Destiny 2: Best XP Farming Methods (2024)

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Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Destiny 2’s seasonal Battle Passes have some pretty sweet rewards in them. Unfortunately for many players, they can be an absolute chore to grind through. Luckily, there are methods and locations you can use to speed up your leveling process. To help you out, we’ve put together this guide for the best XP farming methods in Destiny 2.

Let’s get started!

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Required Materials

We’ll begin with a few of the required materials for XP farming in Destiny 2. Note that we say “required” lightly — while they’re not explicitly necessary, these extra steps and purchases will help you make the most of the methods we outline below.

First up is the Battle Pass. Buying this will net you many more rewards as you level, as well as granting you small boosts to your XP gains the more you progress. We also recommend purchasing the Lightfall expansion, the Last Wish Raid (bundled with the Forsaken expansion), and/or the Bungie 30th Anniversary DLC. All of these offer really convenient mob farming locations.

Finally, you’ll want to equip an XP bossing mod to your Ghost. The max you can get is a 12% increase, which really speeds up the grind.

Bounties

Bounties will be our primary method for farming XP in Destiny 2. Bounties can be obtained from various vendors scattered throughout the game’s sandbox. Some vendors are found on different planets and locations outside of the Tower, including Nimbus on Neomona, and Eris Morn on the Moon.

Each vendor will have three types of bounties for you to pick up: weekly, daily, and random. Each bounty type rewards different amounts of XP:

• Weekly: ~12,000 XP
• Daily: ~ 6,000 XP
• Random: ~4,000 XP

Between Levels 1–100, you’ll need around 80,000 XP per level to level up. This equates to around 6 weekly, 13 daily, or 20 random bounties for a single level-up. Note that random bounties are repeatable, but you can only claim around 5 from a single vendor at a time. Be sure to knock out all your weekly and daily bounties first so you can make the most of the repeatable options.

Repeatable Bounty Farm 

Since bounties reward the most XP for the least amount of effort, they’re our primary farming method. We recommend two specific vendors for this, but feel free to choose whichever vendors and activities you want while farming. Just keep in mind that other bounties may take longer to complete than the ones recommended here!

We suggest going with Banshee-44 at the Tower and Shaw Han at the Cosmodrome. Both of these vendors have random bounties that tend to overlap with each other. For example, Banshee may ask you to get kills with an SMG, while Shaw Han may want you to damage targets with Void energy. These bounties can be completed simultaneously simply by using a Void SMG.

Once you have as many random bounties as you can carry, head to a location with lots of enemy spawns. We recommend aiming for public events, as they’re a great place to grind mobs and usually reward you with additional XP and a decent chunk of Glimmer. This last part is especially helpful, as each random bounty you claim will cost 3,000 Glimmer. It’s a great way to get supplied for your next round of bounties!

Weapon XP Farm Locations

Bounty farming is also a great opportunity to farm for crafted weapon XP. Bounties require a lot of enemy kills, and it just so happens that crafted weapons require enemy kills in order to level up.

Finding good places to level your crafted weapons can be a pain, but we’ve got you covered with two excellent farming locations where you can knock out both your bounties and weapon leveling in little to no time.

Breakneck Mission

For this method, you’ll need access to the Breakneck mission from the Lightfall campaign. This is the third mission in the campaign, and it can be replayed once beaten normally. We recommend playing on classic difficulty, as the enemies will be easier to kill.

Make your way through the first sections of the mission. You’ll know you’re getting close once you’ve completed the first Strand platforming challenge. You’ll come across a door that you need to shoot in order to progress. Once you’ve done that, you should see a rally banner circle sitting on the floor. Check the bottom-left corner of the screen for the name of the room — you’re looking for Radiosonde.

This room will spawn around 40+ enemies per run, ending with a yellow health bar Wyvern. Take out all the mobs, then either let the Wyvern kill you or blow yourself up with a heavy rocket or grenade in order to reset the encounter. Killing the Wyvern progresses the mission and removes your checkpoint, ending your perfect farming setup.

This encounter should only take about a minute or so to clear once you get the hang of things, letting you go from Level 0–30 in just a couple of hours. Maybe even less, depending on the weapon you’re using and your general efficiency!

This method is such a good one because it has a rally banner immediately before some relatively easy waves of mobs. You can level up special and heavy weapons without having to restock on Raid banners or special weapon ammo.

