Destiny 2 Salvager's Salvo Guide: How To Finish Messy Business Quest And Unlock Ornaments

The Season of the Chosen has brought with it a new slate of weapons to Destiny 2 to help players battle the Cabal and the season's new villain, Empress Caiatl. Salvager's Salvo is one of the best you can get during the Season of the Chosen, and if it being awesome wasn't enough, there's now a Seasonal Challenge linked to earning the gun. To unlock it, you'll need to complete the Messy Business quest, but you'll need to rack up a whole lot of kills--but on the plus side, you can earn those kills in any activity playlist, including Gambit, Strikes, Nightfall: The Ordeal, and the Crucible.

Here are a few tips for how you can make the most of your playlist activities, speed up your progress in Messy Business, and grab yourself Salvager's Salvo with a minimum of frustration. You'll also want to check out our other Season of the Chosen guides, including our rundown of seasonal challenges and a complete explanation of how the HELM, Hammer of Proving, and Umbral Engrams work.

Step 1: Get The Messy Business Quest

You'll first need the quest for Messy Business, which you can pick up from Banshee-44 in the Tower. The quest tracks your progress across your entire account, so if you play on other characters, you'll still chip away at the quest--even if you don't pick it up on all characters.

Step 2: Grab A Good Grenade Launcher

The first requirement for Messy Business is to rack up points for getting kills in playlist activities. You need 7,500 points, which is a lot. You'll get points for any kills you make during Crucible matches, Gambit matches, Strikes, and Nightfall activities, but most of those kills will have very low point totals.

To maximize your points, you want to use breech-loading grenade launchers, barrel-loading (that is, Heavy ammo) grenade launchers, and grenades in battle. Kills with these weapons rocket your points up, whereas kills by other means can get you as few as one point per kill.

To maximize efficiency, we recommend using Witherhoard if you have it. The Blight-launching grenade launcher from the Season of Arrivals leaves a poisonous ring on the ground where it lands, and enemies who stumble through it will die even while you're reloading or focusing on something else. Grenades and Heavy ammo launchers are useful too, especially launchers with the Chain Reaction perk, but Witherhoard is going to do the bulk of the work for you here.

If you don't have Witherhoard, other breech-loaders will do, including Deafening Whisper from the Season of the Hunt.

Step 3: Set Your Loadout For Discipline

Having lots of grenades to throw will also help you significantly in advancing along the track to Salvager's Salvo. It's best to have an armor set with Discipline mods equipped to get your grenades back as quickly as possible.

You'll probably also want to avoid using the Stasis subclass on this grind, as Stasis grenades don't immediately kill enemies. Any grenade that issues a powerful explosive, chain lightning, or creates a lasting damage field will help you maximize your kills against small enemies.

Step 4: Jump Into Gambit

We did a few experiments to determine which activity is likely the best for grinding Messy Business, and it seems like Gambit is the winner in most cases. There are lots of enemies in any given Gambit match that you can kill with your Witherhoard, which will help you earn points as quickly as possible.

The second requirement for the quest is completing playlist matches of any kind, which drives up a percentage for the objective. The numbers vary a bit, with wins earning more percentage points than losses, and tougher Nightfall: The Ordeal runs raising the percentage more than easier ones. Crucible and Gambit losses added about 2% to the total, while Gambit wins and Nightfall Strikes of the Heroic difficulty raised the percentage around 3-3.5%, it seemed.

If you want to go tougher Nightfalls, you'll raise the percentage more quickly, but Gambit seems like the sweet spot for efficiency. We added about 250 points per Gambit match with just Witherhoard in tow, so speccing properly to favor grenades and grenade launchers will likely add more points. If you're earning between 2% and 4% per match, that should put you at around 30 Gambit matches to fill the meter for the second objective; your points total should pretty much match that trajectory, requiring about 30 matches for you to earn all 7,500.

