How To Make The Most Of Destiny 2's Relentless Faction Rally Exotic Catalyst Grind

As part of the continued evolution of Faction Rallies in Destiny 2, now the event has been linked to a number of exotic catalysts, in that it’s the only place to get them. For achieving rank 50 over the course of a season in Dead Orbit, you’ll get the Graviton Lance catalyst. Future War Cult has Sunshot, and New Monarchy has Sweet Business. With Graviton Lance and Sunshot two of the better exotics in Destiny 2 now after recent buffs, this event is a must-grind for many players.

The problem? There are only three Faction Rallies this season, and you can only pledge one faction per account now, as each of your characters can’t be different faction, which is how it’s been since D1.

Not only do I hate this from a worldbuilding perspective (my Warlock and Hunter have been New Monarchy and FWC for three years, and now they have to be Dead Orbit) but in terms of practicality, it’s something of a nightmare too.

This new system, with the account pledging and the catalysts at rank 50, means that you will have to hit 50 on each faction spread across three different faction rallies. Yes, faction rank continues across the season, but if you say, get to 40 in Dead Orbit this time, you will be forced to be locked into Dead Orbit again next time, and then by the third, you’ll only have one faction rally and one week to grind to 50 with either FWC or New Monarchy, missing either the Sunshot or Sweet Business catalyst.

Clearly something needs to change (Faction Rally being two weeks for one), but if it doesn’t, you’re going to have to grind a lot of faction tokens in a single week. Thanks to the new “renown” system, that’s possible, but you’re going to want to be as efficient as possible about it. Here’s how to do that:

• As soon as you can, assemble a full set of faction armor. Yes, this can be armor you’ve already earned, brought up to current light levels. You will earn more renown when you’re in full faction armor, as in, a single heroic event will get you 4 instead of 3. Then just do a single patrol and you’ll be good to do a 5-renown lost sector for max tokens. Just remember not to die as you will lose one renown stack per death.
• While you can do the public event/patrol/lost sector farm anywhere, the best place to do it is Titan. Titan has the easiest public events anywhere, as you can probably solo most of them heroic, not that you’ll need to as there are always people around. It also has the easiest lost sector in the game, one with an Ogre who will barely shoot you, and the entire thing is more or less a single room. This is definitely the best place to farm tokens if you want to do it using the new patrol mechanics.
• Bring something to heal you on these renown excursions, as your recovery will be garbage otherwise. Your best bet is Crimson, the hand cannon, which heals on kill, but farming as a Warlock means you'll always have a rift. As Hunter, Wormhusk Crown is invaluable here. For Titan, Crest of Alpha Lupi or Mask of the Quiet One aren't bad.
• Remember that there’s still the old system where a new patrol event will crop up that has you capturing four supply drops in a zone. There’s really no reason to skip this as it’s an easy eight tokens, especially if there are even one or two people out there doing it with you.
• Always look for whatever the daily challenge is for an extra stack of 15-20 tokens. Day one it was doing an EDZ lost sector with 3x renown. Yesterday it was doing three strikes while pledged to a faction. It’s not going to be anything too hard, so make sure you don’t miss it.
• The one good thing about being forced to pledge to the same faction across characters is that you’ll acquire tokens a lot more quickly because of it, even just doing your regular weekly milestones. And you’ll need it, because hitting rank 50 in a week means that you need to farm something like 145 tokens a day across your characters. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but with so many sources of tokens now and three characters all working toward the same faction, it’s doable. But it will take a lot of playtime that I know many players won’t have.

At the beginning of Day 3 here I’m a little more than a third of way to rank 50, and I’m hoping that with a mercifully free weekend I’m going to be able to get rank 50 done with Dead Orbit and be able to do a new faction (FWC) next time.

I don’t especially like how catalysts are linked in this way to must-grind faction rallies, especially given how pledging works now and how short they are. But I do like the addition of renown, which makes everything more fun.

Happy grinding, keep your spirits up. That sweet, sweet catalyst awaits.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2018/06/07/how-to-make-the-most-of-destiny-2s-relentless-faction-rally-exotic-catalyst-grind/