As monsters in Remnant 2 get stronger, so too must the player's arsenal of conventional and not-so-terrestrial weapons. Upgrading equipment is the primary way of scaling into the later stages of the game, and everyone should be polishing up their favorite sword or rifle as they traverse Remnant 2's various worlds.
The upgrading process in this game is fairly simple, but there are some things that aren't explained at all. Getting Hardened Iron, for example, is ridiculously easy, but players may not be able to see this resource until well into the tail-end of their first playthrough. Here's how to find them.
Where to Find Hardened Iron
Hardened Iron is the final tier of upgrade material in Remnant 2, and players will need a ton of these if they want to max out their core gear pieces. They can be obtained the same way as the previous tiers of Iron, which is by simply defeating monsters or picking up random Hardened Iron pieces scattered around the game's many maps.
What Remnant 2 doesn't say is that players need to meet a certain condition in order to make Hardened Iron drop more frequently. This condition is to simply have at least three weapons at or close to upgrade level 15 (+8 for unique weapons). Hardened Iron will become more common once the game detects that the player is actually in need of it.
Difficulty has no apparent bearing on how frequently Hardened Iron spawns, though loot drops in general tend to be more generous on harder modes. Players can easily get their main weapon set maxed out on Survivor difficulty if they grind hard enough. Still, farming on Veteran or Nightmare mode is the best when it comes to stockpiling resources.
Another easy way to get Hardened Iron is to simply buy them from Cass, the player's friend from the tutorial section who has since settled in Ward 13 as a junk vendor. She keeps a healthy stock of weapon upgrade materials in her inventory that replenishes after some time. Players may need to make campaign progress before Cass starts selling Hardened Iron in larger quantities, however.
Normal weapons (the ones with free mod slots) require 28 Hardened Iron to go from +15 to +20. Meanwhile, unique weapons (like those made from boss materials) need only 25 Hardened Iron total to reach +10. The latter category of weapons does require Lumenite Crystals, and they tend to be more expensive to max out compared to regular equipment.
Remnant 2 is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.