Destiny 2 · Witch Queen Raid · Savathûn's Throne World
Vow of theDisciple
A full visual field guide to all four encounters of Destiny's glyph masterclass — the symbol language, the obelisk reads, the Caretaker stun loop, the Exhibition relic relay, and Rhulk's dunk-and-laser dance. Built for a second screen: schematic maps, archetype loadout jobs, and current loot.
Status: Current & playable · non-matchmade · 6-player
Vow is the raid that punishes loose comms harder than loose aim. Almost every encounter is built on a shared symbol language, so the team that names its glyphs first and keeps callouts short wins. Here are the stable truths and the traps stale guides still set.
Stable truths
It is current and launchable. Vow lives in the Director under Savathûn's Throne World — no vaulting, weekly checkpoint, six players, no matchmaking.
Symbols run the whole raid. The game uses 27 official glyphs with community names. You don't need the real set memorized — you need your team's shorthand agreed before you start.
Read first, shoot second. Three encounters gate progress behind reading hidden information (obelisk symbols, Glyphkeeper drops, or relic-carrier vision). The DPS is the easy part.
Most wipes are callout failures, not mechanics failures — wrong symbol entered, missed obelisk, dropped relic, or someone caught in Rhulk's room-clearing line.
What stale guides get wrong
Symbols aren't flavor — they're the language the raid speaks. This guide decodes the full 27-glyph tongue (below): memorize the six that never change, agree team nicknames for the rest. The only rule mid-run is that everyone maps the same name to whatever the game actually shows.
The exotic and its farm are the live bits. Vow's exotic is the Rhulk / final-encounter chase, with raid Triumphs improving drop odds; open the Director and read the in-game reward preview before grinding.
This is not a first raid. Learn callout discipline somewhere gentler (Vault of Glass, Deep Stone Crypt) first.
Monument baseline: last gameplay patch Update 9.7.0.3 (2026-07-07). Update 9.7.0.4 (2026-07-28) shipped without notes; Update 9.7.0.5 (2026-10-07) is an anti-cheat back-end fix only. Checked 2026-10-08.
The Fiction
Why you're here
The puzzles below aren't arbitrary — every one is the Disciple's own language, museum, and weapon turned against him. Here's the story the raid is telling while you solve it.
The Disciple's tomb-ship
This sunken Pyramid is the vault of Rhulk, the Witness's First Disciple — a Lubraean who became the last survivor of a Traveler-blessed world he burned down himself, reforged from a betrayed outcast into the Witness's most devoted enforcer. He fights with Lubrae's Ruin, the glaive he used to end his own people.
The Pyramid sank into Savathûn's Throne World, where Rhulk bred the Worm larvae that first seeded the Hive. Savathûn cursed the structure and sealed him inside. Unlike every Pyramid before it, nothing guided you here — you found it on your own.
Every gate below is his language, his museum, and his weapon: read the Witness's glyphs, ransack the Disciple's collection, and take Rhulk's own power to end him before he seals the Light out of the Throne World.
Core Mechanic
The three verbs of Vow
Strip away the lore and every encounter is one of three jobs. Learn these three verbs and the whole raid becomes "which verb am I doing right now?" — the same triad the Acquisition, Caretaker, and Exhibition rooms remix in different shapes.
Verb · Information
Read
› Identify hidden symbols
Obelisks, Glyphkeepers, and relic views reveal which glyphs are "live." The reader calls the names your team agreed on. Wrong read = wrong dunk = wipe.
Verb · Carry
Run
› Carry the relic / orb
One player picks up a relic (or resonance orb) and ferries it under fire. The team clears their lane and protects the carrier to the deposit.
Verb · Deposit
Dunk
› Deposit on the right symbol
Bank the carried thing at the matching glyph plate / obelisk. Progress only happens here — dunk the wrong symbol and you stall or wipe.
Callout hygiene: Vow ships 27 official glyphs, and every one is a real word (Hive, Pyramid, Stop, Kill…). Don't decode art under pressure — agree short nicknames before the run and call position before description when a timer is ticking. New: the whole alphabet is decoded in The 27 glyphs below, and those same words spell the raid's hidden Prophecy Wall.
