Destiny 2 Essence of Despair - Moon Activities

Essence of Despair is a quest item in Destiny 2 Shadowkeep. It can drop while you’re out and about, doing missions and being all guardiany. It’ll task you with completing a certain amount of activities on the Moon, and when you’ve done so, you’ll get a nice reward. If you’re having trouble figuring out which activities exactly fill up the gauge, keep reading our Destiny 2 Essence of Despair guide.

How to cleanse Essence of Despair

Once you’ve obtained the item, pretty much any activity you do on the Moon will count towards completion. This includes collecting planetary resources, opening up loot chests, playing patrols and public events, as well as clearing lost sectors. Just keep goofing around on the new map and eventually, you’ll fill the bar. The quickest way would probably be the hardest, which means doing heroic public events. Quests aren’t mentioned anywhere, so it seems like they’re out of the equation.

Essence of Despair quest bug

A number of players have reported getting the quest item that starts the Essence of Despair mission, only to have it removed promptly. It doesn’t even appear in the quest trackers when they check, and speaking to Eris Morn doesn’t allow them to take it again – because they can only have one at a time. So the game claims they have it, yet it doesn’t allow them to actually try to complete it.

What happens is the game sees (or gets confused into thinking) that their quest tracker is full, so it sends the new quest item to the postmaster. If you have this problem, just talk to the robot and you’ll be able to pick it up, provided you’ve emptied out your quest log a bit. It’s a common issue in the new expansion, so expect to see it a lot more.

If you need further help with Destiny 2 Shadowkeep, check out our guides on Dead Ghost Locations, Jade Rabbit Locations, and Eyes on the Moon - How to Start Vex Invasion. If it's Exotic Weapons that you're after, we've got you covered with our Pain And Gain Exotic Quest and Deathbringer Exotic Rocket Launcher - Symphony of Death guides. Going back in time for new players, we can offer you guides like Ikelos Weapons - How to Get SMG, Sniper Rifle, Shotgun, or, if you're playing Forsaken content, guides like Corsair Down & Badge - Dead Body Locations.