1) Crucible kills - The handle counts (and it's a blast to be honest.)
2) Find a ghost that tracks your material and find a material. After you've found one, use a sniper to scope in and it'll give you the direction of all the materials in that area. It lasts until you leave that planet.
3) Switch other swords over to same character you've already completed to skip over the majority of the quest (you 'start' the quest collecting materials.)
Also, I do know that a majority of you probably know this, but I was just feeling nice for a second and decided to help those who didn't.
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Last part bolt caster