The Disciple's Tongue
The 27 glyphs, decoded
Every symbol Vow throws at you is a word. The Pyramid speaks in a written language — 27 painted glyphs, an art style borrowed from abstract painter Hilma af Klint — that the community decoded rune by rune. (In-game, aim down sights at any glyph in the entrance gallery and its name prints under the radar.) The same alphabet returns in the Sundered Doctrine dungeon and the Dual Destiny mission — learn it once, read it three times.
Powers & anchors
Travelerthe Light-giving spherePyramida Darkness shipLightthe Light itselfDarknessthe Dark itself
Beings & factions
Witnessthe final enemyGuardianyou / your GhostHivethe HiveScornthe reborn FallenWormthe Worm GodsSavathûnthe Witch-QueenFleetthe Black Fleet
The six that never change. Most glyphs you'll nickname per fireteam, but these six read identically every run and anchor everything else: Light — white disc, rainbow gems; Darkness — black disc, white rays; Stop — a solid red square; Guardian — a Ghost shell (not a helmet); Kill — a crosshair (not a blade); Hive — three eyes. Lock those and the rest fall into place.
These same words spell a prophecy. Deep in the raid, a hidden wall writes out the Witness's entire plan one glyph at a time — and the very last word was smashed off a broken pillar, left unreadable for two years. Decode the Prophecy Wall →
Mechanic Checkpoints
What moves the encounter
Vow fails when symbol information gets noisy. Keep one reader, one carrier plan, and one deposit call per mechanic window.
Low-man / speedrun read: Vow's low-man problem is callout compression. Readers may also run, runners may stun, and relic holders may open the next room, but Pervading Darkness and Caretaker movement are hard gates that speed cannot skip.
Acquisition
Progress: readers use obelisk and Glyphkeeper calls to identify the matching glyph, then shoot the correct obelisk symbol before it rejects.
Fail/wipe: wrong glyphs, wrong obelisk shots, or slow sectors let Pervading Darkness climb until it wipes the fireteam.
Caretaker
Progress: runners gather and enter the called symbols while the stun team delays Caretaker, opening each floor's damage window.
Fail/wipe: if Caretaker reaches the far obelisk, the team wipes. Bad symbol entries or missed stuns are the usual cause.
Exhibition
Progress: relay the relics through each room, use the correct relic action to clear blockers/open doors, and bank at the final deposit.
Fail/wipe: dropped relics, dead carriers, or hesitation at a door let Pervading Darkness finish the team.
Rhulk
Progress: split Leeching Force, convert it with Rhulk's beam into Emanating Force, dunk the called symbols, then damage Rhulk upstairs.
Fail/wipe: wrong dunks stall the loop, his line attacks punish clumping, and enrage wipes the room if damage cycles drag too long.
Field Maps
The pyramid at a glance
Vow is a march deeper into Rhulk's pyramid: an opening symbol-bank, a museum gauntlet of guardians (the Caretaker), a relay of relics across a flooded gallery (Exhibition), and the Disciple himself. Here's the whole route; each encounter below carries its own detailed schematic.
Vow hides two physical chests and one Deepsight chest, plus the traversal spaces that hide them: the Disciple's Bog payload push, the Caretaker exit platforming and the climb to Dominion. Each one pulls players off the main route, so call it before the group commits.
1 · Disciple's Bog chest
Where: the payload push between the entrance and the Pyramid. Reach: destroy three Resonant Shards (Cruxes) along the route. Shard 1: the covered alcove to the left of where the payload first stops. Shard 2: behind the half-sunken obelisk at the next stop. Shard 3: under the bridge the payload crosses; one window has no bars, so go through it. A doorway then opens at a later stop, straight ahead among the Scorn, and the chest is inside.
Route choice: one or two players peel off at each stop to hit a shard while the rest stay on the payload push.
2 · Caretaker exit chest
Where: the Pyramid platforming after the Caretaker, in the second of three rooms, by the barred windows. Reach: leave the main path and take the right-hand route along the windows (keep the wall on your right). A floating shard toggles the hexagonal pillars you cross: one player shoots it to flip the platforms while the others jump. The chest sits in an attic-like doorway in the middle of the next room.