Last Wish Raid

This method is faster than the above method, but will cost more resources. First off, you’ll need access to the Last Wish Raid. Once inside, make your way to the door of the first encounter, but don’t go inside. Instead, back up and head left of the encounter room. You should see a small pool of water and a ledge you can jump to. Make your way over to that ledge and follow the platforming challenge ahead until you reach a room that looks like this:

This is the Wish Wall. Think of it like a password wall that will take you to different encounter areas throughout the Raid. All you need to do is shoot the circles to change the symbol inside until you end up with a specific “code” for the encounter you’re looking for. The process is a bit tedious, but thankfully, you only have to do it once a week. Enter the following code into the Wish Wall:

Once you’ve entered the code, step into the glowing circle in the center of the room. You will wipe, but don’t worry — this is normal. When you spawn back in, you’ll be brought to the Shuro Chi encounter. Enter the encounter room and immediately wipe again. This will ensure that the checkpoint saves correctly. You now have access to one of the best XP farming locations in all of Destiny 2. Just like with the Wyvern in the method above, be careful not to kill the boss at the end of this encounter. To avoid this, it’s best to just wipe after killing three of the Knights that spawn in this room.

This encounter spawns well over 80 mobs by default, and can spawn over 100 depending on the order in which you kill the Knights. The major downside is that you’ll need to consume Rally Banners each time you load into the encounter, and this checkpoint will reset after every weekly reset.

Dungeons

There are a number of dungeons in Destiny 2, each with a rather large population of mobs to kill. Dungeons are great because they aren’t nearly as challenging as Raids, and most of the older dungeons come bundled with content you may already have.

In this case, we’re using the Grasp of Avarice dungeon. You’ll need the Bungie 30th Anniversary DLC in order to play this dungeon. This DLC tends to go on sale fairly often, so it isn’t as steep of an investment as a new expansion or Dungeon Key. 

Once you have access to the Grasp of Avarice dungeon, you’ll want to load in from the Cosmodrome. This method is perfectly doable solo so don’t worry if you don’t have a fireteam on standby. The first encounter of this dungeon requires you to kill enemies that are spawning in and around a loot cave. This is the farming spot. These enemies will continuously spawn until you collect 50 red engrams and deposit them into the crystal inside the cave. 

There are two things to keep in mind when doing this method. The first is that a couple of Hive wizards will spawn after some time, so watch out. The second is that picking up any of the red engrams that drop from killed enemies will give you a status effect that will slowly count down. If that timer hits zero, you will die. You can reset the timer by picking up more red engrams, but it’s probably best to wipe at some point in your grind so you don’t complete this encounter and lose its checkpoint. If at any point you do accidentally complete this encounter, you can reset the dungeon’s checkpoints from the Destinations menu.

Seasonal Challenges and Activities

These two methods are alternatives to the methods described above. They aren’t quite as farmable given their time-sensitive nature, but under the right circumstances, they can be just as effective (if not moreso) than the previously mentioned methods. 

Seasonal Challenges/Missions

These challenges can be found in the quest section of your menu. Each week of a season will come with a new set of weekly challenges, ranging from 4–10 new challenges for the first ten weeks of the season. 

These challenges reward anywhere from 12,500 to 100,000 XP when completed. Based on those numbers, it’s clear to see why completing these challenges is so important. One seasonal challenge can be worth an entire weekly bounty worth of XP or more. It doesn’t matter whether you save your seasonal challenges and complete them all in one go once they’re out, or knock them out as they release. As long as you get them all done, you’ll see a massive jump in your Battle Pass level.

Seasonal Activities

Unlike seasonal challenges, seasonal activities can be farmed over and over again. Unfortunately, they don’t reward quite as much XP as the seasonal challenges do, but they are a great place to go if you’re looking to farm bounties or weapon XP. These activities are often dense with mobs and have pretty solid rewards outside of XP. If you’re looking for an alternative method to the ones listed above, these are a pretty solid option to go for.

Now, there are a few other mob farming locations you could visit if you don’t have access to the content listed above. Farming Strikes, Crucible, Gambit, and Dares of Eternity bounties and activities are perfectly viable options for gaining Glimmer, gear, XP, and other valuable items.

Join the High Ground!

That’s it for our breakdown of the best XP farming methods in Destiny 2 — thanks for reading! Let us know your favorite method in the comments, and feel free to share your strategies with other readers. If you’re interested in more Destiny 2 guides, consider signing up for our newsletter today!

Happy gaming!