The Warlord’s Ruin dungeon was one of the biggest hits in Destiny 2’s Season of the Wish, garnering a better verdict than its recent predecessors. Praise for the last two usually came with adversatives, but acceptance of (and often outright affection for) Warlord’s Ruin has instead come with few conditions.
The success of Warlord’s Ruin is a result of Bungie’s hefty experiments in the past year of content. It feels like a different beast when compared to Spire of the Watcher or Ghosts of the Deep—though Bungie design lead Brian Frank sees it less as a departure and more as “the team refining its craft and really hitting its stride,” admitting as much in a roundtable event last week.
Most players can recognize some aspects of Destiny 2’s encounter design, which shows in raids, dungeons, and even Exotic missions. Introduce a mechanic simply, then make it more complex throughout the activity—like the Scorn Totems in Warlord’s Ruin. “So you’re building a bit of a staircase, a crescendo,” staff designer Clayton Kisko said.
Hefnd, the final boss, plays no small part in the success of Warlord’s Ruin. The last encounter is the most remarkable part of the dungeon and arguably one of the most unique fights in Destiny 2. While evolving a mechanic is hardly new, Hefnd takes that complexity to a new level.
“We honestly pushed the envelope pretty hard with the third encounter,” test engineer Amanda Baker said. “I remember the first time going through [the fight] and feeling like, ‘Oh my gosh, we put a raid encounter in a dungeon,’ essentially. But minified a little bit.”
Hefnd’s fight is hectic, with multiple floors and mechanics that allow you to whittle the boss down before making it to a large damage phase. If you can’t finish off the boss in time, it teleports you back to the beginning, and you pick up where you left off. There are no meaty shields or colossal health bars at play, though the game will throw plenty of enemies at you.
“Our goal with each dungeon is to present this challenge and for players to learn and master the mechanics that we’ve built specifically for that activity,” Frank said, which includes the iterations on a basic motif. “I think this is what we’re always trying to do, and we were just really successful in this case with it.”
The main weakness of Warlord’s Ruin is arguably some of its loot, which has become a kind of cardinal sin in the eyes of Destiny 2 players lately. Two of its four Legendary drops are unique enough, but the other half is perfectly forgettable.
In spite of that, though, Warlord’s Ruin seems to be the standard to beat for some of the game’s next dungeons thanks to its worldbuilding and encounter design.
