One of the biggest changes coming with Destiny 2's new Lightfall expansion on February 28 is an overhaul to Artifice armor, which are special types of armor pieces you can only get by completing dungeon encounters on Master difficulty. Right now, Artifice armor only gives you an extra slot for seasonal mods, which isn't very useful since you likely won't have enough energy on your armor to use extra mods anyway. However, Lightfall is turning seasonal mods into unlockable perks that you don't have to equip, and as a result, Artifice armor pieces are being changed so that their additional mod slot will allow you to add three extra stat points of your choice to their stat total.
Since Guardians have five armor pieces, that's up to 15 extra stats just for wearing Artifice armor, which will be a huge benefit to anyone looking to min-max their build. Therefore, Artifice armor is totally worth picking up while prepping for Lightfall, especially if you can get it with high, spiky stat rolls. Luckily, there's a farm available right now that will give you plenty of well-rolled, spiky Artifice armor quickly: the Caiatl boss encounter in the Master Duality dungeon. However, it's only accessible until weekly reset on February 13, and won't be available again until Duality is the weekly featured Destiny 2 dungeon again...after Lightfall launches. Because of that, you'll need to act fast if you want to take advantage of it.
This fight can be tough, but once you get used to it, you'll be able to finish runs of it in just a few minutes. Below, we've gone over everything you need to know about the best way to farm the encounter.
Destiny 2: How to checkpoint farm Master Caiatl
To get started, you'll want to get a checkpoint for the Master Caiatl encounter, which you can do by joining the D2Checkpoint.com bot holding one with the "/join" command, starting the fight, and then wiping. Then, you'll need to get two more players to farm with you. If you're not able to get a checkpoint from the bot, you can try joining someone on Destiny 2 LFG Discord servers that has one and is looking to farm the boss instead.
Once you have a checkpoint, you'll need to have a second player help keep it saved on an alternate character so that you can farm it repeatedly. Here's how to do that:
- At Master Caiatl, have a second player leave and rejoin on an alternate character.
- Start the encounter, then have everyone die to save the checkpoint.
- Have the second player leave and rejoin with their main character.
- Complete the encounter.
- The second player loads the Master Duality checkpoint with their alt.
- The first player joins the second player.
- The second player swaps back to their main and joins the first player.
- Complete the encounter.
- Repeat with steps 6-9.
When farming Master Caiatl (watch this guide if you need to learn how the fight works), the best subclasses to use are Solar and Void. Solar builds are ideal for buffing your damage with things like Well of Radiance, and the Weaken effect from Void builds will debuff Caiatl and make her take more damage as well. It's also highly recommended to use a Grenade Launcher if you equip the Weakened Clear mod for further debuffing, as well as a Solar or Void primary weapon for shield-popping. Make sure you equip an Armorer mod on your Ghost to guarantee that your armor drops with at least 10 points in the stat you want, too.
To one-phase Caiatl with top-tier damage, it's best for everyone to go for crits with well-rolled Linear Fusion Rifles like the Taipan-4FR (Destiny 2 gives this one away for free), Cataclysmic, or Stormchaser. Alternatively, you can use the Gjallarhorn Exotic Rocket Launcher paired with Legendary Rocket Launchers like The Hothead or Hezen Vengeance, though using Linear Fusion Rifles will result in more consistent one-phases.
Once Caiatl is dead, you'll get two drops, both of which can be Artifice armor. Then, simply follow the process above to start the fight again. Happy farming — hopefully you're able to get some god rolled high-stat Artifice armor to take into Destiny 2: Lightfall with this method before it becomes unavailable next week.
