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Destiny 2: Warmind Review: What It Added and Whether You Can Play It Today

Warmind paired a brief Mars story with Escalation Protocol and Spire of Stars. Here’s what the 2018 expansion added—and why its original campaign is vaulted today.
Length3 min Posted Quest giverVGSources Team
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Destiny 2: Warmind was a compact 2018 expansion with a short Mars campaign and more substantial cooperative endgame content. Its combat and activities made a familiar Destiny loop enjoyable, but the story had little room to develop its premise. Today, the original campaign and Mars content are vaulted, so Warmind is best understood as a legacy expansion rather than a currently playable chapter.

What was Destiny 2: Warmind?

Bungie launched Warmind on May 8, 2018, as Destiny 2’s second expansion. Its story sent players to the Hellas Basin on Mars, where they joined Ana Bray against an ancient Hive threat and pursued the mysteries of Rasputin, the Warmind. Bungie’s launch description outlined the expansion’s story missions, Mars setting, new gear, strikes, and raid lair: Bungie’s Warmind announcement.

The expansion’s appeal was not just its campaign. It also added Escalation Protocol, a public activity on Mars, and Spire of Stars, a raid lair. A contemporary review by Steven Strom at Ars Technica found the missions fun and the endgame additions useful, while arguing that the short story did not make full use of its lore premise. That is one reviewer’s May 2018 assessment, not a measure of universal reception.

How good was the campaign?

The campaign’s strongest point was its feel: it delivered the familiar Destiny blend of shooting, abilities, and encounters in a new Martian setting. Its weakness was scale. Ars Technica estimated the story at “two-ish hours,” an individual reviewer’s approximation rather than an official duration or a guarantee of how long any player will take. The review also criticized the story for introducing an intriguing premise without developing it enough, and noted that some campaign content was reused as strikes.

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#1 Best Overall
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That makes the campaign a limited reason to seek out Warmind on its own. Players looking for a substantial, self-contained story may find it slight; those who value Destiny’s combat and atmosphere may enjoy the missions even when the narrative does not fully reward its setup.

What did Warmind add to Destiny 2?

Escalation Protocol

Escalation Protocol was a Mars public activity built around seven increasingly difficult waves and exclusive armor and weapons, according to Bungie’s launch description. In a PlayStation.Blog interview, its design lead Ben Wommack called it “An end-game, challenging, horde mode-esque public activity that is triggered in Free Roam, where players fight increasingly difficult waves of Hive culminating in a unique boss encounter.” The mode aimed to turn open-world play into a demanding group fight with a climactic boss, rather than another campaign mission.

Rank #2
Star Wars Force and Destiny Game Knights of Fate EXPANSION Roleplaying Game Strategy Game For Adults and Kids Ages 10+ 2-8 Players Average Playtime 1 Hour Made by EDGE Studio
  • THIS IS AN EXPANSION FOR STAR WARS FORCE AND DESTINY ROLEPLAYING GAME. This is not a complete game experience. A copy of Star Wars Force and Destiny Roleplaying Game is required to play.
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  • NUMBER OF PLAYERS AND AVERAGE PLAYTIME: Star Wars Force and Destiny is an exciting roleplaying game for adults and kids designed for 2 to 8 players and is suitable for ages 10 and older. The average playtime is approximately one hour.

Spire of Stars and other additions

Warmind also brought the Spire of Stars raid lair, story missions, strikes, weapons and gear, and the Valkyrie Javelin. These additions broadened the activity and reward mix around the campaign. The official Year 1 overview places Mars, Spire of Stars, and Escalation Protocol among the content associated with that era of Destiny 2: Bungie’s Years of Destiny guide.

Can you still play Warmind in Destiny 2?

The original Warmind Mars campaign and its Year 1 destination content are vaulted; they are not part of the currently accessible game as documented by Bungie. Bungie’s Year 1 chronology identifies Warmind-era activities, while its Destiny Content Vault documentation records Year 1 destinations and campaigns moving into the vault with Year 5, which began February 22, 2022.

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Rank #3
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Bungie later announced a change to its policy: expansions would no longer be vaulted going forward. That later policy does not restore Warmind, which had already entered the vault. Vault status describes what is available in Destiny 2, not the entitlement or purchase history of any particular account. Online-service availability can also change; the Xbox listing for the expansion explicitly does not guarantee that online features will remain available: Xbox’s Warmind page.

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Is Warmind worth playing?

As a historical review, Warmind is a modest expansion whose best argument is the combination of satisfying Destiny combat and replayable group activities—not a long campaign. At launch, Escalation Protocol and Spire of Stars gave players more to do beyond the story, while the Mars setting and Rasputin lore supplied the theme. The trade-off was a brief campaign that, in one contemporary critic’s view, did not deliver enough on its premise.

Rank #4
The Witcher: Path of Destiny Wild Hunt Expansion
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For someone deciding what to play now, the practical answer is that Warmind’s original content is vaulted. Its place in Destiny 2’s history is still worth understanding, especially as an example of Bungie pairing a small story chapter with endgame activities, but the original Mars campaign is not a currently available way to experience that chapter.

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