The Arcane Embrace shotgun from Festival of the Lost with a neon green glow from its Holofoil version.
Screenshot by Destructoid

Arcane Embrace god rolls and how to get them in Destiny 2

It's back, and it has a Holofoil version.

Arcane Embrace was Destiny 2‘s first burst-fire shotgun when it released last year, and for this Halloween, it’s back with classic combinations and other new options for a god roll.

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While most guardians may be looking for the new Gunburn Kinetic SMG this Festival of the Lost, Arcane Embrace may also be worth the chase—especially if you’re enjoying Haunted Altars and not hitting a softlock. If you have a god-rolled one from last year, the core of this weapon’s perks hasn’t changed, but the overhauled pool gives you a lot more room for general use and some great alternatives for the third column.

Here are our Arcane Embrace PvE god rolls based on the perk table listed by light.gg.

Arcane Embrace PvE god roll

The Arcane Embrace shotgun as a T5 drop, with the maching icy blue glow.
Holofoil is the rarest drop, but T5s aren’t bad either. Screenshot by Destructoid
  • Barrel: Corkscrew Rifling, Smallbore, or Polygonal Rifling
  • Mag: Tactical Mag, Appended Mag, Flared Magwell, or Alloy Mag.
  • First perk: Fourth Time’s the Charm, Envious Assassin, or Reconstruction.
    • Honorable mentions: Dual Loader, Rapid Hit
  • Second perk: Precision Instrument, Voltshot, or Surrounded.
    • Honorable mentions: Aggregate Charge

You can tune your Arcane Embrace for two main roles: boss/elite damage or regular orange-bar cleaning. For boss damage, it’s hard to beat our god roll of Fourth Time’s the Charm paired with Precision Instrument. With these, you can continuously hurl bricks at enemies. The former refunds ammo into your magazine, and the latter increases precision damage after landing consecutive hits.

Arcane Embrace’s double-shot archetype means you’re getting two stacks of Precision Instrument per burst, and Fourth Time’s the Charm will trigger every two bursts if you’re landing crits. This means every two bursts, you get an extra one for free, since the ammo refund from this perk doesn’t consume your reserves. In the right conditions, you can fire up to 28 rounds without having to reload—22 of them with max Precision Instrument stacks—without any setup required. Aggregate Charge can be a backup choice if your target is affected by three elemental debuffs, too, but we’re sticking to our tried-and-true god roll.

Envious Assassin and Reconstruction may also work here since they’ll overflow your magazine, and that may be enough to get you through a damage phase without that much reloading. We’d still take Fourth Time’s the Charm due to the ammo generation, however.

If you’re looking for an Arcane Embrace god roll focused on more general play, however, your options broaden considerably. In addition to the other perks, Dual Loader and Rapid Hit can help you manually load your magazine more quickly, and you open up a suite of other damage perks.

Surrounded gets more chances to activate, since you’ll often have other enemies around you. Voltshot gets more utility for clearing adds or jolting enemies, but keep in mind Envious Assassin and Reconstruction may interfere with it since it only procs after a reload. For Arc builds, Rolling Storm lets you top off bolt charge, though we recommend skipping it if you’re looking for a subclass-agnostic god roll.

How to get Arcane Embrace in Destiny 2

A Headless One in the Haunted Altars in Destiny 2.
You’ll likely spend a lot of time in Haunted Altars anyway. Image via Bungie

This horrifying shotgun is available as part of Festival of the Lost, Destiny 2‘s Halloween event. The 2025 edition runs until Nov. 11, so there’s a limited window to get it. Portal rewards from FOTL will drop one tier above your usual limit, giving you a little help farming for higher-quality versions of this shotgun. It didn’t return between this year and the last, so this may be the only chance at getting this gun for a while, though Bungie has already introduced another weapon in this archetype since The Edge of Fate.


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Image of Pedro Peres
Pedro Peres
Destiny guy at Destructoid. He's been freelancing since 2019, and covering Destiny almost exclusively since 2021. These days, you can summon him by inviting him to do a raid in D2, fight a Nightlord in Elden Ring: Nightreign, or go vault hunting in Borderlands 4.