Destiny 2 – Presage (Dead Man’s Tale) Quest Guide

Distress Signal

To get started with the quest, you will need to find an intercepted distress signal inside of the “Arms Dealer” strike. You can start this right from the EDZ director, it doesn’t need to be inside a playlist or nightfall version.

Once you load into the strike, go to the hologram of the Traveler Shard in the middle of the room, across from it should be an open door.

Upon entering the door, you’ll be kindly greeted by some flame turrets, traverse the room taking them all out, until you arrive outside and see a yellow-bar Phalanx, kill the Phalanx and you’ll receive an objective marker. Head to the location of the marker and use the “Activate” prompt when you get to the tablet.

Once you do this, you should receive a common consumable called “Intercepted Distress Signal,” once you collect this, return to Zavala in the tower. Upon speaking to him, you will receive a new monologue cutscene and an exotic quest.

With the quest in your inventory, open the Tangled Shore map and start the mission, “Exotic Quest: Presage”

Boarding the Derelict Vessel

Once you load into the mission, the first thing you’ll do is head to the platform to your left.

After this, you’ll need to make a series of jumps to get inside of the ship, if you’re confident in your ability to find these jumps, you can skip this part of the guide, if you need help, stick around and follow the route shown in the images below.

Now, you should be face to face with a red glowing hallway, go down it and turn to the left.

You will need to shoot some vents open to pass through the halls, some of them lead to secrets that are also dead ends.

Eventually you’ll come to this room, drop down, and towards the middle left of the room will be a vent you can shoot open, blast it and go through.

You’ll eventually see a vent on the ground, you’re going to, you guessed it, shoot it open and drop down.

After dropping down, you will see a lever on your right, pull it.

Congratulations, you’ve officially boarded the Glykon, but we’re just getting started

Into the Dark

After flipping the lever, ignore the BIG door that opens to back outside where you started. Instead, turn around and go through the other door behind you.

Upon entering the room, you should see a portal looking wall in front of you, and an odd spore-like plant to your left.

To go through the portal, you will need to stand next to the spores and shoot them until they explode, once you do this you will receive a buff called “Egregore Link,” with this buff active, you can pass through the portal. Be aware that touching the portal while you do NOT have the buff will deal loads of damage to you.

Upon entering this new room, directly to your upper left will be a pipe system, jump on top of it and follow it to a vent door. Shoot it open and pass through.

After passing through here, you should come to a hole above your head, jump out of it and you will be in a room full of pipes, you should only need to make 2 jumps to get to the top and continue onward.

After going through the door up top, you should locate a hole to drop down into the next area.

Bridging the Gaps

You’re going to be doing a lot of back and forth in this part of the mission, good luck.

After you dropped down from above, go into the room directly behind you. There will be some high-health Screeb enemies in there so knock ’em out before they do the same to you.

After the Screebs are dead, head to the back of the room, around a stack of junk there will be a lever, pull it.

Once you pull the lever, head back out of the room, a door will have opened that has some of those Egregore spores in it. Apply the buff and jump the gap between the two rooms.

Once you made the jump, go directly forward inside of that room, you should see a smaller room with two Egregore portals inside, go inside one before your buff runs out. Once inside, drop down off the ledge to the ground below, there’s more enemies in here so be on the lookout for them. Jump up onto the next ledge to your right after you drop down.

Cross the gap to the other side, directly to your right after you make the jump should see a sparking cylindrical object, I’ll be calling them fuses from now on.

Shoot the fuse until it explodes, then a hatch door below it should open up, drop down into it.

After entering the lower room, walk out and to the right, above you should be a ledge to jump up on.

After getting up on the ledge, there should be a lever around the corner, pull it, big surprise I know.

Go across to the other side of the room and jump onto the ledge, to the left side should be a hallway, go through it to get back outside to the gap. Cross it, on the back side of the pillar touching the other ledge has a lever on the back of it, pull it.

After flipping the lever, cross the gap one more time back to the other side, go back through the hallway and jump down back to the ground, to your right should be a door, a fuse is inside, destroy it.

After this, jump back up on the ledge, go out of the hallway again, and don’t worry, no more gap jumping. You’re going to drop down onto a platform, it looks really narrow from the top, but it will automatically rotate to be horizontal once you get close enough, so you’ll have plenty of wiggle room.

After you’re on the platform, an open door should be to your side, drop down into it and you’ll start sliding into a big open area. Make sure you use your double jump before you land to break your fall, you’ll instantly get killed from fall damage if you don’t.

On the other side of the room is a lever, when you’re ready, pull it and it will start the trash compactor.

The Trash Compactor

This is going to be a pretty short segment of the guide, because most of this encounter is mostly randomly generated.

Once you pull the lever to start the compactor, the walls will start closing in and the floor will slide open to reveal dozens upon dozens of vents. Some of them will have a glowing object underneath them that you can see through the slits in the vents.

