Edit: Made it to the first page ladies and gents! I'd like to thank all of you for helping spread the word, just a classy bunch of guardians! Bang up! Alright let me start by saying I'll put this here because I'm still seeing the posts about people not being able to find anyone in the forge and not getting drops/ can only play one round. It's essentially a guide to matchmake/ play forge for those who don't already know. Hopefully it gets up voted for people to see and my end goal is to help some fellow guardians who are frustrated with the forge or maybe don't understand it. I can't tell you how many runs of forge I've done but it's ALOT. I mean hours of heavy grindage. EDIT: just checked I'm at 238 and counting. So yeah, a lot haha. Through all of this I've been able to get a metric -blam!- ton of engrams, blue and legendary, The full gear set and a bunch of duplicates of it, three snipers, and the fusion rifle. EDIT: I've gotten everything by now multiple times each, sitting at 299 runs. Now here's a bit of leveling info for those that don't know. While doing the forge always wear your highest light level pieces, the in forge drops will be just below, at or above whatever light that piece is. I know this is fairly common knowledge but there are fellow players that don't know this. Same goes for decrypting engrams. Blues up to 340 and purples up to 365. When you do get a legendary from the cryptarc check it and if it's higher light equip it, that way if you get another legendary drop of the same type it should be higher light. This is up to 365 for those not there yet. The forge is the fastest way to 365 in my opinion. And will drop up to 385. The highest I've had an item drop for me so far past 365 is 369 cloaks, I've gotten like ten of the damn things now but won't seem to go higher for me. I've heard others getting higher light drops on other pieces but I haven't had that luck yet. Now the drops you can get in forge are fairly random but from my experience I found class items drop like crazy. And the forge exclusives seem to be frequent enough if you are willing to put the time in. Alright so to start off this is a method I've seemed to have excellent luck with getting matchmade in forge almost every single time. Not everyone is going to be mid activity when you get there, I've ran into many groups or single people just waiting there. Sometimes they have an offering and are just waiting for additional people, or they don't have one and are just waiting. Stick around for a bit to find out what it is, or stick in your offer to get the party started. To get this to work all you have to do is simply crouch walk from the tunnel/ hallway leading to the forge. Crouchwalk right from the start of it all the way, doing this ensures you are moving slow enough to be matchmade with others. Once you reach halfway up the stairs to the forge you should load in with someone. If they are mid activity use a splicer key and dive in. Or use your offer if you have one. If it's a dead end and nobody has offerings, turn around and run back to the archons keep. Once you hit the tunnel entrance fire up your sparrow and cut a lap around the ramps that lead up to the Building you are in. This means you go down the right side, hang a left, go past the patrol beacon and up the ramp on the other side, back into the building to the tunnel. Once you reach the tunnel crouch walk again. I've found this to be almost a Billy Mays guarantee you get matchmade every time. I've also been told that going through the tunnel with the SIVA "veins" to the warrens yields the same results. Go down the tunnel, kill a few fallen and slowly make your way back up. I think the key here is to spend the right amount of time away and enough time slowly walking back to match up with someone.- thanks JayCally! The benefit of doing it this way is the fact that a splicer key is not required to join in the gangbang! Which is great! Have not tried it myself but have confirmation it is just as consistent. IMPORTANT!!!!! So once you are in there with a group kicking ass the offerings will drop like mad. BUT MAKE SURE YOU RUN AROUND THE FORGE AND LOOK FOR THEM ONCE YOUVE FINISHED!!! OR TAKE A QUICK LOOK IN YOUR INVENTORY! Sometimes they can be easy to miss in the mayhem and I've found them in my inventory without knowing I even picked one up! I've found the damn things drop almost anywhere in that place and it's really easy to miss them because they can hide quite well. It's a white engram half the size of a regular one, and once you get a bunch of primary ammo packs and whatever else all over the floor make sure you take a good look to find it! Sometimes it's just a key as well but mainly offerings. I've even had a key and two offering drops in one round. I don't know how many times I've seen people complete and just jump right back to the offering computer without even looking around for an offering drop. LOOK FOR THEM TO KEEP IT GOING!! Once a group is there you can go for quite a long time if everyone finds the drops, although there are times where everyone runs out or leaves. But no biggie, just run back out, cut a lap and have a gay old time! EDIT: since the drop rate was increased I've noticed sometimes they will drop right into your inventory upon completion, but I don't think it's automatic. Just added to the loot table for completion. This is the strategy I like to use to play forge. it fits my play style well and you can be effective from this position throughout the entire forge. I'm not the fly around everywhere melee type. You may not find this appealing but play it however you like. This is just something I've found works great. I'm much more effective holding an area. Once an offering is active, run off the platform to the left and find the corner by the left dome. I usually play just off the left side of the closest door to that corner. From this spot you can hit 5 of the spawning doors and both upper ledges. Pretty much shoot everything from here. And it provides some great cover if shit ends up getting real hairy. IF YOU WANT FIRE AXES - destroy the SIVA cluster in the middle dome, once your ghost says "I think the fallen are up to something" or " the fallen are trying to tempt us" one of the domes on the sides of the middle one will open up. There will be another cluster in this one, destroy it and axes will spawn in the opposite dome a short time later. Alright so that's it! Try this out and you should be able to forge til your fingers fall off! Sorry for the giant wall of text. Hopefully it ends up helping someone out! Thanks for reading! Edit - no matter your light level I suggest to try using any offer that you have. Wether it's green, blue or purple it never hurts to give it a go, I don't know the complete loot table for forge but you get pretty much the same drops from each. Plus it's a chance for another offering drop to keep it going even if you are unable to complete it. For the perfected offerings three people that know the drill at adequate light levels can pull it off easy but most of the time with random people a larger group gets it done. ANOTHER-another edit: This is also IMPORTANT INFO! - If you are the one that starts the offering DO NOT RESPAWN if you can, wait for a revive. If the starter of the offering dies and re spawns the whole event fails. I have died on a perfected that I started trying to desperately drop the boss in the last 30 seconds, but just sat there and the crew ended up pulling it off, and I still got good drops. As long as you are in the event, alive or waiting for revive it stays active. I'd also like to point out I've done all of this solo, i found two others from LFG once for about 10 runs and had to leave. You don't need to have a fire team to do this it's something you can do at your own pace, which is why I find it so appealing. Fire up some tunes, grab a few beer and have a blast! Another edit: I have seen some questions about whether or not you have to damage the boss to get loot. You do not, as long as the boss dies you've got a chance for a drop wether you shoot the boss or not. You are contributing just as much to the effort cleaning up adds for higher DPS players on perfected offerings! EDIT- Straight from the sept. 29 patch notes boys and girls: Archon's Forge Quarantine Patrols will now always drop an Archon’s Forge Offering upon killing the Splicer Priest in the second phase of the Activity Archon’s Forge has a higher chance to drop Offerings upon completion Sounds like good news!