Destiny 2’s Ascendant Challenges are among several moving parts involving the Dreaming City’s intricate Curse, which envelops the area in a three-week time loop.
The curse ranges from weak to strong to strongest, and each cycle brings you a ton of treasure to hunt for—if you’re brave enough to dive into the Ascendant Plane in search of riches. Destiny 2 has six Ascendant Challenges that rotate every week. They’re a surefire source of Dreaming City gear, including reissued versions of Waking Vigil, Tigerspite, and Twilight Oath.
Finishing an Ascendant Challenge grants a piece of Legendary gear, but you can get your hands on an extra drop if you have Petra Venj’s weekly bounty. These weekly objectives are also a prime target for stacking bounties, since you can have up to six weeklies total—one for each Ascendant Challenge.
Ascendant Challenges yield one piece of gear each week, plus another from Petra’s bounties. Those objectives are character-based, meaning you can get six pieces of Dreaming City gear from Ascendant Challenges alone.
To find the entrance to the Ascendant Challenge, consume an item called Tincture of Queensfoil, available from Petra Venj for five Legendary Shards or found in Dreaming City chests.
Each Ascendant Challenge has a special entrance, and though the challenge changes every week, its entrance remains in the same spot whenever it pops up.
What is this week’s Ascendant Challenge in Destiny 2? (June 25 to July 2)
- Challenge: Keep of Honed Edges
- Entrance: Harbinger’s Seclude (Rheasilvia)
How to find and complete the Keep of Honed Edges Ascendant Challenge in Destiny 2
The Keep of Honed Edges Ascendant Challenge, as its name states, involves using a Hive Sword (sorry if we disappointed any Izanagi’s Burden enthusiasts). Head to the Harbinger’s Seclude in Rheasilvia and go all the way through the area, but without going down to the area with the Ahamkara Skulls. Find a Techeun statue and use a Tincture of Queensfoil to spot a path by the walkway, and follow it to find a portal above the statue.
Once inside the Keep of Honed Edges Ascendant Challenge, kill the enemies that spawn and grab the sword in the center of the room. Use that to hack your way through the Hive, and make liberal use of guarding and your Super if needed. Once the enemies (and the Hive Knights) are down, grab the sword and head to the floating island with the portal. You can use the sword to fly around, but mind the colossal rocks that are coming your way. Get to the portal to wrap up another Ascendant Challenge on your list.
How to get Dreaming City gear in Destiny 2
Dreaming City gear got another revamp with Season of the Wish, making those weapons even more relevant. While they still performed decently, perks like Voltshot on Waking Vigil can give them even more of a fighting chance. Blind Well continues to be a good source of the new gear (though its new power delta makes it more of a slog than before).
Petra offers a weekly bounty for completing the Ascendant Challenge if you want to earn Dreaming City gear from exploration, awarding you an extra piece of gear for your trouble. Each week, she also offers a bounty that costs Dark Fragments and yields an Offering to the Oracle. Taking the reward to the Oracle in the Spine of Keres gives you an extra drop and, on weeks where the Curse is strongest, lets you visit Queen Mara Sov’s throne room. You can also find an Ahamkara Bone there if you’re hunting for Cursebreaker.
In addition, check out Petra’s bounties every day for a daily objective that awards gear, as seen in its tooltip. Finishing eight daily bounties and doing Petra’s weekly quest will yield Dreaming City gear if you purchase the objectives.
Like Ascendant Challenges, these are on a weekly lockout per character; you can accomplish them more than once a week as long as you’re not on the same Guardian.
