Best Places And Activities For Farming High-Level Gear

In Destiny 2, your Guardian’s equipment determines their Power Level. The only way to level up is to acquire stronger gear. The Beyond Light expansion has raised the maximum Power Level to 1260. Between the new power cap and the sunsetting of many Legendary Weapons, it is more important than ever for you to acquire cutting-edge gear quickly if you are to keep up with your allies in PvE or compete successfully in PvP.

Many activities in the game can yield high-level weapons and armor, but not all of them are time-effective. While you can get Rare and Powerful gear from random world drops, the Pinnacle rewards you need to get to the highest level are exclusive to a much narrower range of sources. Even among those sources, some will be clearly preferable to the others, though this may partly depend on your skills and time commitments. Some options are quick and easy, but yield only minor improvements in Power Level, while the more lucrative ones may require greater effort for you to take advantage of them properly. They also tend to favor some reward types over others, which is important to keep in mind if you are looking for a specific kind of gear.

Weekly rewards​​​​​​​

Weekly rewards from simpler activities may suffice for the needs of more casual players. For example, completing missions from the Vanguard Strike playlist can be a viable and simple way of earning all sorts of advanced weapons. If you win three Strikes while playing as a subclass that matches that week’s elemental burn, you may even earn a Pinnacle item. Another solid farming method can be unlocked by working with Variks the Loyal after completing Beyond Light’s initial campaign. Once you have obtained the last tier of his Europan Explorer perk, successfully running the Weekly Exo Challenges on Europa will reliably provide you with Pinnacle gear.

Empire Hunts

Still, on Europa, Variks offers another good source of Pinnacle gear in the form of Empire Hunts. Like the Sabotage quests needed to obtain the previously mentioned perk, those missions cost Herealways Pieces to unlock. However, that currency can drop from taking part in virtually any activity on the frozen planet, from Patrol Missions and Public Events to killing roaming enemies, making Empire Hunts easy to access. The missions themselves are fairly short and require you to take down one of three bosses connected to the seasonal antagonist Eramis. You can play through them repeatedly to receive high-level armor, unique weapons such as Thermal Erosion, and crafting materials.

Nightfall

Nightfall: the Ordeal Strikes are harder, but more rewarding than the Vanguard option and tend to be comparable in time investment to the Empire Hunts. While their loot pool includes Legendary and Exotic gear, the best use of Nightfalls is to farm Enhancement Prisms and Ascendant Shards for use in creating Masterwork upgrades for your armor, boosting your energy and all other stats. Additionally, playing on higher difficulty levels will allow you to complete the strike with 100,000 points or more, giving a Pinnacle reward.

Lost Sectors

Lost Sectors are a particularly promising PvE activity for farming gear because they repopulate automatically after leaving the planet. This reset allows you to take them on as many times as you like, though subsequent attempts may result in lesser prizes. Legend and Master Lost Sectors, unlocked after completing the mini-dungeons standard difficulty version and leveling to 1200, contain still greater treasures. The catch is that getting the best of those rewards – including the Exotic Armor that Beyond Light introduced for all classes, which are not available anywhere else – requires completing those higher-difficulty dungeons solo. The exact armor piece on offer changes every day, but the rewards are known in advance, making this your best option for getting a specific piece. Currently, higher-level Lost Sectors are available at Cosmodrome and on Europa, but the Moon should join this rotation next season.

Raids

Unlike most raids, Europa’s post-campaign Deep Stone Crypt mission can be repeated weekly to obtain more rewards so long as you can assemble a team. Its loot pool includes impressive Exotic and Legendary items, including the Eyes of Tomorrow rocket launcher, several weapons, and a distinctive armor set. All attempts at the crypt after your first win will also give you Spoils of Conquest, a currency used to buy Exotic weapons from vaulted raids at the Monument to Lost Lights. If you already have all those weapons, you can still use Spoils to increase your number of loot drops using the chests at the end of raids. However, keep in mind that you will have to defeat Taniks, the Abominable, to get the greatest benefits from this raid.

Dungeons

Similar to Deep Stone Crypt raid, the Prophecy Dungeon is farmable. After the first win of the week, all subsequent playthroughs will give you duplicates of the same item, which may be useful if you are hunting for a God Roll. If you want a different reward, you will only need to wait for a weekly reset. Its possible prizes include six sets of armor and an assortment of quality weapons. Prophecy can be accessed through the Tower with no prerequisites. Unlike the raid, it is feasible to complete it solo if you are already well-equipped.

PvP

There are other sources of high-end gear in the shooter, including PvP content like Gambit matches, Trials of Osiris, or Iron Banner Bounties, as well as Weekly Clan Challenges. None of them offer such a high likelihood of getting good rewards for the effort you put in, but that should not discourage you assuming you enjoy those game modes. Still, the places and activities listed here are what you should focus on if your goal is to get the best gear quickly.