How to get Ruinous Element in Destiny 2

The new weapon crafting system in Destiny 2 features many new resources to grind for. The ability to create weapons with your own custom rolls is welcome, but where and how to find materials isn’t explained well in-game. Ruinous element is one of the new rare crafting resources. This guide will help make you find them.

Update: May 24, 3:02 PM CT

How to get Ruinous Element in Destiny 2 Season of the Haunted

Destiny 2 Season of the Haunted was released on May 24, and it has fundamentally changed the entire crafting system. Bungie has completely reworked most of the crafting components that The Witch Queen expansion introduced. Ruinous element and all of the others like it have been removed from the list of items needed to craft new weapons.

This move attempts to clean up a convoluted crafting system and allow for a streamlined resource hunt with fewer items overcomplicating matters. Due to this change, the Ruinous element is no longer an element in Destiny 2, and all traces of it have been erased from player inventories and the crafting table. The only new crafting element will be the Resonant element in the future.

With this new change to the crafting table, we will keep the older information down below, in the off chance Ruinous element is used for a new purpose or regains relevance in a future update.

Original Article

How to get Ruinous Element before the Season 17 update

To farm Ruinous element, you must unlock the crafting system first. After completing the first two missions of the Witch Queen campaign, the Enclave will unlock. After the brief tutorial on crafting your glaive, the ability to start gathering rare crafting materials is enabled.

After the glaive is crafted, every legendary weapon has a chance to drop as a resonant weapon. Resonant weapons are easy to spot due to the red box they are outlined with. Once you have a resonant weapon, you must equip it. Each equipped resonant weapon has a special meter called attunement. Once the attunement meter is complete you can then break that weapon down to extract crafting resources.

Ruinous element is a random element on resonant weapons, so getting your hands on a large number of them is the best way to gather a lot of this valuable resource. Completing seasonal activities, campaign missions, and PvP matches is a fantastic source of resonant weapons.