How To Complete The Destiny 2 Nightmare Containment Event

The Destiny 2 Nightmare Containment event takes place within a derelict version of the Leviathan, a huge Cabal ship home to the exiled Calus. Upon the Derelict Leviathan you’ll find the Nightmare Containment public event in Destiny 2, which sees Guardians wielding never before seen instruments and weapons, including a massive scythe, to clear waves of enemies and capture Nightmares. Here's how to start and complete the Destiny 2 Nightmare Containment event.

• Our Destiny 2 Solar 3.0 guide explains everything you need to know about the new update.

Destiny 2 Nightmare Containment: How To Start The Event

There are two options when you enter the Derelict Leviathan: Castellum or Containment. According to Bungie’s in-game help, Containment will be more effective in getting straight into the Nightmare Containment event itself. Having said that, when entering via either option we found it very easy to quickly join or begin a Nightmare Containment.

The Castellum option is intended to allow for more free-roaming and the Containment option specifically for grinding through the event repeatedly, although neither option will lock you into any area or prevent access to other parts of the Derelict Leviathan.

Destiny 2 Nightmare Containment: Gather Vestiges Of Dread

As part of the Season of the Haunted, like seasons before, Destiny 2 has introduced a unique currency in the form of Vestiges of Dread. These drop from killing enemies across the game, but the drop rate is exponentially higher during Nightmare Containment. Vestiges of Dread are key to unlocking certain rewards especially at the end of Nightmare Containment events, and help Guardians gather the best weapons and armour.

Gathering 500 Vestiges of Dread is the best way to be prepared for a Nightmare Containment event, but you will earn them throughout the event too. The reason for this is following the strongest Nightmare being defeated after Tier 3, there is a Nightmare Harvester which gives the option to deposit 500 Vestiges of Dread for seasonal rewards.

Destiny 2 Nightmare Containment: Triggering The Public Event

When aboard the Derelict Leviathan in the Castellum area, a red diamond icon will appear indicating the area in which the next Nightmare Containment event will begin. If you head to this area and interact with it, you’ll place a Nightmare Harvester, an eerie, glowing red sceptre. This will trigger the beginning of the event by omitting an energy and drawing Nightmare enemies as well as waves and waves of other enemies to its point. Killing these will bind them to the Nightmare Harvester to disrupt Calus’ connection and interrupt his plans.

There are three tiers to Nightmare Containment and completing each three nets you the best rewards from the event. There are three different Nightmare Containment bosses that seem to be on a weekly rotation, as with previous seasonal events such as Season of the Risen’s Psi-Ops Battlegrounds.

Destiny 2 Nightmare Containment: Gather Shards Of Dread

Clearing enemies to power up the Nightmare Harvester is the main activity you’ll be completing in tiers one and two of the event. Killing these enemies will grant you Shards of Dread, another new in-game currency for Season of the Haunted. The more enemies you kill, the more Shards of Dread you obtain. On the left-hand side of your screen you can see the number of Shards of Dread required to progress the tier. 

There are Nightmare enemies that will crop up throughout these tiers called Dread Bearers. They are stronger enemies with bigger health bars, and may be flanked by smaller Nightmares. Killing the glowing orange Nightmares grants you Unstable Essence, which gives a brief damage boost. Combining this with the new Solar 3.0 aspects, abilities and fragments can really up your damage output numbers, so crafting a good build will help you massively here.

Killing a Dread Bearer drops a Core of Dread, which you can pick up and carry back to the Nightmare Harvester to ‘dunk’. Dunking this Core of Dread will give you a small pile of Shards, and will cause a massive burning Scythe to spawn.

You can use this Scythe temporarily to clear waves of enemies. Its normal attack will cast waves of fire towards enemies and its powerful attack will blast fire at multiple enemies. A Champion does spawn as soon as the Scythe does, so bear that in mind and clear it quickly to avoid allowing it to cause too much trouble.

When one wave of enemy clearing is complete, four Eregore Atavists will spawn. These are Psions encased in a bubble around the area. To reveal them, you will need to find and shoot four Atavist Illusionists, false enemies placed to deceive the Guardian. A simple punch of the Eregore Atavist from within the bubble will remove it from existence and allow you to progress further.

During tier one of the Nightmare Containment, you’ll repeat this cycle twice. Completing this will spawn a heavy ammo chest which you can use to replenish your stocks ready for the next tier. If the timer runs out without you completing the process, the event will still progress to tier two but without the heavy chest reward spawning.

The second tier trigger will appear after the timer ticks down. Activate this quickly to keep the event proceeding. Tier two works similarly to tier one with the addition of a Nightmare Harbinger mini boss.

Destiny 2 Nightmare Containment: The Nightmare Of Elykris

The final tier of the Nightmare Containment activity is in the smallest area of Castellum, with a huge Nightmare of Elykris boss, for the first week. You may recognise this enemy as the Scorn Baron, The Machinist, from the Forsaken story campaign. Do as much damage as possible to the boss early on to deplete his health bar, which is divided into thirds. 

After one third of his health is depleted, this triggers a second phase where more Nightmares will spawn around him, but both the Nightmare of Elykris and these new Nightmares are immune initially. Six Resonant Splinters will spawn around the area, shooting these will bring down the shields from the surrounding Nightmares but the main boss will still be immune.

Kill all of the additional Nightmares to remove his shield, and be mindful of Exploding Screebs that continue to spawn in the area. After these are eliminated, the boss’ health can again begin to dwindle down. You are on a timer here, so make sure to be efficient. 

As you’re fighting all of these enemies, the Dread Bearers from the first two tiers will also show up and produce Cores of Dread upon death. Dunking the Cores provides a Scythe which can again be used to deal damage to the boss. 

Finishing off the Nightmare of Elykris will spawn a reward chest. You don’t need to kill the boss to get this chest but the rewards for doing so are greater and will help you progress through the Season of the Haunted Season Pass levels quickly. You can enter your Vestiges of Dread at the Nightmare Harvester at the end of the event here for even greater rewards. 

Now you know how to complete the Nightmare Containment event, read up on our Destiny 2 Sever Shame walkthrough so you know how to beat that activity.