I’ll have a guide out every time the Vanguard is offering double rewards! This week’s Double Rewards Guide is UP! (10/6/20-10/13/20) “A Garden World.”
Lake of Shadows Overview
9/15/2020-9/22/2020 – This week’s Nightfall: The Ordeal is Lake of Shadows. Lake of Shadows is probably the fastest playlist strike and the easiest to complete at higher levels (i.e. master, grand master). At the 1020 level, you’ll likely be able to queue up solo if you’re above the recommended light level and get through it easily. You’ll be matched with random teammates, but in all honesty you might even be able to solo Lake of Shadows if you match your weapons properly. As long as you can reliably kill most of the enemies in the strike and take a Falling Guillotine with you, you’ll get through 1020 no problem. I’ve gotten a few good rewards just from the 1020 level version alone, including enhancement prisms.
At the higher levels, you’ll want to recruit some friends. This week, getting 100,000 points should be easy with two friends at the 1050 difficulty. Make sure everyone is able to handle different champions and match-game. Take out the smaller mobs first, then focus fire on the champions and beefier foes.
Nightfall: The Ordeal Rewards Breakdown
The unique weapon drop for Lake of Shadows is Militia’s Birthright
- 750 (Adept) – Enhancement Cores (Uncommon), Exotic Gear (Rare)
- 1020 (Hero) – Enhancement Cores (Uncommon), Exotic Gear (Uncommon), Enhancement Prisms (Rare)
- 1050 (Legend) – Exotic Gear (Common), Enhancement Prisms (Uncommon)
- 1080 (Master) – Exotic Gear (Common), Enhancement Prisms (Common), Ascendant Shards (Uncommon)
- 1100 (Grand Master) – Exotic Gear (Common), Ascendant Shards (Common)
Additionally, the unique drop for the Lake of Shadows is the Militia’s Birthright. As always, you may complete The Ordeal with 100,000 points to earn weekly pinnacle gear. 2x rewards means strictly that any time you are given the chance to get a reward, you are given an additional chance to earn that reward. Finishing the Ordeal once will equate to having finished it twice any other week. The enhancement prisms will be really useful when you start getting Beyond Light Armor, and you can have fully masterworked armor to go along with your new stasis abilities.
Best Weapons for Lake of Shadows
This week’s Ordeal has Barrier Champions and Overload Champions. The obvious choices, given the seasonal mods, are hand cannons and pulse rifles. It may seem a bit counter-intuitive to run two primary ammo weapons, but you should be fine in the 1050 level Ordeal this week. It’s fairly quick, and you’ll come across a good deal of ammo.
You’ll also want to prioritize Solar weapons in the energy slot when running the 1050 or higher. The team will additionally need to squeeze in some way to deal with Arc shields.
Best Kinetic Weapons
Outbreak Perfected is the top recommendation for this slot
- Outbreak Perfected – Best Exotic pulse rifle for clearing adds, hands down
- Vigilance Wing – Exotic pulse rifle with high RPM due to five shot burst.
- Bad Juju – Exotic full auto pulse rifle with some extra perks to get you through the mission.
- Cold Denial – With unrelenting as a perk, this rifle can get you out of some sticky situations. It’s also legendary, so you can mod the weapon itself and run a different exotic.
- Any decent hand cannon – If I had a pulse rifle or auto rifle I wanted to use in the energy slot, I’d likely use a Dire Promise in this first slot to get extra Overload damage.
- Mountain Top – Always a great AOE weapon, and more useful if your friends have the above covered. You can also use this to direct hit snipers from far away.
Make sure you equip the appropriate mods for each weapon to deal with Overload or Barrier Champions. If you have an exotic pulse rifle, you’ll need to equip the unstoppable pulse rifle arms armor mod, as you can’t equip anything directly to your weapon.
Best Energy Weapons
Luna’s Howl is the top recommendation for this slot
- Luna’s Howl – A solar hand cannon with high RPM and a damage boosting perk.
- Trust – Not a bad second option with dragonfly. Solar hand cannons in this slot will be handy.
- Outlast – A solid solar pulse rifle to help you if you needed to run a hand cannon in the first slot.
- Jian 7 Rifle – A really good arc option for 1050+. It can have Disruption Break, Ricochet Rounds, Dragonfly and it’s a pulse rifle with a mod slot.
- Uriel’s Gift – Or any Arc damage for the 1050+ match-game mechanic. It can also drop with the Shield Disorient perk, which will also be a plus during match-game.
As mentioned above, attach the appropriate seasonal mods. If you are running Uriel’s Gift or a similar weapon to deal with arc damage, make sure you run something like overload grenades and a void subclass, or inferno whip with a solar subclass to deal with the Champions.
Best Power Weapons
- Falling Guillotine – It’s really good.
- Falling Guillotine… Seriously. If you don’t have one, uh, you can basically just go get one from the washing machine next to the Drifter.
You should work toward getting a Falling Guillotine no matter what. Aside from turning your guardian into a Final Fantasy character, it’ll help you burst down anything you’re having trouble with – even combatants with miss-matched shields can be ground up by the monster sword. It should be your go-to for most PvE situations with a few exceptions.
Biiiiiig sword
I should also note that at the 1020 hero level, if you go through matchmaking, you’ll have an easy time doing this strike even without any exotics. I ran this with a Cold Denial, a bad hand cannon, and a Falling Guillotine and managed to get top rewards with ease.
Lake of Shadows Strategy
First, you’re going to want to be careful around corners. It’s not unlikely in Lake of Shadows to turn a corner and find a large unstoppable man who wants to boop you into the ether. These, apparently, are called Phalanx. Understand how your mods work so you can stop this man immediately. You can also just swing your sword into him in a panic.
“no no no NO NO…”
The hardest part of this mission is the outdoor scaffolding area. You’ll have to defeat a wanted wizard after beating the two large boop shields (one will be unstoppable). If you rush inside and sword the wizard, you can take the rest of this part very slow. Don’t try and rush the run here just to get booped dead where your teammates can’t revive you. After this, the only real trouble you should have is against knight fire. Avoid that too.
Lastly, you’ll want to have your big, big sword out for the boss. He will likely live for a total of three seconds as you spin at him. I honestly don’t even know what this boss looks like, as he lives for so little of the fight.
Wrap Up
Lake of Shadows is a real joke, and we love it so very much. Thank you Destiny 2, because Lake of Shadows double rewards is exactly the rush of easy loot we’ve been looking for. Have fun, and enjoy your new wealth of masterwork resources. Get your Destiny 2 double rewards before this event ends on 9/22!
