The Vesper's Host dungeon in Destiny 2 is, in a lot of ways, an expansion of the Deep Stone Crypt raid from the Beyond Light expansion. It's another BrayTech orbital facility near Europa overtaken by the Fallen, just like the Deep Stone Crypt, and it sees the return of mechanics and even bosses from the raid. But Vesper's Host has a bunch of new tricks for you to deal with, too, making it a piece of endgame content that is simultaneously familiar and diabolically different.
Making your way through the dungeon's three encounters can be tough, but even tougher is solving the puzzles that unlock after your first clear, which let you dig deeper into the story of Vesper's Host and uncover its secrets. We've got everything you need to know about what's going on in Europa's orbit, which can help you beat the dungeon, find everything hidden within, and eventually unlock its Exotic weapon, the Ice Breaker sniper rifle.
How to start Vesper's Host: visit Spider
First, to get access to the dungeon at all, you need to drop by Spider in the Last City location that was added with Episode: Revenant - Act 1. Talking to him gets you the Rogue Network quest, which unlocks the dungeon for your first run. This quest will also advance as you find secrets in the dungeon on subsequent runs.
You'll find Vesper's Host on the Europa map screen in the Director.
Entering the dungeon
Your first foray into the dungeon has you making your way along the outside of the station to an airlock. Here, you get your first introduction into the dungeon's mechanics, which use the three Augment items that appeared in Deep Stone Crypt. As you fight the first group of enemies you come across, you'll see enemies with strange icons over their heads--a red one and a gold one. These are Augments, and when you kill these enemies, you can grab the augment from the ground. You'll know enemies with Augments have arrived on the battlefield when you see a message about a "Viral Carrier" on the left side of your screen.
How Augments work
The first two augments are Operator and Scanner, and these are the main ones you'll use for most of the dungeon. Operator allows you to operate various interactive red panels throughout the dungeon; Scanner lets you scan the panels (and later on, enemies) to discover which one to shoot.
The thing about the Augments is that any given person can only hold one at a time. As a fireteam, the idea is that one person holds the Scanner Augment to discover which panels need to be activated, and a second person uses the Operator Augment to shoot those panels to turn them on.
The Scanner Augment works a little differently in Vesper's Host than it did in Deep Stone Crypt. When you're holding the Scanner Augment, panels and enemies are marked on your radar as yellow icons. Walking close to one with the Scanner equipped will check whether it's the one you need to shoot--if it's the correct target, the icon will turn white, but if it's the wrong one, the icon will disappear. So to use the Scanner correctly, you need to watch your radar and get close to the panels to determine which ones the Operator needs to shoot. Keep in mind that if the Operator shoots the wrong panel, they'll die instantly, so make sure you know which panels are the right ones.
In the entrance, run around with the Scanner Augment to find the four correct panels. Use the Operator Augment to shoot those four panels and the airlock door will open, allowing you to advance to the first real encounter.
As with the Deep Stone Crypt, you'll see white stations set into the walls of the dungeon and lit with yellow light. There are stations where Augments can be placed; there's no other way to "put down" an Augment once you've picked it up other than to place it into one of these stations. It's important to keep an eye out for them, because when you pick up an Augment, a timer appears on the left side of your screen and starts to count down from about a minute. When it hits zero, the Augment will kill you, but if you place the Augment into a station, the timer goes away. You can then pick the Augment back up to reset the timer. If you die with one, you'll simply drop it, so having an ally nearby to revive you can reduce the threat the timer poses.
In some areas of the dungeon, you'll find multiple stations in different sections of an encounter. The cool thing about these stations is that if you place an Augment inside one in one room, that Augment will be accessible in another station in the other room. In this way, you can "pass" Augments from place to place, which is especially useful because certain doors will have forcefields that will strip Augments off of you automatically. If you still need an Augment to complete an encounter when that happens, you'll need to go find the enemy carrying it to get it back.
Vesper's Host Encounter 1: Activation
The first encounter takes place in a large room with a big sphere in the center. That's the AI system, and you're looking to power it up to activate the station's security systems. To do that, you need to find three nuclear cores and dunk them into three bins located just behind the sphere.
