Of all the many memes Destiny has birthed, the best-known remains the Loot Cave. Despite that playing the game normally dropped a similar amount of gear, players preferred the path of least resistance of standing in front of a cave mowing down trash mobs and watching shiny engrams carpet the ground. Such was the massacre that, after removing the infinite spawn, Bungie even honoured the millions of lost thrall with a ghostly message.
I mention the cave because this week in Destiny 2 offers a loot farming opportunity which far surpasses it in terms of rewards. Per the little in-game message that pops up to tell you what's happening at reset, this week has double rewards from the Nightfall Ordeal. That would be spicy in itself, but is made even more fuego because this week's strike is Lake of Shadows—long regarded as the quickest and easiest Nightfall in the game.
With a well-drilled team (ideally at 1080 power, or close to it) you should be able to pull off Platinum runs in around 15-20 minutes. To earn Platinum rewards you must kill all the Overload and Unstoppable Champions in the Strike, but areas without Champions can be skipped to speed up your completion time.
Fill the cupboards with vital mats and god rolled exotic armor before Beyond Light.
Unlike the loot cave, which only dropped blue and the occasional purple gear, rewards from the Nightfall Ordeal are the best in the game. For earning Platinum rewards on the 1080 Master difficulty, Exotic gear and Enhancement Prisms are a common reward, while Ascendant Shards (the rarest upgrade material in the game, needed to fully masterwork armour) are rated as uncommon. In my experience that means about a 1-in-3 drop rate.
So if you're willing to steel yourself to grind the same strike ad nauseam—and hey, you are a Destiny player—you should be able to fill the cupboards with vital mats and god rolled exotic armor before Beyond Light drops. Note that once you have a full stack of 50 Prisms and 10 Shards, the excess will go to your postmaster, so you'll have to keep a weather eye on it to avoid accidental deletion when the mailbox overflows.
"You get an Exotic, and you get…"
You could also opt for Grandmaster difficulty completions, but here your power is capped at 1075 versus enemies at 1100, making for a real slog. Even the easiest strike in the game is pretty punchy with that handicap. The upside is that you'll be guaranteed two Ascendant Shards per Platinum run, but I still think you're better off sticking with the much quicker and less stressful 1080 variant.
As for ideal loadouts, given the type of Champions present, I would opt for the classic 2x Izanagi's Burden plus someone wielding Divinity. In terms of primary weapons, a Solar pulse rifle (eg Adhortative) or Hand Cannon (eg Ancient Gospel) with an Unstoppable mod is a good shout, as is running the Overload grenades chestpiece mod on a Void subclass. As for your Heavy weapon, Falling Guillotine will make mincemeat of the boss in combination with stuff like Well of Radiance and Ward of Dawn. It turns out, swords are quite good.
If you really want your runs to go smooth, I strongly suggest working the Taken Barrier and Armaments mods into your build. You can also put Taken Spec on your weapons if you have it, as the entire strike comprises Taken enemies. If you don't have those mods, here's how to find them—you'll be fine without, but they will make life a lot easier. Oh, and if it's teammates you're looking for, try the ever excellent Discord Destiny LFG or the Nightfall section of Bungie's own fireteam search function. Most will be happy to play without mics given how simple the strike is, provided you don't turn up with a clownish loadout.
In case you're still looking for further guidance, I've linked a fast Platinum run below. It should give you a sense of which areas you can speed through (a bottom tree Nightstalker Hunter will be able to help by making your team go temporarily invisible.
Interestingly, double Nightfall rewards originally appeared in the game back in April as a bug which Bungie squished. But I guess they saw the excitement and decided to make it a Thing during the languorous downtime before the 10 November release of Beyond Light. In any case, I know what I'm doing for the rest of the week. Reset happens at 1pm EST, 10am PST, and 6PM GMT, meaning you should be able to log on and start farming now. I'll be hunting for a 65+ roll, Recovery/Intellect stat split, Dragon's Shadow. How about you?
