Destiny 2 Ascendant Lens finally useful in Festival of the Lost 2021

Last year’s Festival of the Lost event in Destiny2 — the in-universe version of Halloween — bestowed upon players a seemingly useless gift: the Ascendant Lens. The item was of no apparent use and many Guardians stripped it from their inventory. After all, players have limited space for items such as this. Bungie has offered a generous reward to fans who kept their Ascendant Lenses through 2021, a year after the fact.

In 2020, Guardians still ran the Haunted Forest activity. They could find a secret quest. After opening 45 chests with the event’s special currency, Spider would suddenly have a new quest. But talking to the NPC on the Tangled Shore didn’t send players on any kind of goose chase. Spider offered the Ascendant Lens to players. For a whole year, it proved to be completely useless.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

While sitting in the inventory, fans can see that the Ascendant Lens reads: “A focusing lens from the Dreaming City through which the Ascendant Plane can sometimes be seen.” Considering Season of the Lost deals heavily in Ascendant Planes and the Dreaming City, it seems that the Ascendant Lens was an elaborate and lengthy tease a year in the making — or at the very least, a happy accident that worked out thanks to The Witch Queen delay.

But as Festival of the Lost 2021 kicked off on Tuesday, players discovered that Mara Sov, queen of the Awoken and a major player in Season of the Lost’s story, had a new quest for patient Guardians. Mara offers to talk while your Ascendant Lens is in your inventory. You will receive a wall full of text. Mara basically tells Guardians that the tool is useless in their hands, but very potent in the hands of a Techeun — a kind of Awoken witch. The player is then given a bag with Halloween treats and told to leave.

Image: Bungie via Polygon

The “Bottomless Goody Bag” contains some special materials, three rolls of the new Jurassic Green pulse rifle, and 21 Spectral Pages — giving players who are looking to complete this year’s Festival of the Lost a big advantage.

While it’s certainly not a new Exotic quest or something truly exciting, it’s nice to see Bungie award Destiny2 Players who were vigilant believed that something extraordinary might occur. Spider and The Tangled Shore will soon be leaving Destiny 2In The Witch Queen, it’s great to have one final Easter egg involving the cantankerous Eliksni.