The Warmind DLC added a bunch of amazing things to Destiny 2, among them is a returning weapon from Destiny 1 that was a big favourite for Guardians, the Sleeper Simulant. This weapon was a Fusion Rifle with shots that would bounce off of surfaces and hit enemies around corners in much the same way as Hard Light’s.
The catch to getting Sleeper Simulant this time around is a big old quest. Don’t worry about the details, we’ve got a guide here that’s going to take you from start to finish and land you with that brilliant new Exotic for your collection, and your own self satisfaction.
First things first, you need to get on and finish the Warmind campaign missions. It’s a great DLC that’ll take you around 3 hours in total to finish if you play it all at once, with a little bit of grinding in-between, and it’s very much worth it for the added lore to the Destiny universe.
In addition to the core campaign there are two missions that you can pick up afterwards that are part of the overall Warmind endgame, Legacy Code, and A Piece of the Past. You need to also complete both of these, but if you’re really into Destiny 2 and Warmind then you won’t find this a chore in any way.
As a reward for the above you’ll get the IKELOS Hand Cannon, essential for this quest. Then you’ll need to had off and see Ana Bray and pick up the Violent Intel quest item. With these two you’re going to have some tasks to complete, and you can figure them out for yourself from the item descriptions.
To save time we’ll go through what you do next anyway. First you need to defeat Hive and Cabal with an IKELOS weapon equipped. This is super easy all over Mars, the only slow part is killing Cabal because sometimes they aren’t always around, but the Hive are around everywhere so you’ll be fine.
Next up you need to kill yellow bar enemies with an IKELOS weapon equipped. This again isn’t going to be too hard, and you could even make use of the Escalation Protocol if you really want to. The best way I’ve found to do this is to keep an eye out for public events on Mars and then go straight to them. You might not always get the yellow bar enemy kill but you’ll get more chances at them this way around.
Now you have to complete 5 Heroic Strikes with an IKELOS weapon equipped. If you’re not up to the right Light level here I wouldn’t worry about it too much. You can complete a Heroic Strike when you’re about 10 Light levels under the requirement as long as everyone else who you get matched with is up there in terms of Light and really good at covering you. It might be worth taking this time as an opportunity to complete the Adventures on Mars in order to earn yourself some new gear and get your Light up to where it needs to be. The Strikes themselves will all be missions you’ve probably played, just made harder for Strike purposes, so be prepared when you head out.
This is the point where things get really tough. Now you need to complete 3 Escalation Protocols and find 15 Sleeper Nodes with an IKELOS weapon attached. You find Sleeper Nodes by collecting a specific item from enemies, then combining 4 of them into something else that leads you to an active Sleeper Node. This second part isn’t too hard, it just takes a little bit of time, maybe 10-15 minutes per Sleeper Node I would say. It’s important to remember earlier on in your time with Warmind not to exhaust these, since going through them again will just be massively annoying if you’ve already spent so much time wondering around Mars collecting items and solving cryptic cyberpunk puzzles in text to find their locations.
However, the first part of this step in the road is far more difficult. If you’ve jumped in on Escalation Protocols as you’ve been dancing around Mars then you know how hard they are, and if yo haven’t then you need to know going in that they are very much endgame content. The biggest problem you’ll have completing these is Guardians with really low Light levels starting them, leaving you and maybe a couple of others to do all the hard work. If your Light level is too low then you can’t even hurt the enemies, so don’t bother starting the activity. Spend your time getting your Light level up high enough so that you can boss one of these events, making it past every single wave, 3 times and blast through this step in the quest. Each Escalation Protocol wave comes with a boss that is hard as ails to defeat, and you need to be on top of everything that’s going on in order to defeat it within the time limit. That’s right there’s a time limit, and there’s one for pretty much every stage of an Escalation Protocol just to keep you on your toes and make things even harder, just in case you thought Destiny 2’s endgame was going easy on you.
Finally you will be able to access the mission, Will of the Thousands. This is the final mission of Warmind, so you’ll know what’s coming at this point anyway. Be wary though as it’s going to be harder and might catch you off guard if you think you’re over-levelled for it now.
Once you complete this final mission then you’ll be given Sleeper Simulant. The weapon is a pretty exclusive Exotic and definitely one worth getting in your collection. I’ll be the first to admit that there are points in this guide where I think the quest step is going to be too hard, but Destiny 2 is about grinding through the tough moments in order to get a reward that will change the way you play.
If we missed anything please do let us know in the comments, and keep us up to date with whether this guide was helpful to you when you tried to get Sleeper Simulant.
Image Source: Eurogamer
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