One of the most important items in Destiny 2 Season of the Chosen is the Hammer of Proving. This tool is the key to controlling umbral engrams and collecting extra loot at the end of Battleground missions. However, the Hammer runs on cabal gold, and the search for this resource can be time-consuming if you don’t know what you are doing.
This Destiny 2 guide will tell you which activities give you cabal gold and how much you can expect to get from each of them. If you’d like to know more about how the Hammer of Proving works, we’ve got a separate guide on that here.
How to Get that Gold
Sources for fall roughly into four activity categories:
- Matchmade PvE
- World Events
- PvP activities
- Endgame content
Keep in mind that the exact amount you receive from each of these does have some variation, so most of the numbers provided below are approximations based on results gathered by repeating activities.
Also, you have a limited capacity for this currency in your inventory. Initially, you can store 42 pieces. Eventually, you can increase that to as high as 84. If you are seeing little to no gold awarded after completing missions or matches, then you may be at or near your capacity.
Matchmade PvE
Matchmade activities include:
- Strikes
- Nightfall Strikes
- Nightmare Hunts
Gold drops upon completion, and the amount depends on the activity.
Nightmare Hunts drop around three pieces. Strikes and Nightfall strikes drop 14 if you have the capacity. How quickly you accumulate the currency is largely dependent on the quality of your fireteam and which strike you load into, but one strike will net enough to load your Hammer of Proving for your next Battleground.
World Events
World events can yield gold as well. These take place in open public spaces and can be either Public Events or the Blind Well in the Dreaming City.
Public events are often fast, but not always available; they drop around seven pieces. The EDZ and Cosmodrome on Earth is a great place to chain fast public events.
The Blind Well has the advantage of being available any time you want to launch it, provided you have Blind Well Charges to start the activity. If there are other guardians to join you, a full round can be as fast as five minutes, but that is solely dependent on other random players in your instance.
Completing a Blind Well only drops around two to three units, making this at best a mediocre activity for farming.
PvP Activities
PvP activities are Crucible and Gambit, and drops aren’t dependent on victory, just finishing matches. Both modes yield around eight pieces.
Gambit matches usually take around 10 minutes, as do some crucible game types. Mayhem, however, can be over in as few as four minutes. That game type isn’t always available, but when it is, it is by far the fastest PvP option, and possibly the fastest gold farming route overall.
Getting certain weapons, of course, like Bottom Dollar and Dead Man’s Tale, may speed up the process.
Endgame Content
Dungeons and Raids are endgame activities, and typically require you to assemble your own fireteam to take on the most challenging PvE content in the game.
Cabal currency will be awarded after each encounter, giving you multiple drops for each full run. There may be some variation depending on the encounter, but each section seems to drop around from five to 10 units.
A typical raid or Dungeon will take most teams roughly an hour. At a rate of 15-30 gold per hour, these tend to be among the least efficient farming methods.
Alternate Sources
There are two other limited sources for this precious resource.
A quest will award you 28 gold at the start of the season. There are also a pair of Hammer of Proving Enhancements you can unlock that will reward you with a small amount anytime you smash one of the Tribute Chests at the end of a Battleground mission in the Vanguard Playlist.
There you have it. Cabal Gold is the currency you need to progress in the Season of the Chosen. Follow this guide, and you will have no trouble keeping it flowing — and your Hammer of Proving primed and ready for chest-smashing joy.
