With Season 4, Destiny: Rising introduced a new system to obtain new characters. The system requires you to grind Elemental Condensate, character shards that you can spend on unlocking any of the released characters, even if their banner is long over.
Here’s everything you need to know about Elemental Condensate in Destiny: Rising, how to get it, and how to unlock new characters.
Table of contents
How to get Elemental Condensate in Destiny Rising
There are two types of Elemental Condensate you can get in Destiny: Rising: Universal Elemental Condensate (Exotic) and character-specific Elemental Condensate (Mythic). As the names suggest, the Universal Elemental Condensate allows you to unlock any character, while character-specific ones are tied to individual characters.
Here’s every way to get Elemental Condensate in Destiny: Rising:
- Season Settlement rewards
- Seasonal Shop
- Seasonal Engrams
- Gauntlet: Onslaught
- Casual activities
- Shifting Gates shop
- Black Market
- Past Glory event
The main ways of earning Elemental Condensate are tied to seasonal progression. You can buy it in the Seasonal Shop (10 per week) for coins or get it from Seasonal Engrams. However, the biggest rewards are for those who grind the Seasonal Settlement.
You can find Seasonal Settlement rewards in the season’s menu. Completing all quests in three of the four major categories grants 40 Universal Elemental Condensate, guaranteeing one character of your choice. It’s a long grind, but it can be worth it if you decide to commit to the season.
Apart from seasonal progression, you can get Elemental Condensate by playing activities. Gauntlet: Onslaught features three weekly rewards granting a random Elemental Condensate. There’s also one for completing the weekly Casual activity reward track and one in the Shifting Gates Exchange shop.
Another good way to get character-specific Elemental Condensate is through Black Market (especially if you have bought the Blessing to get daily Black Market Coins. On the Black Market, you can buy five Elemental Condensate for around 80,000 Black Market Coins.
In total, you can get 15 Elemental Condensate per week from shops and activities, alongside one-time Season Settlement rewards, Black Market, and any additional drops you get from Seasonal Engrams or events.
How to use Elemental Condensate in Destiny Rising
To unlock a character, you need 40 Elemental Condensate for that specific character or Universal Elemental Condensate. If you don’t have enough character-specific ones, you can compensate for the rest with Universal.
Once you have enough, you can unlock a character in the Archives:
- Open the menu and press on your name in the top left.
- Head to Archives.
- Open the Characters category.
- Scroll down to find locked characters.
- Use Elemental Condensate to unlock them.
If you already have the character unlocked, you can also use Elemental Condensate for Ascension. In the character screen, there’s an Ascend tab under the Talents Tree. Ascend provides an additional damage buff to the character that increases with each level. Unlocking all Ascension upgrades requires 265 Elemental Condensate and awards a character’s signature.
Keep in mind that you can’t use Elemental Condensate for Talents—those are still tied to regular pulls on banners. If you’re aiming for Talents and want to maximize your resources, make sure to unlock the character using Elemental Condensate first, and only then pull for additional copies.
