Tips For Surviving The Cauldron In Destiny's Trials Of Osiris

The Cauldron has been revealed as this week’s Trials of Osiris map in Destiny, so it’s time to get your fireteam of three together and make a run at the Lighthouse, the reward granted to those who manage a 9-0 record in their Trials Passage.

First off, let’s talk about this week’s rewards. Depending on how you think about your guardian’s loadout, the five-win armor piece could be pretty exciting. Whether you’re a hunter, a warlock, or a titan, that fifth win will get you access to a Trials-themed helmet. The Egyptian flavor is particularly notable with the helmets, and it’s hard to imagine a more cosmetically exciting prize to shoot for. However, at the same time, many of the best exotic gear pieces (for all the classes) are helmets, which means a new legendary-tier Trials helmet may just sit in your inventory rather than getting use. 

If you manage to make it up to seven wins, you can purchase The Infinite Theorem. The arc damage machine gun comes standard with some valuable PvP perks, including active radar while aiming down the sights, and faster reload speed when the mag is emptied. 

As for the Cauldron itself, it should be interesting to see what strategies various teams explore this weekend. The many automatic doors throughout the stage likely mean that shotguns will be devastating options in those chokepoints. The large center chamber can be a deathtrap for many teams that venture into the area, but if you can confidently hold all the entrances you can dominate the whole map. Alternately, with no Control points to worry about, you can pursue victory along the periphery of the map as an alternate strategy.

Like when holding the middle, watch for spaces outside where your team can keep all points of ingress targeted, so no one can sneak in on you. Both heavy ammo spawns are ridiculously exposed, so rush strategies that target players hanging out there during the heavy round are likely to be prevalent, especially since the small map size should make it easy for the other team to reach either heavy spawn point in no time.

While the map is primarily close-quarters, skilled snipers can quick scope along some of the outside areas, and easily cover a single door if the other team starts to over-rely on a particular path. Watch for the red glint of sniper scopes, and move around corners in such a way that you are easily revivable if you get dropped.

As always, communication with your team is key to victory. Be patient, watch your radar, and until you know the map well, The Cauldron in particular is likely to be devastating to teams that rush in too quickly without a clear plan. Because of the short range that many kills are likely to happen in this map, you should prioritize aggressively camping on enemy dead ghosts to prevent respawning, which should be easier to do than in more long-range maps, where your kills might be further away, and thus harder to protect from respawn. Finally, as with all Trials runs, team revives should often override "Hail Mary" throwdowns against the enemy team. If you can get one or two of your teammates up, you’re often in a much better position to win the round. 

Best of luck to all as you try to reach Mercury’s Lighthouse this week, Guardians! Still looking to understand the basics of the Trials of Osiris? Here's a quick primer.