Those nuclear cores are located in three side areas you can get through by exiting this main room through corresponding doorways. Each is marked with a different symbol for easier navigation: a brain, a heart, and a set of lungs. The brain door is at the front-left of the room, the lungs room at the back-left, and the heart door at the back-right.
When you activate the AI sphere, Fallen enemies will stream into the room, including a Brig in the center. Destroying the Brig should be your focus, and a new one will appear every time you return to this center room. You'll need to destroy each new Brig before you can advance, so lay into it with everything you have to knock it out quickly.
Get the Augments
After destroying the first Brig, take out enemies around the room until an enemy with the Scanner Augment appears. As with opening the door to get in here, you'll need to scan certain panels with the Scanner Augment and then shoot them with the Operator Augment. Grab the Scanner now; you'll find the Operator at your destination in a moment.
Use Scanner and Operator to get a nuclear core
The brain, lungs, and heart door all have spinning red lights above them--this indicates that they have armed nuclear cores inside. Once you get a core from a room, the lights above the door will turn off, so you always know which rooms are active and which aren't. The lights as markers will appear in later encounters as well.
Head into any of the rooms with the blinking lights and clear through the tough enemies, including the Machine Priest Assistants, to reach the end of the pathway. This room will have several panels inside it. The Scanner will need to run around, identifying which four panels are active so the Operator can shoot them.
When you blast the right panels, a bin will open at the back of the room with the nuclear core inside. You need to carry it back to the main room, but you'll need to fight a bunch of new enemies on the way back--including more elite Machine Priest Assistants. Keep in mind also that holding the nuclear core prevents you from attacking or double-jumping and also quickly gives you stacks of a debuff called Radiation. When your Radiation level hits 10, you'll die, so either have another player take the core from you or drop it before that happens. The good news is that Radiation goes away very quickly, so just dropping the core for a few seconds and then picking it back up is a viable strategy. Just don't leave the core on the ground for too long or it'll disappear and you'll need to go get a new one.
Dunk the core in the sphere room and repeat
Back in the main room, focus on bringing down the Brig in the center. That will open up the three bins behind the sphere, where you can dunk the nuclear core. Repeat the process twice more with the other two rooms to bring two more cores back to the sphere. Once they're all dunked, the encounter ends.
Vesper's Host Encounter 2: Infiltration
The next area is a traversal puzzle where you'll need to fight a bunch of enemies and avoid a giant Servitor boss, Raneiks Unified, while gathering more nuclear cores. As you move through these hallways, you'll find several numbered bins--1 through 6--and you'll need to deposit the cores in the bins in order. The cores themselves will drop from Fallen Captains you can kill along the way.
What makes this whole area confusing is that the doors you need to pass through in these hallways aren't powered. You need to open each one manually, but to get power to open one door, you need to power down another door. This is demonstrated the first time when you approach a Fallen console and deactivate it, which turns off a nearby forcefield.
Managing your Power Reserves
Turning off the console gives you something called Power Reserves, which appears on the left side of your screen. Each forcefield you deactivate or door you close gives you a point of Power Reserves, and each door you open takes one away. So you need to close or turn off doors in order to get the power needed to open others.
Keep an eye out for more forcefields you can deactivate--this not only gives you more Power Reserves to work with, but also opens up pathways that let you circle back to earlier areas quickly and easily. Be sure to make a habit of closing doors behind you after your team goes through them, ensuring you have power to open subsequent doors.
Keep clear of Raneiks
While you're running around these hallways, opening doors and dunking nuclear cores in numbered bins, you'll also have the giant Servitor Raneiks floating around, trying to kill you. Raneiks can hit pretty hard with its standard weapons, but what you need to worry about is the purple beam it uses to tether you to it.
The purple beam is an attack called Integration, and when it connects with you, it starts a timer on your screen. If the timer hits zero, you'll die. You can interrupt the attack by breaking line of sight between you and Raneiks, so make sure to keep moving and keep objects between you and the boss.
Find the bins
The bins where you need to dunk nuclear cores are numbered, and one of the nice things about this whole area is that, while the cores themselves have timers attached to them, Captains will conveniently spawn and respawn, usually near the bins themselves, to give you more cores if you need them. So you're not in a rush here; take your time and play safe for best results.
The No. 1 bin is through the door to your right when you first see Raneiks. Deactivate the nearby forcefield to get the Power Reserves you need to open it. There's a Captain waiting and the bin is on the wall near the door you passed through.
