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Destiny 2 Empyrean Foundation guide: How to unlock and farm fractalines

Hot off the heels of the exciting Cube-inspired Corridors of Time quest, Bungie brought another massive community event to Destiny 2 this week. The game’s latest update added the Empyrean Foundation, a mysterious event that puzzled fans since Season of Dawn’s initial reveal.

The idea is simple: Players can now donate their polarized fractalines to the Tower’s obelisk. Once players collectively deposit enough fractalines, they’ll unlock mysterious rewards. Currently, Bungie has listed seven donation tiers, which will require billions of fractalines.

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The endgame here is still unknown, but many fans are speculating this could lead to the return of Trials of Osiris. Here’s everything needed to get started.

Destiny 2 Bright Future quest
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Complete the Bright Future quest

When you load into the game, head over to the Tower and go to Saint-14. He’ll have a new quest for you, called Bright Future. This is short and straightforward, so it won’t take long to knock it out.

First, you’ll have to go into the Sundial activity and kill Inotam, the activity’s latest boss. As with all Sundial bosses, there’s no fail state here, so jump in and fight until it’s over.

After that, you’ll need to collect 30 orbs of light. Equip a masterwork weapon if you have one and get a bunch of kills to generate orbs fast. You can also knock this out quickly by jumping into an activity with a fire team and chaining supers.

Once you complete this, you’ll get a core. Take this back to the obelisk in the Tower, and you’ll officially gain access to the Empyrean Foundation.

Donating fractalines

Once you’ve unlocked the Empyrean Foundation, you have to submit polarized fractalines, which can be done in packs of 100.

Fractalines aren’t hard to come by. If you’re looking for a consistent source, pick up Saint-14’s bounties, which reward packs of them. The same goes for obelisk bounties, which will also give you a good supply of fractalines. You can also obtain these for completing various season 9 bounties, so focus on grabbing those for some easy gains.

You’ll also want to load up on fractaline skimmers, which can be purchased from the Tower’s obelisk. When you use one, you’ll have a chance to receive polarized fractalines as a normal activity reward. You’ll only be able to use six of them every week, but this will give you an extra 600.

Players who donate 5,000 fractalines during the event will earn a triumph and emblem, so make sure to hit that threshold by the end of the season. Contributing will also generate a 25% progression toward any timelost bounties in your inventory, so there are many reasons to be a team player here.

Upgrade your resonance rank

During the event, the Tower obelisk will generate a batch of polarized fractalines for you every week based on your resonance rank between all of the planetary obelisks. You’ll notice that you can donate fractalines at obelisks, which will update each one’s rank.

While your instinct might be to donate everything you have to the Empyrean Foundation, you’ll want to make sure you’re raising your ranks when you can. Doing this will give you more guaranteed fractalines every reset, making it more lucrative in the long run.

If you don’t feel like spending fractalines to raise your resonance, you can buy a light-fused fractaline from the Tower obelisk, which increases the rank of any other obelisk. This will cost you 50,000 glimmer and 10 legendary shards, so make sure you’ve loaded up on glimmer if you want to take advantage of these.

If you missed the Corridors of Time, this is an excellent chance to get in on a community event that’s much easier to grasp and participate in. You don’t need the game’s season pass to help either so every player can help out here.

Giovanni Colantonio
As Digital Trends' Senior Gaming Editor, Giovanni Colantonio oversees all things video games at Digital Trends. As a veteran…
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