'Destiny 2' Season 5 Lost Forges: Everything We Know About the Horde Mode

Destiny 2 is about to get an entirely new game mode in Season of the Forge, and it could be the best spin on a classic mode that this game has ever done. Here’s what you need to know about Forge in Destiny 2 Season 5.

To coincide with Season of the Forge kicking off on Tuesday, Bungie released a new ViDoc detailing “The Road Ahead,” and the video included lots of new information about Season 5 and beyond in the world of Destiny 2. Not only is Season of the Forge increasing the Light Level cap from 600 to 650, but it’ll also introduce a brand new horde mode called the Lost Forges.

Destiny 2’s Lost Forges Are the New Horde Mode Introduced With Black Armory

The simple way to explain Lost Forges is to call them a new kind of end-game horde mode similar to the Blind Well in the Dreaming City. So basically, players team up to face off against waves of enemies to accomplish a task.

Except Lost Forges are limited to fireteams of three and allow players to craft weapons designed by the Black Armory.

“You will have to push back waves of enemies so that you can actually get your components into the Forge and manufacture your weapon yourself,” Destiny 2’s art director Jason Sussman said in the recent ViDoc. In one snippet of gameplay, a player throws some kind of ball into the Forge, and later the same type of ball is seen dropping from the corpse of a Vex Minotaur.

Storywise, players venture out to “reclaim” and “reignite” several weapon forges that have literally been “lost” by the Black Armory, an organization that created some of the most powerful weapons ever going as far back as the Golden Age. A new Exo NPC called Ada-1 serves as the main point of contact.

Players probably have to claim these “components” from dead enemies in order to create weapons.

The First Black Armory Forge Releases December 4

Destiny 2 Season of the Forge might start on November 27, but Black Armory — and the first Forge — won’t be available to players until the following weekly reset on December 4. The first is called the Volundr Forge.

Destiny 2 Will Have 4 Different Forges

The Goffannon Forge will be released only three days later on December 7 (the same day as a new Raid). Then the Izanami Forge will be released on December 18. Niobe Labs, scheduled for release on January 8, will be the fourth and final Forge.

3 of the Destiny 2 Lost Forges Are Based on a Family-Based Weapons Foundry

In the latest ViDoc, Design Director Evan Nikolich explains that the Black Armory focuses on “lost craftsman” from “foundries we haven’t seen before all coming from the Norse, Japanese, and French family lines.” Volundr is the Norse family, Izanami is the Japanese family, and Gofannon is the French family. As such, each weapon tries to capture a specific kind of style.

3 New Exotics Connect Directly to Each Forge Family, and There Are 2 More Exotics

Each family name is linked to a specific new exotic weapon: a sniper rifle called Izanagi’s Burden (Izanami), a grenade launcher called Anarchy (Volundr), and a bow called Le Monarque (Gofannon).

It’s unclear how the exotic weapon questlines might connect to each family’s specific Forge. It’s probably the case that to unlock each weapon, players have to do things like get a certain number of kills at the corresponding Forge with the same kind of weapon (i.e., grenade launcher kills at Volundr Forge). There’s also Jotun, a fusion rifle that goes over the player’s hand.

Design Lead Josh Hamrick notes in the ViDoc that Season of the Forge includes “four brand new awesome weapons and one old favorite.” So that means there’s one unannounced new exotic weapon that’s probably a throwback from the first Destiny. (That quest is called “The Draw,” so our guess is that it’s for the Last Word hand cannon.)

Destiny 2 Lost Forges Will Have Matchmaking

Perhaps the most striking difference between the Lost Forges and previous comparable Horde Modes is that they’ll have matchmaking, a seemingly simple feature for these kinds of activities that fans have demanded for years.

Destiny is no stranger to horde modes, having introduced the Court of Oryx, Prison of Elders, and Archon’s Forge in the first Destiny. Much more recently, we’ve seen Escalation Protocol with the Warmind expansion and the Blind Well in Forsaken. For years, the trick has been to slowly creep towards the event in the hopes that the player might automatically join an event in session, an annoying workaround that wasn’t always successfuly.

Destiny 2’s Season of the Forge is now available for all players, but Black Armory activities are limited to players with the Annual Pass.

Watch the full “The Road Ahead” ViDoc right here.