Farming Catalysts

[Mad Marduk]

I am just getting back into the game after having left off at the end of Shadowkeep. I have been trying to get the catalyst for Graviton Lance since the base game (I missed getting it by the quest). What are the best strategies for grinding to get catalysts? I know it's supposed to drop from vanguard playlist, do they have higher drop rates on higher difficulty or nightfall? Any particular strikes that are good to farm? I know that Graviton Lance isn't an S or even A tier exotic, but I always have a lot of fun chaining cosmology kills from range.

[Zach]

they drop from every activity so the best would be strikes. i don't think other activities have higher chances but strikes are the easiest to farm.

[Luxia]

Just a honest word of warning, you're gonna get burned out real fast trying to actually grind for those. Faction Rally catalysts have a very, very, very, very low droprate.

[Nakos]

Umm.. check the Ghost Shell mods. There's one that boosts rewards from activities. There's one each for Vanguard, Crucible and Gambit.

I don't recall the exact wording of the text on those, but they might boost your chances at getting things like Catalysts.

[fwwm]

as far as I'm aware, the majority of them now drop from playlist activities, so you can't just, say load up lake of shadows from the directory and farm it, you have to be playing in playlists, so crucible, strikes or gambit. crucible would probably be the quickest way to farm imo, as I would say on average matches are shorter than strikes or gambit matches, but of course whether or not you just wanna sit and play crucible for hours will depend on how you feel about pvp.

honestly, I would just play the game normally, and you will get it over time. the drop rates are quite low, so farming for an extensive amount of time might be tiring.

[Mad Marduk]

Originally posted by Raddenson11:

Just a honest word of warning, you're gonna get burned out real fast trying to actually grind for those. Faction Rally catalysts have a very, very, very, very low droprate.

So i've noticed. Like I said, I have been trying to get it for years with no joy. It's really odd that they choose to make those particularly hard to get since none of them are particularly powerful exotics and they used to literally give them out with a simple quest. Bungie needs to replace the faction rally stuff with other quests.

[Mad Marduk]

Thanks for the responses everyone. Looks like I can file that catalyst under the "abandoned content" folder.

[Nakos]

If you look under Character - Triumphs and then over on the right look at the Patterns and Catalysts section, the last tab is Catalysts and it'll show you where they come from. Some are available, some are not.

Also, sometimes they're quest related, and those don't show up until after you acquire them via the quest.

[Nordblut]

Originally posted by Nakos:

Umm.. check the Ghost Shell mods. There's one that boosts rewards from activities. There's one each for Vanguard, Crucible and Gambit.

I don't recall the exact wording of the text on those, but they might boost your chances at getting things like Catalysts.

These mods only work for legendary items, not exotic, at least from the description.

[InfinityMaximus]

Tip I read a bit back on a forum related, so long as you have 4 or more unfinished catalysts unlocked but not completed,, your drop rate for new ones decreases. I spent hundreds of hours trying to get sunshot. then after reading this, grinded out a few catalysts on weapons I was not fond of to below 4 and been very successful getting regular drops 10~ hours or so intervals since so long as I stay under 4 unfinished. But my experience this helped me.Good luck though

[Nakos]

Originally posted by Nordblut:

These mods only work for legendary items, not exotic, at least from the description.

Ahh, fair enough. Oh well.

[fwwm]

Originally posted by InfinityMaximus:

Tip I read a bit back on a forum related, so long as you have 4 or more unfinished catalysts unlocked but not completed,, your drop rate for new ones decreases. I spent hundreds of hours trying to get sunshot. then after reading this, grinded out a few catalysts on weapons I was not fond of to below 4 and been very successful getting regular drops 10~ hours or so intervals since so long as I stay under 4 unfinished. But my experience this helped me.Good luck though

this is just complete speculation and has never been proven to be true, and has never been confirmed as something that exists by Bungie. frankly, I think this is complete rubbish tbh