Destiny 2’s Season of the Wish brought new activities and rewards, as well as another major piece of content: a new dungeon. These three-player raids are some of the hardest and most confusing in the game, but they don’t require the six-player raid squads of Destiny 2. The new dungeon is called Warlord’s Ruin, and it’s set to launch on December 1st, the first Friday of the new season.
Details about Warlord’s Ruin are scarce, but we do know a few things, including when it will be available and what you can earn from it. We also get to ponder what Warlord’s Ruin means to Destiny 2’s story as we head into the current story’s final expansion, The Final Shape.
Note: The last section of this article contains images of dungeon rewards. If you want to enter the dungeon intact, stop scrolling there.
When is Warlord’s Ruin coming out?
You can play Warlord’s Ruin on the daily reset Friday, December 1st at 9am PT/12pm ET. Keep an eye out for game updates during this time to make sure you’re ready to go.
How to access Warlord’s Ruin?
Unlike other content in Destiny 2, Warlord’s Ruin is not free, but paid content. To access it, you need to either purchase the Lightfall expansion and its annual pass (normally $100, but currently discounted on Steam for $40), or buy the Lightfall Dungeon Key. You can find the Dungeon Key in the Expansions tab of the Eververse store, and it will cost you 2000 silver, or about $20.
What place in the story does the Warlord’s Ruin have?
We still don’t know much about Warlord’s Ruin beyond the name, but we can understand a few details about the dungeon based on Destiny 2 lore.
First of all, we know about it from the “Collections” tab of the dungeon this will include Scorn enemiesbased on the displayed icon.
![Without inscription](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1581/15811374/4227835-20231129151528_1.jpg)
There’s also a short description that gives some clues: “Uncover the hidden stories and lingering grudges in a crumbling Dark Age castle.”
In Destiny’s backstory, “Warlord” was the name given to some of the predecessors of the familiar Guardians players inhabit in the game. Before the Last City or Vanguard came to organize them, the people resurrected by the power of the Light had little guidance. Some of them used their newfound immortality and fancy magic to become territorial dictators, raising small armies. Those people were called military leaders.
Warlords in general were kind of horrible, as the name suggests. They originated in the Dark Ages of Destiny’s history, which followed the apocalyptic collapse that destroyed the technological Golden Age that came with the arrival of the Traveler. During that period, humans were scattered and often hunted by the Fallen and other alien forces still in the solar system. Warlords were like medieval feudal lords, sometimes protecting the people who lived under them, sometimes subduing them, and sometimes victimizing them and conquering or killing anyone in their path. Not all of them were bad – the Crucible merchant Lord Shax was also a warlord and worked to protect his people – but many of them were pretty awful.
In terms of lore, warlords most often originate with the Iron Lords, the predecessor group of Lightbearers that preceded the Guardians. The Iron Lords were former warlords who specifically worked to protect humanity and oppose tyrants, and they fought against various warlords several times. So it stands to reason that the Warlord’s Ruins could tell a story heavily connected to the Iron Lords, including Lord Saladin, the last of them we’re dealing with. (Another Iron Lord, Lady Ephrideth, also technically still exists, but we haven’t seen her since Destiny 1’s Rise of Iron expansion in 2016.)
![Without inscription](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1581/15811374/4227838-destiny2ironlords.jpg)
What we don’t know is how Warlord’s Ruin ties into the ongoing story, but there are some directions it could explore. The legend of the Lightfall expansion mentions how the inhabitants of Neomuna returned to Earth in the post-Crash period, but chose not to report themselves at the time, mainly due to the threat of warlords. While visiting what appears to be the former warlord’s stronghold, we can search for more information about the Collapse and Neomuna’s strange Darkness object, the Veil.
We could also look for information related to Savatun’s post-Crash actions regarding the Veil and the plans she was developing to thwart the Witness. We’ve only gotten hints of what those plans and actions were, but with Savatun resurrected in Season of the Witch, perhaps this is a place to look back at what happened in the past.
There is also some speculation that if this dungeon has a lot to do with the Iron Lords, it may be related to SIVA, the nanomachine plague that eventually wiped out most of the Iron Lords. We learned about SIVA (and dealt with it) during the Rise of Iron campaign, but haven’t heard anything about it since. Bungie didn’t seem to want to revisit SIVA in any significant capacity, but branching it off into a dungeon might be a way to return to that theme without becoming a major part of the rest of the game.
Warlord’s Ruin Rewards
Warning: Spoilers for dungeon loot beyond this point!
Bungie has yet to reveal everything you can get from Warlord’s Ruin, and the full details won’t be released in-game until the dungeon goes live. However, thanks to a slight glitch with Destiny 2’s transmogrification system, we’re getting a glimpse of the dungeon armor before it’s available in-game.
Gallery
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