Destiny 2: Here's How To Get Izanagi's Burden Exotic Sniper Rifle--Black Armory Mystery Box Quest

The Black Armory, Destiny 2's first expansion of the post-Forsaken era, is here, and players have discovered many of the mysteries of its four new areas, the Forges. Those locations, located in Earth's EDZ and on Nessus, are part of the game's new activity, in which three players try to defend a Forge from enemies and create special weapons and armor for their trouble. First, though, you have to find the Forges and start them up, and unlocking them all can be difficult.

There's also an overarching quest that players have been unraveling in all of the Forges, one that leads toward a new, awesome Exotic weapon: the Izanagi's Burden sniper rifle. In the EDZ's Volundr Forge, hidden just at the edge of the area where you fight to protect the forge, as Reddit user H1gash1kata discovered, is a cave that hides a treasure chest. Inside is an item called a Mysterious Box, which is the first step toward forging the Exotic sniper. Here's everything you need to know to unlock Izanagi's Burden.

Open The Forges

To find the box, you'll first need to unlock the Black Armory mission that sends you to find Volundr Forge. You'll start by interacting with Ada-1, the new Black Armory vendor, in her spot in the newly added Tower Annex area. She'll entrust you with a Machine Gun Frame item, and you'll need to kill enemies to repair and calibrate it for the forge.

The calibrations aren't too difficult, with requirements like racking up Hive kills, multi-kills, and kills on "Powerful" enemies (so those with orange health bars or better), but you'll need to do them with a Power weapon--we recommend Thunderlord. Your first two requirements are in the EDZ; after that, if you head to Mars and complete the Flashpoint or some Escalation Protocol fights there, you should have the first three steps of the quest completed pretty quickly.

Once you return to Ada-1 with the completed Machine Gun Frame, you'll get a mission in the EDZ that sends you to find the Volundr Forge. Follow your Ghost's tracker north from the Gulch and you'll find your way through Cabal tunnels to a location called Smidur's Cavern. Here you'll find the forge itself, which is a big, floating, V-shaped machine surrounded by Cabal guys. You'll know you're in the right spot when you have to jump a big chasm marked by a destroyed bridge.

When you reach the bridge, jump to the far side (and clear out the enemies), then stand at the edge of the gap the bridge used to cover and face the forge. From here, do an about-face so you're facing back toward the far side of the collapsed bridge, where you came from. Look to your right along the cliff face ahead of you and you'll see a small cave opening, along with an obvious path of platforms to reach it.

Head over to the cave to discover the chest inside. Open it and you'll receive the Mysterious Box Pursuit. It has some weird requirements. The Pursuit describes four insignias on the box, each with a different lock--a fishhook, a butterfly, a hand, and a Black Armory insignia.

Find The Drones

The four locks correspond with each of the four Forges. In the first three Forges, Volundr, Gofannon, and Izanami, you'll need to destroy two floating drones hidden in the arenas around them in order to bring the Forges up to "Maximum Temper." When that happens, completing each Forge will spawn a special treasure chest, which you can open to find a key to the box. The video below, from YouTuber Esoterickk shows the location of Volundr's drones.

The Gofannon Forge, the second of the four Forges located on Nessus, has a similar mechanic for discovering its hidden key. You'll find the two shield drones at one end of the forge area, where a big round piece of the Exodus Black crash creates a wall to the area. One of the drones floats around the top of the disc-shaped chunk of the ship there. You'll find the second drone to the left of the metal disc, near a cave opening that spawns enemies. Again, both drones appear during the second of the three waves of enemies during a forge ignition.

In the third location, Nessus' Izanami Forge, you'll find two more drones and a key for the Mysterious Box. This forge is broken into three islands, and the drones hang out on the smaller, lower two.

Look for them floating above the area, toward the sides.

The Final Lock

Opening the final lock requires more than just shooting drones in Bergusia Forge, the last of the Forges to be unlocked. First, once you've unlocked all four Forges, head to Ada-1. She has a new pursuit for you: a key mold. Unlike the other three keys for the Mysterious Box, the fourth key requires you to make it in a Forge.

To make the key, you'll first need to head to the Leviathan to gather Watcher Lenses. These are parts of the small robots that hang out in the underbelly of the Leviathan, but you can farm them easily in one room. Use our Leviathan guide to find and collect them.

After that, you'll need to gather a resource called Glimmering Amethyst. These can be found in chests and as rewards for Public Events and Strikes. You'll need to farm quite a few--you'll need to open about 100 chests, complete 40 Public Events, or clear 10 Strikes to gather them all.

Next, you'll need to head to the Bergusia Forge in the EDZ, which you can reach by heading south from the Outskirts area. Complete the Forge and destroy the two drones inside, like you've done at the other Forges, and you'll get the final key for the Mysterious Box. Unfortunately, that's not the end of the quest. Once you have what's inside the Mysterious Box, take it back to Ada-1 to trigger a new quest line.

Forging the Unknown Frame into the Izanagi's Burden sniper means you'll need to do three more big events. First, complete a rare Black Armory bounty--which can drop when you complete daily bounties and can last for two weeks--to gather an Obsidian Crystal.

After that, complete the Shattered Throne dungeon in the Dreaming City; you'll then be sent to Level 640 version of The Pyramidion Strike. Once you've beaten that, a mission will become available in the EDZ. Complete it, and Izanagi's Burden is yours.

The cool thing about Izanagi's Burden is how powerful it can become. Hold down the trigger when shooting the sniper with a full clip, and you can fire all four bullets from the magazine at once. If you do it with a full clip, Izanagi can land one-shot kills on other players in the Crucible even with body shots. By contrast, even the best sniper rifles in Destiny 2 require you to hit fellow Guardians in the head for a one-shot kill. If you're looking for a deadly long-range weapon to add to your repertoire, Izanagi's Burden is definitely worth the effort.