Destiny 2: How to get Exotic class items and unlock the ‘Dual Destiny' mission, plus a big warning (2024)

The first week of The Final Shape expansion for Destiny 2 may be over, but there’s still plenty of content for players of Bungie’s space fantasy looter shooter to engage with. The start of Week 2 brought the arrival of the game’s first seasonal Episode “Echoes,” and it’s also added special Exotic class items designed specifically for use with The Final Shape’s “multiclassing” Prismatic subclass.

With two randomly rolled Exotic armor perks on each class item that drops, these will undoubtedly become some of the most sought-after gear pieces from The Final Shape for anyone looking to put together the best Prismatic builds. However,actually getting them will require you to unlock and then complete a hidden Exotic mission called “Dual Destiny.” Be warned that this mission can only be done with a two-person fireteam, which means it can’t be completed solo or with three or more players.

I’ve put together a quick guide below that goes over everything you need to know about unlocking the Dual Destiny mission, so read on to learn how and start farming Exotic class items.

How to get Exotic class items in Destiny 2

The process of unlocking the Dual Destiny mission that will give you Exotic class items is pretty obscure and is easy to miss without a guide, but it’s easy once you know what to do and have a teammate with you. First, you’ll need to go to The Final Shape’s The Pale Heart destination and fully complete the Public Event-style Overthrow activity in its The Landing, The Blooming, and The Impasse regions. Overthrow will escalate to Tier 3 as you kill enemies, open chests, and complete small objective-based events (these are marked with Public Event icons); once Tier 3 is done, a boss will spawn that you have to kill.

In each area, killing the final Overthrow boss will cause the text “A Secret-Keeper of the Witch Queen is near…” to appear, indicating that you have five minutes to find and kill this enemy while Overthrow is on cooldown. These are Lucent Hive Wizards, and spawn in the same location within their respective regions each time. Here’s a list of where you can find each one:

• The Landing: In a cave in the southeastern part of the area, near the Lost Sector.
• The Blooming: Near the eastern side of the region, in a purple cave.
• The Impasse: Towards the southwest portion of the zone, close to where Taken forces set up a bubble shield during Overthrow.

Once you’ve killed all three of these Wizards, you’ll see a beam of green light in the sky coming from The Refraction area between The Landing and The Blooming. Head to where its origin point and fight the Dread enemies there until two Subjugators spawn, then damage them until they drop a Light or Darkness orb (each Subjugator will drop one of these).

Pick up one of the orbs and have your ally take the other, then head into the nearby cave that objective markers direct you towards. Inside, you’ll find pools of Light and Darkness energy; dunk the Light and Darkness orbs into their respective pools and a flag you can interact with to start Dual Destiny will spawn (you’ll also get some dialogue from Savathûn). Note that interacting with it will create a Dual Destiny node on the Pale Heart’s Director screen so you can launch the mission in the future without having to complete this process again (this is account-wide, not per character).

I won’t spoil Dual Destiny in this guide (it’s fantastic), but something important to know about it is that one player will need to be using a Light subclass (Arc, Solar, or Void) while the other needs to be on a Darkness one (Stasis or Strand). One or both players can also use Prismatic, provided one Light and one Darkness Super is equipped between the two of you. On top of that, each of the mission’s segments are timed; if you fail to progress before a timer runs out, you’ll be sent back to Orbit.

The mission itself is similar to The Whisper or Zero Hour, though it’s more complicated since it features some raid-like mechanics to figure out (they're not too complicated, though). Again, no spoilers here, but be prepared to communicate with your teammate and do something other than simply slay out. Once you finish the mission, you’ll get a guaranteed drop of Exotic class item armor with random Exotic perk rolls.

Given that they were marketed as a major draw for The Final Shape expansion, solo players will no doubt be very disappointed that unlocking Exotic class items requires playing through a mission in a duo. The good news, though, is that you only have to complete Dual Destiny once; while follow-up runs will guarantee an Exotic class item reward, there’s also a chance they can drop from opened Pale Heart chests after you finish the mission.

Destiny 2 is one of thebest Xbox gamesandbest PC gamesfor fans of multiplayer and looter shooters, and The Final Shape — the final expansion in the Light and Darkness Saga — is finally here and available to play now.