You will shoot those vents open and destroy the fuses inside of them, after breaking all of the fuses, head to the vent surrounded by red blinking lights, shoot it open and drop down inside of it.

I should also mention that Screebs spawn while the compactor is active, if you have a hunter on your team, a Silence and Squall (Stasis Super) will take care of most of them pretty easily. If you die to the compactor, you will all respawn outside in the hallway right behind the ledge to drop down into the compactor door. No screebs will spawn after the first time the lever is pulled, making it way easier the second time you start the compactor than the first.

Combat Zone

We’re now at a very combat focused part of the mission, good luck.

After escaping the trash compactor, you will be dropped inside of a very small and red-lit room. Climb up onto the box that has a trail leading off to the right, should be the one closest to the tablet on the ground.

Follow the slim hallway until you reach your mom’s house lol a room with an obvious hole in the center, drop down into it. This will send you into a respawn restricted zone, you will see a boss appear in the far side of the room, after he takes a small amount of damage (about 1/8th of his health) he will go immune and disappear. After this happens, you will be left to deal with a whole bunch of trash mobs, the most guidance I can give you here is good luck, shouldn’t be too difficult if you’re skilled at PvE combat.

After everything is dead, there’s a door right behind where the boss was at that is now unlocked, go through it.

You will now have to traverse through some dimly lit rooms, no switches to pull or anything, just some time to decompress after the last fight.

You’ll eventually reach a hangar, once you step inside you will enter another respawn restricted zone, this fight is much harder than the last, lots more trash mobs to deal with on top of two VERY tanky Abominations. The only strategy I have is to kill the trash mobs first before engaging the two Abominations, every time an Abomination is killed it will spawn another wave of trash mobs.

Once you kill the two Abominations, as well as any trash mobs left, the respawn restriction will end, and it will be time to carry on with your mission.

Space Walkin’

Once you’ve killed all enemies the area, you will head to the hangar window on the far side of the complex. You will be able to see a platform outside of it, jump to it.

From there, you’ll see another platform close by, go to that one and use it to enter the second hangar.

Once inside, there is a door up on the ledge, you should be able to make the jump up to it, but if not, there is a hanging platform off to the side that should make the jump much easier.

Enter the door and fall down into the hole inside, you’re now ready to enter The Maze.

The Maze

Upon exiting the hangars, you will drop down into a room with a dead Scorn laid out on the table, this is more of a landmark than anything, you don’t need to do anything with it, (as of Feb. 19th 2021.)

Enter the room and go around the Darkness growths to your left, concealed behind all the vines should be a lever, pull it to open the door right next to it which leads to an Egregore plant.

Apply yourself the Egregore link buff and go around to the other side of the room to the unlocked door. Pass through the Egregore portal onto the other side.

Upon passing through it should lead you to a room with a large cylindrical structure in the center, there are a few Screebs in here to make sure to take care of them before proceeding.

On the other side of the structure is a lever, pull it.

This will open a door across from you which contains a fuse inside, destroying this fuse will eliminate the electric wall above you, be quick though, this fuse regenerates after a few seconds and will turn the electric wall back on.

Upon reaching the upper area behind the electric wall, there will be a lever on the right side of the room, activate it.

This will open a door on the opposite side of the room, inside of that room is another lever, pull it to open the door out, also opening the door to another Egregore plant. Drop down and go to your left, it will be along that wall. Apply the Egregore buff to yourself and follow the route below to get to the next area.

After passing through, you will eventually reach a room with a few trash mobs inside, clear them all out. On the far end of the room, there should be a fuel tank looking structure, on the side of it is a lever, pull it.

Right next to the ramp is a door that is now open, there’s a turret inside so be sure to destroy it as fast as possible as it does pretty decent damage to you.

After the turret is destroyed, go inside the room, to your immediate right is a fuse, destroy it.

This will open up a door near the top of the ramp behind some crates.

Inside this room is an Egregore plant, apply it’s buff to yourself and go back over to the area of the room where you found the fuel tank with a lever on it, diagonal from it should be an Egregore portal in the floor.

We’re almost done with the maze section, keep it up!

Upon dropping through the portal, you will descend into a red-lit room with some vent doors, you will only need to shoot open two sets of them.

The ones you need to shoot open are (while facing the ledge) the set to your left, and the set to your right.

The path sprouting from the left leads to an Egregore plant, and the one to the right leads to the exit, but as you’ve probably guessed, you need the Egregore plant to get to the exit. Before you grab the Egregore Link though, it’s probably best to clear out the screebs on the path to the right, once you reach the intersection from the right side, wait there. After a few seconds, a few screebs will come out, deal with them accordingly.

