Tips for completing Eriana's Vow Catalyst quicker (2024)

Eriana's Vow catalyst is infamous for the supposed grind it needs. It is true that there will be a need for many activities to be completed before you can get your hands on that 9-bullet boss-killing monstrosity but the good news is that it doesn't have to feel like grind.

The problem everyone has with the catalyst is the first part where you need to complete activities with the Exotic Hand Cannon/ Sniper Rifle hybrid. Its progression is moving at a snail's pace. By the time we wrote this guide, chances are you already got the progression boosts from the Season Pass but if you didn't, make sure you do, at least until level 22 where the catalyst progression will be quadrupled.

Whether you levelled or purchased the Season Pass at all will ultimately not matter that much if you are not in a hurry. The key is in the wording of the catalyst description - you don't need to kill things with Eriana's Vow for it to progress.

You can simply have it equipped and complete Strikes, Crucible or Gambit matches the way you normally would and the progression will keep going. Furthermore, Eriana's Vow catalyst progression is shared among all characters on an account so keep it in all of your characters' load-outs for maximum progression speed.

The best part is that Eriana's Vow is actually a really good weapon. It is extremely useful in all three of these activities. Here is a quick rundown of its capabilities for each activity.

Strikes:

• You can one-shot any Base (red health bar) enemy, regardless of where you hit them
• You can one-shot Elite (dull orange health bar) enemies, with a precision hit
• Major enemies, who serve as mini bosses are distinguished by bright orange health bars and usually have shields. Eriana's Vow can down them in one clip or less, depending on how good you are at precision shooting
• Ultra enemies, the big bosses, are the only enemies that can survive more than a clip of Eriana's Vow fire. The gun still excels here and is among the weapons that are considered most efficient when dealing with these powerful foes. Grenade Launcher cheesing is one of the few ways to deal more damage with weapons.
• Eriana's Vow absolutely wrecks shields, especially Hive ones. Hive Wizards tend to have fire shields, which explode when destroyed by Solar damage. It also penetrates Knight shields and cancels out Barrier Champion's regen and the barrier itself

Crucible:

• Can two-tap any Guardian, regardless of their resilience. One headshot, one body shot is enough
• Only Overshield changes this rule a little. You will need two headshots or one headshot, two body shots in this case
• Warlocks can use Empowring Rift with Eriana's Vow and one-shot enemies with Precision hits. Only Guardians with 9 or 10 Resilience can survive this single shot, with 1 or 4 HP, respectively.

Gambit:

• Eriana Vow benefits in Gambit are basically a combination of benefits from Strikes and Crucible
• It is one of the rare weapons that is devastating to both enemy Guardians and NPCs
• In case your Super does not finish a Primeval Off, Eriana's Vow certainly will

There is absolutely no reason to refrain from carrying this weapon around, even after completing the catalyst. Speaking of, you might get worried that the progress was reset after completing the initial, grindy part of the catalyst quest due to a bug or whatever else. It was not.

All the guardians on your account received that progress and now you need to actually kill things with Eriana's Vow. You can check the progress in the catalyst slot in the mods section of the weapon as it's no longer in the quest log.

While getting the catalyst after the initial step would be optimal, the second part is not too grindy, despite requiring 700 kills with the weapon. The progress is once again tracked account-wide and given the density of enemies found in strikes, it shouldn't take more than a set of Vanguard bounties to complete.