Dunking cores in the first three bins opens a large metal door around the corner from the No. 3 bin, which lets you into the second half of the puzzle. You'll need to repeat the process with more bins--numbered 4 and 5--to complete the encounter.
After dunking the fifth core, run down the last hallway to find a big hole in the floor that will let you get away from the boss.
Vesper's Host Encounter 3: Raneiks Unified boss fight
You'll work your way through a short traversal section next before coming out into another large room with numbered panels set into the wall. It's time to fight that big Servitor boss.
Loadout recommendations
This fight has you shooting a lot of smaller enemies to do boss damage, rather than one big target. Its damage phase is also very short, so the trick is to rely on area-of-effect damage that can hit multiple targets that are close together. Explosive weapons like grenade launchers are a good bet here; you don't need to be accurate but you do want to dump as much damage as you can, as fast as you can. You'll also want Supers that can hurt several enemies at once, like the Hunter's Storm and Squall. Avoid weapons and abilities that rely on precision damage or that take a long time to reload, as reloading is a surefire way to waste a damage phase.
A new Augment: Suppressor
The panels should let you know that the Operator mechanic is back in this encounter, but instead of having to deal with the Scanner, you'll have a new Augment in play: Suppressor. This is a blue Augment you can pick up from a specific Tracer Shank enemy that appears in two sections of the fight. Suppressor is an ability you'll specifically use against the boss, but be careful when doing so, as you'll need to get close to Raneiks, and that's always a risky proposition.
When you have the Suppressor Augment, you can hit your grenade button to activate a special ability. The grenade will generate a blue hologram image of a person that sits on the ground (your feet have to be planted to make it, so keep that in mind if you're a jumpy player). If you or a teammate then shoot the hologram, it generates a special explosion in a radius around where the hologram was placed. You might have noticed that Raneiks Unified is actually made up of lots of smaller Servitors to make one huge one--when you catch Raneiks in the Suppression hologram's explosion, it causes the boss's cohesion to fail and it'll fall apart into a big heap of smaller Servitors. At the right time in the fight, that'll make the boss vulnerable.
First, kill the Machine Priest's Assistant
At the start of the battle, however, your job is just to kill enemies and stay alive. The room fills with Fallen foes, including Vandals, Dregs, and Captains. Clear them out while keeping an eye on Raneiks, who is above you in a big hole at the top of the room. Raneiks will periodically drop small explosive Servitor shells into the room that can do a lot of damage if they blow up near you, so try to avoid them. These can be shot and destroyed to prevent them from rolling close to you.
Watch for the Operator Augment to appear on an enemy. Kill them, take the Augment, and place it in the station in the center of the room so you have it for later. You won't need it for a while, so don't carry it around with you, as the timer will eventually kill you.
When you've killed enough enemies, an elite Machine Priest's Assistant will appear. Focus your fire on killing that enemy. A message saying that "Raeniks defends itself" will appear when the Assistant is killed, and you'll be teleported into a new, outside area.
Suppress Raneiks for information
This new arena is actually just the area behind where Raneiks was in the first room, and those two areas are connected. This outside space will fill with Shanks--first, be sure to prioritize destroying the seeking Exploder Shanks that will try to cruise right up to you and explode, often killing you and your teammates. Make use of the cover here as well, because in addition to a lot of gunfire coming from the Shanks, Raneiks will throw lots of explosives your way.
When all the Shanks are dead, a Tracer Shank with the Suppressor Augment will appear near Raneiks. You need to kill that Shank, grab the Augment, and use the grenade ability near Raneiks, all without getting blown up, tethered by Raneiks' Integration ability, or straight-up blasted by the close-range eye beam that does massive and sustained damage.
Blow up the Suppressor hologram next to Raneiks and he'll lose structural integrity, falling apart into a large group of 10 smaller Servitors.
Find the glowing Servitors
This is the part that matters to executing on the mechanics. All of the Servitors are numbered from 0 to 9. Two of the Servitors in the group will glow more brightly than the others. Identify those two Servitors and note their numbers, because you'll need them. It's often good to write the numbers in the chat window so your team can refer back to them without worrying about remembering them.
