Heliostat Destiny 2: Full Wolfsbane Mission Walkthrough

Most Heliostat guides were written during launch week, and they describe a Director that no longer exists and a catalyst schedule that expired months ago. Follow one and you will hunt for a menu node Bungie deleted, or skip a catalyst you were told was locked. This Heliostat Destiny 2 guide covers the mission as it actually runs today, including all nine Vex nodes and all four catalysts.

What Heliostat Is and What It Rewards

Heliostat is an Exotic mission that arrived with the Ash & Iron update on 7 October 2025, set inside a Golden Age Warsat facility beneath the Archon's Keep in the Plaguelands. Completing it once awards the Wolfsbane Exotic Sword.

The story hook is straightforward. Maya Sundaresh, operating as the Conductor, is trying to launch a Warsat that would let her push Red Legion forces into the current timeline. Ikora sends you in with a squad of allied Psions to stop it. Lodi, the Vanguard's ambassador from Earth's past, runs comms alongside her.

Wolfsbane is filed in your inventory as a Sword, but it swings as a two-handed battle axe with Iron Lord animations. Destinypedia's entry for Wolfsbane describes it as an Iron Battle Axe pulled from another timeline and infused with Quicksilver nanites, which is why the Psions who manipulate Quicksilver matter so much to the mission's mechanics.

If you want the weapon's stat block, perk pool, and build notes rather than the mission, our Wolfsbane guide handles that side in full. This page is about clearing the mission and stripping it of everything it holds.

Heliostat Requirements and Where to Launch It

Everything you need before you queue up, drawn from Destinypedia's mission entry for Heliostat:

Fireteam size: 1 to 3 players. The mission is comfortably soloable.
Recommended Power: 280
Run time: roughly 20 to 30 minutes on a blind first attempt, and faster once you know the route
First run difficulty: locked to Normal with fixed modifiers
Location: the Pinnacle Ops node, under Vanguard Ops

That locked first run matters. You cannot start on Master to farm catalysts early, because difficulty customisation only unlocks after your first completion. Every player's first Heliostat run is the same run.

Navigation is where older guides will send you wrong. Bungie's support documentation for Update 9.7.0 confirms that the Legends node has been deprecated, and that Exotic missions previously found there now launch from Pinnacle Ops or the Raids and Dungeons node instead. The weekly Exotic mission rotator is retired as well. Heliostat sits in Pinnacle Ops permanently, and you can run it any week you like.

Heliostat Walkthrough

The mission runs as two main combat encounters, two traversal sections, and a boss fight, with a puzzle layer threaded through all of it. Your Psion allies are the spine of every mechanic, so the habit to build early is simple: when you are stuck, look for a white interact ring on the ground.

Reaching the Warsat Facility

You land on a cliffside path outside the facility. Clear the Cabal in your way and look for a white ring on the ground marked Call Radiation Shielding Psion.

Interact with it before stepping inside. This summons Decima, Shielding Psion, who projects a bubble. Standing in that bubble grants Psionic Protection, reported by walkthrough guides as lasting around 15 seconds, which is what keeps the radiation inside the facility from killing you.

Push forward and keep interacting with each ring you pass to refresh the buff. The route winds through corridors and a vent before opening into Bunker War-6 and the Warsat tube itself.

Access the Bunker

At the end of the Warsat corridor, another ring summons Thysaeuc, Quicksilver Psion, and a Radiolaria Nexus Minotaur spawns alongside him.

Kill the Minotaur and it leaves a pool of Radiolaria. Stand in the pool and you gain Radiolarial Suffusion with a filling progress bar. Let it fill completely and it upgrades to Radiolarial Saturation, which is the state Thysaeuc actually needs. Return to him at the blocked doorway and use the Help Psion Dissolve Barrier prompt.

The encounter proper asks for four security nodes destroyed. The first is in the ceiling of the machine at the centre of the main room. The other three sit inside side rooms sealed behind barriers, so the loop repeats: kill adds until another Radiolaria Nexus Minotaur spawns, top the buff back to Saturation, walk Thysaeuc to the next barrier, dissolve it, clear the room, shoot the node.

