Destiny 2 Leviathan raid guide: complete walkthrough, defeat Calus, secret chest locations and loot

Destiny 2’s Leviathan raid is here, and it’s a beast.

You’re going to need at least a little help for Destiny’s 2 first raid, Guardian. Luckily, we’re here to help.

Now that the Leviathan raid has been beaten by Fireteams including The Legend Himself clan, we know that the raid should take around six hours for an experienced team of Guardians. That’s not too imposing if you set aside the time, and these things only get easier the more you do them – expect hour-long runs of Leviathan over the coming weeks as players discover shortcuts to cheesing their way through it.

Leviathan raid power level requirements and getting started

To attempt the Leviathan raid you’re going to need to be rocking a power level of 260 or higher. That’s a conservative estimate, and obviously the higher you are the more confident you can be of tackling the raid successfully – realistically you probably want to be closer to 280 before you consider doing it.

If you’re in need of help reaching that figure, we have some very useful tips on how to level up quickly and get more power as part of our extensive Destiny 2 guide.

As with any raid in Destiny, you need to be in a Fireteam of six players. While many will prefer to do this with a pre-formed team of friends, Destiny 2 features a Guided Games service, which is now available for raid activities. This will let you play with other players not on your friend list.

If you want to watch the whole raid in one go, this video from Arekkz highlights the entire activity. Or you can scroll down for a full text description and a breakdown of the three trials and boss fight.

To get started with the Leviathan raid, open the Directory and seek out the raid location on Nessus. What you should expect is a series of Trials created by Calus. Once completed, complete with boss fights, you’ll be able to grab the rewards for all your hard work.

Got your friends and feeling confident? Let’s begin…

Calus will greet you and invite you to Enter the Pools as soon as you arrive at the rather magnificent Leviathan. There are enemies here but if you don’t engage them they won’t fight you back, so you can pass through unharmed. You’ll also see objectives; The Proving – complete every trial Calus has set before you, and The Labyrinth – loot 3 of Calus’ gifts in the underbelly of The Leviathan.

Head up to the top of the building using the man-cannons and follow the corridors until you arrive at Castellum.

The Leviathan Castellum

This isn’t technically a trial and is simple in theory; collect and defend three standards while defeating all the enemies and any bosses. Find the hologram standards designed like a chalice, blades and a beast.

You’ll have to fight off multiple enemies here. Kill the Standard Bearers and you’ll be able to pick up the standard and run it back to the triangular pedestal. All three standards are placed in the same spot, so a good technique is to split your fireteam. At least three should defend any standards you’ve already captured so the Cabal don’t steal them back, while the rest should be picking up the standards and running them back to the rest of the team. Remember, if you’re holding the standard you can’t fight, so make sure as many adds have been cleared out as possible.

Once all three standards have been placed in the triangle, the doors will open and you can collect your loot – purple engrams, Calus’ Selected Shader and a Emperor Calus Token. Now head through the corridors to the next section.

The Royal Pools Trial

The Royal Pools have four pressure plates in the corners, with another in the center. Four Guardians should stand on the corner plates, which will grant them the Psionic Protection buff for 1 minute, protecting them from environmental damage. Don’t stand in the pool of liquid surrounding the pressure plate as it will drain your health.

By standing on all four pressure plates chains will rise in front of each plate – stand on them long enough and 9 lanterns will appear in the central chamber. These need to be destroyed in order to pass the trial. You’ll need to clear out Cabal but also Ceremonial Bathers who rise with the chain.

Once the minute of protection is up, one of the other two Fireteam members should swap with a Fireteam member on a pressure plate to activate the buff and keep the chains moving. There’s also the Psionic Protection buff in the center of the room as well, remember. It’s important to communicate here and let the fireteam know when you’re down to around 10 seconds left on your buff, so that someone else can swap positions and take your place. Once the lanterns appear in the central chamber hit them hard to destroy them, but watch out for a lot of spawning Ceremonial Bathers. If the lanterns recede back into the ceiling you’ll have to start the process again.

