Season 11 has brought new Umbral Engrams to Destiny 2 . MeinMMO shows you how to open and focus them to determine your loot at the Prism Engraver yourself.
This is new: With the start of Season 11, Destiny 2 wanted to give players more options to determine their loot themselves and effectively hunt for God-Rolls. This is now made possible by the Umbral Engrams.
We explain what this new feature is all about. In the season of arrival, the Umbral Engrams and their focusing become an important game element that seems quite complex at first glance but offers cool possibilities.
Getting Umbral Engrams: Obtaining Umbral Engrams is the easy part of the task, as the encrypted items drop pretty much everywhere in the game world. You can randomly receive some in almost every activity or playlist – compare this system to the regular, random Engrams.
To open the Umbral Engrams, you need to go to the Tower, to the Wanderer. We will go into the various possibilities that come with it in detail in this article.
Bungie has already extensively commented on the idea behind the new Engrams and their locations before Season 11:
Focus Engrams – All about the Prism Engraver in Destiny 2
This is how to open Umbral Engrams: If you have obtained an Umbral Engram, you cannot just open it. You need to first cleanse these items “possessed” by darkness. Bring them to the Wanderer in the Tower.
To the left of the NPC, you will find two devices:
- the Prism Engraver
- the Umbral Decoder
The Decoder is quite simple: Bring Umbral Engrams here and receive your loot. Essentially, this is a Cryptarch for evil items. However, through focusing, you can greatly influence the content of the Engrams yourself.
This is what the Prism Engraver can do: The machine serves as your seasonal hub. It replaces the Obelisks from Season 9 and Rasputin’s Seraph Bunker from Season 10.
By using “Distorted Energy,” you can raise your seasonal rank here and earn rewards. The Prism Engraver offers a variety of functions:
- Focus Engrams and thus determine which weapons or armor you receive
- Here you can increase your seasonal rank and receive rewards – this requires “Distorted Energy”
- Access to Bounties – These provide seasonal resources such as “Distorted Energy” and “Altered Element”
- Through the “Gifts of Light & Darkness” tab, you unlock bonuses for seasonal activities, find more Umbral Engrams, or save resources when focusing – new bonuses are unlocked through ranking up the Prism Engraver.
- Seasonal mods and a new ship are also available
This is how focusing works: By focusing, you narrow down the potential loot pool of the Engrams. This way, you decide which loot your Umbral Engrams should contain.
Each week, you even have free focus options available, which you can increase up to a maximum of 6 through ranking up. Depending on the desired loot, the process costs different seasonal resources.
You have the choice of three types of focusing:
- Simple focusing: Costs 50 “Altered Element” and offers 4 Engram specifications
- Random new Pyramid weapons
- Random new season armor
- One of 6 weapons from Year 3 at the current level (these weapons from Season 8, Season 9, and Season 10 can no longer be found in the game)
- One of 4 Gambit or Reckoning weapons at the current level
- Improved Arsenal focusing: Costs 100 “Altered Element” and significantly narrows the weapon selection – For example, you only have the new sword and the new bow as contents of the Umbral Engram. You need to unlock this focusing in the Season Pass (Rank 32 in the premium track).
- Improved Armor focusing: Costs 250 “Altered Element” and a Trace Override and allows you to determine the stat value of the armor – For example, you can specify that the armors from the Umbral Engram are optimized for Discipline if you like to throw grenades. You need to unlock this focusing in the Season Pass (Rank 72 in the premium track).
Check out the video from Nexxoss Gaming about Umbral Engrams here:
Tips for Umbral Engrams and Focusing
We have some additional tips that will make handling Umbral Engrams and their focusing easier for you. MeinMMO will continually expand this section throughout Season 11.
Use your Umbral Engrams: In the first hours of the new season, we have already found dozens of Umbral Engrams. We didn’t feel like we had to be particularly careful with them.
What should I level up first? First, utilize properties that save you resources. For example, there is the option to recover materials used with each decoded Engram – even if only in small amounts, it’s better than nothing.
You can’t really screw up with the bonuses under the “Gifts of Light & Darkness” tab. Before you can use the more powerful abilities, all previous bonuses must be activated first.
This bonus is significant: One of the later unlocks in “Gifts of Light & Darkness” grants you an additional alternative weapon perk and a chance for higher stats on armors – Making the Engrams considerably more worthwhile.
Collect resources quickly: Through the two weekly Bounties, you can quickly secure 1000 units of “Distorted Energy.” You can also farm this resource with three characters if needed.
The repeatable Bounties unfortunately only bring experience points, so do not prioritize them. You can also acquire needed resources through the Season Pass and seasonal Triumphs.
Take your time: Over the next three months, you will automatically level up by completing Bounties and seasonal activities, so you don’t have to rush to level the Prism Engraver.
Do you think it’s good that all activities now drop relevant loot and you can decide what’s in the new Umbral Engrams? Are you more interested in exotic weapons? Then you will find what you’re looking for here: Destiny 2: All new Exotics of Season 11 that are known so far
