7 Tips to Efficiently Farm the Materials Needed for All Three Exotic Swords in Destiny: The Taken King

Are you tired and frustrated of farming those needed materials for all three exotic swords? Well, here's some tips on how to farm those materials without experiencing some anger management issues :)

Note: For those who are unaware, you should always use a ghost shell that gives you the location of the material you are farming and a sniper rifle. This combo will highlight the nodes across the entire zone by using your scope.

1. Look for empty zones. If you arrive in a zone and find that there are no guardians and no material spawns up, WAIT! This means that the zone has been empty and the materials will begin to spawn within 1-2 minutes. These are the best places to farm because you can generally get between 5-8 materials. Also, because they are spawning as you are gathering they tend to be very easy to find and farm quickly. The best zones that for this are Mothyards, Hellmouth and Buried City. These zones are the best for two reasons. First, they are large zones with a good number of material spawns. Second and more importantly, they are almost always empty. Some zones have spawn points for particular quests and strikes that result in them having guardians entering and exiting regularly (Forgotten Shore and Hollows for example). These zones tend to have material nodes that have already spawned when you enter and you will usually see other guardians farming here. The same goes for starting patrol zones.

2. Stick and Move. Speed is king when trying to complete this process quickly. If you spawn into a zone that has three nodes available, grab those three and move on. Don't wait around for more nodes to spawn.

3. Don't be afraid to reset. If you started a patrol on the Moon and found that there were three guardians running around Archers Line, you should check the spawns, grab what you can grab, and restart the patrol. Most of the time, you will found that when you left a crowded instance and restarted your patrol, you would end up on an empty planet.

4. Take time to enjoy the game. Getting tired of farming? Stop and do a public or taken event. Spend 2-3 minutes instead, to do a Warsat or Taken Zealot could be very refreshing. Shooting monsters is fun.

5. If you find a good node, abuse it! You can open the same node multiple times by grabbing a material, leaving the zone and then coming back. A particular node at Anchor of Light on the Moon comes to mind. When you see those node up, grab it and make it back from the Hellmouth 3-4 times before it would disappear. If you are paying attention, there are plenty of opportunities to grab a good node multiple times. Take advantage!

6. Remember the spawns. As you make your way around a planet multiple times, you will become familiar with where the common material spawns are located. By the third time around a planet, mostly you will never use your sniper rifle to locate nodes. Instead, you should blast around a zone on your sparrow checking the spots where you knew they had spawned previously. This allowed me to avoid pulling out my sniper rifle after each node to check locations and definitely saved lots time.

7. Give yourself time limits. In most cases, try to limit yourself within 30 minutes or an hour to farm for materials and regardless of how many you found, try to pause and have a break. This helped to break up the monotony and helped to speed up your farming. As the clock ran down, you will almost always moved faster in an effort to get one more material before you ran out of time.

Good luck to all the guardians searching for that last node. Now the wait for Armsday begins!

Extra: Look for empty zones, don't wait around, leave a crowded instance, stop and shoot the monsters, abuse good spawns, use your brains, and race against the clock.

Bonus Tip: It is possible to complete the quest for all three swords on the same character. You can also skip parts of the quest (Crucible portion and Regicide mission) on your 2nd and 3rd swords.

Share this post