Destiny 2: Complete Haunted Lost Sectors Guide (Festival of the Lost 2023)

Destiny 2 Festival of the Lost 2023 is introducing Haunted Lost Sectors (a.k.a Haunted Sectors), which are harder, more rewarding versions of Lost Sectors. Get Eerie Engrams, a good amount of candy, and earn rewards during the event with the help of our complete Haunted Lost Sectors guide. 

How to Start Haunted Sectors

You’ll earn access to your first Haunted Sector during the Festival of the Lost introductory quest, Classic Carving. Be sure to wear your Masquerader’s Mask so you can start collecting Candy. After your first completion, you can finish out the Classic Carving quest, and you can access Haunted Sectors from the Tower Director map.

How Haunted Sectors Work in Festival of the Lost

There are two difficulties for Haunted Sectors: normal and Legend. The normal ones are pretty easy, even if you don’t have any endgame-ready builds. It has a Power limit of 1815 and assumes you have lots of good gear and even a partial build or two ready to go. Legend Haunted Sectors are the only guaranteed way to get both Eerie Engrams and the Lost Momento item, so you’ll need to do some extra work if you want everything during Festival of the Lost 2023. Complete Haunted Sectors solo or a fireteam with up to three players.

Haunted Sector Phases in Festival of the Lost

Haunted Sectors feature two phases during Festival of the Lost 2023.

• You need to either defeat 10 Headless Ones or exhaust the five-minute timer.
• Defeat the Lost Sector boss that spawns.

To spawn Headless Ones — pumpkin-headed Hive Knight Ultra enemies — stand in the green-glowing ritual circles scattered about the Haunted Sector. There will also be a capture point letter above each circle, either A, B, or C. These circle designations don’t change.

Standing in a circle for about ten seconds causes a Headless One to spawn, and killing it causes the next circle to appear. About two minutes into the Haunted Sector timer, the pace will increase, and two ritual circles will start coming at once. You don’t need to stand in both at the same time. Ritual circles remain for about twenty seconds, so if you can defeat the first Headless One and head over to the other circle, you can effectively cycle them without the threat of being overwhelmed.

After you either defeat ten Headless Ones or the time runs out, the boss will spawn. The kind of boss will depend on the enemy faction in the Haunted Sector. They’re tanky, especially on Legend difficulty. Once you deplete a third of their health, the bosses gain an immune shield.

Now it’s time to spawn more Headless Ones. When you defeat them this time, they’ll drop four Pumpkin Charges. Pick these spooky bombs up and chuck them at the boss — it takes three Charges to take down the shield, so the fourth is supplemental damage.

Repeat this process to take the boss to one-third health and drop its shield. Then kill it for your loot chest. The amount of rewards you receive depends on how many Headless Ones you killed in the first phase.

What Rewards Do You Get During Festival of the Lost 2023?

There are several reward types during Destiny 2 Festival of the Lost 2023, and the most valuable requires you have Eerie Engrams. Eva Levante can decrypt or focus your Eerie Engrams for the following rewards:

• Decrypting Eerie Engrams rewards enhancement materials, mostly Enhancement Cores, but I managed an Ascendant Shard as well.
• Eerie Weapons Endgrams cost an additional 500 Candy and supply a single, randomly-rolled Festival of the Lost Weapon.
• You can spend 1,000 Candy and an Eerie Engram to focus a specific Festival weapon.
• You can spend a whopping 2,500 Candy and an Eerie Engram to focus a random Exotic Armor piece from previous Destiny 2 seasons. You can choose which Exotic slot you want — head, arms, chest, or feet — but what you get is still random.

Additionally, as you complete activities throughout Destiny 2, you can earn Spectral Pages. Taking these pages into Haunted Sectors transforms them into Manifested Pages, which you can turn in at the Book of the Forgotten for lore and ultimately for the Nyxpteron Exotic Ship.

Lastly, there’s the Festival of the Lost Event Card, which has seventeen challenges to complete, all of which have additional rewards. For a full list of those, check out our guide on Festival of the Lost challenges and rewards.

That’s our complete guide on Haunted Lost Sectors in the Festival of the Lost 2023. If you’re looking for more content on Destiny 2 Festival of the Lost and the game in general, check out our guides on the Heads Will Roll triumph, the Crota’s End Raid loot pool, and more in our D2 guides hub.