The Lectern of Enchantment is one of the main new sources of acquiring weapons in Destiny 2's Shadowkeep expansion. As with activities such as last season's Menagerie and Chalice of Opulence, you can use the Lectern to choose which guns and armor you earn as you play on the moon, by completing various specific quests. You unlock the Lectern as part of the Shadowkeep story, and it lets you cash in Nightmare Essences to acquire these quests. The Essence of Failure quest, for instance, lets you get the very nice Arc Logic auto rifle, but includes a step where you have to find the Captive Cord. But where is it?
Each of these Essence weapon quests gives you a named location for where to find the special item you need to obtain. In this case, it tells you the Captive Cord is found in the Lunar Battlegrounds, but you won't find that on the in-game map. The area you're looking for is the one from the very first mission of the Shadowkeep campaign. Once you're reasonably close to it, you'll receive an objective marker that guides you right to it. Here are step-by-step instructions to get there, or you can watch the video guide above.
Where To Find Captive Chord
- Spawn at the Sorrow's Harbor landing zone
- Get on your Sparrow, head right toward the southeastern exit, which takes you across a bridge
- Keep moving forward and you'll be notified you've entered the Lunar Battlegrounds
- Pass through this next area by going straight and to the right
- When you enter the next area, you'll see a wrecked dome structure and a building with a series of antennae and satellite dishes
- Jump up to the third floor of the satellite building and you'll find the cord on the right side
Finding the Captive Cord is only one of three steps for this quest, though it is the only one with any ambiguity to it.
Essence of Failure Quest Steps
- Activities Completed (patrols, public events, Lost Sectors on the moon)
- 50 Auto Rifle kills
- Captive Cord found
Finish all three steps and you'll net yourself the Arc Logic auto rifle. If you don't like the rolls you get on it, you can reacquire the Essence of Failure quest from the Lectern. When replaying the quest, you'll only need to complete the first two steps--you won't need to find the Captive Cord again. However, the quest itself costs one Phantasmal Core, which in the early going are not easy to come across. They drop as rewards for some of Eris Morn's bounties, or you can buy them from the Lectern in exchange for 20 Phantasmal Fragments, which you'll earn by killing Nightmares. They can also be purchased for 25 Helium Fragments, the moon's planetary material.
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