How to complete Convalescence: Budding and get Microcosm in Destiny 2 The Final Shape

Microcosm is a new Heavy Exotic Trace Rifle in Destiny 2, but it's not easy to earn. In fact, you'll need a Fireteam for it. Here's how.

Lloyd Coombes

11th Jun 2024 11:42

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Destiny 2’s Final Shape is here, and once you’ve wrapped up all the missions in the campaign, you’ll be given the chance to secure some post-game exotic loot.

It’s a similar process to most of the loot-shooter/MMOs expansions, with three exotics up for grabs once you’re done - plus Red Death Reformed in the Echoes Season Pass.

Here’s how to get the Microcosm, a new Heavy Exotic Trace Rifle that’s perfect for ripping apart enemy shields.

For more on Final Shape Exotic weapons, check out our roundup, as well as our guides to getting Still Hunt and Ergo Sum.

Spoiler Warning

If you’ve somehow not finished the campaign yet, I’d recommend coming back - consider this a spoiler warning.

How to get Microcosm in Destiny 2’s Final Shape expansion

Once you finish the campaign, you’ll be given a quest to help you get the new sword, Ergo Sum. The questline is called “Destined Heroes”, and you’ll need to finish “Queens, Part 1” as a prerequisite to get yourself Microcosm.

Once that’s done, you’ll need to work through a series of quests called Convalescence that will teach you about the Final Shape’s Pale Heart destination (it’s somehow bigger and more complex than it looks, right?).

Eventually, you’ll get to a quest step called Convalescence: Budding, which is the one you’ll need to finish to earn yourself Microcosm.

How to complete Convalescence: Budding, including Cooperative Focus mechanics

Destiny 2 co op focus

Remember when I said you need to finish the campaign? That’s because you’re going to be playing through three of the missions again, only you’ll need backup. That’s right, there’s a focus on cooperation here which means solo players may want to lean on Fireteam Finder or another LFG tool.

Once you’ve got your Fireteam together, hop into the Campaign replay section on The Pale Heart, and set yourself up for Cooperative Focus - you’ll be tackling level 2005 enemies that fall somewhere between standard and Legendary campaign difficulty levels.

The three missions you’ll need to complete are:

Ascent
Dissent
Iconoclasm

As you can probably imagine, the Iconoclasm one is likely to be the trickiest since it’s the final fight against the Witness (until you tackle the Raid, that is).

It’s not just tougher enemies, though - each mechanic gets a slight tweak for the Cooperative Focus versions of these missions.

Berserkers

Berserkers are added (you may remember them from Scourge of the Past), and you’ll need to coordinate to take them down since you need to damage weak spots on their front and back at the same time. After that, you’ll need to shoot a Darkness Crux at the same time as a teammate to avoid a wipe.

Glyphtouched

A common mechanic throughout the Final Shape’s campaign, Glyphtouched refers to a buff that lets you see symbols that need to be matched up with resonant energy sources. The twist in this version is that only one player can get the Glyphtouched buff, and they won’t be able to see the corresponding symbols - so you’ll need to communicate.

Witness Fracturing

The Witness doesn’t know when it’s been beaten and will debuff a random player in the Fireteam in each mission. This debuff, called ‘Fracturing’ will kill players if it hits a stack of ten - but from seven onwards, you can pass it off between each other, resetting the count.

Is Microcosm worth it and what does it do?

Destiny 2 Microcosm in action

Microcosm is a Heavy Exotic Trace Rifle in Destiny 2 that has the unique distinction of outputting Kinetic Damage. That’s ideal because Kinetic attacks power up your Light and Darkness meters to help you hit Transcendant if you’ve got a Prismatic subclass equipped.

Here are the perks for the weapon:

Paracausal Beam: Fires a beam of Kinetic light, dealing massive bonus damage to shields.
Paracausal Imbuement: Final blows with this weapon grant Super energy. This weapon gains bonus damage once your Super expires.

About The Author

Lloyd Coombes

Lloyd is GGRecon's Editor-in-Chief, having previously worked at Dexerto and Gfinity, and occasionally appears in The Daily Star newspaper. A big fan of loot-based games including Destiny 2 and Diablo 4, when he's not working you'll find him at the gym or trying to play Magic The Gathering.

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