Dissolving a barrier consumes the buff entirely. Do not stack the walk to the barrier and the room clear in the wrong order, because you will arrive at the next barrier empty and have to farm another Minotaur.

The Descent and the Trap Doors

With all four nodes down, a hole opens in the centre of the main room. Drop through it.

You land in a chamber of platforms and diamond-shaped doorways above water. The water kills instantly, and that holds true for every body of water in this mission, so treat all of it as lethal terrain. Interact with the terminal at the end of the walkway, then work along the left wall to the far doorway.

The next corridor is the trap door section, and this is where blind runs die. Wrong doorways discharge electricity that kills almost immediately. The correct doorways are marked with a blinking blue light in the entryway. If a doorway is dark, it is not the way through. Check from outside before you commit, and if you find nothing lit ahead of you, turn around and re-scan the ones behind you.

Past the doors, a jumping section leads down a vent into the room where you summon Nuajes, Hacking Psion.

Central Observation

The hacking mechanic is a two-person job that you do alone. You station the Psion at one terminal, then run to a second terminal and use the Execute Partner Hack prompt yourself.

The first instance is simple: interact with the red screen next to Nuajes, then take the passage on the right side of the next room to the matching terminal. Past that, a room with a pulsing radiation emitter in the middle asks you to read a symbol on the right-hand terminal and select the matching symbol on the left.

That opens a shaft in the floor. The shaft is lined with electric gates and shootable security nodes. Slide down and shoot each node as it comes into range, because each gate only drops for a couple of seconds and the next node becomes shootable a beat after the last one breaks. Expect to eat this a couple of times before it clicks.

Central Observation itself is the mission's real puzzle. Three buildings surround a central pillar, and each face of the pillar shows a symbol corresponding to the room nearest it. Enter each side room, look through the window into the room opposite, and note which symbol is displayed there.

Once you have all three matched, work in order from left to middle to right. Call Nuajes to the terminal to start the hack, shoot the vent, cross into the opposite room, clear it, and activate the correct symbol. Repeat for the remaining two.

Override the Gravlift

Two large jumping puzzles run off the sides of the Central Observation room, one on each flank. They are comparable in scale to the opening climb in Spire of the Watcher.

Ride the elevator up on either side and cross to the far end. Radiation is present but easy to route around, and shielding Psions are available if you need them. At the far side you will find an Override Gravlift Access terminal and a red portal.

Activate the terminal before you touch the portal. Entering the portal without overriding first teleports you back and you will run the whole course again.

Do both sides, then take the gravlift that appears at the end of the room down to the final encounter.

Stop the Warsat Launch

The final arena opens with a heavy add wave and repeats the mechanics you already know, twice.

Kill Radiolaria Nexus Minotaurs and build back to Radiolarial Saturation, take Thysaeuc to the first side room and open it, clear the room, then station Nuajes at the terminal inside. Build the buff again, do the same on the opposite side room, and execute the partner hack there.

That spawns Valus Thunn. Damage him normally until he goes immune, and watch the Radiation Breach timer that appears on your HUD when he does. During the immune phase he traps your Psion allies, including your shielding Psion, which is what makes the arena lethal.

Find the Warden, the Vex heavy that spawns during this phase, and kill it. That frees the Psions, restores your access to radiation protection, and breaks the boss's immunity. Repeat the cycle until Valus Thunn goes down.

One thing worth flagging: Destinypedia's entry lists a Deathwatch Commander alongside Valus Thunn in the mission's boss section, but does not say where it appears. Most walkthroughs name only Valus Thunn, so do not be thrown if a second named Cabal target shows up during your run.

With the boss dead, interact with the ring at the centre of the room to call the Psions to the Warsat, shoot the satellite, and take the Reach Through Time prompt. Wolfsbane is yours.

All Nine Vex Nodes for Wolfsbane's Intrinsic

Wolfsbane ships with the Resurgence Directive intrinsic, and three upgrade tiers sit above it: Resurgence Directive II, III, and IV. Each tier raises the axe's Impact, Stability, Guard Resistance, and ammo stats.

