How To Get The Osteo Striga Exotic SMG In Destiny 2: The Witch Queen (2023)

By Phil Hornshaw on March 4, 2022 at 11:42AM PST

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While the paths to Exotic weapons in Destiny 2 is usually fairly straightforward, finding Osteo Striga can be a little more confusing. The new Exotic submachine gun is a bonus for buying the deluxe edition of the new Witch Queen expansion, but unlike other Exotics that come with purchases, such as Grand Overture, it's not immediately clear what you need to do to unlock the bonus weapon. In fact, when you first enter the expansion, the game won't mention the gun at all, and when it finally does, you might miss it.

Osteo Striga requires you to take some steps to earn it--in fact, you'll play the entire Witch Queen campaign before you get any information about Osteo Striga, and you'll need to understand something about the new weapon crafting system, the Relic, in order to get it. You're going to want this gun, however--it's excellent. Here's everything you need to know about how to get Osteo Striga.

We've got lots more guides for The Witch Queen, as well. Check out our rundowns for completing the Memory Alembic mission, unlocking Deepsight tiers 2 and 3, completing the Legendary story campaign, and explaining everything you need to know about The Witch Queen's story. You can also read our review-in-progress for The Witch Queen.

How to unlock Osteo Striga

First, Osteo Striga is currently only available to players who buy the Deluxe Edition of The Witch Queen, so if you purchased the standard edition of the game, you can't access it right now. That could change in the future, but it's unclear how or when the gun will become available for all players.

In order to get hold of Osteo Striga, you'll first need to complete The Witch Queen's story campaign. That can be an investment in and of itself, as the campaign is pretty long, especially if you play it on Legendary difficulty. Expect to invest some time in uncovering the secrets of Savathun's throne world.

Finishing the story campaign doesn't earn you the gun, however--it only unlocks the Osteo Striga pattern to craft at the Relic, in the new social space called the Enclave. Once you've completed the final mission, called "The Ritual," you'll return to the Enclave for a short denouement. At that point, check the Triumphs screen, under the Patterns and Catalysts tab, to find and unlock Osteo Striga's pattern.

Head to the Relic and hit the Shape button, then go down to SMGs on the Primary gun tab to find Osteo Striga. Your options will initially be pretty limited for what perks you can add to the gun. You'll also notice that you won't be able to craft its Exotic catalyst just yet. Once you've locked in the gun, hit Finalize Shape to craft it. You might need crafting materials to make that happen, but you can get them easily enough by completing the few short missions that introduce you to crafting as part of the campaign. Anything you come up short on can be purchased from Rahool or Banshee-44 in the Tower.

Using the crafting system means you can customize and upgrade Osteo Striga over time, but you'll need to level up the gun by using it in order to do so.

What Osteo Striga does

If you're familiar with Thorn, the deadly Hive hand cannon, you have a sense of what Osteo Striga is like. The SMG fires objects that look like thorns instead of bullets, and those thorns track their targets. Kill an enemy with Osteo Striga or hit them with a number of precision shots and you'll trigger a burst of poison that infects both the enemy you shot and any opponents in the immediate vicinity, dealing them damage over time. The gun can be devastating against crowds, blasting multiple enemies with poison at a time, even if you don't manage to kill any of them.

How to unlock Osteo Striga's Exotic catalyst

The best upgrade you can get for Osteo Striga is its Exotic catalyst, which significantly amps up its reload speed and automatically refills the magazine as you get kills with the gun's poison effect. In order to unlock it, however, you'll need to put some work in with Osteo Striga, pushing the gun up to Level 10. To do that, you just need to play with it; you'll level up all your crafted guns by using them in activities, and the more enemies you kill, the faster they'll advance. Leveling up guns is how you unlock the ability to "reshape" them with better perks, so keep your favorites in the rotation to make them better more quickly.

Once Osteo Striga is up to Level 10, you can return to the Relic and reshape it to add the catalyst. It requires 140 Ruinous Element, 2,000 Neutral Element, and 3 Ascendant Alloy to craft. The first two currencies you should come by fairly easily by using weapons with Deepsight Resonance and dismantling Deepsight weapons you don't want. Ascendant Alloy is tougher to earn, but if you need to, you can purchase it from Rahool or Banshee.

We've got plenty more Witch Queen coverage coming your way. Check out our full rundown of all gear you can earn from the Season of the Risen, plus our guide to leveling up to 1560 quickly, five things you should do first in Destiny 2: The Witch Queen, how to get the Exotic Catalyst for Grand Overture, and where to find Faction Chests.

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