Umbral Engrams made their Destiny 2 return during Season of the Chosen, and luckily, the system will be sticking around throughout Season of the Splicer. Thanks to Bungie's shift away from season-locked content throughout Beyond Light, players will stive have access to last season's Prismatic Recaster vendor where they can focus Umbral Engrams into both Season 13 gear and brand new Season 14 gear. If you missed Season of the Chosen or just need a refresher on how the Prismatic Recaster works, here is our comprehensive guide to Umbral Engrams and focusing them in the Prismatic Recaster.
What Are Umbral Engrams?
Umbral Engrams, like Prime Engrams, are items you'll inevitably pick up that need to be decoded before you can use them. What makes Umbral Engrams special is that the item they contain starts out random but can be turned into a specific item of your choice through the process of focusing.
When you first pick up an Umbral it will generally be in an unfocused state. If you decode a raw umbral in the Umbral Decoded located in the H.E.L.M., the item you receive will come from a very large pool of weapons and armor that change with each season. However, if you focus that Umbral using the Prismatic Recaster, you can narrow that pool of items down considerably and even force the gear you get to have a specific perk or have weighted stats. You can acquire Umbrals from practically any activity you play, but most would recommend that you hang onto them until you have the resources necessary to focus them into the specific gear that you want.
How Does The Prismatic Recaster Work In Season Of The Splicer?
When you visit the Prismatic Recaster in the H.E.L.M., you'll find that the menu is now split into two halves: Active Season and Past Season. If you visit the Past Season page, you'll find all of the focus options from Season of the Chosen, however, any lenses you didn't unlock last season will still be unavailable, so you'll need to complete the objectives for each lens if you want full access to last seasons focuses.
This season, the recaster works a little bit differently. When you first visit the vendor you'll only have access to Worldy Weapon and Worldy Armor. This is a fairly broad focus that only narrows down your Umbral to either weapons or armor. If you have an Umbral to decode, it's better to use these focuses instead of nothing since it's free. To unlock the rest of the lenses, you'll need to complete the Prismatic Recaster triumphs found in the Season of the Splicer Triumph page.
If you played last season, these objectives will be pretty familiar. The only difference is that progress is kept on your Triumph page now instead of on the recaster itself, so it's a lot easier to reference your progress without having to return to the H.E.L.M.
These triumphs can be completed in any order, but be aware that most of them take a fairly significant time investment to complete. If there's a specific type of gear you're looking for, you can focus on finishing the associated triumph to unlock it. It's not always obvious what each lens does, but you can usually make an educated guess. For example, if you're interested in farming the new auto rifle, Chroma Rush, then you should probably focus on completing the Triumph called Splicer Captain's Armory which requires you to get a certain number of final blows with an auto rifle or grenade launcher.
Once you unlocked a lens, you'll need to spend Decrypted Data to focus your Engrams. Tier 1 Engrams costs 75 Decrypted Data, while Tier 2 Engrams cost 75 and Tier 3 Engrams cost 150.
Be careful about spending your Decrypted Data on focusing Umbrals, however, because the same currency is also used to upgrade your Splicer Gauntlet at the Splicer Servitor down the hall. It may be a good idea to horde your Decrypted Data until you've unlocked most or all of the Splicer Gauntlet upgrades before you start investing in Umbrals since these upgrades only need to be purchased once and Umbrals are a renewable resource.
You can earn Decrypted Data by completing the first two Seasonal Challenges each week (300 data) and by successfully completing runs through the Override Activity and opening the Conflux Chest at the end with a Data Code. Additionally, there are three troves of Decrypted Data on the Season 14 battle pass, unlocked at rank 2, 12, and 32.
Luckily, you probably won't need to choose between focusing and upgrading your gauntlet since the grind to unlock each lens is so long. Just spend your Decrypted Data on gauntlet upgrades until you are able to unlock more lens. If you run into a situation where you're inventory and bank is too full to hold anymore Umbrals, there's nothing wrong with spending some data here and there for a focus. Go ahead and treat yourself.