The Best Ways to Grind 'Destiny 2' Solstice Armor

Efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to Destiny 2’s annual Solstice armor grind,

There are a number of things you should know about the grind in order to race through it and get your final sets, from general advice to specific tips about specific parts of the challenges.

Make Sure the Relevant Piece is Equipped – Whatever challenge you’re going for, that piece of armor needs to be worn as you complete it. You rarely need the full set on, but keep in mind many challenges can overlap with one another, so yes, you may want 3-4 pieces on at a time sometimes when you’re just starting out. Once a piece is finished, you can permanently replace it with your “real” armor.

Read the Fine Print of the Challenges – Did you just kill a bunch of Fallen but that didn’t progress that challenge? You need to inspect the armor to read the fine print, and in that case, it’s kill Fallen while being the matching subclass of the Solstice day. I have yet to run into a truly broken challenge that won’t make progress.

The Bonus Multiplier – This was bugged at first but fixed now. You do not want to spread out your characters as you play, as if you get to Majestic on one, it will create a 2x progress multiplier for the others. If you reach two Magnificent sets (possibly Majestic, but I need to check), your third character will get 3x progress. I believe Titans have been patched to always have 3x progress as a fix for an earlier bug.

Orb Challenges – It does not have to be the “right” day to generate orbs, but keep in mind orbs spawn both from your subclass and from your weapons. So if you have a challenge that’s to generate solar orbs in Strikes, you should be a solar subclass using two solar weapons in energy and heavy, and getting kills with those weapons (not your kinetic).

Running Out of Adventures – If there aren’t enough adventures for you to complete in a day, you can do Spider’s heroic bounty which counts as one.

PvP Elemental Kills – Momentum control is live this week and the most popular play is to use insta-melting trace rifles to match the element you need. With no radar even bad players will have a chance to get lucky and get kills this way. I believe teammate kills also count. Fast kills, fast respawns, it goes faster here than anywhere.

Gambit Requirements – Gambit Prime counts for completions but you will not generate orbs in Gambit Prime, so it will not make progress for those challenges.

Public Events – When you complete a public event quickly, reload back into the zone as sometimes you’ll get a new instance that is just finishing up, getting you two done almost instantly.

Make Sure to Overlap – You can often do 3-4 challenges at a time, just make sure you check all of them. For instance, you can 1) Get elemental kills, 2) generate elemental orbs, 3) generate strike orbs 4) get kills with an elemental weapon all that the same time if you’re lining everything up right. There are very few challenges you will have to do completely by themselves.

Tricky challenges:

HUNTER

100 void grenade kills – Waiting for a grenadier day in strikes or Reckoning is helpful. I actually played Momentum Control for other challenges here where grenades are pretty much insta-kills, and each one counts as 5 toward this.

TITAN

100 solar melee kills – Since no one ever uses this subclass, remember Burning Maul has the thrown hammer that is unlimited melee kills if you pick it up again. I believe sword kills also count for this, even if your sword does not have any ammo.

WARLOCK

150 Guardians killed with Arc Super – This is not written correctly. Any kills, not just Guardian kills, count for this challenge. This was a typo carried over from last year.

Armor Farming – Once you hit Magnificent and turn in your quest to Eva (important), you can start farming rolls of armor through Solstice Packages. While you can get keys anywhere, the only way to get Packages is in the EAZ. To max your runs, Fallout has made the ultimate guide to guaranteeing you find pretty much every hidden chest on the map:

Final Stage – Do not expect your armor to be masterworked when completing the final set of challenges. It will not be. It will glow white. These challenges are account-wide, so you will not have to do them 3x. I cannot help you with 7 Trials wins as you’ll have to figure that one out for yourself.

That’s all we've got for now, but we may add more to this in time.

Source/Credit: Forbes by Paul Tassi