Once you have the numbers and before the Servitors reconstitute, Raneiks, run past the group into the big passageway where Raneiks previously was, or through a smaller, but safer, hallway immediately to the left of that bigger hole. You'll pass through a forcefield that will take away your Suppressor Augment, but you don't need it right now anyway.
Repeat the process
You found two numbers when you suppressed Raneiks, but you need four numbers to trigger the damage phase and actually hurt the boss. That means you need to repeat this whole thing again. Kill the enemies to draw out the Machine Priest's Assistant; kill the Assistant to get teleported into the next room; clear Shanks to draw out the Tracer Shank with the Suppressor Augment.
Once the Suppressor appears, use it on Raneiks again. This time, two more Servitors will glow more brightly than the others, allowing you to find two more numbers. Make sure you get different numbers from the first round, as you need four total numbers and none will repeat. When you have them, head back into the boss room for the damage phase.
Shoot the four panels and Suppress Raneiks
Now that you have all four numbers, it's time to grab the Operator Augment. One player needs to shoot the four numbered panels that match the ones you took from the glowing Raneiks Servitors. Meanwhile, the rest of your fireteam will need to clear out Fallen enemies that stream into the room as normal.
When you've shot all four panels, instead of a Machine Priest's Assistant appearing in the center of the room, Raneiks will come down to fight you instead, while the other enemies disappear. As before, a Tracer Shank with the Suppressor Augment will appear in the middle of the room. Kill it and grab the Augment, being careful of Raneiks's explosives and its close-range eye beam attack--these are all very strong at this point and can be tougher to avoid. Use the big glass panels to either side of Raneiks for cover until you can place the Suppressor hologram.
When you shoot the hologram, Raneiks will again fall apart into small Servitors, but they'll now be vulnerable to damage, so lay into them with everything that you've got. As noted, Supers that do AOE damage to multiple enemies are great here, as are explosive weapons that let you catch several Servitors in the blasts at a time. Powerful swords are also great here, since swings can hit more than one enemy and you don't need to worry about which specific Servitor you attack. Don't worry much about aiming or damaging a particular Servitor, as no single one can take enough damage to be eliminated.
You only get a handful of seconds here, so make them count and throw everything you've got at the pile of Servitors. After 10 or 15 seconds, Raneiks will reconstitute and become invulnerable.
That's one complete damage phase on Raneiks. From here, you just need to repeat the process: Suppress the boss to get the four numbers from its Servitors, use them to activate panels with the Operator Augment, then Suppress Raneiks again to do damage. Each damage phase resets the panel numbers, so don't worry if they repeat between damage phases. After three or four rounds, Raneiks Unified should go down, leaving a reward chest in the center of the room.
Lightning jumping puzzle
Leave Raneiks' boss room by jumping up through the hole above that leads outside and continue out of the arena through the door to the right. That'll take you back outside, but here, you'll see a new obstacle to deal with: orange lightning strikes. These blasts are telegraphed by orange circles that appear on the ground. When you see them, get out of the area as quickly as you can. Lightning will strike those spots, dealing a lot of damage. The ground will stay electrified for a short period after the strike as well, which will continue to do damage to you.
You don't have far to go, but you will have to jump across a bunch of debris while dodging lightning until you get to an area on the outer hull where the boss, the Corrupted Puppeteer, is waiting. This is Atraks, the Fallen Exo from the Deep Stone Crypt raid. When you see the Corrupted Puppeteer, it'll be facing the big orange ring anomaly in the distance.
Approaching the Corrupted Puppeteer starts the final boss battle of the dungeon, but beware that you can die right here. The boss will fire a flare into the air that creates a spherical wave of energy to burst forward from the ring. That energy wave will kill you if it hits you; to get away, jump through the circular door in the floor of the arena that opens when the wave starts toward you. Being inside that location will protect you from damage and take you into the boss area.
Vesper's Host Encounter 4: Corrupted Puppeteer boss fight
In the final battle, Vesper's Host brings together all the mechanics you've seen so far into one long, involved battle. You'll need all three Augments to complete multiple steps in order to make the boss vulnerable, and there are a lot of steps to get to the actual damage phase.
