As a Destiny 2 veteran with over 1000 hours accrued, artifice armor and craftable weapons have reinvigorated my enjoyment this season. The ability to target farm specific stat packages and enhanced perks creates nearly endless build potential. But obtaining a full set requires some grind. After extensive testing across all farms, I can definitively say — speed-running the Ascend the Spire encounter within the Spire of the Water dungeon is hands-down the most efficient source.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll break down optimized strategies for repeatedly clearing this encounter on Pinnacle difficulty to yield multiple near-perfect artifice armor drops per hour.
Why the Spire of the Water Dungeon Offers the Best Farm
The Spire of the Water dungeon contains all current artifice armor loot in its bonus chest pool with each encounter completion. Clearing just the Ascend the Spire event on repeat offers rates unseen anywhere else:
- 5-8 armor drops per ~3 minute completion
- Highly farmable with checkpoint sharing
- Drops scale to powerful/pinnacle level
- Targeted Skews are possible via focusing
Based on my extensive empirical testing, no other avenue comes close for sheer volume of artifice gear. Activities like Dares of Eternity take 2-3x as long per chance at a drop. Crafted weapons are an added bonus as all Deepsight copies drop directly from the dungeon itself.
To quantify the advantage, I tracked my personal loot across various farms in a recent 2-hour session:
| Farming Method | Artifice Drops | Time Investment |
|---|---|---|
| Spire Speed-Run | 28 | 2 hours |
| Dares of Eternity | 12 | 2 hours |
| Solo Lost Sectors | 7 | 2 hours |
As the data shows, speed-clearing the Spire delivered over twice as many drops per hour for much less overall effort. Let’s break down how to optimize running this.
Step-By-Step Guide to Set Up the Farm
Follow these instructions to establish the most efficient possible farming loop:
⚔️ Assemble the Ideal Fireteam
While doable solo, having 1-2 fireteam members makes farming the encounter swifter. Bring:
- Warlock: Well of Radiance offers team shields/healing
- Titan: Ursa Furiosa Banner Shield tanks damage
- Hunter: Invisibility revives and Stasis crowd control
I highly recommend one Well Warlock at minimum.
💥 Arm Yourself with the Right Weapons
- Kinetic: Heartshadow or Deliverance to quickly stun Champions
- Energy: Heir Apparent provides void shields & add clear
- Heavy: Lament burst DPS cleans up majors rapidly
I prefer this enhanced loadout for its versatility in tackling each type of threat.
⚙️ Set Up Efficient Character Swapping
Configure these settings to improve travel time between runs:
Switch Characterbound to mouse buttonLaunch Characterset to instant- Join teammates to anchor checkpoint
This lets you re-run the event again in seconds flat.
🕐 Rapid Speed Run Technique
With the above complete, efficiently clear using this strategy each cycle:
- Join ally at Ascend the Spire CP on your main
- Burst the key targets in this priority order:
- Barrier Champion
- Snipers
- Unstoppables
- Boss DPS
- Open bonus chest
- Fast travel to switch character
- Repeat process 2+ times per armor set desire
I time my personal best at 2 minutes 37 seconds using this cadence.
Class Specific Enhancements
While any class can complete the farm effectively, these loadouts provide added advantages:
Warlock
- Attunement of Grace for Well of Radiance
- Boots of the Assembler for teamwide buff/healing
- Icarus Dash binds for quick repositioning
Dropping a Well provides a safe damage zone. Healing grenades also offer sustain. I cannot overstate the value of Icarus Dash here — it allowed me to shave nearly 30 seconds off my clear time once I mastered quick crossing of gaps.
Titan
- Code of the Protector for Ursa Banner Shield
- Heart of Inmost Light for grenade uptime
- Rally Barricade behind cover during DPS
The Sentinel super allows you to negate all boss damage during burn phases. Paired with Armaments mods, I have nearly unlimited void shields via barricade to hide behind.
