While some might feel that actually enjoying Patrols is the wrong way to play Destiny 2, the activity is emblematic of the Destiny experience as a whole no matter what. How do you get to patrolling The Final Shape‘s new Pale Heart location, though?
Whether you’re a Destiny 2 newcomer trying to make a name for themselves or a Vanguard veteran on the hunt for cutting-edge Exotics, Patrols are something you’re going to have to get around to doing sooner or later. For what it’s worth, I quite enjoy them myself due to their laid-back and explorative nature, but campaign missions, Strikes, and all the other targeted missions are obviously more exciting. Whatever the case may be, you won’t have immediate access to Patrols in the Pale Heart. Here’s how to get clear of that blockade!
Unlocking Patrols in The Final Shape’s Pale Heart zone
While you usually had to finish the entire campaign of a given DLC to unlock its respective Patrols, this curiously isn’t the case with The Final Shape. Bungie has chosen to hold back the actual last mission of the expansion until after the community clears The Final Shape‘s Raid. The good news, though, is that you don’t need to finish the campaign itself to unlock Patrols in The Pale Heart: instead, just wrap up the Iconoclast mission and get started with the Destined Heroes questline.
Doing so sends you on a short but satisfying trip across some of the key locales of the Pale Heart, which results in Patrol activities opening up after you’re done with the questline. In classic Bungie fashion, Destiny 2‘s post-campaign activities for The Final Shape are some of the most interesting content in the DLC, and this specific questline will finally have you interacting with Micah-10, also known as the “den-mother” to wayward Ghosts.
As far as The Final Shape‘s Patrol activities go, there’s not really that much excitement if you were hoping for mechanical innovation. Guardians will still end up embroiled in guerilla warfare while doing Patrols: assassinations, materiel destruction, exploration… It’s the sort of stuff you keep doing to get a sense of how a new location works in practice, and to chill after you’ve wrapped up the admittedly challenging Legendary Campaign. So, good stuff, albeit not innovative at all in most respects!
Naturally, if you’re not even remotely close to jumping off the never-ending ride that is Destiny 2‘s live-service setup, then any new piece of content is a meaningful addition to the roster. The Pale Heart’s Patrols take you on a ride through a visually striking and novel area, at the very least, and that’s about as much as we could’ve asked for in the first place.
