The Pantheon is a time-limited endgame challenge in Destiny 2, which arrives has part of the Into the Light update. That means you only have a few weeks — until servers go down ahead of The Final Shape expansion on June 3 — to complete The Pantheon and earn all of its rewards.
In this Destiny 2 Pantheon guide, I’ll walk you through how Pantheon works, the Pantheon rewards you can get out of it, and what the week-to-week schedule looks like.
The Pantheon guide: What is Pantheon and how does it work?
The Pantheon is a raid gauntlet that also acts as a raid catch up mechanic. There are four different difficulty levels of The Pantheon, which release one week after the other. The lowest difficulty version of The Pantheon starts on April 30, and will put you at a five Power disadvantage, whereas the final difficulty on May 21 will put you at a 20 Power disadvantage.
Pantheon starts with only four raid bosses, gathered together from a variety of different Destiny 2 raids. You’ll start in the Golgoroth encounter from King’s Fall. Once you kill him, you’ll receive your rewards before getting teleported to the Caretaker encounter from Vow of the Disciple. This continues until you beat the final boss for that week.
If you want to see the first Pantheon activity (Atraks Sovereign) in action, you can watch a complete playthrough from Esoterickk on YouTube:
In addition to an increased difficulty, subsequent weeks also gain more bosses. So while week one starts with four bosses, week two will take you through the original four and then ask you to kill a fifth. There will be a sixth boss on week three, and then week four adds two more bosses, tasking you with killing eight endgame bosses in a row. Each boss also has a few tweaks to them to make them even more difficult than before.
That might sound tough — and it looks like it will be — but there are some great boons in Pantheon to help you succeed. Like Master raids, The Pantheon has burns, meaning certain elements are more powerful and deal bonus damage. There are also some modifiers that are unique to Pantheon that will help increase your damage and survivability, like giving your Fireteam a buff when someone uses their class ability nearby.
Destiny 2 Pantheon rewards
As for why you’d want to subject yourself to The Pantheon, the rewards are pretty substantial. Each time you kill a boss, raid loot from the raids featured in Pantheon practically rain from the sky. This is a great way to get some raid weapons you’ve been missing, or even fill out your crafting patterns.
But the best part of The Pantheon activity is the “Divine Weaponry” quest. If you manage to complete all the bosses in Atraks Sovereign Pantheon, you can choose from a collection of raid Exotics you might be missing. You can guarantee yourself one raid Exotic as part of completing this quest — weapons that have always been random in the past, and can take dozens of clears to earn.
Here’s the full list of Exotics you’ll be able to choose from in Week 1 of Pantheon:
- Eyes of Tomorrow rocket launcher, Deep Stone Crypt
- Touch of Malice scout rifle, King’s Fall
For completing the week 3 or 4 Pantheon, you’ll be able to select a second Exotic from this pool:
- Collective Obligation pulse rifle, Vow of the Disciple
- Conditional Finality shotgun, Root of Nightmares
- One Thousand Voices fusion rifle, Last Wish
Finally, there’s the Godslayer title, which will require you to not only kill all the Pantheon bosses before June 3, but kill them quickly. Each boss also has a bonus timer, and if you kill them with enough points, you’ll get a Platinum medal, netting you a Triumph you need for Godslayer and a free Adept raid weapon once per week.
The Pantheon bosses list in order
The Pantheon will add a new encounter each week leading up to The Final Shape, headlined by the final boss in the run, and will include all previous encounters alongside a Power difficulty increase.
Here are the bosses you’ll need to clear in each The Pantheon encounter, as well as the most noticeable changes you can expect:
- Golgoroth (all Pantheon encounters) — Golgoroth now inflicts two Guardians with Unstable Light at once, spawns additional enemies for gaze holders to deal with
- Caretaker (all Pantheon encounters) — Taken Phalanx now spawn near Caretaker to harass the tanks
- Macrocosm (all Pantheon encounters) — Zo’Aurc spawns additional fire tornadoes during the planet moving phase, a Tormentor spawns after all planets are in place
- Atraks Sovereign (all Pantheon encounters) — A Tormentor can spawn in the lower or upper part of the map during the buff gathering stage
- Oryx Exalted (Oryx Exalted playlist onwards) — There are additional Light-Eater Knight spawns per-phase, a Tormentor spawns after the damage dealing phase, plate Knights are now boss-level enemies with Solar shields, and there are now multiple Oryx shades in his between-phase prison
- Rhulk Indomitable (Rhulk Indomitable playlist onwards) — Tormentors now spawn in opening phase, and a second Rhulk will appear in the end arena. This Rhulk takes no damage and does not use the beam attack. It will, however, chase you and your Fireteam around and literally kick you to death.
- Riven of a Thousand Voices (Nezarec Sublime only) — Riven now takes far less damage on any floor that isn’t the top floor, meaning the infamous Riven cheese is dead and you’ll need to do the fight “correctly.”
- Nezarec Sublime (Nezarec Sublime only) — Nezarec’s big change is that you can no longer deal damage from the platforms, meaning the damage phase plays out a lot more like Rhulk from Vow of the Disciple: running and gunning with fusion rifles, rocket launchers, or grenade launchers. The Centurions that appear during the running phase also have temporary immunity shields.
All done? As you wait for The Final Shape, you might want to complete the return of “Zero Hour”, and grab yourself a craftable Whisper of the Worm in “The Whisper” mission. Once you have the latter, be sure to find all of the Oracle locations and upgrade your Whisper of the Worm with Taken Blights.