Destiny 2 Festival Of The Lost 2020: Halloween Event Start Time, Dates, Rewards, And Activities

The Festival of the Lost, Destiny 2 yearly Halloween event, has returned. You'll have a total of about a month to enjoy the final holiday event before the release of the Beyond Light expansion on November 10 is free to all players, and revamps some of the aspects that have defined the Festival for the last few years. As usual, you'll have the ability to dress up and trick-or-treat in-game for the event, gathering candy from activities and other characters and wearing Halloween masks to increase your bounties. But this year's take on the Festival makes a few small, subtle changes, allowing you to earn both new rewards and new versions of old ones.

Bungie detailed the Festival in a blog post, which explains the tweaks to this year's festivities. Once again, players will return to a spooky version of Mercury's Infinite Forest. Dubbed the Haunted Forest, your goal there is to get as far as you can in 15 minutes. Your goal is to kill as many enemies as possible to extend your timer as you work through each of the Haunted Forest's branches--but you'll be hunted by some huge unkillable baddies along the way, as well.

Destiny 2 Festival of the Lost Start Time

• October 6, 10 AM PT
• October 6, 1 PM ET
• October 6, 5 PM GMT
• October 7, 4 AM AET

Venturing into the Forest and completing Festival of the Lost bounties will earn you Chocolate Strange Coins, which you can then spend on special Festival rewards. These include a variety of masks of different characters that you'll be able to wear on a helmet you earn during the Festival. The masks are all armor ornaments for the Masquerader's Helmet you'll get from vendor Eva Levante, which means you can wear them without a big Power loss as in previous years. You'll earn new masks from Eva, and if you have the masks from the 2018 and 2019 Festival of the Lost, you'll be able to equip those as well.

In addition to the other currencies at play, this year, there's a new caveat--when you start the festival, Eva will send you to visit the Spider on the Tangled Shore. He'll introduce you to a new item called a Cipher Decoder. You'll gather these by completing Strikes, Gambit matches, and Crucible matches while wearing a mask, then take them into the Haunted Forest to open optional caches scattered throughout; as many as five per run. These extra caches show up at the end of your Haunted Forest run and seem to be determined by how far you get, so the more branches you clear, the more chests you can open. You probably shouldn't waste too much time on Haunted Forest runs unless you've got some Cipher Decoders stored up--without decoders, even a great run through the Forest won't yield much in the way of rewards.

Past Festival of the Lost rewards return this year, offering the opportunity to get new rolls on the guns. Both Horror Story from two years ago and last year's Braytech Werewolf will be available on your Haunted Forest runs, offering random rolls so you can get find some new favorites. There are new Triumphs with the Festival of the Lost this year, and you'll be able to earn some new masks through gameplay, as well as buy additional masks and other cosmetics through the Eververse Store.

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The Halloween event also has its own cosmetic rewards. You can snag some new monster-themed gear from the Eververse Store, and there are new items you can earn through gameplay, including a bandage wrapped sparrow, ship, and Ghost shell.

As has been the case for the last year, the Festival of the Lost will feature its own set of specific Triumphs to clear during the month-long event. There are also a few Festival-specific mods that can give you an edge in the Haunted Forest, like Vampiric Touch, which gives you health regeneration on precision kills, and Energetic Assassin, which makes precision kills grant grenade and melee energy. You'll only be able to use those mods during the Festival, though, so make sure you unlock them and equip them early for best results.

The Festival of the Lost is open to all players, including those in the free-to-play New Light version of Destiny 2. You'll need to be at least 770 Power to access the Haunted Forest, which is pretty low and easily attainable with a bit of grinding even if you're brand new to the game. The Festival of the Lost kicks off on October 6 and runs until November 3.