Destiny 2: How to Cheese Raid Bosses with the Porcupine Void Football Exploit

The Legacy of Boss Cheesing: Destiny Comes Full Circle

Since the inception of the original Destiny in 2014, the community has shared a rich tradition of finding unintended, physics-defying methods to conquer the game’s toughest encounters. Over a decade ago, players discovered that they could throw pulse grenades at the feet of the Vault of Glass raid boss, Atheon, and the Templar, causing them to back up off the edge of their platforms into the infinite void. This resulted in an instant kill and skipped complex mechanics entirely.

Now, in Destiny 2, history has repeated itself in spectacular fashion. With the release of the final updates, players have uncovered a game-breaking physics exploit to defeat the game's ultimate boss gauntlet—the Pantheon. By combining a weapon glitch that turns the player into a spiked "porcupine" with the ability to carry a Titan's Ward of Dawn like a "void football," Guardians can launch raid bosses off the map to their deaths.

This guide breaks down the underlying physics mechanics of this exploit, provides a step-by-step walkthrough to execute it, and analyzes it from an encounter design perspective.

Anatomy of the Exploit: The Porcupine and the Football

This exploit relies on a collision logic vulnerability that occurs when moving attached projectile actors. To understand how it works, we must break down its two core pillars: the Titan's reworked void bubble and the persistence projectile physics.

1. Reworking the Ward of Dawn

In the recent update, Bungie reworked the Sentinel Titan's Super, Ward of Dawn. Instead of being a stationary dome of protection, Titans can now interact with their placed bubble, picking it up and carrying it under their arm. In this state, it acts as a mobile shield, affectionately dubbed the "void football" by the community. Because this bubble is treated as a physical boundary rather than a simple screen space overlay, it possesses its own collision box and mass in the game engine.

2. The "Porcupine" Projectile Attachment

The second component is the projectile attachment logic. When players fire a crossbow or projectile-based weapon (specifically weapons utilizing a high "Persistence" stat or perk that allows bolts to remain embedded in surfaces for an extended period), the game engine anchors these projectile actors to the surface of the object they hit.

If players fire these persistence bolts directly into the central orb of a Titan's Ward of Dawn, the bolts become stuck to the bubble's outer mesh. By firing dozens of bolts, the dome becomes covered in projecting spikes, resembling a giant, glowing void porcupine.

Step-by-Step Implementation Guide

To execute this exploit successfully in the Pantheon raid gauntlet, your fireteam must coordinate the setup. Follow these precise instructions:

Step 1: Subclass and Loadout Configuration

• Subclass: At least one player must run a Sentinel Titan equipped with the Ward of Dawn Super.
• Exotic Armor: The Titan should equip the Helm of Saint-14. The reworked Helm of Saint-14 allows you to extend the bubble's duration when you pick it up, which helps sustain the exploit and optimize Super uptime.
• Weaponry: Equipped weapons must include a crossbow or a high-persistence weapon that leaves projectiles stuck in surfaces for long durations.

Step 2: Preparing the Porcupine Bubble

1. Find a safe spot near the boss arena but away from immediate enemy fire.

2. The Sentinel Titan casts their Ward of Dawn.

3. The Titan and their teammates immediately fire their persistence weapon bolts directly into the bubble’s core orb.

4. Continue firing until the bubble is visibly covered in dozens of protruding bolts, resembling a porcupine.

Step 3: Picking Up the Void Football

1. The Titan walks up to the central point of the bubble and holds the interact button to pick up the Ward of Dawn.

2. The Titan will carry the bubble under their arm. Note that the attached bolts will move with the bubble, maintaining their positions relative to the bubble's coordinate space.

3. Teammates should stay close to benefit from the mobile shield's protection while the Titan prepares for the charge.

Step 4: Pushing the Boss

1. The Titan runs directly toward the target boss.

2. When the Titan makes physical contact with the boss's hitbox, the collision calculations for the dozens of attached bolts and the bubble will trigger simultaneously.

3. This massive collision overlay creates an exponential physics cascade, transferring a tremendous amount of velocity to the boss.

4. The boss is instantly launched backward and off the edge of the arena, dying to the death volume below.

Technical Analysis: Why the Physics Engine Breaks

From a game engineering standpoint, this exploit highlights the challenges of handling overlapping collision states for attached actors in a peer-to-peer/server environment.

When a projectile is fired and hits the Ward of Dawn, it is spawned as an actor and parented to the bubble's transform matrix. Under normal circumstances, when a parent object moves, the game engine updates the child actors' transforms linearly.

However, when the Titan carries the bubble and collides with a large static character like a raid boss, the collision loop struggles to resolve the simultaneous overlaps. The game engine attempts to prevent the child bolts from clipping into the boss's hitbox while resolving the bubble's own collision.

Instead of applying a standard, controlled impact force, the physics resolver sums the collision forces of every single attached bolt along with the bubble's own kinetic force. This results in an exponential force transfer, sending the boss flying.

Encounter Design Impact and Community Reception

In the Pantheon raid gauntlet, where players face multiple bosses back-to-back under tight timers, this glitch has become highly popular for farming Spoils of Conquest and rare loot. Players are bypassing intense mechanical phases—like plate-stepping, symbol-matching, and puzzle-solving—in favor of a five-second physics push.

While some players find this game-breaking, the general community has embraced it with humor. It serves as a nostalgic callback to the early days of the franchise. It proves that no matter how complex encounter designers build raids, players will always look for the simplest way to push a boss off a cliff.