Destiny 2: Forsaken guide: How to get the Ace of Spades Exotic hand cannon

After losing Cayde-6, it’s understandable if you need to take a moment and grieve. But eventually you’ll return to the reality that Destiny 2: Forsaken is a game all about loot. After all, surely Cayde-6 would rather you retrieve his precious hand cannon than morn his passing. Retrieving Cayde-6’s Ace of Spades from Uldren Sov won’t be easy, but boy is it worth it.

In this guide, we’ll teach you how to complete each step for retrieving Ace of Spades, and turning it into your own, personal instrument of death.

Step 1: Get Cayde’s will and finish the campaign

Shortly after you start Forsaken, Banshee-44 will give you Cayde’s last will and testament. This quest will ask you to reclaim the Ace of Spades, which basically means that you need to complete the campaign before doing anything else. Forget about the Ace of Spades for a while, and go have some fun killing barons.

Once the campaign is over, return to Banshee-44 to get started.

Step 2: Invader kills

Banshee-44 will inform you that Cayde’s beloved hand cannon is in bad shape, but he can fix it. To make it the perfect gun for you, he’s going to need you to do some killing for him. The first thing you need to do is go into the new Gambit mode and use a hand cannon to kill Invaders that enter into your realm.

Note that doing the Invading and killing enemy players with a hand cannon does not count. This is an important distinction, as the quest text is extremely confusing and seems to convey the exact opposite. Kill incoming Invaders to your arena. Don’t do the invading yourself.

This quest step is pretty tough, especially if you’re on your own in Gambit. But there are a couple ways to set yourself up for success. First, you want to get a precision hand cannon — the Old Fashioned if you have one — as this will let you quickly kill Invaders from a distance.

Next, you want to win Gambit. Yes, that sounds fairly obvious, but getting to the Primeval stage first will allow your enemies to Invade constantly. With every invasion comes a new chance to progress your quest. Kill your Primeval and wait for the enemies to come pouring in. Keep at it, enjoy Gambit, and you’ll finish it eventually.

Step 3: 250 strike kills with hand cannons

After you get enough Invader kills, Banshee-44 will ask you to hop into some strikes and kill enemies with hand cannons. This step is easy, and is more of a time investment than anything. Keep playing the strike playlist until you earn the 250 hand cannon kills.

If you have a group of three, there is an easy way to cheese this. Go to the map and select a strike — we used the Lake of Shadows strike in the EDZ, since it spawns you near so many Lost Sectors. Load in with your fireteam and ignore the instructions that Zavala or whoever is shouting at you.

Spread out and start running through Lost Sectors in the world, killing as many enemies as you can. This should speed up this step considerably. Try not to start a strike if you don’t have a full team with the same goals. Otherwise, the game will fill in random allies who you’ll abandon to run around like a jerk before the strike even really starts. Not a good experience for that rando.

Step 4: 25 precision hand cannon kills in the Crucible

Ah yes, the PvP step — the part where every PvE player decides that they will never get the Ace of Spades. But fear not, dear reader, for this is much easier than it sounds. Because of the recent Crucible changes, hand cannons now kill very quickly.

Take the same hand cannon that you used in Gambit and jump into the quickplay playlist. Just focus on getting your hand cannon kills. Make sure you’re aiming for the head, since precision kills are the only ones that count.

Step 5: Cayde’s caches

Once you’ve gotten all those crispy headshots, Banshee’ll send you around the universe to find some of Cayde’s old caches. This step is easy, as long as you know where to look.

EDZ caches

Grid View

• Bungie/Activision

• Bungie/Activision

Make your way into Firebase Hades via the small air duct. You’ll find yourself in a familiar area of the original Destiny 2 campaign and the Arms Dealer strike. Make your way outside through the doors, and move toward the landing pad for Cabal ships.

Go between the pipes to the right and across the grating until you reach another landing pad area — the path you take the fuel cell in the Arms Dealer. Now, you’ll want to go in toward the base (the direction that’s closed off in the strike) until you find a dark hallway to your left. Walk forward and look to your right until you pass by a tank. Behind the tank and on some kind of weird pallet will be the Cayde-6 cache.

Io cache

Grid View

• Bungie/Activision

• Bungie/Activision

• Bungie/Activision

Load into the Lost Oasis and make your way up into the Wraith Mines. As soon as you walk into the cave structure and can see the drill, look up to the balcony above you. Make your way up there by running around on the ramp … or just hop on some rocks and parkour.

After landing on the balcony, look toward the drill, and you’ll see the faint glow of a Cayde cache in the distance.

Nessus cache

Grid View

• Bungie/Activision

• Bungie/Activision

• Bungie/Activision

• Bungie/Activision

This is probably the most confusing Cayde cache to find if you’re just looking at a map. You need to go right before you can go left.

Load into the Exodus Black area and take a right toward the Chamber of Sky. Walk into the Sunken Cavern cave behind the shanks and ignore the Vex teleporter on the left. Push forward until you reach a large, circular room. Go until you can see a bronze-looking circle with a glow peaking over the edge. Jump up, look down, and you’ll find the Cayde cache.

The Tangled Shore cache

Grid View

• Bungie/Activision

• Bungie/Activision

• Bungie/Activision

If the map for the Nessus cache is confusing, this one is just downright unhelpful.

Drop in at Thieves’ Landing and ride toward the Jetsam of Saturn. Keep to your left, and drop down into some very creepy Hive caves around the drop ship. Follow the cave path for a long time, past several spaces. Once you reach the end and come up against a dark barrier, you’ll know you’ve made it. Take a step or two back, look to the left wall, and it’ll be sitting in plain sight, thankfully.

Step 6: The mission

This is the easiest step. You’ll need to go to Titan and start a mission. We don’t want to spoil it for you, but in case you get lost, here’s a tip: Keep an eye on the left side of your screen for the blinking message that suggests a chest is nearby. They glow very brightly, but you may need to go a bit out of your way to find them.

Follow your radar and look for any enemies that are around. Find the enemies, and you’ll find some of the less obvious caches sitting under, near, or around them.

Our final tip is to wait for the dialogue to finish before opening another cache, so you don’t cut off any of the dialogue.

Once the mission is finished, you’ll need to return to Banshee-44. Upon your arrival, he’ll hand you the magnificent Ace of Spades. This gun is fantastic and very powerful, so have a blast. You’ve earned it.