Destiny 2 Royal Pools - how to stop the Bathing Ritual, trigger Bathers, and use the Bathing Pool Orbs

The Royal Pools are a tricky area that you'll encounter fairly early on in Destiny 2's first Raid, Leviathan.

They involve some serious coordination from your team, and require both a sense of timing and combat proficiency. Read on for details on how to stop the Bathing Ridual, how to trigger the Bathers, how to use the Bathing Pool Orbs, and everything else you need to know about how the Royal Pools work.

If you want to read more about the Raid, our Destiny 2 Leviathan guide and walkthrough can be help with every main encounter, including the Castellum, Royal Pools, Pleasure Gardens, Gauntlet and final boss, as well as how to access and explore the Labyrinth underbelly.

Note if you are playing on Prestige difficulty, there are additional mechanics to consider, which our Prestige changes and differences page explains.

Royal Pools explained - how to stop the Bathing Ritual at the Royal Pools

A summary of the steps to progress from the Bathing Ritual encounter are:

• To start the challenge and trigger enemies, five players must simultaneously jump onto the platforms with the Orbs on.
• The Orbs provide a buff that lets you stand in the toxic water and on the platforms without dying.
• Staying standing on one of the four external platforms moves the large nearby chain.
• When the grey 'Soap' blocks of the chains touch the liquid at their base, that chain locks in place.
• The two spare players must refill their buff from the central Orb, and run to replace their depleted allies to keep lowering chains.
• When all four chains have locked in place, the next phase starts
• Keep rotating to keep buffs topped up, until all chains lock.
• Players must then all head to the central room.
• Some need to shoot the purple Lanterns, from the central Orb platform, and some must defend them.
• Look out for spawning Councillors on that platform, who kill anyone in their way.
• Once the Councillor's have spawned, the window for damaging the Lanterns ends.
• When all nine (three sets of three) purple Lanterns are destroyed, you've completed the task.
• This normally takes two to three rounds of lowering the external chains, going to the central room, and repeating.

It's also worth noting there is an additional Challenge Mode to complete, assuming it is active that week.

Detailed breakdown to Stop the Bathing Ritual in the Royal Pools step by step:

This is a complicated, awkward, and difficult task, but once you figure out what you're doing there's certainly a knack for it. Here's what to do step by step, in full detail:

Split into two teams again - One covers the 'left' side (as you look at the room from the entrance) one covers the right. Each team has one person on each external corner Orb platform, and one 'floater' who is spare.

Starting positions - The two players on each team who are starting by the external Orbs need to go and stand on a nearby podium (not in the water) and get ready to jump onto their Orb. One floater goes to the middle room and gets ready to jump onto the middle Orb platform. The other floater can stand between their two teammates.

Everyone jumps on their platform at the same time - Do a little countdown, and all jump onto your designated Orb platform at the same time. This will start the Ritual, meaning the chains will move and an aggressive Bather will come out of a set position on each side.

The floater immediately supports the teammate being attacked by the Bather - Kill the bather, kill any additional enemies nearby. The other teammate on that side has to kill any enemies and everyone must stay on their platform as much as possible.

The floater swaps with the teammate who had the first Bather - Floater jumps onto the Orb platform, and that teammate runs back to the central room to refresh their buff from the only respawning Orb. The Floater now has to survive, and the other teammate gets ready to leave.

The new floater goes to the other teammate - the teammate who didn't have a Bather at first will definitely have one by now. The new floater, who swapped out from the first Orb platform, must immediately go to help them and then swap out once their Bather is down. The next Bather will be spawning back at the other Orb platform again!

The third teammate is now floater - just like the first teammate, the third is now Floater, needs to get the central Orb buff, and go to support the original Floater at the other end again.

Repeat the relay until all 'Soaps' are locked at their lowest point, at water level - an audio cue will trigger when they're all done.

Take a second to kill any nearby enemies - clear this first wave, and any surviving Bathers, to make your lives easier for the next phase, and make sure everyone's still alive and know's who still has a revive spare.

Everone goes to the central room, and splits into two teams again - time for phase two! One team, ideally the 3 players with the highest Power level, is the Protectors. The other team is the Centre Squad (our names, we like them OK).

