More than any other story campaign Bungie has ever made in Destiny 2, The Final Shape is full of mechanics. Instead of just shooting a bunch of baddies, you’re often tasked with deactivating mechanisms and solving puzzles in order to progress. In the second mission of the campaign, Temptation, you’ll need to interact with three black sundials to deactivate three “conduits” and bring down a shield. Here’s how they work.
The dials are scattered around the area of The Landing and guarded by several enemies. Once you clear those troops out, Taken Psions will appear nearby. The psions are the key to turning the dials and deactivating the conduits, but you’ll need to check the dials themselves to know how many psions to shoot.
You’ll find each dial near the floating, triangular Splinters of Darkness (which look like pyramids with their points facing down). As you get near a dial, you’ll see that orange spikes of light are sticking out of nodes around the edges. The first dial has one spike, the second has two, and the third has three. These spikes tell you where to turn the dial, like a combination lock.
When you kill an Insight Psion, which spawn in small groups around each dial, you’ll gain a buff called Psionic Insight. Each Psion gives you one stack of Psionic Insight. To activate the dial, you need to gather insight and then “dunk” it into the dial by using the activate button near it.
Each stack of Psionic Insight moves the dial one notch around the outside edge, so the trick is to look at the dial, determine how many notches around the circle the spike of orange light is, and then collect that number of Psionic Insights to activate the dial so that it turns and stops on the lit node.
There doesn’t seem to be any penalty for missing because you have too much or too little Insight, as long as you eventually get the dial to the right spot. To do it quickly and efficiently, the dial lets you dunk Insight into either side of it, in order to turn it either clockwise or counterclockwise. So, once you know how much Psionic Insight you need and which way you want to turn the dial, it’s just a matter of shooting some Psions and getting back to the dial before the timer on the buff expires.
Each dial is slightly more complicated than the last. On the second dial, you’ll notice that there are two spikes of orange light and that one is significantly bigger than the other, while the third dial has three spikes, each a different size. The size of the spikes indicates the order in which you need the dial to stop on each of those nodes, with the largest spike indicating the first node to stop on, the next-largest spike indicating the second spot, and so on. Again, there doesn’t seem to be any penalty for mistakes other than spending more time shooting enemies, so don’t worry about it if you dump too much or too little Insight.
Once you’ve cleared the area and deactivated each conduit, the shield will drop and you’ll be able to continue the mission pursuing Crow. The best strategy for the dials is to take your time, clearing enemies to keep yourself safe while you’re working the mechanics–especially if you’re on Legendary difficulty.
Check out our Destiny 2: The Final Shape guides hub for a ton more coverage of what there is to find in the Pale Heart of the Traveler.