For months, hardcore Destiny 2 players have been trying to scale their way up to a seemingly impossible mountaintop. The Mountaintop, in fact… because that’s the name of a Legendary grenade launcher in Destiny 2 that many players have coveted for a long time. It is, as its name implies, incredibly labor-intensive to get, with no real work-arounds other than to just buckle down and do the work. Trouble is, “doing the work” makes you play Destiny 2 like a bit of a jerk.
The Mountaintop is a Pinnacle Weapon, a type of Legendary weapon introduced with Destiny 2’s Forsaken expansion. They’re top-tier legendary weapons introduced at the start of a new season, and players are meant to spend that whole season trying to grind them out. In other words, they’re meant to be a lot of work.
To get Mountaintop, you have to complete three steps once you’ve received the “First of Many” pursuit from Lord Shaxx in the Tower:
- Reach the Glory rank “Brave” in the Crucible within a season.
- Use grenade launchers to land 750 final blows, rapidly defeat two or more opponents 200 times, and earn 100 “Calculated Trajectory” medals.
- Reach Glory rank “Fabled.”
That is a whole freaking lot. Glory ranks in the Crucible come from points you earn from completing Crucible bounties and winning Crucible matches. Consecutive wins earn you more points—currently 80, with a 20 point increase each win. Losses will dock you roughly the same amount—approximately 60 points, give or take a few points depending on your Glory rank. (I’m getting these numbers from this spreadsheet from the Dads of Destiny Battleborn clan.)
Getting to “Brave,” which requires 200 Glory, isn’t hard at all, then. Getting to “Fabled,” which requires 2100 points… that’s much harder. And all the time, you’re trying to score grenade launcher kills. This is what will begin to annoy everyone around you. Scoring that many grenade launcher final blows and multikills is nigh impossible to do without juicing your odds every way you can.
This means finding the only grenade launchers you can equip in your kinetic and energy weapon slots, which would be the Legendary The Militia’s Birthright single-shot kinetic launcher and the Exotic energy launcher Fighting Lion, alongside whatever you like for the usual Power weapon launcher. Then you pretty much have to play Crucible matches like a selfish jerk, spamming grenades and stealing kills as much as possible. And since playing in the Competitive playlist earns you more points towards your goal, you’re going to want to try and accomplish these goals in that playlist, even though doing so will likely make you a pretty rotten teammate.
People will notice, too. The Destiny subreddit is full of posts that lament how ludicrously difficult the quest is and how trying to work through it makes you a painfully obvious target in the Crucible. Some players also note that Crucible Pinnacle weapons like The Mountaintop are so useful in Player-vs-Environment play that players who normally shy away from competitive Player-vs-Player Crucible modes are trying to stomach it just to get the weapon.
Yet it still remains a highly sought-after weapon. In a video published last week, top Destiny YouTuber Datto notes that “how do I get The Mountaintop” is still one of the top two questions he gets from viewers, the other being how to get another grindy Crucible Pinnacle called Recluse. In that way, the gun is in keeping with the natural phenomena it’s named after: nigh-impossible to summit and perhaps best left alone, but something we can’t help but try, no matter how foolish it seems.