Destiny 2’s Iron Banner is back for the second time this season and comes with 2 new reprised weapons, reprised armor, and 2 brand-new weapons.
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 does include these four “new” weapons to chase: The Riiswalker shotgun, the Finite Impactor hand cannon, the Occluded Finality sniper rifle, and the Archon’s Thunder machine gun.
On the armor front, Iron Banner sets are considered among the sexiest armor in the game. On top of that, Iron Banner remains a reliable source of high stat armor, and for that reason alone, you should definitely pay Lord Saladin a visit.
In this guide:
Before we get started, Iron Banner:
- Starts on Tuesday, June 8, 2021, at 9 AM PDT
- Ends on Tuesday, June 15, 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 14
It was disappointing to learn that Season 14’s Iron Banner armor was again a reprised armor set from Year 1. This time around, Iron Banner features the Iron Symmachy set:
If you’re a somewhat new Destiny 2 player, this won’t be an issue for you. But if you’re a veteran, I feel your pain. In fact, this set has been reprised before, which means we’ve been served the same recycled content twice already.
This is 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 definitely expected.
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, the vast majority 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: Leverage the Void
- 10 Void or Arc Abilities Final Blows
- 10 Zone Captures
- 30 Guardian Defeats
- Step 2: Negotiation by Force
- 6 Match Completions
- 20 Zone Captures
- 20 HC Final Blows
- Step 3: Adversarial Relations
- 30 Zone Captures
- 100 Guardian Defeats
- 10 Sniper Rifle final blows
- Step 4: Hostile Takeovers
- 15 Melee Final Blows
- 40 Zone Captures
- 10 Shotgun final blows
- Step 5: Gunboat Diplomacy
- 15 Super Final Blows
- 3 Machine Gun Final Blows
- 25 Match Points (Earn 3 points for a win and lose 1 on a loss).
- Step 6: Reaping Rewards
- Return to Lord Saladin
Recommended loadout: For the specific objectives, I recommend Igneous Hammer for the hand cannon kills, Adored for the Sniper kills, Duality or Felwinter’s Lie for the shotgun kills and Commemoration or the Seventh Seraph SAW for the machine gun kills.
All Iron Banner armor sets
Iron Banner armor generally comes with high stat armors, but even if the sets you’ve amassed 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:
Good farming!
