With the release of Thorn, a lot of people will be wanting to get their hands on it, both for PvP and PvE shenanigans. Not only can this weapon 3-crit as a 150 RPM, with the Soul Devourer perk active, it can 2-crit anyone under -6- resilience. In PvE, Thorn has fantastic add clearing potential with the boosted damage, and the resulting remnants can keep the mag topped off, for non-stop soul devouring fun. So, how do we go from here to there? Read on. Step 0: Yes, you read that right. This is because you need to actually get eh quest, and it's not marked anywhere. So load into the Trostland landing zone, RDZ (No, it's not at the Drifter). Run from the starting point into the mines (the ones you went through to get the transmitter to Hawthorne in the story) until you reach the elevator that you broke earlier in the game. There is a little teleporter there: stand on it and hold the interaction button / key. You will teleport to a different area. Run directly up the hill, ignoring enemies until you hit the big blue barrier. Once you do, move over to the edge of the cliff, and keep following it around. Once at the end of a very short narrow hidden path, you can look up and slightly left, and see a little hole in the wall ahead. Jump in there, keep moving forward, and you'll come to an abandoned camp sight. Look around if you like, but eventually, go over to the fire pit ashes. There, you'll be prompted to sift through them; hold your action button / key to do so. This will reward the exotic quest item Melted Hunk of Metal. You have officially started the Thorn quest. A Melted Hunk of Metal, Step 1: The first step in this quest is to go back to the Tower, and show the item to Banshee. After a short dialog, the Quest item will automatically be updated to the next stage. The Essence, Step 2: Here's where the work actually begins. You need to collect Hadronic Essence. There are 3 options: complete tasks for Asher Mir, kill Warlocks in Crucible, or complete Nightfalls, with Nightfalls being marked as the most efficient option. I personally recommend doing Nightfalls. My method is Void Singe / Heavyweight, Telesto, Tracking Bad Omens, and Void subclass. Anything in the Infinite Forest is great, since you can skip 50% of the strike by just running through it. As soon as your special and heavy ammo are full, sprint to the boss encounter, dump supers / heavy / Telesto shots to get a fast kill and run it again. Each completion will award 15 Essence. Do 3 of these, and then a single task for Asher, which will give to the last 5 you need. The Steel, Step 3: Almost identical to the last step, but you are collecting Plasteel Plating. The options are killing Titans in crucible, doing tasks for Sloane, or completing Heroic Blind Wells, with Well completions being the most efficient. As before, Head to the Well, and just start slaying out. Be a dude, not a douche, and grab some tier 3 and 4 activation items before heading in. Each completion will give 10 Plating. You can either run 4 Wells and 2 bounties, or just finish up all 5 there. The timing is about the same either way, but Wells are super easy. The Binding, Step 4: Same thing, different planet. This one requires either Hunter kills in Crucible, Ana Bray bounties, or Escalation Protocol waves for Sapphire Wire. This is a little different scenario, as the bounties and activity are on the same planet. Grab them all up, and then do Escalation Protocol waves. both the bounties and the wave completions will reward 5 wires, so completing all 3 and 7 waves will finish this step. Either do the first few waves solo, or run all the way through if there is a group present, whichever is best for you. Weaponizing the Unknown, Step 5: This is the only step that requires Crucible, and there is no way around it. The quest states that you need to kill guardians with void abilities or hand cannons. IB and Comp give faster progress, and precision streaks with void hand cannons gives bonus progress. Best thing to do, get another person or two and go into Quickplay, or jump into rumble matches. Use the Ikelos hand cannon or a good rolled Kindled Orchid, and click some heads. Make sure your class is set to void, you have a void heavy, etc, but your main goal is to get more than one kill in a life with hand cannon head shots. It seems like progress is almost doubled to tripled this way. Good players can get 5-10% per game easily, while less experienced players might be in that 1-5% range. I wish I could tell you there was another way, but there's not Play cautious, run from bad fights, stay alive, and try to work on streaks as much as possible. It's not about the kills, it's about the quality of those kills, so getting a 5-kill streak of precision kills will reward you more than getting 7 normal kills, etc. Good news, for the first time, a Thorn quest has no death penalties, so it's just a matter of grinding to get it. Good luck, and don't get discouraged. Edit: as has been mentioned by more than one person, if you hate PvP that much, wait for Mayhem. Suit up with a void super, Telesto, void heavy, and just go nuts. Nade spam, voop, rocket, and melee your way to victory, and apologize to no one. Something Yet Remains, Step 6: This one is a gimmie. Just go to the Farm (its in the upper-right corner of the EDZ map menu if you've forgotten) and talk to Tyra. This will automatically update you to the next and final step. The Chasm of Screams, Step 7: After talking to Tyra, you'll get access to an epic-level reprisal of the Savathun's Song strike on Titan. I won't spoil anything in it, but it's definitely harder and different than the last time you were here. There is also no matchmaking, so you either bring a team, or go it solo. Whichever you choose, complete the reprised strike, and the exotic hand cannon Thorn is now yours. Hopefully this helps some people out, and allows you to avoid the majority of the unneeded Crucible steps, reducing the frustrations of the PvE only and never-PvPers to a minimum. Those that have local friends that are better in those activities might want to consider bribing them to complete the Crucible step for them (I have offered to do it for any player at work any time a Crucible quest comes up, and I've done a lot of them over the years). I find pizza and beer (if age-appropriate) is a great motivator. In any case, good luck, go get yourself a Thorn of your own.