How to Get Laurels in Guardian Games

Guardian Games is in full swing and if this is your first time, you need to know that this event runs on Laurels. You’ll need them to buy Contender Cards so you can earn medals as well as repeatable bounties from Eva Levante if you’re looking to level your Season Pass faster or bank some more bright dust.

However, if you jumped straight into the Guardian Games strike playlist right away, you might be wondering where all of the laurels are and how to get them to drop. You’ve probably noticed that they don’t drop automatically. Pump the brakes. There are a couple of hoops you have to jump through first.

Getting Laurels to Drop

The first thing you’ll need to do is go talk to Commander Zavala in the Tower. After a quick pep talk, he’ll let you choose your Guardian Games themed class item. You’ll then be prompted to go to Eva Levante by the medal podium to collect your Medal Case. This will let you keep track of how many laurels and medals you have in your inventory.

Equip your class item immediately. Laurels will not drop unless you’re wearing it.

To get laurels to drop, you’ll need to be wearing your class item and get final blow on an enemy using one of your abilities. This means you should focus on using your melee, grenade, and super to get kills in whatever activity you’re running.

Laurels are color-coded based on your class with blue laurels belonging to Hunters, red laurels belonging to Titans, and yellow laurels belonging to warlocks. You can pick up laurels dropped both by your class and other classes as well. But it’s important to note that if you pick up your class’s laurel, you have a chance to pick up an extra laurel.

However, laurels do not physically “drop” in Gambit, Crucible, or Trials. They go straight to your inventory so you don’t have to worry about taking enemy fire while trying to collect your hard-earned laurels.

Quick side note. The class item from Commander Zavala won’t be at your power level. He gives you a non-upgraded version at 1250 power level. If you don’t want to waste the materials to infuse it, Eva Levante sells class items at your level for 1,000 glimmer, but they also are not upgraded so you’ll have to handle that yourself.

Best Way to Earn Laurels in Guardian Games

You can earn laurels however you want. As long as you’re wearing your class item, your ability kills will drop laurels in any activity. That means you can get laurels while running strikes, crucible matches, Nightfalls, Trials, Gambit, and even in patrols. It is entirely up to you how you spend your time during Guardian Games.

However…there is a best way to get laurels quickly and that’s running the Guardian Games strike playlist. Playing this activity will match you with two other members of your class so only your specific class’s laurels will drop. This means that every laurel that you pick up has a chance to give you an additional laurel as well. If your fireteam is focusing on getting ability kills, you can easily pick up a few hundred laurels in a single strike.

You’ll also want to be mindful of what the day’s Focus Activity is since you have a chance at earning bonus laurels.

The day’s Focus can be found in the Director or by checking out the marble slabs that flank the podium in the Tower. There will be an activity specific icon that will visually cue you to the day’s Focus activity. Strikes will be the Vanguard symbol, Crucible will have the crossed swords, and Gambit will have its telltale snake symbol.

Provided that you have the gear to do it, you’ll want to put together a set that focuses on getting ability kills. Something that’ll let you have maximum uptime on both your grenade and your charged melee abilities. Don’t worry about your super. It will take care of itself.

Take my Titan as an example. I’m currently running top tree Striker with max discipline, Insurmountable Skullfort, and Monte Carlo.

Titan Build for Guardian Games

• Code of the Earthshaker (Top Tree Striker): Using this subclass gives you 2 grenade charges and lets you use Seismic Strike (shoulder charge). Both of which are phenomenal tools to rack up those ability kills and get Laurels to rain from the sky.
• Insurmountable Skullfort: Kills with Arc melee abilities trigger health regeneration and restore melee energy. Don’t let the tooltip fool you. Charged melee kills instantly recharge your melee ability. Shoulder charge for days.
• Monte Carlo: Dealing damage with this weapon reduces your melee cooldown and grants a chance to fully charge your melee ability with each kill. If my melee ability is down, I can quickly recharge it by killing multiple mobs or just doing damage to an elite/ultra/boss.
• Max Discipline: This puts my grenade cooldown at 32 seconds so I can lob pulse grenades between shoulder charging clumped up groups of mobs.
• Demolitionist Perk on SMG: Kills with this weapon generate grenade energy. Activating your grenade ability reloads this weapon from reserves. I can quickly recharge my grenades by getting a handful of kills with my SMG. And, fun fact, demolitionist reloads all of your weapons, not just the one with the perk.

This build has, arguably, the greatest potential to generate the largest amount of Laurels if played correctly. It lets you have two pulse grenades, (effectively) infinite melee energy, the fastest possible base grenade cooldown, and ways to quickly recharge those abilities if they happen to be down.

You can quickly dispatch red bar enemies with shoulder charge, toss grenades at elites/ultras/mob spawn points, and use a fast-moving roaming super with great AoE potential to clear large amounts of mobs. I have, quite literally, gone an entire strike without needing to use my weapons outside of boss damage.

Needless to say, it’s a lot of fun.

Fun side note, if your class (read: Titans) happens to end up in last place on a particular day (read: like always), you get the Bronze modifier in the Guardian Games strike playlist. This buff boosts grenade damage and increases their recharge rate. And if that wasn’t enough, you also get the Power Cycle buff which gives your ability kills (melee, grenade, and super) a chance to drop an Orb of Power.

These buffs crank this build’s laurel generating capacity to a whole different level.

(Optional) Armor Mods

These armor mods are by no means mandatory for this build to work. The Guardian Games strike playlist is an 1100 power level activity so you don’t need to be min/maxed to the gills. Think of them as icing on the cake. Just keep these mods in mind if you happen to have extra energy slots on a respective piece of gear during Guardian Games.

• Ashes to Assets (Solar, Helm): Gain bonus Super energy on grenade kills.
• Hands-On (Arc, Helm): Gain bonus Super energy on melee kills.
• Momentum Transfer (Arc, Arms): Causing damage with a grenade reduces your melee cooldown.
• Melee Damage Resistance (Default, Chest): Reduces incoming damage from combatants that are at point-blank range.
• Innervation (Solar, Legs): Reduces grenade cooldown each time you pick up an Orb of Power.
• Invigoration (Arc, Legs): Reduces melee cooldown each time you pick up an Orb of Power.
• Absolution (Default, Legs): Reduces all ability cooldowns each time you pick up an Orb of Power.
• One, Two Finisher (Arc, Class Item): Finishers restore melee abilities. Requires one-sixth of your Super energy.

Recap

Now that you know how to get laurels to drop and the best activity to run, you’ll have no trouble getting laurels during Guardian Games. If you’ve found a better way to grind laurels, we’d love to hear about it in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to check your Medal Case every now and then too. Laurels cap at 500 so don’t be like me and get caught grinding them when you literally can’t hold more in your inventory.

Also, stop by our Destiny 2 Guardian Games Guide for more information about this event!