Destiny 2 Shadowkeep Players Are Solving A Huge Puzzle That's Not Even In The Game

The moon is full of secrets and story tidbits to discover in Destiny 2’s latest expansion, Shadowkeep. Undoubtedly the upcoming raid, the Garden of Salvation, will have a host of its own mysteries to discover. But one of the biggest puzzles related to the expansion isn’t actually in the game at all–it’s related to the physical Collector’s Edition that Bungie sold ahead of release, and a hidden puzzle that’s requiring the Destiny 2 community to work together to solve it.

The Collector’s Edition game packed with moon-centric story supplements, including a journal that sheds some light on the strange object quest-giver Eris Morn discovered there, which kicks off the expansion’s story. It also includes a Hive Cryptoglyph, a collector’s item that’s meant to sit on your desk. The Cryptoglyph (which is also a big part of the in-game mechanics for unlocking new gear on the moon) is also a combination lock, and those who bought the Collector’s Edition had to figure out how to open it using clues hidden throughout the package.

Inside the Cryptoglyph was a slip of paper with a URL that led to a Bungie site, as well as a code to redeem. The code awarded anyone who’d solved their Cryptoglyph with a unique in-game emblem to show off their puzzling skills, but it also provided an image on the URL page made up of a series of strange runes. On Reddit, community members quickly started to put the images together, discovering that when they were overlaid, the runes formed words.

As it turns out, though, the puzzle is extremely complex. CE buyers each got one random URL in their Cryptoglyphs, of a possible five. But as it turns out, once you’ve redeemed your code, you can visit each of the other URLs as well, uncovering more pieces of the puzzle. The result of putting all the rune images together is five big pages of text related to Destiny 2’s Hive lore.

As of this writing, the messages have been mostly deciphered, but not completely. In fact, the Reddit post tracking the puzzle reports that more images are needed. It includes instructions on how to send the images to the team deciphering them, and you can see the messages as they’ve been compiled so far as well.

What does it all mean? It’s not quite clear yet, although the puzzle-solvers report they’ll issue transcripts once they have the messages fully deciphered. The Cryptoglyph definitely hides more of Destiny’s ever-expanding and perennially weird story. Given that this is Destiny, it seems likely there might be something more, like clues to a hidden Exotic weapon, similar to the way Whisper of the Worm and Outbreak Perfected required players to discover them within the game. The Black Armory also saw a major all-hands-on-deck puzzle with Niobe Labs. We’ll have to wait and see what the Destiny 2 brain trust discovers.