You unlock them by destroying nine hidden Vex nodes scattered through the mission, arranged in three sets of three. Each completed set grants one tier.

The catch that forces a second run is that the nodes are only damageable with Wolfsbane equipped. Anything else returns an Immune prompt. Since you do not own the axe until the first run ends, node hunting starts on run two at the earliest.

Where the sets sit:

Set one (Resurgence Directive II): the traversal section after the first encounter. One node is in the water room, tucked in a small alcove near the main console. One is at the far left door of the long hallway. One is in the doorway directly beneath you as you jump across into the right-hand hallway.
Set two (Resurgence Directive III): the large jumping puzzle. One sits atop a platform shortly after the first elevator. One is on a Warmind radiator platform reached by the elevator in the water. One is on the opposite side from the second, past the middle platform.
Set three (Resurgence Directive IV): the final boss arena. One is in the back corner behind a stack of boxes, and the other two are in the side rooms off the main chamber.

The nodes respawn every run, so a missed one is never lost. In a fireteam, players have reported that node credit can be shared, meaning each member breaks a different set. Solo, plan to find all nine yourself.

All Four Wolfsbane Catalysts

Wolfsbane takes four catalysts, which the game calls Refits:

Attrition Orbs Refit: dealing sustained damage creates an Orb of Power
Relentless Strikes Refit: landing three light attacks in quick succession grants Sword ammo
Burning Ambition Refit: sustained damage scorches the target, and damaging a scorched target inflicts scorch
Subroutine: ~Recursion Refit: nanites grant more health the higher your Nano-Assault stacks, and taking damage with Nano-Assault active can generate nanites nearby. Some guides write this one as Subroutine Recursion, without the punctuation

That fourth one is missing from most guides still ranking for this mission, because it landed after the launch-week articles were written. All four come from the same puzzle pattern, and all four require Master difficulty or higher. Each one asks you to find a hidden datapad, carry it to a specific terminal and insert it, then finish the mission. The refit arrives on completion.

The Attrition Orbs datapad is the earliest and easiest to demonstrate the pattern with. Head into the opening radiation area, continue down to the first door, then turn behind that door to pick up the datapad. Carry it forward through the radiation zone to the terminal further in, insert it, and complete the run.

Refits are applied at the Relic in the Enclave rather than in your inventory. Bungie's weapon crafting documentation covers how shaping and reshaping work there. The Enclave is reached from Savathun's Throne World in the Director.

The Fewest Runs Needed to Finish Wolfsbane

Nobody tells you how many times you actually have to run this, so here is the maths.

Run one is fixed. Normal difficulty, no customisation, no node hunting, because you do not have the axe yet. You finish and Wolfsbane drops.

From run two onward, set the difficulty to Master. This is the part that saves time: the Vex nodes work on any difficulty, but the catalyst puzzles require Master or higher. Running Master means every subsequent run can progress both tracks at once. Running Normal means the node hunt costs you a run that could have carried a catalyst too.

All nine nodes are findable in a single run if you know the locations. The four catalysts each use a separate datapad and terminal pair, and you carry one datapad at a time, so plan on one catalyst per run. On that assumption the realistic floor is five runs: one on Normal for the weapon, then four on Master, with the node sweep folded into whichever of those four you like.

The one thing that will stretch this is weapon level. Refits are applied at the Relic, and a freshly shaped Wolfsbane will not have the level to slot everything immediately. Collect the refits at your own pace and expect to keep the axe equipped for a while before you can wear all of them at once.

Two Hidden Dialogue Triggers Most Players Miss

Heliostat rewards you for bringing the right Exotic, and not with loot.

Carry Outbreak Perfected into the mission and Ikora's dialogue changes when you reach the dormant nanite growth. Instead of the standard exchange with Lodi about the danger, she notes that the surrounding growth is not reacting at all to a Guardian carrying a live colony of nanites, and tells Lodi this is one threat they are both past. It is a quiet callback to Rise of Iron, and it only fires with that specific weapon equipped.