Completing this will reward you with more Emperor Calus Tokens.

Return to the Castellum Standard Bearers

You now have to repeat the first trial with the Standards and Cabal enemies. This time the position of the standards have moved, but that’s really the only difference. Repeat the steps above and move on to the next trial.

Pleasure Gardens Trials

Prepare for a different type of trial here, with a weird stealth section. Kill all of the enemies, then head towards the statue. Two of your Fireteam should now pick up the two orbs and charge them using the light, before heading to higher ground. As the doorway opens in the statue, the four remaining team members should charge inside and pick up the pollen.

Team mates with pollen need to make their way to a flower and once there the team mate with an orb fires at it, which will give the member near the flower a strength buff. This can be done multiple times to stack a good amount of damage.

Why do you need this power? Because there are six Royal Beasts patrolling (they look like big dogs) and they will absolutely kick your ass. Normal weapons won’t do an ounce of damage – you need to have the power buff stacked up as high as possible before you can cause serious pain. Once Guardians have enough power buff, they should attack the Royal Beasts.

The important thing to remember here is that if a Guardian carrying the pollen is seen by a Royal Beast a 60 second countdown begins. You all then have a minute to do as much damage as possible and get back inside the statue before the countdown ends or you will die. You can retreat to this safehouse three times before the whole statue saferoom locks up and you have to start again. All six Royal Beats need to be killed before you can move on.

You’ll pick up the Irrigation Key as one of your loot rewards for this trial.

Castellum Standard Bearers… again

This is the third and final time you’ll have to tackle the Castellum Standard Bearers Trial but as you’ve already done it twice you should know exactly what to do, right?

The Gauntlet Trial

The whole team should head towards the round platforms and kill the spawning enemies. As you do so, the meter under each pillar will fill up. Once these are full, two orbs will appear and two Guardians should grab them. They will be transported to corridors nearby.

This is actually easy to figure out. The players with the orbs need to jump through a gate with circles, one of which has a red ring around them. The runner must jump through this red ringed circle. However, the runner shouldn’t jump through until he has called out to the other players where that circle is (“top” or “middle” for example) and they have shot the triangles on the corresponding pillar that DOES NOT contain the red circle. So if the runner shouts out “top” the other two players should shoot the middle and bottom triangles. The corridors for runners get tricker with pitfalls but it should all be manageable with good communication. At the end of each corridor the runner can place the orb in a fountain and repeat the process.

Do this three times and then the whole Fireteam can pick up an orb and dunk it in the fountain to pass the trial.

Kill Emperor Calus

You’ve completed the three trials so now it’s time to defeat the big man himself, Emperor Calus. Once inside the throne room, shoot the chalice from his hand and take down the spawning enemies.

After a while Calus will transport three players to a purple dimension where they will be faced with Calus’ giant head with a symbol on it. Each player will see a different symbol.

Meanwhile in the throne room, as well as fighting off adds, the players will see four Psions with different symbols above their heads – beast, chalice, blades and sun.

The objective here is for the three in the other dimension to call out the symbols they see, and the three in the throneroom to kill the Psion with the symbol that wasn’t called out. So if the team calls out “sun, blades, chalice” you should be killing the Psion with the beast symbol. Killing these Psions in order will shorten the barrier protecting Calus’ head in the other dimension. Guardians in the other dimension will also be fighting Psions, and it’s important to take down those on the ground first or risk being blasted off the map.

Once the barrier is lowered Calus will fire a massive amount of projectiles. Survive that and the three Guardians will be able to run into orbs and be transported back to the throne room. Now it’s just a case of jumping on the glowing platforms to get the Force of Will buff and hitting Calus with everything you’ve got. It’s not easy, but what did you expect? Try not to get the whole team wiped.

Leviathan raid secret chests

The raid isn’t just about the loot you get as a reward for defeating Calus and his minions. It turns out there are nine secret chests hidden throughout the raid, all of which will gift you some pretty sweet fear. You can follow our guide to all secret Leviathan chest locations or just jump straight in with this video to see them all: