Destiny 2 Witch Queen: Vow of the Disciple Raid

Around 10 days after the launch of Witch Queen, the Vow of the Disciple raid launched. This is the first original raid that they’ve released since Beyond Light’s Deep Stone Crypt. Vault of Glass was basically a remix. The World’s First raid race was marred with connection issues.

I was watching Sweatcicle’s team from Clan Redeem and Saltagreppo’s team from Clan Elysium. Many teams got error coded in the opening of the raid. This went on for hours. Eventually, teams took off the orb and well generating mods, even going down to doing the opening with only 3 people in order to pass the opening section.

The error codes made Bungie extend contest mode for the Day 1 for 48 hours. That was kind of annoying for many people as they were waiting for Sunday, when contest mode was switched off, to try out the raid. I didn’t try it out on Day 1. After my experience with day 1 VoG, I just didn’t feel like bashing my brain into this for a whole day.

I was worried about the raid being inside a pyramid, but it wasn’t an issue. The raid looked beautiful, especially when the environmental reveal of the worm goddess mother Xita pouring her energy, willingly, into the Upended super weapon of Rhulk. It’s a kind of world destroying weapon.

There are 4 encounters, excluding the opening section. There are a bunch of symbols that recur, and for once they have been officially named by Bungie, which makes callouts somewhat consistent.

The first encounter involves guarding obelisks, getting symbols from rooms by clearing glyphkeepers, and clearing obelisks by shooting those symbols. It’s pretty chaotic at first, but eventually, it becomes orderly.

The second encounter is the Caretaker boss. He looks like a darkness modified abomination. There’s a whole thing about how resonant darkness splinters are used by the Disciple, the final boss. The Caretaker is what happened after Rhulk did some experiments with resonant splinters. They were successful.

The Caretaker needs to the baited and stunned by 2 players during the whole encounter. Two players are defending and killing ads. Two other players are runners, who will run into dark rooms and collect three symbols. These symbols then need to be shot on the obelisk. This needs to be done 3 times on each floor. When that’s completed, it’s damage. My teams used linear fusions, snipers, and fusion rifles. People tend to blow themselves up with rockets.

Damage can be done from plates, three plates on each floor. The Caretaker’s health is gated, but it’s also a DPS check. I didn’t find it an issue, it was a lot harder during contest mode. Once you’ve reached final stand, you have 3 more plates on the last floor to finish the encounter.

After that, it’s a cool jumping puzzle. The path needs to be stabilized first to make it easier for others to do this. I had no issues doing the jumping on my hunter, but a lot of issues doing them on warlock. It’s just down to how comfortable you feel. Overall, I enjoyed this section. There’s a secret chest to grab.

In the beginning of the raid, there are symbols lit up. If these symbols are found throughout the raid, you can guarantee yourself a deep sight raid weapon at the end of the final boss. This is great, because you need 5 patterns per raid weapon in order to craft them. The first secret chest is in the opening section section after shooting three resonant splinters.

The environmental reveal is breathtaking. The worm mother is actually moving if you look at her closely. The fire gets more intense as you move closer. The next encounter is Exhibition. It reminded me of the Gauntlet from Leviathan. There are three relics that need to be handled by teams of 2. There’s s cooldown, so you can’t use the relic twice in a row. You’ve got about a minute or so, which can be extended, to move into 4 rooms, kill glyph keepers to make symbols appear. These can be read by relic holders or others, depending if it’s a taken or scorn.

One is the aegis which cleanses players. Everyone will be getting stacks of pervading darkness. The next one is the taken nut, which shoots a laser to kill shielded knights, which extends your timer. The final one is like the eye of riven, and it’s used to clear the taken blights that make enemies immune. It’s a frantic run through 4 rooms. There more and more platform in involved as you get further. At least all of the blights and knights spawn in the same locations, so it’s easy to get used to the runs.

I’ve spent a lot of time in this encounter. Mainly because people kept falling off, or we ran out of time. Once you get it down, it’s a lot easier. It’s a frantic race, but if everyone knows what to do, it’s not that bad.

There’s a final, small jumping puzzle leading to the final reveal of the boss arena. Rhulk is calling himself the first Disciple of the Witness. In the Witch Queen campaign, it’s revealed that the main antagonist of the light and dark saga.

The Witness wants to get our universe into its final shape (Destiny 2’s final expansion will be named this. Well, final expansion of the light and dark saga.) using sword logic, having the strong survive and the weak die. The Witness cloaks itself in the darkness and the pyramids. It controls the darkness in some way, or is it’s avatar. Whether it has the same relationship to the light as the traveler is unknown. From what it appears, it is on a different level, if the traveler is akin to the pyramids.

The Witness sent its disciple Rhulk into Savathun’s throne world to keep an eye on her after he failed with another species. That species destroyed itself rather than go into its final shape. This was before she got the light.

The raid is ripe with a lot of lore. Of Rhulk, of the disciples, of the witness and the darkness. There’s even a prophecy that can be found out. It’s spelled out using the symbols from the raid.

Hive and scorn love darkness worship witness. Pyramid fleet enter earth stop guardian. Witness commune traveler. Drink light. Witness kill ???

The last part of the prophecy has been left blank. It’s quite disturbing.

The final encounter involves taking buffs, splitting them, dunking them in the right columns six times before you move up a floor, right underneath the Upended. You have to take the buff four times by shooting Rhulk’s glaive, dunk them in the right spots, then DPS starts.

For once, the final boss doesn’t involve sitting in a bubble/well combination. The boss moves around. He will randomly aggro people, shoot his lasers, and kick them. DPS supers are what’s needed. We used snipers, fusions and linear fusions. When he enters his last stand, you’ve got about 10 seconds for max DPS to finish him.

Just like in previous raids, you can purchase rolls of what you’ve unlocked from his glaive. The raid exotic is a 450 rpm void pulse rifle called Collective Obligation. It’s a complicated gun, which can leech void debuffs and apply them to targets. If more than one person is using it, it can be quite good. It’s easiest to use on Titan, because with one grenade, all debuffs can be applied to targets. I got it to drop after 5 lootable runs. The drop rate is higher than vex mythoclast. I feel like it’s about 10% because many people have gotten it so far.

There also another glaive that can drop. It’s called Lubrae’s Ruin, and its lore ties in to Rhulk. Lubrae was his original planet. Rhulk destroyed it by cracking open the sun to prove his worth to the Witness.