How to complete Defiant Battleground: EDZ activities in Destiny 2

Defiant Battleground: EDZ is the first seasonal activity you can take part in with Destiny 2 Season of Defiance. While the name suggests something familiar, this is a battle against the forces of darkness as you’ve never seen, resulting in the rescue of valuable prisoners. This guide explains how to complete the Defaint Battleground: EDZ activities so you don’t get too stuck tackling them.

Related: All Region Chest locations in Neomuna in Destiny 2

Defiant Battleground: EDZ walkthrough

You can access the Defiant Battleground: EDZ activity from the map on The Farm in the EDZ or directly from the HELM. Select it to matchmake with other players and start.

Once you drop into the activity, follow the on-screen objective marker until you find some enemies. You need to fight your way through them, killing every enemy you see, until you reach a large expanse of open water with a Pyramid ship on the opposite side. Your next goal is in the middle of the water, a section of concrete that sticks out.

Once you reach the marked location, you’ll need to interact with it to use Mara Sov’s power to enter the Ascendant Plane. This is where the real combat begins. Inside the Ascendant Plane, you need to push forward and fight your way through Taken foes. As you progress, you’ll see Taken Blights that need to be destroyed. Take these out and ignite the Balefire to open the path forward.

There will be several of these blocked paths, and the Taken enemies are at a high Power Level, so be mindful of where you are and how many enemies there are around you. We found that the best approach was to stay back and take out enemies from afar before closing in to take out Taken Blights. Of course, you’ll need to take a risk to ignite the Balefires, but once they’re up, the enemies are quickly dispatched.

After you’ve pushed through the outer area of the Ascendant Plane and into the main structure of the Pyramid, you’ll be facing your first boss. This will likely change week to week, but the one we faced in the first week of Season of Defiance was called Exomida, Taken of The Witness.

This monstrosity is a giant Corrupted Servitor, and it deals a lot of damage. You’ll need to stay back and clear out the enemies that spawn in the room before attacking the boss too much. There are Taken that spawn on high vantage points that deal a huge amount of damage if left unchecked, so deal with them before anything else. At each third of its health, it’ll gain a shield and become immune to damage. You need to destroy the Taken Blights that spawn in the room to remove the shield and get the boss to enter the damage phase once more.

Once the first boss is defeated, run out of the room and follow the objective marker. This will lead you to a new area where the prisoners are being held, but you can’t get them just yet. Clear the room out of enemies, and you’ll trigger a second boss to jump in and start fighting for you. Once again, this may change from week to week, but the boss we faced was called Warden Vincu’us, Shadow Legion.

This boss is very different from the first. You’ll get to shoot down its first third of health without any trouble. However, at that point, it will trigger a strange mist that spawns in the room and starts damaging you before jumping away. Follow it, ignite the Balefire to protect yourselves, and start killing the enemies that spawn.

Related: What is The Veil in Destiny 2?

You need to kill the Wizards that spawn during this phase of the fight to remove the boss’ shield. They’ll drop Taken Essences, and you must consecrate them at the Balefire before throwing the orb that they give you at the boss. The orb must hit to remove a portion of the boss’ shield. Repeat this process until the boss’ shield is down, and you can deal damage to it once again.

After you remove that second sliver of health, the boss will jump back once again. In this new position, it can see you wherever you are on the map, and it won’t stop firing at you. This makes getting Taken Essence and consecrating it a lot tougher, but you can do it. Repeat the process of removing the boss’ shield this way, then kill it when that shield is down.

After the boss has been defeated, you can climb the stairs and rescue the prisoners. When you do this for the first time, it’ll be Amanda Holliday that you rescue, and you’ll get a short cutscene once the mission ends.

How to use Defiant Keys

Defiant Keys have a chance of being awarded for completing Lightfall expansion story missions, Crucible matches, Gambit matches, the Terminal Overload activity on Neomuna, Raids, and Vanguard Ops missions. They’re automatically used when you complete a Defiant Battleground activity. We managed to get one of the new seasonal weapons when we completed a Defiant Battleground: EDZ activity after claiming a Defiant Key from the Season of Defiance season pass.