Destiny 2’s Festival of the Lost 2023 is cutting close to its predecessors, with Spectral Pages and Manifested Pages being another core part of this event for the third year in a row.
You don’t have to be an expert at Festival of the Lost to know how this works, though: While Bungie has been watering down the currency/seasonal loop over the year of Lightfall, the Halloween event still uses a familiar formula.
Spectral Pages are at the center of the Festival of the Lost event loop, and players can dive into the event’s unique activity to transform them with a little work. As with other years, you’ll have to take on Haunted Sectors to convert your pages.
New this year is the addition of the Legend-difficulty Haunted Sectors, which offer more rewards. Eerie Engrams are also on the table, with the option to focus them at Eva Levante for some of your hard-earned Candy. You can even turn them into Exotics if you have the necessary resources and expansions. And if you’re really lucky, you could even score the new Twilight Keepsake Memento.
Of course, if you’re chasing these new rewards, it doesn’t hurt to have some Spectral Pages on your person when you clear a Haunted Sector. Here’s how you can get this resource, and how we’ve been farming them for the past three years.
How to create and earn Spectral Pages during Festival of the Lost in Destiny 2
Spectral Pages are earned only while completing various activities during the Festival of the Lost while you have an event mask equipped. Here are a few activities that can drop Spectral Pages:
- Public events
- Lost Sectors
- Legend/Master Lost Sectors
- Strikes and Nightfalls
- Gambit/Crucible matches
- Raids and Dungeons
- Dares of Eternity
- Terminal Overload
Best Spectral Pages farm in Destiny 2’s Festival of the Lost
Our favorite picks for this Festival of the Lost have been:
- The last checkpoint in the First Contact Lightfall mission
- Heroic public events
- Terminal Overload (with the glitch)
- Regular Lost Sectors
To find the best Spectral Pages farm in Destiny 2, you need an activity that can be done quickly. If you have friends, you can share the last checkpoint in the First Contact mission, which just requires you to open up the Cabal drop pod at the end of the room (thanks, Cheese Forever). This is similar to the Investigation cheese in The Witch Queen, where players could just go to Fynch to complete a mission and get rewards.
In our case, we’ve been redoing the Atrium Lost Sector in Trostland, which is one of the shortest Lost Sectors in the game and is right by a landing zone. This applies if all you’re looking to get done is farming Spectral Pages. The Orrery in Nessus is another quick Lost Sector with plenty of enemies, which makes for a decent opportunity to progress the weapon-based event challenges.
Terminal Overload is also a shockingly good Spectral Pages farm as long as you’re familiar with the glitch that lets you loot multiple chests. Once you’ve finished a run of Terminal Overload, exit the zone with your sparrow, then backtrack once the area changes. While Bungie patched this with the actual Terminal Overload chest, guardians can open the regular chest multiple times, for three Spectral Pages each.
And with anything that requires quick completions, it’s once again time to go beat up Dûl Incaru, the boss at the end of the Shattered Throne dungeon. She is a pushover these days,
Heroic public events are a solid choice, too, with the addition of getting some extra Candy at the end of a run. Both the EDZ and Nessus have been our go-to destinations in the past three years of Festival of the Lost due to the sheer amount of public events around them. They may take a bit longer, but you’ll get slightly more Spectral Pages, plus some Candy and Glimmer.
While you’re farming Spectral Pages, pick up a weapon whose catalyst objective you still need to complete. With some luck, you can also complete Ada-1’s destination bounties while doing this.
That said, you can also hoard Spectral Pages by doing other activities that feature in event challenges. Diving into ritual activities will grant you progress toward the Occult Ritual challenge, and if you’re doing Crucible or Gambit with a Festival of the Lost Mask on, you’ll put a dent in the Masked Bandit challenge.
More importantly, you can gain Spectral Pages just by playing the game. Unless you’re in a hurry to farm, odds are you’ll stack a bunch of those passively as long as you’re putting in some consistent playtime during the event.
How to create and earn Manifested Pages in Destiny 2
After you’ve stocked up on Spectral Pages, it’s time to transform them into Manifested Pages with a little help from some Festival of the Lost magic. You’ll have to complete Haunted Sectors to convert your Spectral Pages into Manifested Pages.
When you’re doing a Haunted Sector, you’ll stumble upon summoning circles, an essential mechanic to the activity. After you and your team set foot on a summoning circle, you’ll notice a progress bar will start to fill up, just like when taking control of a plate in the Vex-based public events in Nessus or the Glimmer Mining public event.
Stand inside the circle to spawn a Headless One when it fills up, and defeating this miniboss will manifest some of your Spectral Pages. Defeating more Headless Ones in a Haunted Sector means you’ll get more Manifested Pages at the end of it, so be sure to take out as many as you can.
Despite their name, Headless Ones actually have a very generous critical hitbox. It’s just like shooting a Reaper with that pumpkin head skin in Overwatch.
Headless Ones will spawn more often as you go through the Haunted Sector, too, so burn them quickly for more rewards (but don’t forget to save some ammo for the big boss at the end of the activity).
After clearing the mission, you should receive some Manifested Pages, which you can hand in to the Book of the Forgotten by Eva Levante in the Tower. This will unlock some lore pages for your perusal, and it’s a requirement for the three Bookworm event challenges. You’ll also score some Festival of the Lost gear, with a shot at the reissued Horror Story auto rifle (which uses Stasis now), the new Acosmic heavy grenade launcher, and the tweaked Jurassic Green pulse rifle and Mechabre sniper rifle.
