The Division 2: How To Farm Gear Score 500 & Prepare For The New Raid

Operation: Dark Hours, the first 8-player raid for The Division 2 is out on May 16th. It’s going to be a completely different level of challenge, and if you want to attempt it, you’ll need to reach at least GS 490 — and it helps to reach the top-tier limit, GS 500.

Gear Score is a little trickier to earn once you’ve hit the GS 450 soft cap, but the Title Update 3 patch includes a simple, straightforward path you should take to level up your Division agent and reach 490 — or all the way up to 500.

Getting to GS 500 should be much easier now, and below we’ll list all the activities you’ll want to farm to reach GS 490… and what to keep doing to finally hit GS 500. If you’re looking for help grinding up to GS 450, check out our GS 450 guide here, all the standard advice still applies while you’re working your way to the top of the GS ladder. Things are just slightly different once you hit WT5.

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How To Farm Gear Score 500 & Prepare For The New Raid | GS 450-500 Guide

For this guide, we’re focusing exclusively on WT5 farming to reach GS 500. If you haven’t reached WT5 yet, you need to complete the campaign, then replay all three lairs to unlock the Tidal Basin. Complete the Tidal Basin, and you’ll find yourself in WT5.

Up until the Tidal Point, GS farming is fairly straightforward. It’s still simple. You’ll just want to farm these activities exclusively to increase GS.

In TU3 (Title Update 3) all activities have a higher chance of dropping gear with a higher average GS than your character. Your GS average is calculated by items that you are carrying — NOT your displayed GS. Keep high GS items in your inventory. You do not need to equip them to find higher and higher level GS equipment.

To increase your GS Score from 450-490, or 490-500, you’ll want to focus on completing the following events and activities. Purple tier rarity items can only drop up-to GS 490.

Best Activities To Farm For Higher GS

Standard enemies and containers will not drop higher GS loot. You need to focus on specific tasks to get higher and higher GS loot from activities.

Daily Priority Hard / Challenging missions now give higher level rewards. Play these missions daily. Only end-mission rewards are valuable. Everything else will be junk.

Certain bosses will drop improved GS loot. Stronghold Bosses, Heroic Mission bosses, and Bounty bosses — focus on these types of bosses for useful GS drops. Bounties provided by the Snitch NPC are especially good for GS farming.

Control Point Alert Level 4 reward containers are especially good for finding high GS loot. To enhance a CP’s Alert Level, check the CP location on the map — mouse over it and you’ll see any events linked to the CP. Complete those events and the Alert Level will increase. At Alert Level 4, CPs are much, much more difficult. But the rewards are very good. Bring a team or be prepared for a tough fight.

Finally, Dark Zones drop more Contaminated Loot, and Contaminated Loot will ALWAYS be a higher GS than your current average. Contaminated Loot will never be lower than your average — that makes Dark Zones actually viable for farming.

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