Note that some playlist activities will not advance the Messy Business quest. The new Battlegrounds list that's under the Vanguard node in the Director, specifically, does not affect your progress toward Salvager's Salvo. Save those activities for when you're working on the catalyst for Ticuu's Divination or other objectives you want to complete.

Step 5: Play What's Fun

Of course, your mileage may vary, and that's a lot of Gambit to play. Note that Bungie has deliberately redesigned Ritual weapon quests to be playlist-agnostic--meaning you can work on them no matter what part of the game you like to play or need to play for other objectives. Keep in mind that quests like this are meant to be completed over the course of at least a portion of the season; if the grind sounds overwhelming, know that you can always progress Messy Business at a much more leisurely pace. Mix in Strikes and Crucible to keep yourself having fun.

Unlocking Salvager's Salvo Ornaments

Once you've earned this season's ritual weapon, you can earn ornaments for it that are specific to each ritual activity--so Strikes, Gambit, and the Crucible. Each one has a mission of its own you'll need to complete.

Crucible Ornament: Pyretic

To earn the Crucible ornament for Salvager's Salvo, you'll need to earn grenade launcher kills against other players. Luckily, it's not too many, and you get extra progress for multikills. Salvager's Salvo is actually pretty great for this requirement; you can set the Vorpal Weapon and Demolitionist perks for the gun, which are pretty mighty in the Crucible. Head to Lord Shaxx to pick up the quest for this ornament.

• Thrown, Launched, Or Otherwise Quest
  • Earn 6 Valor ranks (including subranks)
  • Get 30 grenade launcher final blows on Guardians; multikills grant bonus progress

The Valor ranks are easy for this quest--just play any Valor playlist activity and complete Shaxx's daily bounties to increase your ranks. Wins grant even greater progress, so you're incentivized to play with friends and communicate.

To earn grenade launcher kills, pair the launcher with a fast-firing weapon you can use to do some damage before flipping to your launcher to finish the enemy off. Dead Man's Tale with the Dark-Forged Trigger perk from its Catalyst is a good pairing, but any weapon will do. If you're not using Salvager's for this step, Witherhoard is a good alternative because of its area-of-effect damage (which is great for Control matches where players are stuck guarding a specific spot), as is Fighting Lion, which does additional damage on direct hits. Use your launcher to kill enemies around corners and behind cover by holding the trigger when you fire and releasing it to detonate your grenade. You'd be surprised how many Titans hang out behind their Barricades, never expecting someone to fire a grenade over it and blow them up from behind.

Strike Ornament: Panacea

You mostly just have to play Strikes with a grenade launcher to earn the Panacea ornament. Keep in mind that you get bonus progress for multikills and for defeating enemies in Nightfall Strikes, as opposed to regular playlist Strikes.

• Destructive Deployment Quest
  • Land 150 grenade launcher final blows
  • Earn 4,500 points by completing playlist strikes

Again, Salvager's is kind of great for this quest. Set the perks on the launcher to Ambitious Assassin and Chain Reaction and just go to work--you'll get lots of progress any time enemies are bunched up because Chain Reaction will rip through them, and the extra grenade in the chamber with Ambitious Assassin lets you blast them double-quick. You can also rely on Fighting Lion and Witherhoard here, with Witherhoard likely being your best bet, since its AOE grenades work great when you drop them in a doorway and let enemies charge through them.

Gambit Ornament: Toxicology

For the Gambit ornament, again, the order of the day is just to rack up grenade launcher kills, so use your favorite gun for the job.

• Mote-Vated Bombing Run Quest
  • Land 100 grenade launcher final blows; bonus progress for multikills
  • Bank 350 motes of Darkness

Again, this is pretty straightforward--banking motes is all you do in Gambit, so just make sure you're routinely making it to the bank and not taking too many risks to make progress on that objective. As for the grenade launcher kills, bring your favorite guns for clearing up lots of enemies and take the bonus progress for multikills. We still like Salvager's Salvo and Chain Reaction for this job, but Witherhoard, Anarchy, and Fighting Lion are all good choices as well.