Destiny 2’s Halloween event Festival of the Lost is returning to the game on October 29, which will be the fourth iteration of the autumn live event in the franchise. Every time the event has appeared, it has been different. Developer Bungie has yet to detail what 2019’s Festival of the Lost will bring to the game with the recent release of Shadowkeep, but as players look forward to the event’s return later this month, Game Rant takes a look back at the Festival of the Lost events of the past.
While the event coincides with the real-world holiday of Halloween, in the context of Destiny 2’s universe, Festival of the Lost is meant to be an in-game celebration of those whom the Guardians have lost. In lore, the Festival was celebrated in the Last City but Eva Levante brought the celebration to the Tower for Guardians to take part in as well.
2015: The First Festival of the Lost
Destiny 1 released in September 2014, so there was no Festival of the Lost that first October when Destiny was out. Just a month into the game, there were other events and things going on with Destiny’s somewhat troubled first few months.
The first Festival of the Lost came as a complete surprise in 2015 in Destiny 1’s Year 2 after the release of The Taken King expansion. Players signed into the game, and when they loaded into the Tower, it was decorated with candles and hanging paper engram lanterns. The event was active for two weeks from October 26 to November 9, 2015. Players visited Eva Levante to start a quest called Sweet Memories that sent players around the vendors in the Tower to collect candy.
The purpose of Festival of the Lost was to collect masks themed after different characters and enemies in Destiny. To do so required killing enemies in PvE or PvP and filling up a satchel of candy then returning it to Eva Levante to get a Gift of the Lost that dropped more masks. Rare masks expired after the event while Legendary masks persisted on. Players could use an item called Paper Glue to turn a Rare mask into a Legendary one.
There was one Legendary mask, the Skull Mask, that could only be obtained through Festival of the Lost Gifts from Eververse. All players had a free chance to get this mask to drop and then all the rest would be a random drop from Eververse. While this was frustrating for some, besides also offering a few emotes for direct purchase, Eververse was not a major factor in the Festival of the Lost. But that would change dramatically the next year.
2016: “Festival of the Cost”
The next year’s event was another two-week jaunt from October 25 to November 8, 2016 a little after a month from the release of the game’s Year 3 expansion, Rise of Iron. This time, Rare masks that expired at the end of the event were retired, and instead all masks were Legendary and persisted after the event finished. Some masks could be obtained by filling the satchel from Eva Levante just as in 2015; however, most of the masks were locked behind the Eververse paywall requiring players to pay for the most appealing and the majority of the masks. Players were upset by how many of the masks could only be obtained through Eververse instead of by playing the game, so fans dubbed the event “Festival of the Cost.”
The event also changed the Crucible, setting all of the game’s PvP maps to take place at night. Trials of Osiris became “Spooky Trials,” with the motion tracker was removed, revives were turned off, and when players aimed down sights for a certain amount of time a spider would crawl across the screen.
Back in the Tower, the Sweeper Bot was missing its broom, which could be found in the Tower. Picking it up gave players the Lost Broom Sparrow. But at the end of the event, the Lost Broom Sparrow was removed from players’ inventories and as the Tower was reset back to normal, the Sweeper Bot got its broom back.
2018: Destiny 2’s First Festival
With Destiny 2’s September 2017 launch, and its own rocky start, the game did not have a Festival of the Lost event in its launch year. Instead, the sequel’s first Festival of the Lost came in 2018. Eva Levante, the event’s original quest giver, disappeared from the Tower in Destiny 2 so Amanda Holiday served as this event’s host. The event focused specifically in its lore and storytelling about the then-recent death of Cayde-6 in the Forsaken campaign and the loss of people in the Red War, the game’s original campaign.
This event focused on a version of the Infinite Forest from the Curse of Osiris expansion called the Haunted Forest, a three-player matchmade activity that tasked players with clearing out the area of Nightmare enemies under a 15-minute timer. Players earned the Fragmented Soul currency by playing the Haunted Forest and completing event bounties. Fragmented Souls could be turned in to Amanda Holiday to earn masks, emblems, and the Horror Story auto rifle.
There was also a multitude of Eververse items themed after the event, including masks, armor sets, ships, Sparrows, Ghost shells and projections, emotes, shaders, and transmat effects. Upon XP rank up, players could earn Eververse engrams for a random chance at these items or purchase the engrams and items through microtransactions or Bright Dust.
Also, during this event, was when the quest for the Thunderlord exotic machinegun came to the game as part of quest themed after the murder of Master Ives, the Cryptarch that was located in The Reef in Destiny 1.
Fans should be getting more information about 2019's Festival of the Lost soon, with the event itself set to kick off on October 29.
Destiny 2: Shadowkeep is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with a Stadia version also in development.