Destiny 2 - Atheon boss strategy, including Time's Vengeance and Supplicants explained

How to kill Atheon, Time's Conflux in Destiny 2

Have your team evenly split towards the left and the right before starting the encounter. To do so, shoot the cube in the middle of the arena. Atheon will spawn but ignore him as much as possible for now.

Instead, clear enemies, paying particular attention to the harpies that spawn in the air on the left and right. If too many are left alive it will make one of the critical jobs of this encounter harder.

Once the third set of air Harpies spawn, Atheon will begin to teleport half the team. Three random players will be spawned into a portal room. The team will call out which room they are in so those on the outside can open the correct portal when the time comes to let them out.

How to restore vision with the Relic

One player inside the portal will need to pick up the Relic which is right in front of you. Players inside the portal room will slowly lose vision. To clear their vision, the person holding the Relic will need to hit the shield button, which will create a bubble aura.

Get players inside the bubble to reset their vision. The person holding the Relic will mostly be focused on keeping their teammates vision clear but also clearing enemies. Praetorians will spawn in here again with shields so keep those down if you are the Relic holder.

Now, the team in the home arena, as soon as players begin to get teleported, one player needs to try and run to the back of the room so they have a full view of the arena. Here's the tricky part: the Oracles are back and they are red this time.

How to deal with the Oracles in the Atheon encounter

The player, who will be called the Reader, needs to watch the order and position the Oracles spawn in above Atheon's head. There are six possible locations. Three close to the portals and three closer to the archway behind Atheon. On both rows there will be a left, middle and right.

Here is where they can spawn (Keep in mind, this image doesn't account for depth perception so the distance should be easier to tell in game):

It is smart to share these Oracle locations. Due to the random nature of who is getting teleported into the portal room, it's a good idea to at least go over the callouts and make sure everyone is at least vaguely familiar with the positions, as anyone could be called upon shooting and/or reading the Oracles at any time.

Sorting out callouts is up to you. Some use numbers for each oracle, but this may not be best for new players who are not entirely confident about where the Oracles are. Instead, a close left/middle/right and far left/middle/right may be more intuitive for everyone when this is one of their first runs.

Three Oracles will play one after another. Like in previous encounters this sequence will play twice to give you a chance to confirm. Once the sequence is complete three oracles will spawn inside the portal room, and the players in there will have to shoot them in the correct order.

To do that, you need to situate yourself. The portal rooms, if you hadn't clocked yet, are identical to the home room (representing the space at different periods of time, meaning you are time travelling each time you go through the portal. That's not crucial for the Raid, but it's a cool little fact).

When players are teleported, they spawn in the equivalent of the archway where Atheon came from.

The Oracles will be in the same positions that the Reader saw, however as you spawned across from them (relatively) you will need to get to the bottom of the stairs (preferably between the two portals) and turn around 180 so your left and right match up with what the Reader said. Close Oracles will be above or behind you and far oracles will be closer to the archway.

Here's an example of how this all would play out. Three players have just been teleported to the jungle room. Then, these were the Oracles the Reader saw and the order they spawned in.

The call-out would be Far Right, Close Middle, Close Left.

Inside the jungle room, The oracles would need to be shot in this order (bearing in mind two and three might be a little above or to the side of this exact perspective):

You will need to repeat this process three times before you will be leaving the room (so you will need to clear 9 oracles.)

What the remaining two players must do

Now, there are still two players who are unaccounted in this encounter. While one person is calling out the Oracles and the other team is inside the portal shooting them, Supplicant harpies will be spawning. If they get too close to you they will explode and kill you and they move fast.

The other two players in the room not reading should be doing their best to control the enemies as it can get out of hand quickly. You don't want your team coming back from a portal to a room full of Supplicants.

Atheon damage phase: 'Guardians make their own fate' explained

Once all nine of the oracles are destroyed, a prompt saying 'Guardians make their own fate' will appear in the buff feed above your Super. At this point, you can start finally doing damage to Atheon. Players in the home room should immediately jump to the platform in the middle of the room and begin using supers and damaging Atheon.

The team inside the portal will leave (again, make the correct portal is open so they can). They can then join the rest of the players doing damage on the central platform. Once on the platform the Relic holder should cleanse the team. Also, the Relic's super does effective damage to Atheon so feel free to use it.

During the damage phase, you will get a buff called Time's Vengeance. This will supercharge your abilities. You will get Supers much faster so feel free to spam them as soon as they are up, using any damaging weapons you have in your downtime. That is why it is a great idea to have a lot of damaging supers, though there should be one or two support supers like Well of Radiance and a Titan Bubble.

You will have around 25 seconds to do damage to Atheon so give it everything you got.

The Season of the Deep is here alongside the Into the Depths quest. You can know go fishing too! Don't forget to keep an eye on the Lost Sector and King's Fall challenge rotation schedule!

Imminent Detention explained

There is one more really important thing to be aware of and it is easy to forget about, but it will end your run if you do. During the damage phase, one player at random will get a debuff on their feed called Imminent Detention.

This player will have 5 seconds before they are detained. If they are standing near the other players, those players will also be detained, meaning no one will be able to break out and it will be a full team wipe.

Because of this, during the entire boss damage phase, every player needs to be very diligent of the left of their screen. That's why it's a good idea to keep asking during this phase, 'does anyone have Imminent Detain?' Over and over. It needs to be spotted, and it is just text on your screen so it is very easy to miss. If you do though, your team will almost certainly wipe.

If you do have Imminent Detain you need to leave the middle platform immediately. Jump up to the left or right, still in view of your team. That way, they can just turn slightly to you to break you out when the countdown finishes.

Keep doing damage until Atheon goes immune and then do it all again. Eventually, you should do enough damage to make Atheon go down, letting you take his throne.

It's a wild boss fight with a lot of moving parts, so make sure you keep at it if you fail a couple of times. However, once Atheon falls, you've completed the Raid. Congratulations!

Did you get Vex Mythoclast, which can drop from the end of the raid? Probably not. But maybe you did! Or maybe you will next time - along with any Glass Shard or chest locations you missed.

As was the case in Deep Stone Crypt, players will be able to purchase gear with the Spoils of Conquest tokens they've been earning through the run from a kiosk. This means if you didn't quite get the roll you wanted on something, feel free to buy more versions for another roll of the dice.

In summary - there's plenty of reasons to replay the raid beyond the need for Pinnacle drops. Hope your first experience was enjoyable, and best of luck on your future runs!