Loadout suggestions
When you actually damage the Corrupted Puppeteer, you'll be doing so fairly long range in an arena that's full of enemies and orange lightning strikes, meaning you'll need to stay as mobile as possible to avoid dying. For that reason, you have a couple of options as to what you should bring. Powerful burst Supers, like the Hunter's Golden Gun or the Titan's Thundercrash, are great for doing a lot of damage quickly.
As for weapons, precision damage can be good but because of how much is going on in the arena, standing still and aiming down sights for any length of time becomes very dangerous. Explosives make good alternatives, particularly those that you don't need to be very accurate with. The boss mostly stays still, but does tend to teleport between three platforms at the back of the arena periodically. Rockets and grenade launchers can be good here, particularly if you can get in close enough to limit the chances of missing, so that you can do some damage and then move before you're killed. But the closer you are to the boss, the more risk you run.
Strategies are likely to become more refined over time, but our team found success with machine guns like Fixed Odds or even Xenophage. These guns allow you to put precision damage on the boss without committing to a lot of shots at once, and are also good for taking down the boss's puppet enemies, which are elite-level copies of the boss that flood the arena and can be very annoying. Clearing the puppets makes the damage phase altogether easier to deal with and survive, so being able to quickly shift from hurting the boss to knocking out enemies was a big boon.
In any event, survivability during the damage phase is your biggest concern. You want weapons and abilities that you'll be able to use in brief bursts or fire and forget so that you can keep moving and stay alive. We saw success with rocket sidearms as well, like Aberrant Action, which works well to take down puppets in four or five shots, can still deal damage to the boss, and is great with Heal Clip for survival.
Dealing with puppets
The main change with the Corrupted Puppeteer boss is her puppets, which are copies of the boss that use close-range sword attacks against you. These guys aren't particularly powerful, but they are annoying. They generate radiation fields around themselves that will increase your Radiation count when they get too close, and if that reaches 10, you'll die regardless of your level of health. Puppets are also invulnerable while they're generating radiation, which means you need to play keep-away with the puppets until you can kill them.
To destroy the puppets, you need the Suppressor Augment. Use it the same way you did against Raneiks, generating a hologram with the grenade ability and then shooting it to blow it up. When the puppets are suppressed correctly, their Radiation fields will vanish and they'll become vulnerable. Puppets aren't too tough when they're vulnerable, so you'll want to clear them quickly to keep from getting overwhelmed. There is a cooldown on the grenade ability, and the range of the hologram is limited, so be sure the puppets are close enough to be affected, or else you may be stuck waiting several seconds.
Clearing the first room
At the start of the Corrupted Puppeteer fight, your goal is to stay alive long enough to gather all three Augments. The room will fill with enemies, while the boss will also take shots at you, and puppets will chase you around the room with their radiation fields. When the Suppressor Augment appears, grab it and start clearing puppets so it's easier to stay alive.
If you look around the room, you'll see four columns in the center, each with a blue screen and a number on it. Scattered around the room are panels with those same numbers, which you can shoot with the Operator Augment. You'll need to use the Scanner to determine which number is active, and then use Operator to shoot only the panels with that number.
Next, the Scanner Augment will show up on an enemy. Grab it and take it to each of the four columns, watching your radar screen. The icons that represent the columns on your radar will disappear until only one is left, which will turn white. Check the blue number on that column: the red panels with that number are the ones you need to shoot to move on.
Finally, the Operator Augment will appear. With the blue number identified, use the Operator augment to shoot four red panels with that same number; so if the blue number the Scanner identifies is 2, you need to find all four panels marked with 2 and shoot them. They can be tough to spot, as several are up high or on the back sides of objects, but there's no timer other than on the Augment, so relax and take your time.
When you've shot all four panels, doors will open on the sides of the room, two on each side. One set of doors will have flashing lights next to it, indicating which ones you want to choose. Drop the Augments in the stations scattered around this room, as that'll make them easier to grab in the next area. Go through the doors and you'll drop down to another section of the dungeon, the Lower Stacks, for the next portion of the fight.
Navigating the Lower Stacks
The Lower Stacks is split up into two halves. Your goal here is to navigate through some hallways to rooms where the Corrupted Puppeteer is waiting and use the space station's quarantine purge protocols to damage the boss, knocking out the shield that makes her invulnerable. This uses the nuclear core mechanics from the first encounter when you powered up the AI sphere, only this time, the nuclear core is essential to keeping yourself alive.
