How to Get High-End Weapons in The Division
Expand your arsenal with more High-End weapon drops.
The Division is full swing into its second week on the block and players everywhere are trying to figure out what the best ways to farm for High-End weapons and gear are. This guide will teach you some of the best places and missions to undertake if you want to expand your inventory and fill it with more shiny golden gear.
Take on Dark Zone Bosses
One of the most trusted ways to gain High-End gear is to head into the Dark Zone and take on the various named enemies hidden throughout the darkest and most dangerous blocks of Manhattan. Of course this isn’t all going to be roses and pretty flowers. Any gear found within the Dark Zone needs to be extracted, which means you’ll have to place your newly acquired gear in the hands of strangers you don’t know anything about. If you choose to grind for gear in this fashion, grab yourself a safe spot and keep an eye out for any fellow Agents. After all, there could be a serial killer hiding behind every face you meet.
Learn how to extract your gear and survive in our Dark Zone guide for The Division.
Buy Your Gear from Vendors
There are plenty of vendors spread around each part of New York, from Gear vendors, to Weapon vendors, Mod vendors, and even Advanced Weaponry vendors like the guy you can acquire from the Security Wing upgrades. This is by far the easiest way to obtain High-End gear, and while it might not be the best for finding the greatest Talents and Perks, High-End gear from Vendors is still High-End gear.
Redeem your free items by learning how to find the rewards vendor in Tom Clancy’s The Division.
Just remember you’ll probably be paying about 150% what you actually should for the item… but that’s just good ole American capitalism at its finest. Of course Dark Zone vendors sell the best items, so that means you’re going to need to head into the Dark Zone and start grinding for all those shiny black Dark Zone credits.
Craft New Gear in the Base of Operations
Another sure-fire way to net yourself some High-End weaponry and gear is to craft it at the Crafting Station inside the Base of Operations. For me the Crafting Station is one of my favorite things about the game. The simplicity of the crafting, along with the gear you can craft there is exquisite and something that I wish more games in the strange little genre hole that The Division fits into would offer. Of course to craft High-End gear you’re going to need High-End crafting materials, which are actually fairly easy to get thanks to the ability to upgrade crafting materials.
Want to know more about crafting? Check out our in-depth guide to crafting new items in The Division.
Crafting material nodes usually respawn every two hours or so, so find yourself a circuit and start running it. You can also cut down any old gear into crafting mats, if you aren’t trying to save for something at one of those over-priced vendors, of course. Once you’ve found the materials you need, head back to the Crafting Station and go to work.
Loot Every Crate You See
Crates show up on your map when they’re close, and even if you aren’t looking for anything specific, you should be looting them. They can lead to better items and gear, as well as the occasional (though it’s pretty rare) High-End item drop. This is one of the last options for farming for High-End gear, simply because the drop rate for golden pieces isn’t nearly as great as it is for other items. But you have nothing to lose by trying, right? So whenever a loot crate appears on your map, or you see one out of the corner of your eye, don’t write it off. Head over there and loot that bad boy. You never know when luck is going to be on your side.
Replay the General Assembly Mission
We all knew that The Division was going to push the grind, and the hunt for High-End gear sends you spiraling right into the very heart and soul of what it means to grind for gear.
Mild spoilers for the main story of the game follow, so if you haven’t played this mission yet, you might not want to continue reading.
In the General Assembly mission players are tasked with taking down Lieutenant Colonel Charles Bliss, the man behind one of the game’s end-game gangs, The Last Man Battalion (or LMB). There’s a lot to be done in this mission, and it’s basically all the equivalent of walking straight through the fiery gates of hell, but I’ll save the whole dramatic approach thing for when you actually play through it. The good thing about this mission, however, is that it is the point where end-game content for The Division really opens up and begins, meaning it’s the point of no return.
So why replay this mission over and over again? Why force yourself to grind your hours away trying to get High-End gear from this one mission? Well the answer is really quite simple. Right now, at this point in time, this mission always drops at least one High-End weapon or piece of gear.
The drop is random, obviously, which means you won’t know what it is until you get it. It’s also randomly doled out to any of the four people in the group, which means you could very well complete this mission four times and only ever get one actual drop for yourself. Those seem like some pretty bad odds, right? We’d have to agree. But as we said at the very start of this article, we always knew this game was going to be grindy, it was just a matter of time before we learned exactly how grindy things were going to get.
For more on Tom Clancy’s The Division check out our walkthrough and guide for more tips and information on collectables and other items.