Centre Squad jumps on the central Orb platform - these three lower-power Guardians have to shoot the purple Lanterns in that room. Remember you can only damage them from that central podium! As soon as you get down to approximately 5x left on your Orb buff, you must jump off that middle point, or you'll be insta-killed by the spawning Councillor.

The Protectors protect - the three stronger Guardians need to protect their teammates by standing around the edges on safe ground in that middle room, and killing enemies that spawn. Bathers as well as regular foes will appear, and you have to take them down instantly or your Centre Squad will be very vulnerable!

Remember to kill the Councillors ASAP. Take them down with a quick punch from whoever's nearest.

Repeat! - the entire process has to be done over and over until all purple Lanterns in the middle rooms are destroyed. It normally takes two to three rounds, depending on how much damage you can dish out to them in the window you have. But there's some nice loot - a chance at Legendary Raid gear and guaranteed Raid tokens and glimmer - in the central room when you're done!

The Season of the Deep is here alongside the Into the Depths quest. You can know go fishing too! Don't forget to keep an eye on the Lost Sector and King's Fall challenge rotation schedule!

Everything else you need to know about how the Destiny 2 Royal Pools Bathing Ritual works

• You can only revive a teammate once - each member of the Fireteam gets one 'res' each. So one player could be revived five times, for example, if each other player used their one chance at reviving someone on that single player. Use this wisely!
• You have thirty seconds to revive a downed player, or you have to restart - the squad will automatically wipe if someone isn't revived in time. It'll be very obvious that someone is down from the screen turning deep red. Of course, if you've run out of revives, then when the timer ticks down, you're all done, so you need to learn to do this entire challenge without any more than five deaths.
• The 'water' will damage you - if you stand in the blackish liquid anywhere in this room, you'll gradually die. There is a buff to stop this however, more on that below.
• There are five Orbs on platforms, which make you invulnerable to the water - there's one in each of the four corners of the area, and one in the central room. The Orbs make you invulnerable for 50 Steps on the water. If you stand still on the water, it decreases at a rate of about 2 steps per second, so you get about 25-30 seconds of standing still in the water. The orbs refresh if no one is standing on their platform, so you can go back and pick them up again if you need them. This changes after you trigger the start of the challenge though!
• When five players stand on all five Orb platforms at the same time, the challenge is triggered - only do this when you're ready (we strongly recommend reading the step-by-step part of this guide just below!)

• The Bathing Ritual is the challenge - when you start it, giant 'Bather' enemies will spawn, two at a time, in front of certain Orb platforms. Only the central Orb will continue to respawn during this phase, so it's your only source of invulnerability. At the same time, giant chains, directly opposite the four corner Orb platforms, will start to move, but only when a Guardian is standing on all four corner Orb platforms at the same time. You'll see a grey block in the centre of each chain (this being referred to quite frequently as 'the Soap', and we like that name so we're going to use it too). When the Soap part of each chain reaches the water at the bottom of that chain's pool of water, it will 'lock in'.
• When all four Soaps are 'locked in', the next phase starts - now, the focus shifts from the four external Orb platforms to the central one in the central room. In that room, you'll see three more sets of chains, with three purple Lanterns on each. You need to shoot all the Lanterns (three sets of three) in order to progress, but there are wrinkles...
• The Lanterns are only vulnerable under specific circumstances - you have to be standing on the central Orb platform in that room in order to do damage to the Lanterns. When your resistance runs down, a Councillor will spawn in that central platform and kill anyone standing near it. When that Councillor is defeated, a second will spawn somewhere else in that room.
• When both Councillor's are dead, it's time to rinse and repeat! - The system will reset (the corner Orb platforms, the Bathers, the chains) and you'll have to repeat the process as many times as is required for you to destroy all of the Lanterns during the windows of vulnerability.
• Finally, you can leave, but only return under certain conditions - you need to leave someone to join back into a Firetime with in the Royal Pools area if you want to go and come back. As we explain in our main Leviathan Raid guide hub, if you quit as an entire fireteam, you'll have to do some work to get back.

With that all done, you'll open the way to the Pleasure Gardens, Royal Pools or Gauntlet, depending on the order of the Raid that week. But before that, make sure you pop open the chest that allows you to get some loot and rewards - you deserve it!

Additional reporting by Chris Tapsell.