Best Places to Farm Catalysts in Destiny 2

Catalysts can turn a rather bland Exotic into something absolutely godly. However, some exotic weapon catalysts can task you with getting hundreds of kills or having to earn 1,000+ points in order to unlock them. This can take forever to complete if you’re using the weapon while you regularly play the game. However, there are some places that you can farm catalyst kills that will drastically speed up how much time it takes to unlock your catalyst’s effects.

This guide will cover the best farming spots in Destiny 2 to help you speed through completing your exotic weapon catalysts.

Shuro Chi Encounter, Last Wish Raid

Shuro Chi is the second boss in the Last Wish raid. This encounter is arguably the best place to farm catalyst kills because of the rally banner just outside the entrance, the high number of enemies, and how you can quickly reset the encounter to get a fresh batch of mobs.

The really great thing about this farming spot is that you can get there completely solo.

To get to Shuro Chi:

• Open up the Director, select the Dreaming City, and then the Last Wish raid
• Go to the Wishing Wall (watch the video above if you don’t know how to get there)
• Input Wish #4 into the wall
• Step on the disc
• You’ll be teleported to the entrance

Once you spawn in, the rally banner point will be right in front of you. Be sure to plop one down before starting the encounter if you need to replenish your ammo. Head to the door once you’re ready to get started.

Farming Catalyst Kills at Shuro Chi

Don’t panic. We aren’t trying to solo the boss here. Our focus is just on the enemies that spawn in waves throughout the first part of the encounter. Most of them are going to be Taken Thrall with a handful of Taken Knights and a couple of Taken Hobgoblins.

To quickly farm catalyst kills:

• Have a hunter
• Equip Orpheus Rigs & Nightstalker (Way of the Trapper, aka top tree)
• Make sure you have a full Super
  • Drop a raid banner if you don’t
• Go up to the door so it opens
• Use your super and drop your tether just inside the doorway
• Wait for all of the Thrall to be tethered
• Use the weapon w/ the catalyst you’re farming points for to defeat the Thrall
• Clear the rest of the interior room

When you’ve defeated the 4 waves of enemies inside, go back out the entrance and jump off the cliff to the left of the doorway. This resets the encounter so you can do it all over again.

The reason why tethering enemies is an important part of farming catalysts is that the damage you deal to one enemy is shared with all tethered enemies. And as a byproduct of this, the catalyst will get credit for all defeats even if the weapon was only used to defeat one target.

This dramatically speeds up the farming process so you can unlock the catalyst faster.

Generally, this is the best place for you to farm catalyst kills. However, it isn’t the only place to do it and the other two can actually be better farming spots depending on what Catalyst you’re farming for.

Altars of Sorrow, the Moon

Another great place to farm catalyst kills is the Altars of Sorrow public event in Sorrow’s Harbor on the Moon. If you aren’t familiar with it, the Altars of Sorrow is a public event that’s running 24/7 where waves of Hive and Nightmares will spawn and must be defeated before being sacrificed. (There’s a lot of Hive Magic being flung around on the Moon.)

There are 7 waves in total with the final wave being a Nightmare version of one of three bosses from Destiny’s history.

Throughout the course of this event, there are hundreds of enemies that spawn which gives you ample opportunity to get the defeats needed to unlock your weapon’s catalyst.

To farm catalysts in the Altars of Sorrow:

• Open up your Director
• Select the Moon and then the transmat point in Sorrow’s Harbor
• Spawn in and find where the event is currently active
• Go there and start racking up defeats

You don’t have to input any Wishes, solo part of a raid, or anything else like that, which is what really makes the Moon a great catalyst farming place. However, there will be other Guardians there so you’ll have to fight for final blows in the early rounds, but the event opens up in the later rounds when there are multiple Hive spawn points.

Just make your way to one of the less populated domes and take on the Hive by yourself.

The only catch is that if you want to farm Catalyst kills here, you’ll need to buy Shadowkeep if you don’t already have it. As of this writing, both Shadowkeep and Forsaken are paid DLC that is not available to F2P players. While that may be a non-starter for some of you, Shadowkeep is an excellent expansion that’s definitely worth your time and I highly recommend it if for no other reason than getting access to the story missions, the Altars of Sorrow public event, and the Pit of Heresy dungeon.

The Thrallway, the Shattered Throne

This is one of the more difficult catalyst farming spots to get to. If you aren’t comfortable either soloing the Shattered Throne (part of it at least) or grouping up to get the checkpoint, you may just want to skip this section altogether.

The Thrallway itself is the section of the Shattered Throne just before Vorgeth, the second major boss in the Dungeon. To get to there, you’ll need to:

• Complete the Labyrinth encounter
• Make your way through The Descent and defeat the Taken Captain miniboss
• Clear out the Taken Knights and Taken Hobgoblin snipers in the following long corridor
• Get through the jumping puzzle while defeating the Ogres that spawn in

You’ll come to a large doorway that has a film of Taken fog over it. This is the entrance to the Thrallway.

Once inside, you’re effectively suppressed since you won’t be able to sprint or double jump so you’re basically walking while endless shadow Thrall spawn and chase you down like you’re in a zombie movie.

To farm catalysts in the Thrallway, you’ll need:

• The weapon you’re farming with
• Reloader mods for said weapon
• A build that has high recovery & damage mitigation armor mods
• To find an alcove to funnel thrall towards you

This is what makes this, in my opinion, the best place to farm catalyst kills. You will literally never run out of enemies to defeat. However, there is a catch. If you position yourself in a way that the Thrall can’t get to you, they’ll stop coming to you. There has to be a clear path to you for them to keep attacking. Otherwise, you’ll just end up standing there without an enemy in sight.

Find yourself a nice alcove with clear lines of sight so you can put your back against the wall and go to town. We don’t have a video for this yet, but I’ll get one made ASAP.