How to Get the Season 16 Artifact in Destiny 2

It’s been a long six months, but The Witch Queen and Season 16 are finally here and with it a brand new seasonal artifact. Gone are the days of a 1k Voices and Sleeper Simulant dominated META. Instead, we’re looking at a… well, I’m not too sure what we’re looking at. The traditional heavy-archetype dominant artifact mod seems to be a thing of the past, with new Void-based perks taking their place in end-game PvE content. 

Before you worry about all of that, though, you actually need to get your hands on the thing. In this guide, we’ll walk you through how to get the Season 16 Artifact in Destiny 2.

How to Get the Synaptic Spear in Destiny 2

When you boot into Destiny for the first time in Season 16, you’re going to be loaded into the first mission of The Witch Queen DLC. The DLC is designed, to a certain extent, to run directly alongside S16, so you’ll have to progress it past this mission. 

Once you’ve done that, and you’re back in the Enclave on Mars, you’ll need to speak with Ikora. Click through some dialogue and you’ll be informed that you need to attend a meeting between Caiatl and the Vanguard back in the Tower Hanger. 

Apparently, she’s upset that you killed some of her troops during that aforementioned Witch Queen mission. 

After the meeting, you’ll have access to the new seasonal activity: PsiOps Battlegrounds. You’ll need to run through one of these missions, and then you’ll have full access to the new seasonal artifact. 

The whole process shouldn’t take you more than an hour or so, even if you decide to plow through Witch Queen before touching Season 16. Just remember that everyone’s light has been reset, so you won’t be able to faceroll any of this content quite yet. 

As for the artifact itself, it’s a pretty big change away from the Fusion Rifle META we’ve gotten so comfortable with over these last six months. It’s clear that this season will be centered around the new Void 3.0 subclass with a lot of the end-game artifact mods directly interacting with it. 

If you want a little bit more than that, I’ve got a full in-depth breakdown of the artifact and all of its relevant perks here. Bear in mind that this is my early analysis, so I haven’t actually gotten my hands on any of the mods yet. I’m only speaking from past experience.