Destiny 2 – How To Get The Heir Apparent Catalyst (and get it done quickly)
The Heir Apparent Catalyst was put into Destiny 2 as part of Guardian Games 2021, and it’s a catalyst you should be prioritizing as the effects are for those using Heir Apparent. Today I am going to run through the steps for how to get the catalyst as well as how to complete the quest, then have a look at how it improves the Heir Apparent Exotic Machine Gun.
Heir Apparent was introduced back in Guardian Games 2020, and this year we have the catalyst. The good news is that Heir Apparent is available for all players once again (and it’s much easier to get this year). One major thing to note before I continue is that you’ll only be abe to get the catalyst while Guardian Games 2021 is available and that’s from April 20th until May 11th 2021 – so it’s worth getting it now and completing the quest steps that involve the Guardian Games.
How to get the Heir Apparent
Have a chat with Zavala, pick up your class item (and put it on) then speak to Eva Levante. She’ll give you an introduction quest for the Guardian Games. This is called “The Games Begin” and you’ll need to pick up 100 Laurels and use them to buy a Contender Card. Run the Guardian Games Strike Playlist from the Tower node, pick up the Laurels required then go back to Eva. Eva should then have a quest called “Wreathed In Laurels” Exotic quest. If you earned the Heir Apparent in 2020, Eva will not offer you the quest.
Step 1 – Earn 50 Laurels
For the first step, pick up 50 Laurels. Head back into the Strike playlist to do this quickly, or you can play Crucible or Gambit.
Step 2 – Machine Gun Focused
Once you have the 50 Laurels then you’ll need to defeat 100 enemies with a machine gun in the daily focused playlist. Check out your medal case to find out what that is, I also have a guide on that here. When you have your 100 kills, go back to Eva to pick up Heir Apparent.
How to get the Heir Apparent Catalyst
Now you have the Heir Apparent you’ll want to turn in Gold and Platinum medals to the podium and this has a chance at dropping the catalyst. I got mine on my first gold medal earned. To get gold and platinum medals, pick up Contender Cards from Eva and complete them in the specific playlist. Contender Cards cost Laurels and you can check out a guide for how to farm laurels fast here. Earn Gold and Platinum Medals and turn them into the podium to get the “Competitive Catalyst” quest.
Once you have the catalyst there’s a few steps to complete before you can use it with Heir Apparent.
Step 1 – Earn medal points
The first step is to earn medal points. You’ll need 50 points for the first step and various medals equate to point values.
Bronze: 1 point
Silver: 2 points
Gold: 5 points
Platinum: 15 points
Therefore the quickest way will be to earn gold and platinum medals. Nightfalls are a fairly easy way to complete this quickly, so pick up a platinum card (you can only oick up one at a time), complete it and get 50 points to complete this step.
Step 2 – Complete 3 Contender Cards
For the second step of the quest complete 3 contender cards. This can be done through Strikes, Nightfalls, Gambit, Cruicble and Trials. Pick the one you like and do 3 of them. Then it’s onto the next step.
Step 3 – Competitive Spirit
For this step of the quest you have to collect competitve spirit by defeating enemies with machine guns in the daily focus playlist. You can find out what this is by inspecting your medal case or by looking at the playlists on the director, there’s a guardian games icon next to the daily focus playlist. Personally I find strikes the best for this, however, due to the daily rotation I had t complete this in Gambit. It didn’t take long, maybe 4/5 games or so.
Once you have finished this step then that’s the Guardian Games related sections out of the way. You will still need to get kills with the weapon to unlock the benefits of the catalyst.
The quickest way I found to do this was the Shiro Chi checkpoint in the Last Wish raid. This can be done solo by going to the wishing wall and entering the code on the wall. I’ll put a guide and route to the wishing wall at the end of the guide, but you can skip to it if you need to.
Enter the code for Shiro Chi and then use the Heir Apparent to get the kills required. Best thing to do is grab some raid banners from Hawthorn in the Tower then you can reload each time. This method takes about 30 mins to complete and each runs gets about 8-10% each time.
The Heir Apparent Catalyst Benefits
The Heir Apparent Catalyst is worth getting as it improves the shield by about 75%, which is going to turn you into a Cabal Raid Boss. As well as adding the ability to generate orbs, the catalyst adds to the Legion’s Bulwark perk.
Legion’s Bulwark improves the power of Heir Apparent’s Arc shield, and partially reloads your magazine whenever the shield breaks. If you are a titan, this also works really well with Actium War Rig. There’s nothing more fun than going into Battleground and giving the Cabal a taste of their own medicine!
Let me know down in the comments what you think of the Heir Apparent Catalyst and share your methods for getting it done.
That’s it for this guide for how to get the Heir Apparent Catalyst in Destiny 2.