How to get Destiny 2 Nightfall weapons and farm them

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Nightfall weapons and their Adept counterparts can be some of the best Legendary weapons in Destiny 2

Destiny 2 The Slammer Nightfall sword
(Image credit: Bungie)

To get Destiny 2 Nightfall weapons, you just need to do Nightfall Strikes, but with weekly rotating weapons and odd drop rates, it's not quite as simple as that. There are currently eight weapons in the Nightfall weapon rotation in Destiny 2, ranging from the precise Scintillation Linear Fusion Rifle to the hefty sword known as the Slammer. If you're brave and skilled enough to take on a Grandmaster Nightfall, you can even get improved Adept variants of these weapons, that are a little more potent and can use special mods. Here's how you get Nightfall weapons in Destiny 2, both from Strikes and Vanguard Engrams.

Destiny 2 Nightfall weapon rotation

Destiny 2 Scintillation Linear Fusion Rifle Nightfall strike weapon inspect menu

(Image credit: Bungie)

Destiny 2 Nightfall weapons are a rotating set of weapons obtained exclusively from completing Nightfall Strikes. For the duration of Echoes, the Nightfall weapons in the weekly rotation include the Destiny 2 Scintillation Linear Fusion Rifle, Destiny 2 Shadow Price Auto Rifle, and six other weapons, though not necessarily in this order:

  • Warden’s Law Hand Cannon (Kinetic)
  • Pre Astyanax IV Bow (Solar)
  • Scintillation Linear Fusion Rifle (Strand)
  • Shadow Price Auto Rifle (Arc)
  • Wild Style special Grenade Launcher (Solar)
  • The Slammer Sword (Stasis)
  • Undercurrent special Grenade Launcher (Arc)
  • Uzume RR4 Sniper Rifle (Solar)

How to get Nightfall weapons in Destiny 2

Destiny 2 Nightfall Strike rewards and difficulties

(Image credit: Bungie)

Nightfall weapons have a chance to drop after completing a Nightfall Strike, but higher difficulty Nightfalls and Platinum scores have better odds of awarding a weapon – sort of. Here’s how the game describes the drop rates for Nightfall weapons at all difficulties:

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  • Advanced: A Nightfall weapon is an uncommon reward.
  • Expert: A Nightfall weapon is a common reward.
  • Master: A Nightfall weapon is a common reward.
  • Grandmaster: A Nightfall weapon is a common reward. An Adept Nightfall weapon is guaranteed if you achieve a Platinum score (kill all Champions).

Depending on your skill level, doing Expert or Master Nightfalls are likely the optimal way to farm Nightfall weapons, but in practice, the drop rates are actually quite low across the board. This is because other loot, such as Enhancement Cores, Enhancement Prisms, Ascendent Shards, and Exotics are also more common at these higher difficulties, so they dilute the loot pool.

Destiny 2 Grandmaster Nightfall Strike rewards

(Image credit: Bungie)

To guarantee yourself a Nightfall weapon drop, you must complete a Grandmaster Nightfall Strike and achieve a Platinum score, though this will actually give you an improved Adept variant of the weapon that can use Destiny 2 Adept Mods and gains small stat boosts when fully masterworked. That means the best way of getting Nightfall weapons is to just run Grandmasters over and over, though they're not exactly easy. Additionally, you should look out for special weeks when double drops are enabled, giving you a chance to get two rolls of the current Nightfall weapon after a single completion.

How to buy more Nightfall weapon rolls in Destiny 2

Destiny 2 Nightfall weapons focused decoding engrams with Zavala

(Image credit: Bungie)

Alternatively, if you've got lots of Vanguard Engrams stored, you can spend them on Focused Decoding via Commander Zavala to get rolls of any Nightfall weapons you've unlocked, including legacy weapons that aren't in the current Nightfall weapon rotation. You can even get the Adept version of the current week's weapon if you unlocked that previously, but it costs significantly more:

  • Focused Decoding cost per Nightfall weapon: 5 Vanguard Engrams + 25,000 Glimmer
  • Focused Decoding cost per Adept Nightfall weapon: 1 Vanguard Engram + 50,000 Glimmer + 10 Nightfall Ciphers
  • Focused Decoding cost per Legacy Nightfall weapon: 3 Vanguard Engrams + 25,000 Glimmer

Thankfully, there's no cap on the number of Nightfall weapons you can get through Focused Decoding, aside from running out of the currencies needed to buy them from Zavala, so they're a good last resort if you've had terrible luck running Nightfall Strikes. However, Nightfall Ciphers only drop from Grandmaster Nightfalls and you only get a few per completion, so you'll have to do several to get the necessary 10 Ciphers. Annoyingly, they are also capped at 10, so you can't stock up on them to buy multiple Adept weapon rolls.

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Will Sawyer
Will Sawyer
Guides Editor, GamesRadar+

Will Sawyer is a Guides Editor at GamesRadar+ with over five years of experience in writing online guides, news, and features, and has a BA (Hons) in Journalism. Starting as a freelancer, Will contributed to startmenu and Game Rant before joining the GamesRadar+ team in August 2021. Since then, he has written hundreds of guides about a huge range of games, with shooters and action games being his areas of expertise. Outside of writing about games, Will hops between multiplayer shooters with friends, such as Darktide and Helldivers 2, and delves into whatever has been on his backlog for far too long. He also tries to get through his never-ending Warhammer pile of shame of grey Tyranids, Aeldari, and Chaos Space Marines.