Knowing where to find the good loot in The Division is essential if you want to equip your agent with the most powerful weapons and gear. Fortunately, there are several ways to get the best loot in the game, each of which presents a unique challenge. Whether you’re an explorer, someone who prefers PvE, a big fan of PvP, or just want to buy your gear directly there’s an option for you.

Story Missions

Story missions are a great source of gear as you’re levelling, but also offer up some good when you replay them on higher difficulties. Once you’ve finished a story mission you’ll be able to go back and replay it on a different difficulty setting.

Upping the difficulty will net you better loot. The type of loot you will receive for completing it will be displayed beside the difficulty level at the mission select screen. Just be ready for a fight. Even the lower level missions on a higher difficulty can be challenging, you may want to bring a friend.

Find Gear Vendors

A lot of great gear and other loot can simply be purchased from the game’s various vendors, but you’re going to have to leave the safety of your home base. Dark Zoe vendors have the best gear for sale, often offering up several legendarys as well as a selection of rares and other high quality items.

You’ll find them in each of the entrances to the Dark Zone, with each entrance having its own unique vendor with their own unique stock. To purchase the items, you’ll need to have enough Dark Zone currency and a high enough Dark Zone rank.

There are also vendors in each of the Dark Zone safe houses that have their own stock. It’s worth checking each of them out before spending your Dark Zone points in case there’s a better offer at one of the other vendors.

Vendor stock has a timed rotation. If an item you want currently isn’t in stock, check back when the timer each vendor displays has expired.

Picking locked doors

As you explore the world of the Division you’ll run across various locked doors that require a lock pick to open. Behind these doors you’ll usually find some high quality loot which is a grade above what you would normally come across in that area.

To open them you’ll need lock picks. Unfortunately, the only way to acquire lock picks is via random drops from when you’re out kill bad guys or in loot containers scattered around the map, so keep your eyes peeled.

Note: Most lock picked areas will have a higher minimum contamination level than the outside area. Make sure you have the appropriate contamination filter.

Dark Zone Keys (Chests)

As you kill NPCs and other players in the Dark Zone, you’ll collect Dark Zone keys. These keys are used for opening Dark Zone chests which you’ll find in random areas around the Dark Zone (usually in hard to reach places).

On most chests you will also need to be a certain Dark Zone rank, so if you’re too low, head back out and kill some NPCs or other players until you’ve reached the required level. Just be wary of other players, if you get killed there is a chance they will take your Dark Zone keys.