Route choice: the shard-shooter stays behind until everyone is across. Both physical chests complete the Secrets of the Sunken Pyramid triumph (Echoed Anger shader).
3 · Deepsight chest at Rhulk
Where: beside Rhulk's glaive after the kill, with a guaranteed raid weapon with Deepsight Resonance. Reach: as you enter the Pyramid, run through the large grass-and-stairs room: a reference pillar shows three symbols. Find those symbols' rooms, shoot the Crux to open each door, then shoot the symbol on the wall to light it (shoot again to turn it off). "The Disciple recognizes your offering…" confirms the third.
Rooms include: Pyramid (after the big drop), Give (frozen carbonite room before Acquisition), Darkness (left of the sphinx in Acquisition), Traveler (red cube room, balcony), Worship (Caretaker final-stand hallway), Light (beside the red light statue in the platforming), Stop (below the platforming chest), Guardian (up the stairs on the left after Exhibition) and Kill (top of the jumping puzzle before Rhulk).
Route choices at a glance
Decide before Acquisition who owns the Deepsight symbols: the pillar is at the Pyramid entrance, but the rooms run from just inside the Pyramid to the Rhulk climb, so every encounter has a symbol job.
Bog chest: shard-hunters peel off the payload at the stops, so settle who goes before the first push.
Platforming chest: one side route in room 2; the rest of the team can wait or follow.
RouteDisciple's Bog. After the entrance Sparrow run, you push a payload to the Pyramid, killing the enemies that carry Knowledge and feeding it to the payload at each stop. Pace the push around your shard-hunters.
RouteCaretaker exit platforming. Three rooms of narrow angled platforms. Room 1 climbs yellow-marked platforms into a Scorn arena where a switch reveals more. Room 2 splits: main path or the right-hand windows route. Room 3 is hexagonal scrolling columns on a switch timer.
FallsRoom 3 is where groups drop. One player crosses while a partner keeps hitting the crystal switch that holds the column formation; if the switch lapses mid-crossing the crosser falls. Assign a dedicated switch player.
RouteExhibition to Rhulk. After Exhibition, stairs on the left lead to the Guardian symbol room, then the Dominion jumping puzzle climbs to Rhulk's arena, with the Kill symbol room at the top.
Map · Chests & traversal routeEntrance → Rhulk
Route / encounterSecret chestDeepsight symbol / chest
The Pledge
Four encounters, front to back
The raid is a procession through the pyramid. Each room teaches one of the three verbs — Read, Run, Dunk — then Rhulk asks you to do all three at once while a laser sweeps the floor.
1
Encounter · Pyramid entrance
The Acquisition
"Learn the language before the language learns you."
Lore lens · why it works
The obelisks speak the Witness's glyph-tongue — the symbol-language the Pyramid uses to encode its rituals. Reading the Glyphkeepers and shooting the matching mark is you proving you can parse the Disciple's language; the rising Pervading Darkness is the vault trying to reject readers who can't keep up.
The loop
Split the team across the arena's three sectors (left / mid / right), each with an obelisk that displays symbol prompts.
Use the obelisk prompt to open the correct side room, then kill the Glyphkeepers inside and outside. Each side sees a different set of glyphs.
Compare the Glyphkeeper calls to find the matching symbol, then shoot that symbol on the sector's obelisk before it rejects.
Repeat the read / match / shoot cycle for all sectors before Pervading Darkness fills and wipes the team.
TimerPervading Darkness is a stacking team-wide debuff. Let it ramp and it wipes the fireteam. Fast room entry, clean Glyphkeeper kills, and correct obelisk shots keep it suppressed.
RolesBeginner-safe split: 2 players per sector: one reads and shoots the obelisk, one clears and confirms Glyphkeeper symbols. Mid sector is busiest — put your steadiest caller there.
Wrong symbolShooting the wrong obelisk glyph burns timer and can reject the obelisk. Compare inside/outside Glyphkeeper calls aloud before anyone fires.
