The second week of Destiny 2’s Into the Light brings more fan-favorite weapons back to the game–including The Mountaintop, a breech-loading grenade launcher that dominated the Crucible for years after its release. While the new version of The Mountaintop isn’t quite the force of terror the original was, it’s still a pretty powerful option for your Special weapon slot, whether in player-vs.-player or player-vs.-environment content.
As with the other reprised weapons in the Brave arsenal, it’s possible to earn both a curated version of The Mountaintop and random rolls of the gun, which brings new options to the fore with a new perk pool. Here’s everything you need to know to unlock The Mountaintop, how to farm more rolls on it, and which copies of the gun you’ll want to keep for your god roll collection.
How To Unlock The Mountaintop
As with the other weapons in the Brave arsenal released in Into the Light, you can get The Mountaintop by completing quests in the Hall of Champions and taking part in the new Onslaught activity. As with the other weapons, you’ll first need to complete the Feats of Strength quest with Lord Shaxx in order to unlock the full potential of the Hall of Champions. That also means knocking out the first weapon-specific quest you can pick up from Shaxx’s right-hand bot, Arcite 99-40, called Stranger Danger.
The second week of Into the Light sees the release of The Mountaintop and Midnight Coup, but to get them as rewards for completing Onslaught, you’ll first need to unlock them. With Feats of Strength done, you’re now able to pick up weapon quests from Arcite that cover all the available Brave arsenal weapons, including The Mountaintop.
Arcite’s Climbing the Mountaintop quest will unlock The Mountaintop. Like the other weapon quests, it has two different means of completing it:
- Rapidly defeat combatants using Breech-Loaded Grenade Launchers anywhere in the system, with bonus progress for rapid final blows in Onslaught, or:
- Defeat Guardians using Grenade Launchers
Grab a wave-frame grenade launcher like Forbearance to make quick progress on the quest, especially in Onslaught. Note that heavy grenade launchers won’t count for the quest, though–you need to use a breech-loader for progress to count.
Once you finish the Climbing the Mountaintop quest, The Mountaintop will start appearing as a random reward in Onslaught activities. You can also visit the hologram of Shaxx holding The Mountaintop to “attune” the weapon, which will increase the chance of receiving The Mountaintop from rewards chests while playing Onslaught.
Completing the quest will also net you your first version of The Mountaintop–Bungie’s curated roll on the gun, which is a pretty solid offering for PvE.
The Mountaintop Curated Perks
- Barrel: Hard Launch
- +15 Velocity, -10 Stability, -5 Blast Radius
- Magazine: Spike Grenades
- Grenades fired from this weapon do increased damage on direct hits
- First Column: Lead From Gold
- Picking up heavy ammo also grants ammo for this weapon
- Second Column: One For All
- Hitting three different targets with this weapon increases damage for a moderate duration
- Origin Perk: Indomitability
- Kills with this weapon provide grenade energy if you’re using a Light subclass, or melee energy if you’re using a Dark subclass
The Mountaintop God Rolls
The original version of The Mountaintop required completing a lengthy quest and was a PvP monster. The weapon shoots its grenades in a straight line thanks to the Micro-Missile perk (or Micro-Missile frame in the new version), which allows it to be a highly accurate way to deliver explosives. With the new group of perks available on the Brave arsenal version of The Mountaintop, it’s also more viable as a PvE weapon, while still being pretty formidable in PvP.
While there are a few viable combinations for The Mountaintop, in PvE, it can be solid for clearing weak enemies or dealing damage to tougher foes like bosses, depending on your preference. In PvP, the accuracy and high velocity of the grenades makes it great for slugging opposing Guardians. The Mountaintop won’t one-shot opponents like it used to, but it can still inflict some serious pain on the other team.
The Mountaintop PvE God Roll
- Barrel: Quick Launch
- +10 Velocity, +15 Handling
- Magazine: Spike Grenades
- Grenades fired from this weapon do increased damage on direct hits; +10 Stability
- First Perk: Auto-Loading Holster, Demolitionist
- Auto-Loading Holster: The holstered weapon is reloaded after a short period
- Demolitionist: Kills with this weapon generate grenade energy; using a grenade reloads this weapon
- Second Perk: Frenzy or Recombination
- Frenzy: Being in combat for an extended period increases damage, handling, and reload speed for this weapon until you’re out of combat
- Recombination: Elemental kills increase the damage of this weapon’s next shot
- Masterwork: Velocity
There are a bunch of potentially solid PvE perk combinations for The Mountaintop, depending on what you want to use it for. Auto-Loading Holster is a good general pick, since it’s always nice to have a grenade ready to shoot whenever you need it, while mitigating the need to worry about the speed of your reload. Demolitionist is also a good choice, especially with the synergy you get from Indomitability while using a Light subclass, helping you to get grenades back quicker and use them to skip reloading. Frenzy is a reliable boost to several stats, including damage, without requiring you to do anything to activate it, while Recombination can be great for making The Mountaintop hit hard against tougher enemies like Champions.
If you want to go all-in on grenades, though, there’s also Adrenaline Junky to pair with Demolitionist, and if you prefer to use The Mountaintop for clearing smaller enemies, One For All and Ambitious Assassin can help you fling more grenades quickly with additional damage.
The Mountaintop PvP God Roll
- Barrel: Quick Launch
- +10 Velocity, +15 Handling
- Magazine: High-Velocity Rounds or Spike Grenades
- High-Velocity Rounds: +10 Velocity, +10 Reload Speed
- Spike Grenades: Grenades fired from this weapon do increased damage on direct hits; +10 Stability
- First Perk: Auto-Loading Holster or Impulse Amplifier
- Auto-Loading Holster: The holstered weapon is reloaded after a short period of time
- Impulse Amplifier: Massively increases projectile speed, increases reload speed
- Second Perk: Harmony
- Final blows with other weapons increase this weapon’s damage and performance for a short period of time
- Masterwork: Reload Speed or Handling
The Mountaintop’s effectiveness in PvP is in quickly delivering high damage with explosives, but unlike the original version of the grenade launcher, direct hits will no longer kill Guardians in one shot. That changes the equation on what you want from The Mountaintop, since in just about all cases, you’ll need to quickly swap to another weapon to close out the kill.
The Mountaintop’s strength has always been its accuracy, since it fires grenades in a straight line rather than over an arc like other launchers. Because of that, the higher you can get the Velocity stat, the more accurate and tougher to dodge your grenades can be. Handling is also important for helping with switching weapons on the fly, as is Reload Speed, particularly if you’re not using Auto-Loading Holster.
You might also want to check out the god rolls for The Recluse and make note of everything you need to do to unlock the Superblack shader.