Destiny 2 Speleologist God Roll Guide

The final act of Destiny 2‘s first content episode, Echoes, brings a refresh to both its activities and your arsenal. Speleologist is a new Solar machine gun that makes a pretty decent alternative to Fixed Odds from the Duality dungeon, allowing you to dump a lot of damage on tough enemies or take out a lot of little ones very quickly. The rapid-fire frame machine gun offers a 900 RPM fire rate, which mean it’ll fire a lot of ammo very fast–and it’s great for clearing out enemies in a hurry, especially in high-end content. With some extremely useful Solar-specific perks, the Speleologist god roll can also complement the rest of your Echoes weapons and fit well with your Solar builds.

How To Get Speleologist

As with the other Echoes weapons, Speleologist is part of the episode’s loot pool, so it’s most easily earned as a random drop from completing Echoes activities, including Battlegrounds, Enigma Protocol, and Breach Executable. You’re also guaranteed one roll of the weapon for completing the Echoes weekly story missions, adding it to your collections. As with other Echoes guns, if you’re looking to visit Failsafe and tune Echoes Engrams to get Speleologist drops, you’ll need to first complete Act 3’s new Nessus Sample missions to unlock that upgrade. Speleologist is craftable, like the other Echoes guns, so you can eventually build your own version of the gun with enhanced perks.

Speleologist God Rolls

Speleologist PvE God Roll

• Barrel: Arrowhead Brake / Fluted Barrel
  • Arrowhead Brake: +30 Recoil, +10 Handling
  • Fluted Barrel: +5 Stability, +15 Handling
• Magazine: Appended Mag / Tactical Mag
  • Appended Mag: +14 Magazine
  • Tactical Mag: +7 Magazine, +5 Stability, +10 Reload Speed
• First Perk: Enlightened Action / Envious Assassin
  • Enlightened Action: Dealing damage significantly improves reload speed and handling.
  • Envious Assassin: Defeating targets with other weapons before drawing this one transfers additional ammo to the magazine from reserves. This effect can overflow the magazine based on the number of targets defeated.
• Second Perk: Incandescent / Killing Tally
  • Incandescent: Defeating a target spreads a longer lasting scorch to those nearby. More powerful combatants and opposing Guardians cause scorch in a larger radius.
  • Killing Tally: Final blows increase this weapon’s damage until it is stowed or reloaded. Improves magazine size.
• Masterwork: Stability

Speleologist is a solid option for a Solar machine gun in PvE, excelling in a clearance role to help you knock out lots of enemies quickly. While it’s maybe not the best one you can get, it rolls perks that are reliably useful even if you’re not speccing into a build that does a ton to synergize with them. In the barrel and magazine departments, you’ll probably want to focus on the stability stat to make sure you can consistently land critical hits as you’re dumping ammo. Choices that boost magazine size, handling, and reload speed are also useful so that you can swap to Speleologist quickly, shoot a lot of bullets, and get it back in the fight fast.

For perks, Enlightened Action is a strong option for boosting reload speed, making up for boosting the stat elsewhere. You can also go with Envious Assassin to get as many bullets into your first magazine as possible. Incandescent is your go-to here, as it’s a great add-on to a weapon that’s already phenomenal for clearing enemies in dangerous situations, and you don’t need to run a Solar build to take advantage of the cascading Scorch explosions. Killing Tally can also be fun, boosting the gun’s damage against tougher enemies once you use it to wipe out some smaller ones. Add either to Radiolaria Transposer, which causes enemies to explode into a pool of radiolaria when you get multiple kills, and Speleologist is a great option to wipe out armies.

Speleologist PvP God Roll

• Barrel: Polygonal Rifling / Hammer-Forged Rifling
  • Polygonal Rifling: +10 Stability
  • Hammer-Forged Rifling: +10 Range
• Magazine: Accurized Rounds / Steady Rounds
  • Accurized Rounds: +10 Range
  • Steady Rounds: +15 Stability, -5 Range, +7 Airborne Effectiveness
• First Perk: Slideways / Firmly Planted
  • Slideways: Sliding partially reloads this weapon’s magazine and temporarily boosts handling and stability greatly.
  • Firmly Planted: Greatly increased accuracy, stability, and handling when firing while crouched.
• Second Perk: Killing Tally
  • Killing Tally: Final blows increase this weapon’s damage until it is stowed or reloaded. Improves magazine size.\
• Masterwork: Stability

Speleologist shouldn’t be your first choice for a PvP machine gun, but it’s serviceable. Range is generally your primary point of focus on Crucible guns, but you’ll also want to boost stability to keep your shots on target. Slideways and Firmly Planted will both boost stability and help you make quick kills, so pick the one that best fits your playstyle. For secondary perks, Killing Tally is good if you’re able to take Speleologist on a multi-kill rampage, boosting your damage on multiple kills without you having to worry about it.