Map · Acquisition obelisksEncounter 1 · Symbol bank
Obelisk / pyramidReader / scanDarkness timer
2
Encounter · The Vault gallery
The Caretaker
"Read its halls, stun the giant, walk it into the dark."
Lore lens · why it works
The Caretaker is the Pyramid's keeper, hauling itself toward an obelisk to overflow it and purge the intruders — that's the wipe. Feeding the obelisks their symbols wrests the vault's controls from it; stunning its face then its exposed back pries its attention off the ritual long enough to press deeper into Rhulk's domain.
The loop
A lumbering Caretaker giant walks toward a wipe-point. You must stun it to make progress before it arrives.
Runners enter the dark side rooms, collect the called symbols, and shoot those symbols on the obelisk before their Pervading Darkness stacks get lethal.
The stun team delays the boss by shooting its face to make it slam, then its exposed back crit to complete the stun.
When the obelisk set is complete, the floor's damage plates activate; damage the Caretaker, then chase it to the next floor. Repeat across three floors to the final stand.
Wipe wallIf the Caretaker reaches the far obelisk, it triggers a team wipe. Face/back stuns buy the runners enough time to finish the symbol set.
Symbol orderSymbols must be shot correctly and in time. A botched read wastes a floor. Pre-name the symbols; call room then symbol, not the other way around.
RolesBeginner-safe split: two symbol runners, two dedicated stunners on face/back, and two add-clear + DPS anchors. Restoration/Well keeps the runners alive in the open.
The Exhibition is the Witness's museum — a gallery of relics taken from civilizations its Disciples extinguished. The relic you ferry is one of those captured powers, and you're using the collection's own artifact to open the doors deeper, racing the encroaching dark before the exhibit closes over you.
The loop
A relic carrier grabs the relic at the start. The relic's special ability opens doors and reveals the path the rest of the team can't see.
The team pushes through a sequence of three rooms, fighting Scorn while the carrier opens each door with the relic's mechanic.
Hand the relic off cleanly at room transitions so the carrier never has to fight — the team is the carrier's shield and ad-clear.
Clear all three rooms and reach the deposit before the encroaching darkness timer wipes you, then bank to finish.
Dropped relicIf the carrier dies and the relic is lost mid-room, you usually lose the run. Assign a backup carrier who can grab it instantly.
DarknessThe Pervading Darkness wipe timer runs the whole encounter. Hesitation at a door costs you the run — keep the carrier moving and the lane clear.
RolesBeginner-safe split: 1 primary carrier, 1 backup carrier, the rest on add-clear ahead of the carrier. Invis / overshields make the relay forgiving.
Map · Exhibition relic lanesEncounter 3 · Relay
Relic lane / carrierDoor / depositDarkness timer
4
Boss · The Disciple's chamber
Rhulk, Disciple of the Witness
"Take his own glaive, charge it, and turn the dark on him."
Lore lens · why it works
Rhulk fights with Lubrae's Ruin, the glaive that burned his homeworld. The Leeching → Emanating loop is you siphoning the Disciple's own resonance and turning his Darkness back on him; the sweeping beam is his glaive-sight hunting the room. You end the First Disciple with the very power the Witness gave him.
The loop — all three verbs at once
Start the cycle by shooting the central resonance crystal to gain Leeching Force, then split that buff by shooting the next crystal with teammates.
A Leeching player stands in Rhulk's beam to convert into Emanating Force. The team reads the called symbols and dunks Emanating at the matching pillars.
Repeat the split / convert / dunk loop to push up into Rhulk's arena and open the damage window — then unload your boss DPS on his crit.
During damage, Rhulk fires a sweeping laser, kicks, and dashes. Keep moving and step out of the line; the beam is a conversion cue before damage and a lethal attack during the fight.
Repeat the cycle, watching his enrage. Beat the damage check before he wipes the room, then collect the chest.
Room laserRhulk's sweeping eye laser is the #1 killer. When he winds it up, break line of sight behind a pillar or drop low — being greedy on DPS through it ends runs.
