Destiny 2 Wayfinder’s Compass Guide: How it Works, What to Upgrade

The Wayfinder’s Compass is the seasonal artifact and reward source for Destiny 2 Season of the Lost. An ancient Awoken artifact that allows movement and mapmaking between dimensions, it serves the same mechanical purpose as the Splicer Glove and Proving Hammer from previous seasons.

For Year 4 veterans, the Compass is a combination of the Proving Hammer’s time-gated reputation and the Splicer Glove’s farmable upgrades. If you’re new to Season of the Lost, we’ll go over everything you need to know.

Note: We’re discussing the seasonal reward system, not the Artifact.

Introduction to the Wayfinder’s Compass

You receive the Compass at the end of the season’s introductory missions. You can access it in the Awoken wing of the H.E.L.M., on the area’s right side. Initially, you can’t unlock anything. You’ll have to progress through the story until you can access the Shattered Realm quest, also launchable via the H.E.L.M.

Once you’ve done one Shattered Realm run, you’ll have enough Parralax Trajectory to unlock the Barrier Breach ability within the Realm. This also opens up the rest of the green, first row of abilities, provided you have the reputation to activate them. Follow our Parralax Trajectory farming guide linked above if you need more of the currency.

Here’s where things get tricky. Like Season of the Chosen, your reputation is time-gated. In other words, you can only acquire a limited amount of it per week through Seasonal Challenges. The first week of said challenges nets you up to reputation Rank 4 by doing the following challenges:

• Wayfinder’s Voyage I
• Ley Line Rumors
• Ascendant Ballast

If Season of the Lost follows the logic of previous seasons, we’ll unlock the rest of the first row of upgrades with Week 2’s challenges, then repeat the process for both the second and third row in the Compass menu. In short, we won’t have access to all the Compass upgrades until Week 6 of the season.

How the Wayfinder’s Compass Works

Every cell in the Compass menu costs Parralax Trajectory to unlock:

• 150 for the first column
• 400 or 600 for the remaining columns

The first column of the Compass menu changes how we interact with the Shattered Realm.

• Barrier Breach, the green upgrade, allows us to get through the various purple barriers throughout the level.
• True Sight, the blue upgrade, will reveal hidden secrets and platforms.
• Safe Passage removes the slow effect from the Fields of Strive but probably increases the power and deadliness of enemies throughout the Shattered Realm.

The final column has additional time-gated requirements:

• Barrier Breach: Step 27 of Wayfinder’s Voyage.
• True Sight: Step 34 of Wayfinder’s Voyage.
• Barrier Breach: Unknown requirement

What to Unlock in the Wayfinder’s Compass

As we unlock more power from the Compass, we gain access to new abilities. Early in the season, we only had access to the green row. By week 2, True Sight, the blue row, was ours to command. By week three, it’s likely Safe Passage will be available as well.

Below are our recommendations for what to unlock in each tree, starting with the Barrier Breach row. Be aware that you will need to complete three weeks of Seasonal Challenges to increase your reputation to 8 to unlock most of the Compass upgrades. Additional time is needed for the final cell in each column.

Barrier Breach Unlock Priority

• Astral Harvester: A straight buff to Parralax Trajectory gains through playlist activities, this upgrade will ensure you never want for seasonal currency. To reiterate, you use the stuff to focus Umbral Engrams, Unlock the bonus chest in Astral Alignment, and unlock new abilities at the Compass.
• Astral Abundance: A flat reduction to the Wayfinder’s Trove bonus chest cost in the Astral Alignment activity. Combined with the Harvester ability, you’ll be swimming in both loot and currency with no trouble at all.
• Opportune Arms: Though Heavy ammo is easy enough to come by and frequently drops in most activities, Opportune Arms guarantees a Heavy brick from every Champion enemy you defeat in the Shattered Realm. This ability harkens back to vanilla Destiny 2 when powerful enemies dropped heavy for reasons too shameful to go into here.
• Phase Breach: This turns you invisible for a time after breaching a barrier, which is likely to come in handy in more enemy-dense barrier-guarded rooms. It will be crucial once we unlock Safe Passage, as that will probably make the Shattered Realm activity much more dangerous, and a few moments to breathe will be welcome.
• Enhanced Breach: If the Shattered Realm is as expansive as it seems, we’ll need the extra barrier breach and invisibility time to get to all the hidden rewards.
• Astral Efficiency: This lowers the cost of repeatable Compass bounties. 3,000 is a high price, but if you want to grind levels endlessly, repeatables are the best way, as you can do as many as you can tolerate purchasing.

True Sight Unlock Priority

• Sight Beyond Sight: A straight buff to the duration of True Sight, every other upgrade here will only benefit from this ability. 

• Unveiled Eyes: Finding Ascendant Anchors is liable to be a key part of seasonal progression, and with this upgrade, True Sight gives you exact locations of nearby Anchors. It’s likely to be an invaluable ability, so unlock it now.

• Ascendant Sight: By revealing more Ascendant Anchors, this upgrade could open additional paths for progression outside of main story requirements. 

• Frequency Echoes: Time gated as it is, this upgrade nevertheless reveals additional secrets and hidden aspects of the Shattered Realm, and should be a top priority once available.

• Vision of Splendor: Though neither Guardians nor bosses give much in the way of Parralax Trajectory, you’ll be killing a lot of both in the six months before Witch Queen’s launch, so increasing your gains is never a bad idea.

• Parallax Focusing: Additional Parralax Trajectory when picking up Ascendant Anchors is a nice to have, but not immediately necessary, ability, as each is a one-time pick-up

That’s all for the Wayfinder’s Compass for now. We’ll update this article when more abilities become available later in the season. Check out our other Destiny 2 Season of the Lost guides in the meantime.