When players finally complete the new Haunted Forest event in Destiny 2‘s Halloween-themed Festival of the Lost, they’re greeted by the usual: a loot chest that holds all their hard-earned winnings. The trouble is, the walkway between players and the chest gives out almost as soon as their feet touch it, tossing them into a frightening, blood red pit below. Inside: an unkillable Hive Knight called The Invincible Nightmare.
It’s a fighting twist to the horror-themed activity. Instead of getting your loot, you get stuck with an unkillable monster, like that moment in every slasher movie when the killer inevitably isn’t actually dead, and gets in one final scare. The trouble with the pit, though, is that at first blush, it seems to rob you of everything you fought for in the Haunted Forest, and makes it seem like there’s no way to reach the reward chest.
The good news is, even if you don’t open the chest at the end of the Haunted Forest, you still get your winnings. They’re automatically sent to the Postmaster, just like the stuff from chests in just about any other activity. Once you’ve earned rewards in the Haunted Forest, they’re yours, no matter what condition you’re left in by the Invincible Nightmare.
Just because you fall into the Nightmare’s pit doesn’t mean you’re stuck there, though. There’s actually a secret escape out of the pit on one of the walls. Look up about midway to one side of the pit and you’ll see a small indentation that marks a hole you players can leap through. It takes you out of the pit and onto the side of the bridge under which it hides. Following the narrow pathway from there allows you to climb back up onto the far side of the bridge and claim your loot chest, while also giving you a second to let your heart stop pounding.
It’s also possible to avoid falling into the pit altogether, if you’re quick. When the stones of the walkway give out beneath Guardians as they cross, they’re pulled down thanks to a sort of suction, but it’s possible to jump free with the right timing (or, at least, with the triple jump of the Hunter class). You can also stick to the side edges of the bridge and potentially avoid any tricky cobblestones altogether.
If Bungie is following the usual horror movie script with the Haunted Forest, the question now becomes one of how to kill the Invincible Nightmare, like the characters of a Friday the Thirteenth or Halloween movie might try to do. Like all good slasher movies, though, even if players successfully take the Nightmare down, we’ll all still be wondering if it’s really dead.