When you first drop down, look up for more flashing lights. Follow these to reach the first "purge" room where the boss is waiting. Be careful of Fallen tripmine traps, which can kill you, and more irradiated puppets, which will appear along the way and chase you around, trying to kill you with Radiation. Staying mobile and quick is key to staying alive.
Destroying the Corrupted Puppeteer's shield
The lights will lead you to a room where the Corrupted Puppeteer is waiting, which will also include three stations where you can pick up the Augments you left behind in the first room. If you passed through the doors to drop down to the Lower Stacks with your Augment still equipped, the forcefield will have taken it from you, and you'll need to get it back from enemies in the first room you enter in this area.
As before, one person should grab the Suppressor Augment and use it to deal with the irradiated puppets that keep streaming into the room. This isn't essential, but those guys can become really annoying over time, so it's best to keep clearing them out.
Activate the four Operator panels
A second person grabs the Operator Augment and finds and shoots four panels scattered across the room. All of these panels are active and there's no timer here, so you can shoot three and then wait on the fourth for your team to be in the room and ready before activating the final panel. Look for these in the corners of the room, on the back sides of columns (one room has columns right beside the boss, with a panel on one that can be hard to properly shoot from the side), and next to the doors. When you've activated all of them, you can drop your Operator Augment back in one of the Augment stations for safekeeping.
Use the Scanner on the puppet copies
After shooting all four panels, the boss will create four more copies of itself--two on the bottom floor of the room and two on the catwalks above. These are different from the irradiated puppets, as they have no Radiation fields and they carry rifles, not swords. One of your team needs to grab the Scanner Augment and use it to scan each of these four copies by getting very close to them. For three of them, the icon on your radar will disappear when you're right in their face, but like the columns in the first room, one radar icon will turn white, indicating that it's the copy you're looking for. There's also a high-pitched sound that plays when you find the right copy, and a lower-pitched sound that plays when you scan the wrong one.
Kill the copy the Scanner identifies and only that copy. When it dies, it will drop a nuclear core, and the other three copies will disappear. Grab the core and watch for a new timer on the left side of your screen, which gives you about 30 seconds. Note also that the nuclear core starts to stack Radiation on you, as well.
Note that if you kill the wrong boss puppet copy, the purge timer will drop down to five seconds, which almost guarantees a wipe. For this reason, it's usually best for only the person with the Scanner Augment to shoot the boss copy and get the nuclear core, so there's no risk of accidental crossfire.
If you can, drop off the Scanner and Suppressor Augments in the nearby stations--Suppressor in particular is one you're going to want to save, while the others can be more easily reacquired.
Dunk the nuclear core
Take the nuclear core to the center of the room, where there's a small, long bunker area with doors on either side. All members of your team need to go inside this bunker, where there's a bin you can dunk the nuclear core into. When you do, the doors will seal and the space station's quarantine purge protocol will turn on, cooking everything that's in the room, including the Corrupted Puppeteer. That burning purge field will knock out half of the Corrupted Puppeteer's shield.
That means you need to repeat the process a second time. There's another purge room just like this first one, although it will have a slightly different layout. The steps are the same, however. The tough part is getting to that second room with all the Augments.
Pass to the other side of the Lower Stacks
As mentioned, the Lower Stacks are split in half, and if you noticed when you first entered, the two sides are divided by a glass wall in the center. To get to the other side of the area, you need to pass through tunnels beneath that glass wall. There are two exits from the purge room you're in: the door you came through, which will be in the upper area and leads back to the room where you first dropped down, and a lower door with an icon of a staircase beside it. This staircase door will lead you more directly to the other side of the area.
If you saved the Suppressor Augment, you can grab it now and use it to clear irradiated puppets that appear on the path. It's a good idea to keep the Augment handy and take your time passing through here, as this pathway is littered with Fallen mines and tripwires that can kill you if you're not cautious. Follow the long hallway until you reach the far side of the area and look for more flashing lights to lead you to the purge room.
Get your lost Augments
You'll soon reach a T intersection with the purge room in one direction, marked by lights, and another room in the other direction. This other room is the second half of the entry area, divided by that glass wall. If you lost any of your Augments, go to that entry room on the same side as the active purge room. New enemies with the Augments will have spawned there so you can grab whatever you need.
