Hive Escalation Protocol is a new endgame activity coming to Destiny 2 in the game's upcoming Warmind expansion, and there are more details about how the mode works as well as some early strategies for tackling the horde-like activity.

Hive Escalation Protocol takes place within Destiny 2's new public space destination of Hellas Basin on Mars and is triggered like a Public Event. It's the closest thing Destiny 2 has ever had to a horde mode as players must face seven rounds of increasingly difficult waves of the Hive.

Players can enter into the event with a fireteam of three and can be joined by up to six other players within the public space (totaling nine players) to tackle the challenges of Escalation Protocol. There are seven levels total, and to clear each level, players will have three minutes to clear three waves of increasingly difficult enemies. A fourth round will spawn a boss, which players will have four minutes to defeat. Each wave will send players around the Hellas Basin zone, so they won't be standing in one spot the entire activity.

Hive Escalation Protocol has been designed to stand aside the Nightfall, Trials, and the raid activities as endgame content, giving out special rewards specific to the activity, which will rotate on a weekly basis. It should be pretty difficult, at least while players are lower level in the early weeks of the expansion. But Destiny community member FuzzleHC, who played the mode at the recent Bungie Summit, offered some early strategies on the Destiny subreddit.

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He suggests assigning roles for clearing out each wave. Due to the time limit of each wave, if anyone misses an enemy it can cost valuable time to try to track down that straggler and end the wave. The bosses also will take a large amount of damage to take down, so when they spawn, two players should focus on the boss while the other clears out the smaller adds. Planning like this should also encourage players to strategize and coordinate their loadouts to tackle both wave rounds and boss rounds.

Bungie is promising that Hive Escalation Protocol will give players a new endgame activity to engage with every week, but we'll have to see just how engaging it is when Warmind launches on May 8.

Destiny 2: Warmind releases on May 8 ,2018 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.

Source: Destiny Reddit, PlayStation Blog