After they’re dealt with, run back to the LEFT path from where you entered this area at and grab the Egregore Link buff. Once you do, head back to the intersection with the screebs and take a left turn, this should lead you down a One-Way corridor. Follow the corridor till you reach the Egregore Portal and pass through it. On the other side should be a lever, pull it, and you are officially done with the maze!

(And I’m done writing the most annoying part of the guide.)

The Home Stretch

You’re almost to the final boss! Keep going, Guardian!

Upon pulling the final lever in the maze, it will open up back to the room you started the maze in, with the scorn on the table and such. Go to the Egregore plant in that room and apply the buff. You should see a new door has opened in that room since you’ve last been there.

Inside is an Egregore portal, pass through it.

It will lead you to a room full of platforms and ledges, as well as an Egregore plant right next to the portal, you’ll need it later. For now, jump on to the platform in front of you, it looks slim, but like the platform next to the trash compactor, it automatically rotates when you get close enough, this goes for every platform in this room.

Once on this platform, any keen-eyed Guardian will be able to see the faint glow of a fuse on the other side of the grate wall, you will need to destroy it from the other side to open another door inside the chamber.

Once this fuse is destroyed, the door that’s right behind you will open. After this, return to the start of the chamber where the Egregore plant is. Apply the buff and head into the room that you just opened with the fuse. There’s an Egregore portal inside with another plant inside of it, pass through it, shoot it to give yourself the buff again and continue on to the end of the room.

Pass through the Egregore portal at the end. There’s a lever inside the room, this is to open a Egregore plant towards the end of the room in case one of your teammates didn’t make it to the portal in time and their buff ran out, no need to press it if everyone made it in time or if you’re doing this solo.

You’re now ready to fight the final boss, The Locus of Communion

Locus of Communion

You’re almost at your sweet, sweet reward. Keep it up!

You’ll notice a white-lit circle at the room you entered after the jumping sequence, this is to place a Raid Banner down for ammo, be aware if you wipe during the boss fight it does not respawn you here, so you’ll only be able to use the Raid Banner once.

Once you’re ready to fight the boss, shoot the Egregore Plant at the front of the room and pass through the portal to begin.

Similar to your earlier encounter with the Locus, he will teleport away after he takes about 1/7th or 1/8th of his health in damage. He won’t teleport far this time though, instead he will be, quite literally, right under your noses. But you cannot fight him yet because where he’s at will kill you if you go down there without doing the mechanic of this room.

There will be tons of trash mobs inside the room, as well as a few majors, clear them all out. Once you do, two terminals inside the room will now have the “Activate” prompt available.

There is one terminal on each side of the room, but there is three in total you need to activate. Once the two are activated, head inside the unlocked room in the center of the arena. The final terminal is inside of it, there’s a single trash mob inside of there so make sure to clear it out before activating the terminal. You will take constant fire damage inside of this room until it’s terminal is activated.

Once you’ve activated all three terminals, it’s finally time to give this boss what he deserves. Locate a ledge on either side of the room, it should now have a white-lit panel right by it instead of red.

Drop down into the lower room and you’ll be greeted by the boss, he’s incredibly aggressive so I would strongly advise using something like Anarchy to keep constant DPS while dodging his attacks as well as the waves of mobs he spawns.

After you’ve done enough damage, the room will turn red again. You will have a few seconds to get out of there before you start to take fire damage. It does not instantly kill you, but there’s plenty of trash mobs waiting for you above, so you’ll want to have plenty of health to deal with them.

It’s now a process of rinse and repeat. Kill the mobs, activate the terminals, drop down, DPS and come back up. There’s no final stand or change of mechanics any time during this fight, just take your time and stay alive.

Once you’ve slain the Locus of Communion, it’s time to collect your reward. I will not be showing screenshots for this part as not to spoil the big reveal. There’s an actual objective marker this time showing you where to go, so it should be pretty obvious.

Enter the final room, claim your reward (be sure to wait for the “MISSION COMPLETE” at the top of your screen) and then return to Zavala at the tower. You will then receive your weapon, and the quest will be over.

Congratulations, Guardian, you are now the proud owner of the “Dead Man’s Tale” exotic Scout Rifle, enjoy it!

Thank You!

Thank you for reading my guide on this mission, this was about 4 or 5 hours of work, getting the screenshots, writing everything out, revisions, etc.

I really hope this at least helps someone out there get this new exotic. I love this new mission so much, it’s probably one of my favorite in Destiny at the moment. In fact, it’s the entire reason I wrote this guide, so that other people can enjoy the experience as much as I did.

I did this blind day one when it came out and it was a blast, but I understand people get confused, so I wanted to write this guide and sort it out in a way that people can easily skip between sections to get the help they need at that point in time.

Anyways, that’s enough rambling from me, thank you for your time!

-Ludophobia

(P.S., I intend on updating this guide whenever the “Master” difficulty is released, so keep an eye out for it!)

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