Purge the boss a second time
With all your Augments in-hand, follow the flashing lights to the purge room and repeat the process there. This second time, you don't need to worry about leaving any Augments in the stations around the room, because you won't need them again for a while.
Repeat the process of shooting the panels with the Operator Augment and scanning the boss copies with the Scanner Augment. Kill the correct copy to get your nuclear core and then use the bunker to protect you from the purge. That will destroy the Corrupted Puppeteer's shield and it'll retreat to the outside of the space station, where you first saw it as you entered this fight.
Leave the bunker and take the upper door out of this room, then turn right and go straight ahead to reach the center chamber of the Lower Stacks. An orange column of light will teleport you back to the main room where you shot the numbered panels, and from there, you can turn and head to the spot where you dropped down inside the station to avoid the orange energy wave, which will launch you back out into the boss's arena. You don't need to kill enemies along the way, although you may want to do so for a chance to refill your ammo or other resources.
Finally, damage the Corrupted Puppeteer
When you get back outside, you'll finally be able to shoot the boss. This is a fairly long damage phase, but it's a fraught one. The boss stands on a central platform at one end of the arena, and will occasionally teleport to one of the side ones, but not very often. The Corrupted Puppeteer stands still for the most part, so it's not too hard to land headshots here. However, you do have to deal with the lightning.
Lightning will frequently strike the arena in random locations, identifiable by orange glows on the ground. You really need to avoid the lightning, as it'll hit you very hard when it strikes and linger on the ground. Coupled with the boss and its copies shooting at you, a lightning strike is almost always a death sentence. Don't get too mired in landing shots that you don't notice you're about to be struck by lightning, or you'll definitely die.
After a few seconds, the Corrupted Puppeteer will start generating copies on the platforms that shoot at you, and puppets with swords that will chase you around the arena. Both the copies and puppets can be killed without penalty--in fact, it might be a good idea to take them out if you can. The boss will also move to one of the side platforms, so keep an eye out for it to move so you can keep doing damage.
Next, the boss will generate a couple of puppets in the center of the arena at the same time. One of these will glow, much like the Raneiks Servitors did in that boss fight, although the puppets are more white than purple. None of the other puppets and copies matter, but you must kill the glowing puppet. Doing so causes it to drop a nuclear core.
Survive the boss wipe mechanic
On the left side of the arena when you're facing the boss, you'll notice there's another bunker like the ones in the purge rooms in the Lower Stacks. Not long after deploying the glowing puppet, the Corrupted Puppeteer will fire a flare straight up. This causes the big orange anomaly ring in the distance to generate another wave of orange energy. If that wave hits you, you'll die.
You have a few seconds when the flare goes off. Grab the nuclear core the glowing puppet dropped and have everyone run into the bunker. Dunk the core in the bin to close the doors, which will protect you from the energy wave.
The door will open again a few seconds later, which gives you another opportunity to do some more boss damage. The Corrupted Puppeteer repeats its process again, adding puppets and copies to the fight. After enough time has passed, however, it will again fire a flare and send an energy wave toward you. This time you can't use the bunker--instead, jump into the big round doors in the floor that take you back inside the space station. Diving back inside protects you from the energy wave and ends the damage phase, completing one whole cycle of this fight.
Repeat that whole process
That's everything you have to worry about. Repeat the process of gathering the Augments, traveling to the purge rooms, and using nuclear cores to break the boss's shield, then return to the outside arena to do damage to the boss. As mentioned, this can be a long fight, so take your time and focus on survival.
Eventually, you'll do enough damage to the Corrupted Puppeteer to bring it down, finally ending the dungeon. Defeating the boss runs the chance of earning you the Ice Breaker Exotic sniper rifle, so keep an eye out.
Grab the strange message before leaving
The last thing you want to do before leaving the dungeon, apart from grabbing your loot from the reward chest, is to pick up a nearby collectible. On a piece of machinery to the left of the chest is a screen with a strange message playing on it. You can pick that up, which will advance the Rogue Network quest.
Head back to Spider for the next phase of the quest. He'll tell you to head back into Vesper's Host to uncover its secrets.
We'll continue to expand this guide as we discover and run down all of its secrets.
