Destiny: The Taken King - how to find and kill the Taken Champions

The Taken Champions need to die if you're going to complete your quests. Here's how you find them and take them down.

Back to our guide to Destiny: The Taken King.

How to find and kill the Taken Champions

It won't be long into your adventures with The Taken King that you start seeing quest demands to kill Taken Champions. The game does give you location information, but doesn't help much in terms of explaining how to get at the enemies you need to kill and how to complete the encounters.

You'll find details of all the various Champions below, how they spawn and where to find them. Drive the Taken back, Guardian. Spare no soul.

Where are the Taken Champions?

The Taken Champions spawn in a bunch of locations, and you'll need to kill specific ones to complete your quests. You'll find details of the areas you need to visit and tips on completing the encounters through the links below.

• Earth - The Cosmodrome
  • Skywatch - Irxori, Lost to Oryx
  • The Divide - Darnu, Horn of Oryx
  • Rocketyard - Stirok, Banner of Oryx

• Venus - Ishtar Sink
  • Shattered Coast
  • Ishtar Cliffs
  • Ishtar Commons
  • The Citadel

The Taken Champions encounter explained

The Taken Champions spawn in each of their designated locations on a timer. You don't have to do anything to make them appear. These are public events. Just go to the relevant location and wait. Try to find a high vantage point so you can see the black vortexes denoting the Taken spawns from afar.

After a while, you'll see a message in the bottom left of the screen saying Taken forces are corrupting the area. This is just a warning that the encounter is about to start. Kill any Taken you see, if you like, but they won't count towards the boss spawn.

Now you'll see a message saying a Taken Lieutenant is corrupting the land. This is your cue to action. Look for the Taken spawns and find the enemy with a yellow health bar. It'll probably be a Taken Captain, Wizard or Knight. You need to find and kill it quickly, so spread your fireteam out and call them out when you see them. If you take too long the Taken will vanish and you'll have to wait for the whole encounter to start again.

Once he's down, you'll see a message saying the Taken Lieutenant has been slain.

After you've killed three Lieutenants, you'll get a note saying, "Darkness rises! A Taken zealot arrives to claim you."

This is the boss. It's a large Taken enemy. You can't miss it. Smash it until it dies.