DunksOnly Emanating Force carriers dunk, and only at the called symbols. Wrong pillars waste the cycle. Call symbol and side, not "that one."
DPSBeginner-safe: stack a healing Super (Well) at the crit, burst the window, retreat for the laser. Loadout shapes are in the Armory below.
ChestFinal chest spawns after the kill. Collective Obligation is the Rhulk / final-encounter exotic drop, with raid Triumphs improving the odds.
Build around three jobs, not three named guns: melt Rhulk in his window, clear Scorn/Hive between mechanics, and survive the open galleries. The named guns below are durable picks for the Monument-era sandbox — keep the archetype shape and swap in whatever your vault favors.
Boss DPS
For Rhulk's damage window
Heavy Linear Fusion Archetype
Precision burst into Rhulk's crit during the window. The reliable raid DPS job — bring whichever LFR you have leveled.
Bait-and-Switch Rocket / Rocket-Sidearm Archetype
High burst with a swap rotation. Pairs with a debuff for the phase.
Exotic Heavy Sniper / Golden-Gun nuke Exotic
Single-target exotics (e.g. a Heavy sniper, or Still Hunt + Celestial on Hunter) chunk Rhulk fast in his window.
Tractor Cannon / debuff Support
One player applies a damage-vuln debuff before the team bursts — worth a slot on a coordinated team.
Add Clear
Galleries, Caretaker, Exhibition
Chain/explosion Primary Archetype
Wave-clear primaries (e.g. Sunshot/Graviton-style) delete Scorn and Hive packs around carriers and runners.
Add-clear Special Archetype
A wave-frame GL or fast Glaive/SMG keeps lanes open ahead of the relic carrier in Exhibition.
Witherhoard / DoT exotic Exotic
Passive area damage to hold a lane while you handle a mechanic, then swap to Heavy.
Survivability
Stay up in the open
Healing / overshield tools Build
Restoration, Woven Mail, or invis carry readers and carriers across exposed floors.
Anti-darkness uptime Build
Constant ability regen helps you keep killing the right adds, which is what suppresses the wipe timers.
Mobility / cover discipline Skill
Not a gun — the survivability that matters most in the Rhulk room is breaking line of sight on the laser.
Warlock
Well of Radiance / Prismatic
Well anchors the Rhulk crit for survivability and a damage buff. Prismatic offers flexible healing + ad-clear for the galleries.
Titan
Prismatic / Thundercrash
Thundercrash adds burst to the Rhulk window; Prismatic barricades and overshields protect readers and carriers.
Hunter
Prismatic + Invis
Invis aspects make the Exhibition relay and Caretaker reads far safer; pair with a Golden-Gun nuke for the boss.
Loadout note: these are durable picks for the Monument-era (mid-2026) sandbox. Rhulk is a burst-DPS fight gated by a short window, so the jobs matter more than the exact gun — burst the window, clear the lane, survive the open — and swap the names for whatever your vault favors.
Rewards
What you're farming for
The chase
Vow's headline pull is the exotic Pulse Rifle Collective Obligation — a void weapon that can siphon enemy debuffs. It drops from the Rhulk / final-encounter chest, with raid Triumphs improving the odds.
The wider Vow weapon set (the pyramid/Throne World pool) is the secondary chase, plus the raid armor set.
2026 loot posture
The tiered-loot and armor set-bonus systems arrived with The Edge of Fate / Renegades (2025). Two raids are featured each week. Featured: Standard encounters and challenges drop Deepsight weapons or Tier 5 armor, hidden chests drop Tier 5 armor on a weekly lockout, and Master adds Adept weapons from challenges. Not featured: Standard gives a chance at Deepsight weapons and Tier 3 armor; Master and challenges still give Deepsight weapons and Tier 5 armor. Feats raise the reward grade (Grade 0: Tier 3; 1: Tier 3+4; 2: Tier 4+5; 3: two Tier 5; 4: Tier 4 + two Tier 5; 5: three Tier 5; Cutthroat Combatants +4, Challenges +3, Shocktroopers +2, Token Limit and Phase Limit +1). Standard mode earns the weekly tiered reward without Feats.
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