How to Make Motes of Light in Destiny 2: The Final Shape

Many of the missions in The Final Shape expansion for Destiny 2 have some light, Raid, and Dungeon-style mechanics, and they get started very early on. In the second mission, Exegesis, you need to make Motes of Light and Motes of Dark to solve a set of puzzles, and the lessons you learn here will be incredibly valuable later on.

How to Get Motes of Light and Darkness in the Exegesis Mission in Destiny 2

To make Motes of Light, you need to kill a Hive Knight with the Relic’s Light or Heavy attacks.

Early on in the Exegesis mission, you’ll encounter an item called a Relic, a shield made of Light energy. The Relic is key not only to making Light Motes but also to surviving encounters later on in the campaign. With the Relic in hand, you’ll want to find a Hive Knight called the Eater of Light and Darkness and kill him.

The instant the Eater of Light and Darkness dies, it will spawn three Motes of Light. Odds are, you’ll all three up right away, but if you don’t, simply walk over them, and they automatically go into your Motes of Light total. Once you’ve collected three of them, you’ll get the Light Motes Max buff on the left side of your screen, with a 30-second timer. Let the timer run out, and you’ll need to collect the Motes again.

To get Dark Motes, you need to defeat an Eater of Light and Darkness with any weapon of any energy type, and they’ll appear where it died. Picking them up is the same process: walk over them until you’ve collected three. The 30-second timer is the same as well.

Note that if you’re on a fireteam, one of you can pick up Dark Motes, and the other can run around with Light Motes. There’s no lockout across different Guardians, however, once your character is holding a full load of Motes, they can’t pick up any of the opposite kind. Should you not have a full stack and pick up another kind of Mote, it will overwrite what you were previously carrying. As such, you’ll want to use the Motes you’re currently carrying before trying to get more of either kind.

How to Use the Relic Shield in Destiny 2: The Final Shape

If you’re familiar with the Vault of Glass or Vow of the Disciple Raids, the Relic (also called The Aegis) works exactly like it does in those activities. Its attacks are as follows:

• A light attack that deals moderate damage on the ground and can propel you forward in the air.
• A heavy attack that slams enemies in front of you on the ground or slams into the ground from the air.
• A shield with a short cooldown that blocks all projectiles outside it.
• A Super ability that sends out an orb of Light energy to break special shields an enemy might deploy.

In the context of Exegesis, you’ll only really need to use the light attacks, and even on the Legendary difficulty, the Eaters of Light and Darkness are easy to defeat. You can, of course, style on them a bit with heavy attacks or other combos of your own design, but I would highly recommend practicing using the shield as a movement tool.

Using light attack in the air consumes none of the shield’s resources, and if you press jump and then light attack shortly after, you can move far faster than if you were sprinting. Do so repeatedly for a massive speed boost that will definitely come in handy in other encounters where the Relic plays a part. Learn also how the shield functions. You won’t need to use it for a few missions, but you can still practice keeping the Hive Knight boomer weapons from hitting you from a distance.

Those are all my best tips for making Light Motes and Darkness Motes in Destiny 2: The Final Shape. It’s pretty straightforward, which is less than can be said of some of the later mechanics. In the meantime, be sure to check back to our Destiny 2 guides hub for more on The Final Shape, including the best campaign loadouts and the best weapons to use with Prismatic.