Destiny 2 Iron Banner Armor Guide: Season 15 Quest & Rewards

Destiny 2’s Iron Banner is back for the first time this season and comes with 2 new weapons and a brand-new armor set.

Overall, Iron Banner continues to struggle. It’s supposed to be an end-game PVP activity in Destiny 2, yet most people see it as a chore needed to grab 4 pinnacle rewards.

This Season, though, Iron Banner brought us a brand-new armor set that also features an intrinsic perk, something we haven’t seen in Destiny in a very long time. On top of that, Iron Banner armor remains some of the best in the game, stats-wise.

And for that reason alone, you should definitely pay Lord Saladin a visit.

2021 Iron Banner schedule

This is the official Iron Banner schedule for September 2021:

• Starts on Tuesday, August 31, 2021, at 9 AM PDT
• Ends on Tuesday, September 7, 2021, at 9 AM PDT

This means you have an entire week to complete the seasonal quest and farm high stat Iron Banner armor.

Iron Banner armor in Season 15

This time around, Iron Banner features the brand-new Iron Forerunner set:

Granted, the actual aesthetics of the Forerunner set are up for debate. Some like it, but many find it hideous. This is definitely not Bungie’s best work, especially compared to some of their excellent Destiny 1 Iron Banner sets.

Still, this remains excellent news for Iron Banner in general:

1. It stopped recycling the same old armor year after year
2. It features an intrinsic Armor perk

The new Iron Banner Exotic perk

Every piece of the Forerunner armor set comes with the following perk:

Iron Lord’s Pride

Grants a chance to receive an Enhancement Prism as a reward at the end of Iron Banner matches. Each piece of armor you are wearing with this perk on it increases the chance of receiving an Enhancement Prism, to a maximum of 4 items.

The Iron Banner as a PVP mode still has a long way to go, but new weapons, new armor, and especially a new armor perk, are extremely promising.

Destiny 2 Iron Banner armor sets per season

These are all the Iron Banner armor sets that have been offered since the release of Shadowkeep in 2019:

As you can see, the situation of having the same old armor sets every season was becoming harder to swallow, especially when some excellent Iron Banner sets from Destiny 1 could be easily recycled instead. Granted, Beyond Light did introduce several armor sets, but a brand-new Iron Banner set was desperately needed. Glad to see Bungie delivered.

Recycled aesthetics aside, Iron Banner armor does come with high stats and that helps it stay relevant no matter what.

Farming 60+ stat armor

Of all the sources of high stat armor in the game, Iron Banner is one of the most reliable.

Looking at all the Iron Banner armor pieces I have accumulated this past year, many had 62+ base stats. That may not sound like a lot but it’s still better than most of the armor you’ll find elsewhere. More importantly, armor pieces with more than 62+ base stat points are quite common. This is all but one example:

Prime engrams can also drop 60+ stat armor pieces, but you cannot farm Prime engrams as directly as you can farm Iron Banner tokens.

How to farm it: The Quest

Normally, farming armor and weapons from Iron Banner by turning in your Iron Banner tokens required you to complete the seasonal quest first. Luckily, Bungie changed that and now you’re free to turn in tokens as soon as you see Lord Saladin for the first time.

That said, completing the seasonal quest will add the new weapons to the loot table, allowing you to potentially farm them. I definitely recommend you complete the seasonal Iron Banner quest before turning in tokens.

In Season of the Splicer, the Iron-Handed Diplomacy quest involves the following steps:

• Step 1: Forewarned, Forearmed
  • 15 Energy weapon final blows
  • 10 Zone Captures
  • 30 Guardian Defeats
• Step 2: Clustered Shots
  • 6 Match Completions
  • 20 Zone Captures
  • 20 Pulse Rifle Final Blows
• Step 3: Antipode
  • 30 Zone Captures
  • 100 Guardian Defeats
  • 10 Stasis or Solar Ability kills
• Step 4: The Final Lesson
  • 15 Super Final Blows
  • 40 Zone Captures
  • 15 Sidearm final blows
• Step 5: A Finely Tuned Instrument
  • Return to Lord Saladin

Recommended loadout: For the specific objectives, I recommend The Messenger for the Pulse Rifle kills and Traveler’s Chosen or Peacebound for the sidearm kills.

All Iron Banner armor sets

Iron Banner armor generally comes with high stat armors, but even if the sets you’ve collected weren’t impressive stats-wise, they will certainly be useful now that Transmog is a thing. Similarly, if you collected several high stat armor pieces, but you don’t like the Iron Banner looks, you can now use Transmog to apply them to other armor such as the Black Armory or the Escalation Protocol sets.

In case you’re curious, these are all the Iron Banner armor sets (2.0 versions) available in Destiny 2:

Iron Truage: 2.0 version reprised for Season 9 and 13:

Iron Remembrance: 2.0 version reprised for Season 10:

Iron Fellowship: 2.0 version reprised for Season 11:

Iron Will: 2.0 version reprised for Season 8 and 12:

Iron Forerunner for Season 15:

Good farming!