Destiny 2 Defenses Down: How To Complete The Upended Summit Challenge

The Destiny 2 Defenses Down challenge is one of the toughest to complete in the Vow of the Disciple raid. While Destiny 2 raid challenges are some of the hardest parts of the game, a high bar for talented Guardians to clear. That said, some raid challenges are particularly difficult to pull off and require some lateral thinking. This is one such challenge, so let us help you out with our guide to the Destiny 2 Defenses Down Challenge.

• For more Vow of the Disciple challenge tips, check out our Destiny 2 Swift Destruction guide.

Destiny 2 Defenses Down Challenge: Rules

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As is always the case with Destiny 2 raid challenges, there is no in-game explanation of what the challenge requirements are. This challenge is for the Upended Summit portion of the raid, so you will need to get most of the way through to complete it. The normal objective for this section is to run through a gauntlet of enemies, picking up artefacts from previous raids and using them for their specific purposes.

The first artefact is the laser weapon from the Leviathan Gardens and is used to kill the shielded Taken Knights called the Disciple’s Hourglass. Killing these Knights grants more time to complete the encounter, and you need that bonus time to finish it. The other artefacts are the Vault of Glass relic and the Eye of Riven. Those work mostly the same as they did in their respective raids so make use of them while moving through the encounter and reading glyphs to open doors.

The laser artefact you pick up at the start of the encounter is the only relevant one for completing the challenge. As normal, you need to use the artefact to defeat the Disciple’s Hourglass Taken Knights. However, the challenge is no player can kill more than one of the Knights. This means, on top of all the other things you need to manage in this encounter, you also must make sure that you are passing the responsibility of killing these Disciple’s Hourglasses on to a different player each time.

To make matters worse, there are seven Disciple’s Hourglasses. That means you have to let one of them live and lose out on the extra time of killing it. So not only do you need to do more work, but you need to do it in less time. If you manage to complete the encounter and no player has killed more than one Disciple’s Hourglass, you will complete the Defenses Down challenge and have very much earned your extra loot.

• To complete the Vow of the Disciple raid and the final challenge, check out our Destiny 2 Looping Catalyst guide.

Destiny 2 Defenses Down Challenge: Strategy

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There are four stages of the encounter, with Disciple’s Hourglasses spread out among them. There is just one in the first room, then two in each of the three remaining areas. You more or less need to kill the first of these Taken Knights, so definitely take that one out. Our recommendation then is to skip one of the Taken Knights in the second room. Get it out of the way, so you don’t have to worry about it later. Once you have left the second room and only killed one of the Knights, you know you can kill all the remaining ones without worry.

Between each room, you need to place artefacts into their slots, and this is one of the times you will need to swap artefacts among your teammates. Whoever brings the laser artefact into a room will need to drop it after they have killed one of the Knights for someone else to pick it up and take down the second one. This will incur the thirty-second timer where that player cannot pick up an artefact, so try to coordinate your team around that.

Finally, for keeping track of the challenge itself there isn’t much more you can do than for everyone to just keep a tally of what they have and haven’t done. Make sure all teammates are fully aware of the challenge requirements, so no one accidentally kills two Knights by mistake. Be mindful of passing the artefact off to a player who has not gotten a Knight kill yet each time. If you have not done one yet, be ready to take up the artefact and kill one of the Disciple’s Hourglass Taken Knights yourself.

Pull all that off, and the Destiny 2 Defenses Down challenge will be complete. For tips on another Vow of the Disciple raid challenge, have a look at Destiny 2 Caretaker Challenge: How to complete the Base Information challenge.