New Destiny 2 Exotic quest leads to Dead Man's Tale scout rifle

The latest Destiny 2 update added a quest for a new Exotic scout rifle called Dead Man's Tale, and it's the second Exotic in the game's history to feature random rolls. 

To start the quest for Dead Man's Tale, load into the Arms Dealer Strike through the EDZ (or the lowest-level Nightfall: The Ordeal Strike if available). Once you clear out the first room of enemies, a door on the right side of the complex – opposite the path you'd normally take to progress the Strike – will open up. Follow it to an outdoor area and snag the collectible marked by a waypoint, then talk to Zavala back in the Tower to unlock the Presage mission.

You can load into Presage via the Tangled Shore; just look for a new activity in the northwest corner of the map. Once you load in, you'll need to navigate through an abandoned ship in a distinctly Dead Space-y mission. There are some light puzzles and platforming, as well as some close-quarters combat sections, but Presage is pretty straightforward – and fantastic. The main mechanic involves finding, shooting, and then collecting spores to get a buff that lets you pass through these murky barrier things. It's entirely possible to complete Presage solo, but a buddy or two will make things easier. You can also complete the mission a second time to earn another version of Dead Man's Tale, which brings us to this Exotic's special perk. 

Dead Man's Tale is already up on the Light.gg weapon archives, and to our surprise, it comes with the Transformative perk which was introduced with Hawkmoon last season. Unlike the original, the Destiny 2 Hawkmoon features some random rolls. It always has its signature perk, but you can get different performance-enhancing perks like Rangefinder or Snapshot. The same is true of Dead Man's Tale: its Exotic perk Cranial Spike will always increase damage and reload speed with successive headshots, but you can randomly roll perks like Killing Wind and Vorpal Weapon as well. 

Hawkmoon was the first of its kind, but it seems randomly rolled Exotics will become more common in future Destiny 2 content. On Twitter, Bungie community manager Dmg04 discussed the studio's approach to this new breed of weapon. 

"Team isn’t planning to do this for all exotics moving forward," he clarified. "Hawkmoon was the first, but more could see this in the future. It’s a fun new tool in the toolbox, but may not be seen again for a while."

For now, we've got a cool new Exotic to put through its paces. Get on that mission and start theorycrafting your personal god roll. 

Bungie has scrapped its plans to expand the Cosmodrome in Destiny 2 in order to prioritize new content.