A new activity called The Sundial was introduced in Destiny 2‘s latest content drop, the Season of Dawn. This six-player PvE activity tasks Guardians with defeating waves of Cabal and Vex in order to earn loot and rewards. But just what kind of loot do you get from The Sundial? That’s all determined by the Obelisks, a new “vendor” in Season of Dawn. In this Destiny 2 Obelisk guide, we’ll teach you how to farm for particular weapons, how to link to different Obelisks, how to unlock more Obelisks, and what Polarized Fractaline is for. The Obelisks are pretty complicated, but we’re here to break everything down in detail.
Destiny 2 Obelisk Guide | Linking Obelisks, Resonance Ranks, & Obelisk Enhancements
Early on in Osiris’ Season of Dawn story quests, players will unlock the Obelisk: Tangled Shore. Here, much like Destiny 2: Shadowkeep’s Lectern of Enchantment, players have the chance to complete particular tasks in order to grind for certain weapons and equipment. The main draw of each Obelisk is that “linking” one to The Sundial lets you select the exact weapon you want as a reward at the end of a Sundial run. Each Obelisk provides a choice between two Saint-14-themed weapons. The Tangled Shore Obelisk, for example, allows you to select either the Steelfeather Repeater auto rifle or the Breachlight sidearm upon completing a run of The Sundial. You can eventually link multiple Obelisks to The Sundial for a wider selection, but you’ll first need to increase your Resonance Rank.
What are Resonance Ranks?
In order to increase the amount of quests and rewards available to you at a particular Obelisk, you’ll have to first increase your Resonance Rank. Despite its distinct title, Resonance Ranks work basically the same as ranking up at any other vendor: You turn in a particular resource (in this case, Polarized Fractaline), which grants progress toward your next rank. On a rank-up, you earn a reward engram, which contains gear related to that vendor (in this case, the seasonal “Righteous” armor set). The difference, however, is in what’s unlocked after each rank up.
At planetary vendors, retrieving a particular number of reward packages allows you to directly purchase that planet’s armor pieces. At Obelisks, instead of unlocking armor purchases, you unlock the ability to purchase “Obelisk Enhancements.”
What are Obelisk Enhancements?
Obelisk Enhancements are essentially passive bonuses that apply wherever you are in Destiny 2. These bonuses vary from Obelisk to Obelisk, but they include things like “Etheric Spiral Extractor,” purchasable at Tangled Shore Obelisk Resonance Rank 1, which grants a chance for Scorn to drop Etheric Spirals (the Tangled Shore’s planetary resource) when killed with precision damage. At Resonance Rank 11, you’ll be able to purchase the “Signal Strength” Obelisk Enhancement, which permanently increases the number of Obelisks you can pair with The Sundial by one. This means you can pair both the Tangled Shore and the Mars Obelisk at the same time, allowing you to choose from four weapons at the end of each Sundial run.
After unlocking a few Obelisk Enhancements, further increasing your Resonance Rank will instead allow you to unlock seasonal armor mods, which take advantage of Season of Dawn’s Charged with Light mechanic.
How to get more Polarized Fractaline
Polarized Fractaline can be unlocked through a number of means, including:
- Season pass/season rank rewards
- Sundial completions
- Certain Obelisk Enhancements
- Ex: The Tangled Shore Obelisk’s Gambit Fractaline Extractor gives a chance to find additional Polarized Fractaline when completing Gambit matches
- Obelisk bounties
Destiny 2 Obelisk Guide | Obelisk bounties & Timelost Weapon Frames
Resonance Rank-ups also allow you to unlock additional Obelisk bounties. Weekly Obelisk bounties contain standard bounty objectives, such as killing 20 Fallen captains and killing 45 enemies with precision sniper damage. Obelisk bounties provide Polarized Fractaline when completed.
Additionally, you can unlock Timelost Weapon Frame bounties. Each of these will provide you with a randomized objective. Upon completion of that random objective, you’ll receive the weapon specified by the frame, as well as some bonus experience. Each Obelisk has frames for the two weapons it allows you to select from at the end of a Sundial run, along with additional legendary weapons. The Tangled Shore Obelisk, for example, has a Black Scorpion-4SR bounty (unlocked at Resonance Rank 3) in addition to its Steelfeather Repeater and Breachlight frames.
Destiny 2 Obelisk Guide | How to unlock more Obelisks
Unlocking more Obelisks means getting the ability to access more of these rewards. As mentioned above, you’ll have to unlock the appropriate Obelisk Enhancement in order to link multiple Obelisks at a time, but you can always switch out the Obelisk you have linked by resetting your linked Obelisk (more on that below) and linking to a different one. The Nessus and EDZ Obelisks won’t be available until December 17, but we’ll update this guide once we know how to access those.
How to unlock the Mars Obelisk
In order to unlock the Mars Obelisk, you’ll need to get the appropriate quest from Osiris. At the time of Season of Dawn’s launch, this isn’t as easy as it should be: A glitch is causing Osiris to occasionally show no available quests for players despite him actually still offering quests. If you don’t have the Mars: Obelisk Attunement quest, try speaking to Osiris again until it pops up. Complete this quest (a series of simple objectives), and you’ll unlock the Mars Obelisk.
Destiny 2 Obelisk Guide | Resetting your linked Obelisks
If you want to switch Obelisks, you’ll have to unlink the current Obelisk(s) by selecting “Sundial Link: Reset All” at the bottom of the Obelisk menu. You can do this at any Obelisk, so it’s easiest to head to the Obelisk you want to link to, hit Reset All to unlink your previous Obelisk, and then select “Sundial Link: [destination]” (located to the left of the Reset All button) to link the desired Obelisk.
