Destiny 2 Onslaught: Salvation Guide - Potions, Banes, And New Defenses

The launch of Destiny 2's new content episode, Revenant, brings Onslaught: Salvation to the game, a new version of the Onslaught activity. We first saw Onslaught in the Into the Light content drop that led up to the release of The Final Shape expansion, but with Revenant, the activity gets new enemies, new objectives, and new defenses for players.

Onslaught: Salvation serves as your main focus for Revenant, and the primary way you'll get new gear from the episode, so knowing exactly how it works and what you're facing is essential. Here's everything that's going on in Onslaught: Salvation, including its changes from the original mode and the new episode mechanics that you'll want to use to make the most of it. Be sure to also check out all the new Revenant Exotics.

Onslaught: Salvation is more story-driven than the original Onslaught mode, focusing on Scorn enemies attacking locations on Europa and Earth where Eliksni have gathered to make settlements.

While the main Onslaught mode sees rotating enemy factions, including Hive, Vex, Cabal, Fallen, and Scorn, you'll only face the Fanatic's Revenant Scorn, Calus's Shadow Legion, and Dread enemies as seen in The Final Shape. The Onslaught: Salvation approach also mixes those factions together during waves, making threats a little more dynamic than the normal mode. You might have a Subjugator mini-boss show up during some waves, for instance, and Shadow Legion enemies that can summon flying Grim in another.

The main new elements in Onslaught: Salvation is the inclusion of Scorn Revenant Barons and cages holding Eliksni prisoners. In both cases, the focus is to find and destroy glowing orange items called Totems that power these Scorn powers.

Revenant Barons are elite-level enemies that are tough to destroy. Unlike other enemies, however, Revenant Barons can resurrect themselves, coming back to life and forcing you to fight them over and over again if you're not paying attention. When a Revenant Baron dies, a beam of orange light will move away from the area above their body, zapping some distance away and spawning a floating Totem--which looks a lot like a torch that might hang on a wall.

To kill a Revenant Baron and keep them down, you need to chase down the Totem and destroy it as quickly as you can. It doesn't usually take much damage, and shooting it with any gun will knock it out. Once the Totem is destroyed, the Revenant will stay dead for good.

You'll also see cages with Eliksni prisoners in some waves of Onslaught: Salvation. Just like Revenant Barons, these also have torch-like Totems floating above them, creating a bubble of dark energy around them. You can't shoot through these bubbles, and they'll suppress your abilities, but if you get within the bubble and shoot the Totem, you'll destroy the bubble, allowing the prisoners to be rescued. Whenever you see cages, your goal is to take out the Totems and save the prisoners within.

Revenant Barons aren't the only new types of enemies you'll face in the episode. Destiny 2 has a new system of enemy buffs called Banes that can randomly boost individual creatures as you're fighting. An enemy with a Bane might discharge electricity into nearby Guardians, spawn meteors that track players, or require you to hit them with a melee attack before they become vulnerable to gunfire.

Banes are meant to add challenge and make activities and fights a little more unpredictable, and you'll want to try to identify anyone with a Bane and take them out as quickly as you can. They don't require quite the same coordination to dispatch as Champions, but they can be dangerous in a similar way.

Revenant adds some new enemies and challenges in Onslaught: Salvation, but you get some new tricks of your own. The mode adds new defenses that you can purchase as you fight through its waves. These include turrets that players haven't seen since the original Destiny, which players can climb into and control. These can be upgraded with Solar rounds that afflict enemies with Scorch. You can build air-strike stations that allow you to call down an orbital laser blast on a specific spot, but which isn't triggered until enemies stumble into it. Trip mines can also be upgraded to add Stasis effects to enemies who stumble through them, making them more effective for crowd control.

The major mechanical focus of Revenant is in brewing tonics with Eido. They come in two types.

Volatile tonics are offensive and give you special bonuses, like a small amount of health when you do a Finisher, or bonus damage to Arc weapons while you're Amplified. Volatile tonics can also activate specific bonus effects on some matching Artifact mods, making them more effective if you have them equipped.

Enriching tonics act like the attunement system for the normal Onslaught activity, allowing you to prime your rewards from Onslaught: Salvation to be a certain type of loot, like Revenant armor or specific weapons.

Most of the story for Revenant Act 1 will teach you how to craft tonics in the Apothecary in the Market District of the Last City. Once you can do that, it pays to make a bunch of tonics and use them regularly. The effect of each tonic lasts 20 minutes when you consume it and you can use both a Volatile tonic and an Enriching tonic at the same time, so you always want to be gaining some useful effect while you're in Onslaught. You'll also get rewards that help you craft more tonics when you play the activity in the form of reagents that are necessary for certain types of brews.