The second trigger sits on the fourth catalyst. Complete that run carrying Hierarchy of Needs and Lodi's closing lines change: he tells you that the AI's message about a lost sister is aimed at something you are already carrying, and that she may not be pleased about it.

Neither is documented in the guides currently ranking for this mission. Both are worth a run if you care about the writing.

What Changed for Heliostat After the Final Update

Update 9.7.0 shipped on 9 June 2026 and marked the point where Destiny 2 stopped receiving planned live-service content updates. The same Bungie support guide linked above confirms that all content present in the game as of that update stays available.

For Heliostat specifically, that settles three things that older guides get wrong.

The catalysts are not time-gated any more. Launch coverage from October 2025 correctly described them as unlocking on successive weekly resets, and that schedule finished long ago. All four are available now, and none of them are behind a wait.

The mission is not on a rotator, so there is no week where Heliostat is unavailable. And there is no deadline attached to any of it. The mission, the weapon, the nodes, and the refits are all permanent.

Key Takeaways

Heliostat lives in Pinnacle Ops under Vanguard Ops. The Legends node that older guides reference no longer exists.
Your first run is locked to Normal difficulty and awards Wolfsbane on completion.
Psion allies drive every mechanic. Decima shields you from radiation, Thysaeuc dissolves barriers once you reach Radiolarial Saturation, and Nuajes handles partner hacks.
Lit doorways are safe and dark doorways are electrified. All water in the mission kills instantly.
Nine Vex nodes in three sets grant Resurgence Directive II, III, and IV, and only Wolfsbane can break them.
All four catalysts require Master difficulty or higher and follow the same datapad-to-terminal pattern.
Run everything after the first clear on Master so node hunting and catalyst hunting progress together.
Nothing here is time-limited. The mission and every reward attached to it are permanent.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does the Heliostat mission take?

Around 20 to 30 minutes on a first blind run. Once you know the route through the trap doors and the Central Observation puzzle, repeat runs go noticeably faster, since most of that first-run time is spent working out where to go.

Can you solo Heliostat?

Yes. The mission supports 1 to 3 players and every mechanic is designed to be handled alone, including the partner hacks, where you station the Psion at one terminal and execute the hack at the other yourself. Solo runs are the norm rather than the exception.

Where is the Heliostat mission in the Director?

Pinnacle Ops, under Vanguard Ops. It used to be reachable through the Legends node, but that node was deprecated in Update 9.7.0 and all Exotic missions moved to Pinnacle Ops or the Raids and Dungeons node.

What is the recommended Power for Heliostat?

Recommended Power is 280 for the standard run. Master difficulty and any added modifiers raise the effective requirement, so build a buffer before you start farming catalysts.

Do you need to own an expansion to run Heliostat?

Heliostat arrived with the Ash & Iron update, which sits under the Year of Prophecy content year. Access follows the same ownership rules as the rest of that release, so check your entitlements if the mission does not appear in your Pinnacle Ops list.

Why can't I damage the Vex nodes?

Because you are not holding Wolfsbane. The nodes reject every other weapon with an Immune prompt. Equip the axe, then break them.

Do you have to run Heliostat on Master for the catalysts?

Yes. All four catalyst refits require Master difficulty or higher. The Vex nodes for the intrinsic upgrades work on any difficulty, which is why running Master after your first clear lets you chase both at once.

How many catalysts does Wolfsbane have?

Four: Attrition Orbs, Relentless Strikes, Burning Ambition, and Subroutine: ~Recursion. Several guides still list three, because the fourth arrived after those articles were published.

Is Wolfsbane a sword or an axe?

The game classifies it as an Exotic Sword and it uses Sword ammo and Sword mechanics, but it is modelled and animated as a two-handed battle axe. Both descriptions are accurate depending on which you mean.

Are the Heliostat catalysts still time-gated?

No. They unlocked across successive weekly resets after the mission launched in October 2025, and that schedule completed long ago. All four are available immediately now.

Can Heliostat be removed from the game?

Bungie's support documentation states that all content present as of Update 9.7.0 remains available, and Pinnacle Ops is listed among the permanent activity hubs. Nothing about Heliostat is scheduled for removal.