How to play any Destiny 2 activity in solo mode

Destiny 2 solo mode PC — Here's my Warlock, picture here with his chonky son the EDZ Sundial Obelisk. (Image credit: Bungie)

Many of my favourite moments in Destiny 2 have come whilst shooting the shit with friends. But there are also times when, as Greta Garbo noted, you just want to grind alone. Maybe you’re sick of dealing with random blueberry players who still won’t pass the ball in The Corrupted strike. Or perhaps you’re dealing with the weird instancing glitch in the EDZ which is stopping some people from being able to interact with the Obelisk. Happily, a solution to playing Destiny 2 solo is at hand. It was shared with me by one of my in-game pals, and comes in the form of a script which blocks network ports to stop you matching with other players.

Before we get into detail, a couple of caveats. 1) I haven’t waded through Bungie’s Terms of Service, but it’s fair to assume the developer could choose to see this as a form of network manipulation, so use it at your own risk. The reason I’m sharing is that I think that because you’re only altering your own play experience, and not impacting anyone else, there’s a good chance it’ll be viewed as benign. 2) I don’t know who originally created the script, but if you do please let me know in the comments (with sourcing) and I’ll credit correctly.

There are several good reasons to want to play solo. Many bounties require racking up a certain number of kills with a specific weapon type, so being alone in an area with the correct kind of enemies means you don’t have to worry about having your kills stolen. Plus it can be fun to challenge yourself by doing strikes alone and at your own pace. Here’s how you activate solo mode.

Step 1: Paste the bolded text below into a notepad file and then save it as destiny2-solo.ps1

if (!([Security.Principal.WindowsPrincipal][Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()).IsInRole([Security.Principal.WindowsBuiltInRole] "Administrator")) { Start-Process powershell.exe "-NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File `"$PSCommandPath`"" -Verb RunAs; exit }

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Destiny2-Solo-1" -Direction Outbound -LocalPort 1935,3097,3478-3480 -Protocol TCP -Action Block

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Destiny2-Solo-2" -Direction Outbound -LocalPort 1935,3097,3478-3480 -Protocol UDP -Action Block

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Destiny2-Solo-3" -Direction Inbound -LocalPort 1935,3097,3478-3480 -Protocol TCP -Action Block

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Destiny2-Solo-4" -Direction Inbound -LocalPort 1935,3097,3478-3480 -Protocol UDP -Action Block

Write-Host "Destiny 2 Solo mode activated. Press Enter to deactivate solo mode."

Read-Host

Remove-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Destiny2-Solo-1"

Remove-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Destiny2-Solo-2"

Remove-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Destiny2-Solo-3"

Remove-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Destiny2-Solo-4"

Step 2: Make sure you’re in orbit, right click on the destiny2-solo.ps1 file and then select ‘Run with PowerShell’.

Step 3: Launch your chosen activity as normal. It may take a little longer to start as the game will attempt matchmaking, fail to find anyone, and then start the activity.

Step 4: In order to resume normal play, simply tab back to the PowerShell window and hit return, which will deactivate solo mode.

I’ve been using this method to knock out some of the Polarized Fractaline bounties and to enable me to interact with the EDZ Obelisk (which seems to bug out if there are too many players in the instance). It’s also eerie to wander around the Tower with just the vendors and you there. Time to rob Eververse while there are no witnesses.

With over two decades covering videogames, Tim has been there from the beginning. In his case, that meant playing Elite in 'co-op' on a BBC Micro (one player uses the movement keys, the other shoots) until his parents finally caved and bought an Amstrad CPC 6128. These days, when not steering the good ship PC Gamer, Tim spends his time complaining that all Priest mains in Hearthstone are degenerates and raiding in Destiny 2. He's almost certainly doing one of these right now.