Destiny 2 The Final Shape Exotic Weapons Guide: How to Get Ergo Sum, Microcosm, Khvostov & Still Hunt

I have a problem. When a new expansion drops, I ignore the campaign and immediately start hunting exotic weapons. Final Shape has five new exotic weapons plus exotic class items and I've now unlocked all of them. Some were fun to chase. One made me want to throw my controller through a window. Here's the honest breakdown.

Ergo Sum - The Campaign Exotic Sword

Ergo Sum is the guaranteed exotic from completing the campaign. It's a sword with a twist: the heavy attack element changes to match your currently equipped subclass. If you're running Prismatic, it matches whatever element you dealt damage with most recently. The heavy attack also gets a damage bonus while Transcendence is active.

On Legendary difficulty, you get Ergo Sum with a 100 percent drop rate plus the catalyst quest immediately. On Normal, the drop rate is something like one in three, and you might not get the catalyst quest for a while. Just do Legendary. It's harder but you're going to want the gun anyway and having to replay the campaign for it feels awful.

Is it good? It's solid. Not game-breaking, not trash. In the raid, I use it to clear adds when I'm conserving heavy ammo. The Transcendence damage buff makes it hit surprisingly hard - I've seen 80k per swing on red bars. But for boss DPS, you're still using a linear fusion or rocket launcher. This is a utility weapon, not a boss melter.

The catalyst requires 200 kills with Ergo Sum plus some Pale Heart patrol objectives. It adds a perk that refunds ammo on rapid kills, which makes the sword much better for add clear. Do the catalyst. It takes maybe an hour and the ammo refund makes the weapon feel complete.

Microcosm - The Heavy Trace Rifle

Microcosm is the heavy kinetic trace rifle and it's the best raid DPS exotic in the expansion. It fires a continuous beam that doesn't care about elemental shields, and it builds up a damage multiplier the longer you hold the beam on a target. At max stacks, I've measured roughly 40 percent more damage than a comparable legendary linear fusion.

The quest is called "Echoes of Liminality" and it unlocks after you finish the campaign. You'll bounce around the Pale Heart doing bounties, patrols, and killing specific enemy types. The quest tracker is decent about telling you where to go, but one step tripped me up: you need to kill 50 Dread enemies with precision damage. Grims are the easiest target for this - their heads are big and they hover in place while shooting. Load into the Bloom area and farm the patrol spawns.

The final step is a solo mission where you fight a Taken version of yourself. Your doppelganger copies your equipped subclass and weapons. The trick is to equip a loadout with clear counters before starting the mission. I brought a Void subclass with Suppressor Grenade, and a kinetic scout rifle for range. The doppelganger couldn't use its abilities because I kept it suppressed, and I plinked it down from across the arena. Took about five minutes of kiting. People who went in with their usual loadout got destroyed by their own meta setups.

Is Microcosm worth the grind? If you raid, absolutely. It's the best heavy for the Witness encounter and competitive everywhere else. If you're a solo player who doesn't do endgame content, probably skip it. The quest is two hours of busywork for a gun you won't use much.

Still Hunt - The Golden Gun Sniper

Still Hunt is a Solar sniper rifle with a perk that makes it fire like a miniature Golden Gun shot when you land three precision hits in a row. The damage is absurd. I've seen 180k damage numbers on the Witness with this thing. It's not consistent - you need to land three crits in a row - but when it procs, it procs hard.

The quest is called "Lost in the Light" and it's time-gated across three weeks. Seven steps total. Each step is about twenty minutes of gameplay - kill enemies in specific Pale Heart zones, complete a Lost Sector, that kind of thing. You can't speed this one up, so start it as early as possible. The final step requires a 1990 Power level, which means you need to be at the hard cap before you can finish.

Honestly, the time gate is annoying but I understand why Bungie does it. If everyone had Still Hunt on day one, the raid would have been even easier than it was. The staggered release means the community discovers new strategies over time instead of everything being solved immediately.

One tip: during the quest step where you need to kill 100 enemies with sniper rifles in the Pale Heart, use the DARCI. It's a heavy sniper with a massive ammo pool and it's surprisingly effective in patrol zones. Much faster than farming with a special sniper.

Khvostov 7G-0X - The Sentimental Auto Rifle

If you've played Destiny since the beginning, Khvostov is the very first gun you ever picked up, rusted and broken in the Cosmodrome. In Final Shape, you can find it again, rebuilt into an exotic auto rifle with the perk "Eyes Up, Guardian" - every seventh bullet ricochets and deals bonus damage.

The quest starts in the Pale Heart's Hollow area. You find a broken Exo body against a wall and interact with it. This gives you a cryptic hint about crystals scattered across the destination. There are fifteen crystals total, hidden in caves, behind waterfalls, on top of buildings. Each one you shoot in the correct order unlocks the next. The order changes weekly, and the hints are vague.

I'm not going to pretend I solved this blind. The puzzle community had it cracked within hours, and by day two there were map guides online. Use them. There's no shame in it. The puzzle is obtuse and the in-game hints would take days to decipher alone.

The reward is worth it. Khvostov feels incredible to shoot. The ricochet bullets track toward nearby enemies, so you're effectively damaging multiple targets with every burst. In add-dense encounters like the raid's third encounter, the ricochet clears groups faster than most special weapons. It's my favorite exotic from this expansion, partly because of nostalgia and partly because it's genuinely good.

Exotic Class Items - The Wild Card

Exotic class items are back, and they work completely differently now. Each class item can roll with two random exotic armor perks, one in each column. You can get a Warlock bond with Spirit of the Assassin (invisibility on finisher) and Spirit of the Star-Eater (faster Super generation from Orbs), or a Hunter cloak with Spirit of the Ophidian (faster reload) and Spirit of Synthoceps (melee damage when surrounded).

The source is a secret activity in the Pale Heart called Dual Destiny. You need to find two mini-bosses that spawn in specific locations on a rotation. Kill both, and a portal opens to an arena where you fight waves of Dread. At the end, an exotic class item drops.

The grind is real. The perk pool is huge and you're chasing specific combos. I've done Dual Destiny maybe fifteen times and I've gotten two good rolls and thirteen dismantles. The activity itself is fun - it's like a mini-dungeon - but the RNG will eventually wear you down.

Some perk combos are genuinely broken. Spirit of the Assassin plus Spirit of the Liar on a Hunter gives you invisibility and massive melee damage, letting you chain finishers on Champions. Spirit of Synthoceps plus Spirit of the Wormgod on a Titan stacks melee damage to numbers that feel like a bug. Bungie will probably nerf some of these interactions, so enjoy them while they last.

What to Skip

Not every exotic chase is worth your time. The Final Shape also has legendary weapons worth crafting - the No Hesitation auto rifle from the raid, the Euphony linear fusion from the Witness encounter - and some of these outperform the exotic weapons in specific situations. A crafted Euphony with Bait and Switch is better DPS than Microcosm if you can consistently proc the perk.

I'd prioritize Khvostov first because it's the most fun and useful across the most content. Then Still Hunt if you snipe. Then Microcosm if you raid. Ergo Sum you'll get naturally from the campaign. Exotic class items are an endless grind - do it if you enjoy the activity but don't burn yourself out chasing perfection.