Optimizing your stats is one of the first steps to building up your Guardian’s power in Destiny 2, but it can be extremely tedious. That’s where artifice armor comes in: it’s the only way to make optimizing stats more forgiving, allowing you to reap the rewards of top-tier stat distributions quicker.
Artifice armor is such a unique drop that most new players don’t even know it exists. That’s why, in this article, we’ll cover what this special gear does, where to get it, and the best ways to farm it.
How to get Artifice armor
Artifice armor only drops from Master difficulty dungeons. Any encounter with the chance to drop regular armor in Legend difficulty will now drop artifice armor instead. Check out our loot tables if you’re trying to figure out which encounter drops what!

How to get Artifice armor, Destiny 2
There are only up to two dungeons available on Master difficulty per week:
- The newest one
- The weekly featured one
As of Season of the Deep, the Ghosts of the Deep dungeon has a permanent Master variant. However, this will change with Season 23 when a newer dungeon replaces it.
As for the weekly featured dungeons, they’ll also have a Master mode available. The easiest way to find these is to look for which one has a weekly challenge that awards Pinnacle gear. It’s important to note that Shattered Throne, Pit of Heresy, and Prophecy do not have Master variants and thus will not drop artifice armor—even when featured as the weekly dungeon.

Weekly featured dungeon, Destiny 2
What is Artifice Armor in Destiny 2
Every piece of artifice armor comes with an additional mod slot, similar to that of raid armor. However, instead of providing activity-specific benefits, artifice gear grants you a way to round out your stat distribution. The unique mod slot allows you to utilize artifice armor mods, which give a +3 bonus to a stat of your choosing. These mods don’t cost any armor energy and are the perfect way to bump a stat up to the next tier—there’s no downside!

Artifice armor, Destiny 2
As one would expect, you can only equip one of these specialized mods per piece of gear. These stack with multiple equipped, though, meaning you’d gain over a tier’s worth of free stats with four artifice armor pieces equipped.
Best Artifice armor farm today
Recent dungeon final bosses grant two loot drops per completion instead of one. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that last encounters are always the best to farm, it makes them the most reliable method of obtaining artifice armor if you’re in desperate need.
If you’re instead looking for the quickest encounters to farm repeatedly, Duality’s first and third encounters tend to be community favorites. The first main encounter of Spire of the Watcher (Ascend the Spire) and the second encounter of Ghosts of the Deep (Ecthar, the Shield of Savathûn) also aren’t bad choices.

Artifice armor farming, Destiny 2
Before you get deep into your farming session, make sure you select Master difficulty! Also, ensure that you have a stat-boosting mod on your Ghost Shell—they’re a lifesaver when it comes to getting spikes in the stats that matter most!
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