeons. Compared to Ghosts of the Deep, Warlord’s Ruin features a less annoying boss and broadly more engaging combat encounters, as well as a “dragon-slaying” theme that makes it a stellar addition to the game’s roster.
#9: Vesper’s Host – October 11, 2024
A kind of return-to-form for Bungie when it comes to storytelling thanks to its mysterious, implied villain, Vesper’s Host is one of the more difficult dungeons you could be playing. Specifically, though the majority of the dungeon balances difficulty quite well, it once again relies on extremely chunky boss fights to pad out the milestone encounters. That aside, Vesper’s Host is pretty darn fun, and comes with a delightful suite of Deep Stone Crypt-styled weapons and armor, to boot.
All Destiny 2 dungeons ranked by difficulty
Difficulty is always highly subjective when discussing the ins and outs of Destiny 2‘s endgame-tier content, but some dungeons are straight-up harder than all the others. To try to illustrate this point, we’ve set up a list of all the Destiny 2 dungeons ranked by difficulty, from the easiest to the most difficult:
- #9: Pit of Heresy
- #8: Shattered Throne
- #7: Warlord’s Ruin
- #6: Prophecy
- #5: Grasp of Avarice
- #4: Spire of the Watcher
- #3: Duality
- #2: Vesper’s Host
- #1: Ghosts of the Deep
What are dungeons in Destiny 2?
Destiny 2‘s dungeons are, in the simplest terms possible, endgame-tier content designed to be played either in a three-man Fireteam or solo. They are mechanically (slightly) simpler than Raids proper, and they are usually a fair bit shorter, to boot.
In the original Destiny, the concept of mechanically challenging cooperative multiplayer content materialized in raids. Raids that, of course, were conceptually carried over into Destiny 2, with Bungie going so far as to port most of the original title’s raid content into the sequel. Fascinating stuff, really, but it doesn’t stop there. Destiny 2‘s key novelty in the endgame category was to introduce something entirely new: dungeons.
Broadly speaking, raids are pretty high-brow stuff. With six players cooperating with one another to complete puzzles and encounters, it’s a step beyond what most first-person shooters ask from their players. Dungeons came into the picture as bite-sized raids, then, allowing players to onboard into the endgame with a smaller three-player fireteam, simpler encounters, and a smaller time investment from the get-go. Notably, it is also possible to solo each and every one of them, with some of the best cosmetics locked behind the related Triumphs.
