Destiny 2 Season of Plunder: How To Complete Expeditions

Destiny 2’s Season of Plunder has you team up with Drifter, Spider, Eido, and Mithraks to take down the newly escaped Eramis, who is teaming up with other Eliksni pirates to hunt down various Darkness artifacts. With a new season comes new seasonal activities in the forms of Ketchcrash, Expeditions, and Pirate Hideouts.

You won’t immediately have access to all of the seasonal activities when you first log into the new season, so continue reading this guide to learn how to unlock the Expeditions seasonal activity and how to complete an Expedition once it is unlocked. 

How To Start An Expedition

To gain access to the Expedition Playlist, you will first need to complete the seasonal prologue, during which you will learn that Eramis has escaped her Stasis containment and is allying with various Eliksni pirate crews in search of some dangerous Darkness artifacts. You will then be treated to a fun cutscene involving Drifter, Eido, and Mithrax planning how to counter Eramis’ plans.

After that, you’ll need to visit the Eliksni Quarter and speak with Spider, who will grant you access to the Ketchcrash seasonal activity and the Ahoy And Aweigh Quest. Complete a Ketchcrash seasonal activity to progress Ahoy And Aweigh, and head to the H.E.L.M. to turn in the quest for completion.

Once you’ve completed the Ahoy And Aweigh Quest, you will then begin the Sails of the Shipstealer Quest, the 62-step main quest spanning all of Season of Plunder. After finishing Steps 1 and 2 of the quest, you will gain access to the Expedition Playlist on Step 3 of the Sails of the Shipstealer Quest.

You can access the Expedition Playlist from the H.E.L.M.—the icon is located just beside the Ketchcrash seasonal activity icon.

Completing The Expedition Activity

The Expedition seasonal activity involves a fireteam of 1-3 players battling roving pirate crews and excavating long-buried treasure. The Expedition activity will involve you and your fireteam escorting a Treasure Haul cart through different areas, fighting off enemy incursions, and harvesting buried treasure along the way until you reach an eventual evac point.

After you begin the mission, you’ll be treated to some light banter between Spider and Eido. You’ll receive another slight hint at Mithraks’ darker past, which will no doubt be unveiled more as the season progresses. your first objective for this Expedition is to Search for Buried Treasure. Head to the big glowing beam of light nearby. A mineral harvester will begin collecting treasure in the area, and you must fight off waves of Vex enemies as they spawn around you.

At irregular intervals, the mining beam will excavate treasure, which will drop down as golden engrams. These treasure items have about 20 seconds before they explode. You want to pick them up and throw them at your purple glowing Treasure Haul cart. Repeat this process, battling more enemies and depositing more golden engrams, until the cart is full and it’s time to move out.

During this process, a signal jammer will show up, interrupting your operation and blocking the treasure harvester from completing the process. Ride out to the quest objective, defeat the enemies around the signal jammer, and destroy the jammer itself once its shields drop. After it is destroyed, you’re free to return to the Treasure Haul cart to dig up more treasure.

After the first area has been fully harvested of treasures, the Treasure Haul will begin moving along a set path toward your Ketch in the distance. It will eventually stop at another site primed for treasure harvesting. Complete the same process at a new location, but this time you will be attacked by hordes of Eliksni and Cabal scavengers. Fight off these challengers, defending your harvester as it gathers and generates golden engrams.

Continue depositing the golden engrams as they spawn. There will often be more engrams than you’ll be able to despite in your Treasure Haul cart—especially while you and your fireteam are under attack by an increasing number of Cabal and Fallen enemies. Keep at it, and you’ll be finished with this secondary treasure harvesting site in no time.

Once you fill-up the Treasure Haul cart again, it will begin moving toward the final location, where you will be treated to more enemies and eventually a boss encounter once the Treasure Haul cart reaches its final resting place.

After the boss has been defeated, your end-of-mission treasure chest will appear. You will also find three green marks located around the end-of-mission treasure chest. If you have an active treasure map, you can ‘dig up’ the treasure from these green marks for bonus rewards.

And that’s the end of the mission! You can of course repeat it as often as you’d like, but you’ll only be able to collect the buried treasure with an active treasure map, so you’ll want to run more Ketchcrash missions in order to gain the necessary Map Fragments to activate another treasure map.