Year two of Destiny 2 is set to be full of Power increases from the base game’s max Power level of 500, so the grind is going to be very real. With Forsaken, the max went up to 600. In the Black Armory update, it’s now 650.
Whenever there’s a level increase, you might want to infuse your favorite weapon or piece of armor to a higher Power. If so, you’re going to need a fat stack of special items called Enhancement Cores.
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What are Enhancement Cores?
You can think of Enhancement Cores, formerly known as Masterwork Cores, as the lifeblood of your climb in Power in Destiny 2: Forsaken. You use these Legendary items to upgrade your weapons and armor into Masterworks and to infuse low-level gear into higher Power gear.
Put simply, they’re really important. They’re also kind of a pain to find. So here’s our guide on how and where to get them.
How to get Enhancement Cores
There are quite a few ways to earn Enhancement Cores now, thanks to gradual changes by Bungie.
The fastest and most efficient way to earn Enhancement Cores is our Gunsmith friend Banshee-44. With both daily and weekly bounties which reward cores, you can earn up to 69 Enhancement Cores per week. They’ll also reward you with mod components and the weeklies will nab you random legendary weapon or armor mods and even Infamy and Valor! This is by far the most reliable way to earn mod components and Enhancement Cores.
The easiest ways to pick up Enhancement Cores is by simply getting lucky. Just dismantle your unneeded and unwanted pieces of of Legendary gear. That’s right, any Legendary weapon or armor piece has a small chance of generating an Enhancement Core!
Legendary gear is easily farmed by doing any of the many of activities available in the game that reward it (like public events and strikes). Then break the pieces down and hope for the best. You should get a Core for every few Legendaries you break down. Although there are no guarantees, this is still a great way to earn Legendary Shards you need for many other things (like infusing, actually).
Spider in the Tangled Shore remains another good option. He has a slew of bounties on offer each week that reward you with one Enhancement Core each.
Just navigate to the second row of bounties in Spider’s inventory and you’ll see six bounties that offer an Enhancement Core and more. These bounties task you with hunting down “wanted” Prison of Elders escapees around the world. Find them, kill them, and hand in the bounty for your Core
The Spider is also useful because you can buy Cores from him directly, starting at 10 Legendary Shards. But be careful. Each Core you buy doubles the price of the next one. Make sure to pay attention while buying them so you don’t bankrupt yourself on Shards. We learned this the hard way (RIP 2,000+ Shards in the first week of Forsaken). The bright side is that this inflation resets every day. So consider just buying one Core per day, unless you need a quick bundle, for maximum cost efficiency.
Scrapper Bounties also provide Enhancement Cores. You can find these side missions randomly by dismantling Legendary gear. They simply ask you to finish a number of random tasks, like looting a specific Lost Sector or getting kills with different types of guns. Finishing them gives you an Enhancement Core. And, since they come from scrapping gear anyway, there’s always the chance you’ll get a raw Core instead.
Finally, one guaranteed way of getting a Core to drop is by using something called Finest Matterweave. These, like Scrapper Bounties and Cores themselves, are found by getting lucky when dismantling a piece of Legendary gear.
Using a Finest Matterweave gives Powerful enemies (those with orange or yellow health bars) you kill a chance to drop an Enhancement Core straight on the ground. Even if you don’t pick it up, it will end up in your Postmaster, so don’t fret. And don’t worry about the effect expiring, either. Finest Matterweave lasts until you get your core.
