How to Use the Crude Cipher in Destiny 2

What would Destiny 2‘s Season of Plunder be without treasure maps and the ability to find buried treasure? During your treasure-hunting adventures, you will come across Crude Ciphers that seem to have no real use in Destiny 2, as you collect Crude Ciphers they will show up in your Captain Atlas but only say you need more instructions to do anything with them. Let’s go over what you do with Crude Ciphers in Destiny 2.

What to do With Crude Ciphers in Destiny 2

Since the Crude Ciphers appear in the treasure map section of your Captain’s Atlas, it makes sense to assume that the Crude Ciphers are used to get new treasure maps. However, you need more than just the Crude Ciphers to unlock a new treasure map to use in the atlas. You will also need to upgrade your pirate crew to gain access to these new map types.

You upgrade your pirate crew through the use of Repute, which you can earn by completing the newest weekly quests throughout the season. Each week of the season, there will be two quests you can complete to earn Repute, one of the quests will be linked to completing the seasonal questline and the other quests tend to be linked to the seasonal activities.

You can also obtain the Glimmer-focused treasure map by increasing your rank to rank four during the season. You will still need the Crude Ciphers no matter which map you unlock. Aside from the basic and Glimmer-focused maps, you can also get a weapon-focused map and a special rumor map that can be used once a week.

If you are short a few Crude Cipher fragments to unlock the next map, you will need to get them by completing the Cryptic Quantrains and their riddles. Each time you complete the Cryptic Quatrain you should get two Crude Ciphers fragments which is enough to unlock a map in the atlas.

Once you have unlocked the treasure maps, you can use them to run the seasonal expedition activity. This will have you gathering treasure which is need for the Scallywag to triumph alongside killing ruffians. The treasure maps are a great way to farm up any Glimmer you need with the Glimmer-focused map. You can also try to farm a god-rolled seasonal weapon or get a Deepsight resonance one to work toward unlocking it for crafting.

Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Google Stadia.