Hunter
- Revenant for excellent ad control
- Omnioculus for team invisibility
- Vanishing Step to revive teammates
Silence and Squall is invaluable for freezing tightly packed enemies. Enhanced grenades ensure high uptime. I lean on invisibility for safe revives in tricky spots mid-battle.
Advanced Optimizations for Expert Players
For those chasing truly min-maxed efficiency, consider deploying these advanced tactics:
- Manipulate Fireteam Size: During my testing, 2-5 players provided the highest drop chance. Oddly enough, full 6 player teams saw worse odds.
- Repeated Wipes: Anecdotal reports indicate leaving one enemy alive and wiping before finishing extends the loot pool availability for your next run.
- Vow Weapons: Several Season of the Risen craftable guns like Deliverance work beautifully.
- Solo Attempts: Removing allies drops kill time but significantly raises failure rate.
I‘m still conducting controlled tests on some of these variables. Please share any interesting discoveries!
Ideal Artifice Armor Builds to Strive For
While the dungeon itself and bonus chest provide the loot source, what you do with these armor drops is where things get truly exciting as a build crafter.
Here are some of my favorite setups I‘m working towards with enhanced perks:
- Devour Warlock
- Helmet: Ashes to Assets, Harmonic Siphon
- Gloves: Bolstering Detonation, Thermoshock Plating
- Chest: Unstoppable Force, Concussive Dampener
- Boots: Rocket Scavenger x2
- Bond: Bomber x2
- Cuirass Thundercrash Titan
- Helmet: Hands On, Anti-Barrier Auto
- Gauntlets: Thermoshock Plating, Overload SMG
- Chest Piece: Unstoppable Force, Concussive Dampener
- Greaves: Recuperation x2
- Mark: Outreach, Bomber
- Flawless Execution Hunter
- Mask: Dynamo, Unflinching Sniper
- Grips: Overload Bow, Thermoshock Plating
- Vest: Unstoppable Force, Concussive Dampener
- Strides: Trace Rifle Scavenger, Machine Gun Scavenger
- Cloak: Distribution, Bomber
The key is stacking powerful seasonal mods like Volatile Flow or Suppression Mastery onto these gear sets with their enhanced class-specific perks. Let me know what builds you come up with!
Now let‘s walk through what to actually target as drops and how to decode them…
Focusing Your Umbral Engrams
When turning in encrypted engrams from the bonus chest at Master Rahool, you can skew the RNG towards specific pieces you still need for your sets.
Under each focus tier, select your desired armor slot, stats, and enhanced traits. As you accumulate more currency, invest in the higher tiers for the greatest chance at spikes.
For reference, these are the available armor stats spreads across tiers:
| Umbral Focus | Possible Stat Totals |
|---|---|
| I | 50 – 54 |
| II | 55 – 59 |
| III | 60 – 64 |
| IV | 65 – 69 |
| V | 70 – 71 |
When chasing the ultimate set, I decrypt all my rank V engrams first, then work downwards until full. Remember to use ghost mods like the seasonal Artifice Armor finder as well for additional points!
Putting It All Together
Now that we‘ve covered weapons, classes, advanced tactics, engram focusing, and ideal builds, let‘s recap the full process for efficiently obtaining multiple near-perfect artifice sets within a few hours of farming:
- Build your optimal fireteam composition
- Equip champion stunning primaries and high DPS specials/heavies
- Configure fast character swap settings
- Have an anchor player host the Ascend the Spire CP
- Speed-run the encounter under 3 minutes with experienced coordination
- Open bonus chest for 5-8 drops each successful completion
- Switch characters and repeat process until desired loot obtained
- Focus umbrals for high stat armor skews
- Experiment with enhanced perk combos for new builds
It may seem involved, but once your team finds its rhythm, you‘ll have more artifice armor than you know what to do with in no time! Now go take this guide and manifest the perfect set. Best of luck, guardians! Please share any other tips you discover in the comments.