Destiny 2’s Witherhoard exotic lets you one-shot and cheese bosses

Destiny 2, much like its predecessor, is a game with many cheeses. It just wouldn’t be the same if these helpful bugs and glitches didn’t exist. There’s one right now for Umbral Engrams level boosting, and another involving the Season of Arrivals‘ newest exotic, the Witherhoard grenade launcher. This particular cheese might be one of the most broken ones around since it lets you one-shot a number of raid bosses. Here’s our mini-guide to help you out.

Note: For more information about the other activities and content for this season, check out our Destiny 2: Season of Arrivals guides and features hub.

Destiny 2: Season of Arrivals – The Witherhoard exotic’s one-shot cheese for bosses

The Witherhoard exotic grenade launcher is obtained very early on in Destiny 2: Season of Arrivals. In fact, all you need to do is open your season pass tab and pick up the premium rewards. For those who don’t own the premium pass, this is obtained when you hit season rank 35.

The weapon has two unique perks called “Primeval’s Torment” and “Break the Bank.” It fires a grenade that bounces and creates a blight, causing damage over time for opponents that are standing within its area of effect.

The Bank Job: Obtaining the Witherhoard’s catalyst

Although masterworking the Witherhoard exotic via its catalyst isn’t required for the cheese, it’s still a good idea to know about it:

• Speak to Banshee to pick up the exotic quest for the catalyst.
• Gather 50x Vault Keys. These quest items are obtained by getting kills with kinetic or energy grenade launchers (ie. The Mountaintop, Fighting Lion, Martyr’s Retribution, or The Militia’s Birthright). Multikills have a higher chance of dorpping Vault Keys.

After this, you’ll get the next part called “The Bank Job” where you have the following tasks:

• Earn 300 Filthy Lucre – These are just points that you get from completing Vanguard strikes, Crucible matches, Gambit matches, or Nightfalls. You’ll gain extra progress by completing Nightfall Ordeals or winning Crucible/Gambit matches. The progression here is also increased once you obtain “Catalyst Enhancement” perks via the season tab.
• 200x grenade launcher multikills – This can be easily done while farming an Escalation Protocol or the new Contact public event.
• 100x grenade launcher Guardian kills – If you’re running with The Mountaintop (along with Fighting Lion or The Colony), then, chances are, you’ll get this done in no time.

Cheesing time

So, how exactly do you do the cheese? Well, it’s simple: just have six players shooting the raid boss with the Witherhoard. Here’s a quick kill when facing the Sanctified Mind in the Garden of Salvation raid:

Here are some other videos from various Destiny 2 streamers:

Your guess is as good as ours as to why this glitch happens. One theory is that, due to the damage-over-time (DOT) effect of the blight, the game can’t decide how to calculate the damage numbers properly. In the end, it’ll simply lead to massive amounts of damage done within a short timeframe, immediately killing the boss.

Keep in mind that all six players need to fire their Witherhoard shots and there should be ample time for the blights to do continuous damage. As such, this one-shot cheese will work for stationary raid bosses (ie. Calus, Kalli, Shuro Chi, Riven, or the Sanctified Mind). It likely won’t work on bosses that move around a lot such as the Consecrated Mind or the Echo Kell from The Prophecy dungeon.

Destiny 2: Season of Arrivals is available on Steam. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.