Destiny 2 Festival of the Lost Murder Mystery is Disappointing So Far

When Bungie began promoting Destiny 2’s three-week long Festival of the Lost Halloween event, an intriguing mystery put an exclamation point on it. The final week was said to hold a brand new quest. Master Ives, Cryptarch of the Reef in Destiny 1, had been murdered and it would be up to players to solve his murder. Now that October 30 is here, the Destiny 2 Festival of the Lost murder mystery is live, and it doesn’t do as much to underscore the final week of the Halloween event as players had been led to believe.

The crux of Festival of the Lost centered around the Haunted Forest, a reworking of Curse of Osiris‘ Infinite Forest. The timed horde mode provided an exciting activity for people to play, but people eagerly awaited the third week, when a whole new murder mystery would close out the event. What players found when they logged in was a simple quest. Speaking to Amanda Holliday grants a new Exotic quest step, “Journal of the Reef Cryptarch.” Players must find ten pages from the journal by killing yellow-bar enemies in the EDZ, or decrypting legendary and Exotic engrams.

The quest step is extremely easy to complete legitimately in less than 30 minutes, but players have even found a way to cheese it without leaving the Tower by buying legendary engrams from Master Rahool in the Tower. After that? Well it turns out the journal is encrypted, and Amanda has to reach out to her network of associates and will contact you when there are any new developments. In other words, the next step is simply to wait. After completing the first step in mere minutes without ever leaving the Tower, players will be forced to wait—presumably until next week’s reset—in order to continue the quest.

Destiny 2 Festival of the Lost Murder Mystery Continues

Granted, the murder mystery isn’t yet complete. In fact, in all likelihood (and judging from some leaks by the same person leaking Destiny 3 details), the quest will last three weeks total, with the final reward being the Exotic light machine gun Thunderlord. It’s long been teased that Thunderlord will be making a return, last appearing in Destiny 1. Bungie’s already confirmed that LMGs will be introduced into Destiny 2 next season when Black Armory releases in December, and it seems like Thunderlord could be a fun preview of what will be coming.

When all is said and done, there are some potentially exciting things this quest might do. Rumors have players heading back to the Cosmodrome in some capacity, the Earth patrol location from the first game, in order to discover who killed Ives and obtain the Thunderlord. Right now, though, all we can do is talk to our shipwright and get pages for a journal we can’t read, a very boring and quick introduction to the exciting murder mystery that is supposed to close out the Festival of the Lost. If Bungie is going to artificially timegate quests like this, they can at least make them a little more intensive in order to mask the fact that we’re ultimately just waiting for next reset to progress with it.

This week didn’t just open up the murder mystery. It also came with a whole new update that increased the chances of getting new Forsaken Exotics, as well as increasing the appearance the the Malfeasance boss in Gambit. Once you’re done with the brief murder mystery intro, head back out into the word, complete your Milestones, and play some Gambit. You might just find yourself with some new Exotic gear before Amanda reaches back out with those “new developments.”

Don’t miss the great video that Bungie put out for the Destiny 2 Refer-a-Friend program. You can get some bonus items for introducing friends to the game, though with Destiny 2 being the number one grossing digital console title, it might be kind of tough to find players who have yet to play it.

Have you played the new Destiny 2 Festival of the Lost murder mystery yet? Where do you think the next step will lead us. Festival of the Lost officially ends on November 6, but it looks like the murder mystery will carry on beyond its conclusion, tying into Black Armory’s release and introducing players to LMGs ahead of Season 5.