Destiny 2: How to complete the Astral Alignment activity

Astral Alignment is the latest activity in Destiny 2: Season of the Lost but it's had a bit of a troubled launch. Players—including yours truly—were often matched with players halfway through the activity in areas that were broken. Progress bars weren't filling and some larger enemies stayed immune, causing quite a lot of frustration. Fortunately, bugs within the activity are being ironed out and Astral Alignment is back to being playable. 

Destiny 2: Astral Alignment explained 

Astral Alignment is a new six-player matchmade activity that is split into four phases. You'll need to work with your teammates to complete it, so don't try and be a hero, Titans. To get started, head over to the Dreaming City and choose the Astral Alignment icon from the map. It'll transport you into the Blind Well, where you'll meet your first challenge.

You'll need to crush the intruders in the Blind Well by defeating enemies. This shouldn't take very long to complete and once you're done, follow the waypoint to insert your Wayfinder's Compass to go to the next phase: Collapse the Taken Rifts. Here, you'll need to keep an eye out for enemies with yellow health bars labelled Eye of Xivu Arath. A quest marker should float above their heads so you know who to target. This phase can get quite busy so try and manage adds as best you can while searching for the main targets.

These targets will drop spheres that will inflict the Taken Essence Antumbra upon players, so run as fast as you can to any of the rifts that appear that are marked by quest markers. You'll need to fill a progress bar to complete this stage, so just keep lobbing spheres into the rifts until it's done.

The next phase can present one of two ways: either as Install the Batteries or Prevent the Ether Harvest. Prevent the Ether Harvest had been disabled as it was buggy af, so chances are you've only played Install the Batteries. You'll see a quest icon above the batteries, so destroy the spheres to get the batteries, pick them up and bring them back to the beacon where they'll be auto-installed.

You'll get a debuff while carrying them and will eventually drop them before making it back. It would be a good idea to do this mission in pairs so that you can carry a battery for a while before your teammate takes over. The debuff prevents you from carrying for ten seconds which is why you need a second player, otherwise, you'll need to defend your sphere against a bunch of adds. After the batteries have been installed, the Knights will finally take damage so take them out to progress to the final phase.

How to defeat Kholks, Taken of Xivu Arath 

The final phase is a big ol' boss fight. Kholks is a big Taken Ogre and the fight consists of three phases. With each third of his health you take off he'll become immune and a Blight will spawn. Destroy it and the yellow health bar enemies that spawn to gather Taken Essense which you can use to take down Kholks' shield. Do this three times to complete the encounter and finish the Astral Alignment activity. 

You'll get two chests as your reward, though one requires 150 Parallax Trajectory tokens to open.