Guess what? It's not by speed running strikes. You want to increase your overall chances over time, not the value of your single chance. This is a well known concept in RNG item farming. Enable 3 of Coins. Then: [u]Farm Taken Champions[/u] Go on patrol on Earth, Venus or Mars and fight the Taken Champions. They spawn like water. Don't wait in one spot. Work some patrols that move you from area to area and when you see the message in the bar on your screen they are coming, stop, and stay in that area (or go back if you were just leaving). If you have never done this before, when the Taken spawn you have to kill three Taken lieutenants. They spawn randomly in three specific spots. Generally, left, right and center of the area. I usually start by checking center. If people are killing them fast (you see them being killed in your onscreen text feed) just stay where you are and let them work, while you get ready for the champion, who could spawn anywhere. Pop your heavy synth, make sure you've got your 3oC on. Pro tip: Petra has a bounty for one of these champions every day. This should be the very first one you do as you're most likely to have help. She's also got a bounty for Taken lieutenants, so that can help you pick which planet to farm champs. You'll finish that bounty just through the act of farming. Which leads to my next pro tip. Pro tip: if you're running solo, and the Taken Champ spawns, and you're alone, which you usually shouldn't be, you might not finish the boss solo. If no one joins you when the champ spawns after fighting it for a few minutes, move on to another area. Another pro tip incoming. Pro tip: learn the areas where they can spawn, keep track of where other guardians tend to be. For example, almost no one hangs out at the Rubicon base on Mars. Taken champ spawns there, this is usually not the best place to work cause it's a little out of the way. Learn the common areas people fight Taken and work those. Pro tip: put on a Memory of Gheleon and a ghost that gives you materials for engram drops so you can increase materials and glimmer farming as a side benefit. Also, chest will sometimes give you strange coins, which, can feed into your next payment to Xur for 3 of Coins. [u]Farm the Cabal and Hive Champion on the Dreadnaught [/u] Use the Wormsinger Rune. A bunch of Hive are going to drop from a ship. Kill them. A huge Ogre will spawn. You can solo this guy. Chance for an exotic drop right there. Junk the Wormfeeder Rune if you don't want to or need to collect calcified fragments anymore. Use the Skyburner Command Beacon. A cabal ship will drop Cabal. Kill them. A huge Cabal Champion will then come out the doors of the ship. Also easy enough to solo. Unless you want to do more patrols, junk that Skyburner Deployment Codes. Guess what? Pro tip: Both summoning items are random drops from yellow Hive and Cabal, respectively. While the drop may not be fast to come, doing the bosses are very fast. I usually don't farm the Rune or codes, if I happen to get one from doing a patrol bounty on the dreadnaught anyway, I use it right then and there. The reason I junk the feeder Rune and deploy codes is just so I have a better chance of getting the champion Rune and codes. Also, they are a little pointless to follow through on anyway, as I noted above. A lot of work for a meh chest. Addendum: there is an Ultra Knight inside the Cabal ship on the Dreadnaught. If you have a friend, you kill the adds in the room, keep watch for two yellow psion operates. Some say leave these for last. Killing on will open a room on one side, killing the other opens a room on the other. Both little rooms have a console. Activate the consoles at this and time, and the door to the shield brothers strike part of the ship will open. Fight past the bride and there will be an Ultra Knight there that awards a one time emblem. There is a way to get into the room solo, there's a video out there that shows you. Basically the left of the door has a little opening you can jump and boost through to get to the other side. No need to kill the adds. [u]Challenge of Elders[/u] This may be really time consuming if you solo it, which I don't recommend. But if you have a three man fire team, sometimes a two man depending on modifiers like catapult, killing the bosses is very fast. The key is to DPS the heck out of the boss after a wave so that you have less waves of adds to deal with. Three chances for an exotic drop right there, with a good team can be done in about ten minutes. Basically, forget the scoring, and focus on the positive modifiers. If you're getting a grenade back every 5-10 seconds, why are you not throwing it? If you're farming these bosses, you'll hit the score for a package from Variks anyway, and get guns you probably don't have. Plus he has bounties which are much faster to finish with a fire team on comms than randoms in the 41 elders. [u]Crucible![/u] Some people don't know you can get an exotic at the end of crucible match. Pick modes that may finish fast like Mayhem or Supremacy. My final word: why am I telling you this? Because strikes are [b]content[/b], not farming to burn through, and they are inefficient for exotics farming. I like keeping strikes as a challenge and experience. Teaching someone how to do strikes is very painful when you have a third person who is just burning through it to get an exotic chance. If you're farming strikes for strike loot, that's a different story. Personally, grab a fire team for that is my opinion. There are tons of people looking for what you're looking for, too. [u]Addendum: Checkpoint Farming[/u] There is a great post on this already: https://www.bungie.net/en-gb/Forums/Post/215756108?sort=0&page=0&path=1 Note the quote from Luke Smith about how 3oC works. I think that I've had more success with exotics on the Taken because they always take a certain amount of time before they disappear and most runs hit the sweet spot. Iron Tomb Farming still seems possible given comments below if you just want straight exotics but it's a lonely grind. Load up the Iron Tomb mission, work to the boss fight, kill a mutant, pop a three of coins, repeat, kill yourself before mission end so you respawn at the boss fight check point, avoiding restarting the mission. The reason I didn't include this initially is because this fight can be a little difficult for newer guardians, and according to the checkpoint Farming post above, this has already been nerfed. Also, you can get other stuff done using the above methods given rank up packages will happen with completing patrols, bounties, et cetera.