How to heal in The Nether in Destiny 2

Healing in The Nether activity in Destiny 2 is greatly reduced due to the mode’s roguelite inspiration. The goal is for you to seek out alternative forms of healing aside from passive restoration, such as Healing Grenades and the support frame auto rifle introduced in The Final Shape expansion.

In this Destiny 2 guide, we’ll walk you through how to heal in The Nether so you and your Fireteam can escape with your lives. But first…

PSA: Healing in The Nether is bugged in Destiny 2

Unfortunately, as of this writing, most healing methods in The Nether are bugged and are not working as intended. Bungie’s comms team assured players via social media that it’s targeting a balance patch to fix these issues as early as the week of Feb. 10, although the studio hasn’t nailed down a date yet.

With the bug currently in place, there are almost no healing items or builds that we recommend using in The Nether. However, there are a few items that somehow missed out on the bug and are healing players to full, which we’ll go into more in the section below.

It’s worth mentioning that there is a Boon that you can choose while playing The Nether that will give you healing when casting your class ability. And you can, of course, break the urns scattered around the Dreadnaught to pick up Healing Orbs for some very minor healing.

Best Destiny 2 healing items in The Nether (for now)

All items that use the Solar healing keywords — Cure, Restoration, etc. — heal for almost nothing in The Nether. However, there are some older weapons and non-Solar abilities that grant you health and are healing normally, as of this writing. The following weapons and Aspects have the ability to fully heal yourself or allies, even inside of The Nether:

• Knockout Titan Aspect
• Crimson Exotic hand cannon
• Lumina Exotic hand cannon

Crimson is Red Death’s hand cannon cousin, and it’s able to fully heal the wielder on a kill. However, it does zero healing to any nearby allies and is a purely selfish choice. Use this if you’re going in alone or if you’re playing on Expert and you want to be able to spread out a little. It’s a random drop Exotic from an older era in Destiny 2, so if you’re a newer Guardian, you might not have opened enough Exotic Engrams to get it just yet.

Lumina is more of a team-player’s weapon, as you’ll be able fully heal any allies with the special Noble Rounds it fires after getting a kill. Opposite to Crimson, however, you have no way of healing yourself with Lumina if you’re alone. This hand cannon came out in the Season of Opulence many years ago, and is now something you’ll need to buy from the Monument to Lost Lights in the Tower.

If you’re a Titan player, Knockout is an obvious choice, and can even be paired with one of the Exotic hand cannons to really help out your healing. While you have Knockout active, your melee kills will heal you to full. Knockout is very powerful even outside of the Nether this episode, as Arc is boosted by the Artifact during Heresy, and you can use Knockout while playing Prismatic Titan.