How To Unlock The Superblack Shader In Destiny 2 (2024)

By Phil Hornshaw on April 11, 2024 at 1:07PM PDT

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With Destiny 2: Into the Light, Bungie has brought back a number of fan-favorites, including 12 weapons and two of its best Exotic missions. The new content drop also brings back Superblack, one of the best shaders in the original Destiny. It was the only shader in the game that was fully black, and with its return, players finally have a fashion option that lets them go as dark and goth as they want.

Superblack isn't easy to come by, though. In the original Destiny, unlocking it required completing a fairly involved quest during the Festival of the Lost, Destiny's Halloween event. This time, you'll earn it by completing Into the Light requirements that are pretty time-consuming. You can't actually unlock it yet, though. Some of its requirements are time-gated, and others will take a fair amount of work. Here's what you need to know to get started.

You'll find Superblack at the back of the Hall of Heroes, contained inside a big glass tube that makes it look like a volatile substance. In order to unlock it and claim the shader, you'll need two keys. They're held by Lord Shaxx and Arcite 99-40, Shaxx's loyal robot quartermaster.

How To Get Shaxx's Alpha Key

Shaxx's key is the simpler of the two to earn: You simply need to reach reputation Level 17 to get it. That means playing the new Onslaught activity and completing bounties you get from Shaxx and Arcite 99-40 to boost those numbers.

Unfortunately, Level 17 is the very peak of the reputation meter with Shaxx, which means you're going to be playing quite a lot. Shaxx carries daily bounties as well as repeatable ones to get small boosts of reputation, and while they don't award many points, you can complete a lot of them quickly and easily--so it's a good idea to consistently drop by the Hall of Champions or use the Destiny mobile app to refill them whenever you're jumping into an Onslaught run.

You'll also want to try to play the 50-wave Onslaught mode when possible, as your reputation rewards are commensurate to how many waves you clear. You might want to consider putting a team of trusted Guardians together to try to make it through Wave 50.

To get high amounts of reputation progress while you're not playing Onslaught, talk to Arcite 99-40, who carries two types of bounties: Brave weapon assignments and bounties for other activities. You can take as many Brave weapon quests as Arcite has (more on those in a minute), but you can only have one of the normal activity bounties at a time. These are a bit tougher, but will reward something like 100 reputation points per completion, so if you're headed to a raid or into the Crucible or Gambit, make sure to stop by Arcite first and get the appropriate bounty.

How To Unlock Arcite 99-40's Omega Key

The second key will also take you a while, but not because its tasks are arduous to complete. To earn Arcite's key, you'll need to complete all 12 of the Brave weapon quests. These are fairly straightforward--each requires you to rack up kills with a weapon of the same type. These bounties also have two different objectives to complete, allowing you to choose how you want to handle them. Working on them in Onslaught mode grants bonus progress, so that's usually the most efficient way to handle them, but that's dependent on the requirement. Earning rapid kills with a submachine gun, for example, can be tough in Onslaught when other players are also trying to rack up their own kills, so you might be better off heading to the Crucible to kill Guardians with a submachine gun instead.

While clearing these 12 bounties might be a little easier than racking up 17 levels of Shaxx reputation, you still won't be able to get them all done right away. There are currently six Brave weapons available right now, but the other six are time-gated, with two new unlocking each week as we continue with Into the Light. So you'll need to wait another three weeks to finish all the bounties.

There's some good news on the efficiency front, however. Each of the Brave weapon quests nets you 200 Shaxx reputation points, so you'll be getting a big boost toward unlocking Shaxx's key as you work toward getting Arcite's key.

Here's the schedule for when each will become available:

Week of April 9

• Edge Transit
• The Recluse
• Elsie's Rifle
• Falling Guillotine
• Hung Jury SR4
• Succession

Week of April 16

• Midnight Coup
• The Mountaintop

Week of April 23

• Forbearance
• Hammerhead

Week of April 30

• Blast Furnace
• Luna's Howl

Unfortunately, that means you won't be able to grab Superblack until April 30 at the earliest. Even so, you'll have your work cut out for you to earn it, so you'll want to start digging in on Onslaught. While you're at it, keep an eye out for The Recluse and Mountaintop god rolls so at least you'll have some killer guns for your efforts heading into Destiny 2's next expansion, The Final Shape.

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