Destiny 2 Cooperative Focus missions are Final Shape campaign missions that feature extra puzzles and mechanics to deal with upping the challenge. You must pass a debuff between your fireteam to prevent deaths, face challenging enemies, and struggle around limited revives too. However, these tougher co-op missions are necessary for certain challenges and quests, but they offer their own Destiny 2 rewards as well, such as Pale Heart weapons and even Ascendant Shards. Here’s what you need to know about Cooperative Focus mode in Destiny 2, including each of the additional works.
Destiny 2 Cooperative Focus mode explained
The Cooperative Focus mode in Destiny 2 adds extra modifiers and mechanics that encourage and emphasize cooperative play, meaning communication and good teamwork is key if you are to get through them. It's only available on the Ascent, Dissent, and Destiny 2 Iconoclasm missions from the Destiny 2 The Final Shape campaign. You can find the three Cooperative Focus mission activity nodes on the Pale Heart map under the Replayable Missions section.
The extra mechanics and modifiers do add more of challenge to each mission, so they're less straightforward to get through but also aren't punishingly difficult, especially if you've got good teammates. Having one player close to or over the 2005 Power level will also help a lot. Speaking of which, you should buddy up with at least one other person, but Cooperative Focus missions are much easier with a full three-person fireteam, especially since there's no enemy difficulty scaling based on how many players are in your fireteam.
Here's how Cooperative Focus affects these missions and how the extra mechanics work:
- Enemies in Cooperative Focus missions are more aggressive, heavily shielded, and appear in greater numbers. The Galvanized and Chaff modifiers are also active, so enemies have more health and are harder to stun, and your radar is disabled.
- Reviving teammates is limited in Restricted Zones. Whenever you reach a Restricted Zone, each player is given one Revive Token, so you each have one opportunity to revive another player. When a player dies, you must revive them within roughly 90 seconds, otherwise the team will be reset to the start of the encounter. However, you can try and rush through the rest of the encounter before the timer runs out. If you succeed, every dead Guardian will get revived to continue the mission.
- Fallen Berserkers shield Darkness splinters. You'll find that certain room exits, pathways, and items are blocked by shielded Darkness splinters, but these shields can be deactivated by killing a nearby Fallen Berserker. To do this, wait for the Berserker to create its slowing bubble, then have one player shoot the red panel on its chest several times and another player do the same on its back at the same time. If done correctly, you can kill the Berserker, then shoot the splinters simultaneously to remove whatever is blocking your path.
- One player is always Fractured by the Witness and you need to pass the Fracture between each member of the fireteam. When a player is hit with the 'Fractured by the Witness' debuff, they gain stacks of it every few seconds. When it stacks to x7, you can't sprint or jump, and when it reaches x10, you die. However, another fireteam member can take the debuff by going up to the affected player and following the 'take on Fracture' prompt. The player that takes the Fracture now starts gaining stacks of Fractured by the Witness while the player that previously had it gains a temporary debuff called 'Fracture Recovery', which prevents them from taking on a Fracture. Tell your teammates when you get to x7 so that one of them can be ready to take on the Fracture.
- Glyphtouched players are the only ones that can see glyphs on splinters. Certain encounters in Ascent and Iconoclasm involve killing enemies that reveal glyphs and then collecting splinters with matching symbols. However, in Cooperative Focus, one player becomes 'Glyphtouched' and can see only the splinter glyphs while the other player(s) can see only the glyphs dropped by enemies, so you need to communicate which splinters need to be collected to proceed.
- During encounters involving the Aegis shield, only one player can use the Aegis. This will be the player marked with the 'Granted Aegis' buff. This mechanic appears in Dissent and Iconoclasm but does not apply in the final Witness fight during Iconoclasm.
Destiny 2 Cooperative Focus mode rewards
Completing each of the Cooperative Focus missions is required to get the Destiny 2 Microcosm Exotic weapon, but you should still complete them even after you've unlocked it as there are great rewards to be had. Completing any Cooperative Focus mission guarantees you a Pale Heart weapon and Ghost Reputation, and you have a chance to get Ascendant Shards too.
A Cooperative Focus weekly challenge is also available for one of the three missions. Completing this challenge by finishing the relevant mission on Cooperative Focus mode guarantees one Ascendant Shard, one Deepsight Pale Heart weapon at Pinnacle power, and provides a Ghost Reputation surge.
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