Amidst the chase for the best gear in the game with optimal perks and the highest power level, players in Destiny 2 will find themselves completing countless quests long after the credits roll. While most players are concerned with the looter aspect of Destiny, many players become enthralled by the lore Bungie has given in the game world, which can be revealed (albeit, mostly in text) by beating many of the endgame quests the game has to offer.
All quests have some reward for completing them (in fact, all but one quest on this list eventually leads to an Exotic weapon), but the best quests in the game that players remember long after finishing them are the ones that tell the best stories and have the most impactful lore implications.
10 Relics Of The Golden Age
After completing the Red War campaign, players can start the Relic of the Golden Age Exotic quest by completing the endgame adventure chain on Nessus, which rewards them with the legendary sidearm Drang. After completing a series of simple tasks using Drang to defeat Fallen enemies, players are rewarded with Drang's companion weapon, the Exotic hand cannon Sturm. This was many day-one players' first Exotic quest in Destiny 2, and the unique dual-weapon reward made it especially memorable for many players.
9 Exploring The Corridors Of Time
A time-gated quest limited to only one season (which Bungie, thankfully, will be fixing in year 4), players could, as the title says, explore the Corridors of Time during the Season of Dawn to uncover some hidden mysteries about the player-character. Players already navigated the Corridors of Time to save Saint-14 earlier in the season but went back in to solve a very convoluted puzzle (even by Destiny standards) that ultimately lead them to the Memento quest, which rewarded the Bastion kinetic Exotic fusion rifle. Exploring the Corridors of Time was especially memorable for the amount of community cooperation it required to finish as well as the doom-laden plot twist at the quest's finale.
8 The Draw
Tied to the Season of the Forge, The Draw Exotic quest saw the return of the fan-favorite rapid-fire hand cannon The Last Word. In The Draw, the Drifter sent players on a lengthy quest involving a Hive artifact, which mostly involves killing Hive enemies throughout the game world, which culminates with The Conversation, a unique quest step that tests players' quickdraw abilities to determine if they're worthy of wielding The Last Word as they hunt Enkaar, a Hive acolyte who designs weapons.
This lengthy quest is mostly memorable for its unique final quest step, which was unlike any other mission in Destiny, and for bringing back an incredibly powerful PvP hand cannon in a meaningful way.
7 Wish-Ender
The Wish-Ender Exotic quest, which rewarded the kinetic bow that is its namesake, can only be obtained by completing the Shattered Throne, Destiny 2's first dungeon introduced in Forsaken. Players were buzzing about the time-gated Shattered Throne, which only appeared during the peak of the Dreaming City's 3-week curse cycle, during the expansion's launch. Wish-Ender was a fitting reward for completing the dungeon (twice) and made exploring the wonderfully designed Dreaming City even more exciting as it allowed players to see and destroy the Corrupted Eggs spread throughout the City.
6 Exodus
Ahead of the Destiny Content Vault's arrival in November, Bungie decided to give players a reason to revisit the soon-to-be-vaulted locations of Titan, Io, Mercury, and Mars, as well as some lore to motivate their departure from the game. The Exodus quest recently wrapped up in early September and arrived in 2 parts, Preparation and Evacuation, during Season of Arrivals spaced about 2 months apart. For completing the quest, players were rewarded with the Traveler's Chosen Exotic sidearm, an Exotic version of the first weapon players wielded in Destiny 2 at the beginning of the Red War campaign. While nostalgia hasn't had time to set in for this quest, it certainly has some of the largest lore implications of any quest in the game, and it gave a proper send-off for some of the game's fantastic NPCs.
5 Imperial Invitation
The first quest in Destiny 2 tied to a raid Exotic weapon, Imperial Invitation can be found just by simply killing Cabal enemies. The reward for completing this quest is the Legend of Acrius shotgun that slots into the Heavy slot. Players have to complete a special timed version of the fan-favorite The Arms Dealer strike, kill Cabal with an incomplete version of Legend of Acrius, and earn tokens in the Leviathan raid to unlock the final version of the Exotic shotgun.
For many players, this quest was the reason they ran Leviathan for the first time (and for the uninitiated, the first time they ran any raid in a Destiny game), making it an especially memorable quest early in Destiny 2's lifecycle.
4 Darkness In The Light
The infamous quest to get Malfeasance, the unique Gambit hand cannon introduced in Forsaken, can only be acquired by defeating a specific Primeval boss (affectionately known as the "Meatball" by the community, which is really just a giant Taken servitor) with a very low encounter rate in Gambit. Players may not remember the quest itself at all, but they surely remember playing hours upon hours of Gambit before getting the Meatball to spawn, only to usually lose the round (and thus, not spawn the quest). The fact that the Meatball is an objectively harder boss to beat than any other Primeval thanks to an extra invulnerability mechanic makes getting this quest all the more arduous and memorable.
3 Allegiance
Tied to Season of the Drifter, Allegiance saw players choose sides between the Drifter, the mysterious founder and host of Gambit, and Aunor, an anti-Darkness Warlock from the Praxic Order who was commissioned by the Vanguard to investigate the Drifter for his dealings with the Darkness. This was the first (and as of now, only) major questline in Destiny to feature 2 branching pathways with completely different story outcomes, including how the Drifter treats the players when they enter Gambit which carries over into following seasons. The Allegiance questline added a story-based role-playing element similar to many other RPGs (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc.) that Destiny had been lacking for years, and many fans hope that Bungie will continue to give players more agency in future story quests.
2 Enemy Of My Enemy
Easily the most memorable quest from the base game, Enemy of My Enemy introduced Destiny 2 players to Mithrax, Kell of Light, a Fallen captain who rejected the Darkness and founded the House of Light. This is arguably the first Destiny quest with multiple story-based endings, as sparing Mithrax and only killing the Hive Knight that he's found dueling with in the climactic mission, Chances and Choices, triggers an alternate (canon) ending where Mithrax thanks the Guardian before transmatting away. This questline had a massive impact on the world of Destiny as it set off a chain of events that saw Mithrax and the Guardian work together in the hidden Zero Hour mission, and that will continue (and possibly conclude) in the upcoming Beyond Light expansion.
1 Cayde's Will
A fitting tribute for a lost friend, Cayde's Will is easily the most tear-inducing quest in all of Destiny, especially for players who have gotten to know Cayde-6 since the original Destiny. After completing the Forsaken campaign, players will get a broken version of the Ace of Spades, the Exotic hand cannon that was Cayde's weapon of choice, from defeating Uldren Sov, who killed Cayde at the start of Forsaken. To repair it, players will need to get hand cannon kills in Gambit, Crucible, and Strikes, before being sent on a quest to find Cayde's hidden caches throughout multiple planets, each of which has a message for a different Destiny NPC. The fifth message, players may recall, is for the people behind the mysterious Deep Stone Crypt, which players will finally get a chance to explore in Beyond Light. The tenth and final message is for the player-character themselves and is sure to get the tears flowing.