How to get the Heir Apparent Exotic and its new Catalyst in Destiny 2

The annual Guardian Games event is in full swing with Hunters, Warlocks and Titans competing against each other to prove which is the greatest class. Check out our previous article for a quick rundown on the event.

The Exotic Machine Gun ‘Heir Apparent’ will be returning for the event with players who did not receive it last year being given another chance to get their hands on it. Additionally, the Exotic Catalyst for Heir Apparent has been released and can be also obtained through the Guardian Games event.

Here is a quick rundown on how to obtain the Heir Apparent Exotic as well as how to obtain its Catalyst:

How to get Heir Apparent

To start the event you will first need to head on over to Zavala to hear his intro speech and to then pick up your Guardian Games class item. An important note here with the class item is that you must be wearing this class item to be able to create Laurels for the event.

After picking up your class item, hop on over to Eva Levante to be gifted with the Medal Case and the opening quest called ‘The Games Begin’. The Medal Case will sit in your quest tab and will act as a storage unit for all the Laurels and Medals you are about to collect. The first step of the opening quest tasks you with collecting 100 Laurels which can be done fairly quickly by queuing up in the Guardian Games Daily Focus playlist, which is Strikes as of the writing of this article, and focusing on ability kills.

Once you have 100 Laurels you can head back to Lavante to grab a Contender card for either Strikes, Gambit or Crucible. These Contender cards give a random objective that needs to be completed in the relevant playlist in exchange for a Gold medal. Grabbing this Contender card will also unlock the Heir Apparent quest, with its first step being to earn 50 Laurels. Just repeat whatever you did to earn the previous 100 to quickly earn another 50.

The second step for the Heir Apparent quest is to achieve 100 Machine Gun kills in the Daily Focus playlist which is simple enough. Just equip your favourite Machine Gun with a high ammo capacity and go to town on the smaller enemies. If you stack some Scavenger and Reserve mods this should be completed within a single Strike.

After this step is completed, return to Lavante to receive your shiny new Exotic, the Heir Apparent.

How to get Heir Apparent’s Catalyst

This part is a little bit simpler but does also rely on RNG. To get Heir Apparent’s Catalyst quest you need to keep playing the Guardian Games event by collecting Laurels, completing activities for Bronze/Silver medals, and completing Contender/Platinum Cards for Gold/Platinum medals.

Each time you bank your medals at the class podiums you will receive a handful of rewards based on the tier of the medal. Each banked medal is also a random chance at the quest for the Catalyst to drop. It is assumed that the higher tier medals grant a higher chance at the quest dropping. The drop rate appears to be fairly high though so it shouldn't take too much of a grind.

The first part of the Catalyst quest has the player achieving 50 points by obtaining medals. The higher the medal tier, the higher the point value, with Platinum medals being worth 10 points. The quickest way to complete this step is to grab the Nightfall Platinum card and speedrun the Nightfall on Hero difficulty while focusing on completing the random objective. Contender cards are easier to do though and Gold medals still give a good amount of progress so if you would rather do some easier activities this is still fine.

The second step has the player completing three Contender cards. Make sure you are grabbing either the Strike, Gambit or Crucible cards as these are the Contender cards with the Nightfall and Trials cards being Platinum cards. These Contender cards give a random objective that needs to be completed within the relevant playlists, usually something like “Get Solar or Stasis final blows in Strikes”.

The third step of the quest for Heir Apparent Catalyst tasks the player with obtaining ‘Competitive Spirit’ which can be earned by achieving Machine Gun final blows in the Daily Focus playlist. Precision final blows will grant bonus progress so be sure to aim for the head. Hover over the Medal Case in your quest tab to see what the Daily Focus activity is for that particular day. Completing this step will reward you with the Catalyst but there is still one last step before it can be slotted into the weapon.

The final step requires the player to achieve 700 kills with the Heir Apparent Machine Gun. There are a few good places to do this with the best two being the Shuro Chi checkpoint in the Last Wish raid or the ‘Thrallway’ in the Shattered Throne dungeon. Both of these will have you completing this step in under 30 minutes where it could take hours doing it any other way.

As for what the Catalyst does, its perk reads “Increases the Arc Shield’s durability and partially reloads the magazine if it is destroyed.” There have already been some rumblings on social media about how strong this effect is in both PvE and PvP with the Catalyst creating the first true tank playstyle. If this is to be believed, then Heir Apparent’s Catalyst is a must-have.