Destiny

[Hot Heart]

http://i.imgur.com/cF7tOUJ.gifv

[TheMightyEthan]

What's the best way to work toward the new level cap? Should I bother ascending my old gear or just look for new gear?

[Strangelove]

All the old gear is still the best gear. The only shit that comes close is the trials of Osiris stuff.

Do PoE 32 and buy the helmet using the armor core you get. Ascend an exotic armor piece that isn't a helmet using an exotic shard. After that you need 2 etheric lights to level up your 2 remaining pieces of armor that isn't taken up by the helmet or exotic piece.

Luckily, PoE 34 is easy this week. If you have two characters you can run that twice and get 2 etheric light.

 

Also do the nightfall. Etheric light can drop from there too.

 

 

And finally, iron banner will give you an etheric light once you rank up to level 3 and again at level 5.

[Hot Heart]

What's the best way to work toward the new level cap? Should I bother ascending my old gear or just look for new gear?

 

Simplest answer is: look for new gear (but keep the old stuff in case).

 

Firstly, the older stuff might have better perks or stats for certain instances; perks you might not easily come across on the new gear. However, etheric light isn't massively available, and especially so if you're still level 29. You won't be able to tackle the Nightfall, and you'll probably get murdered a bunch in Iron Banner and Trials of Osiris (because level is taken into account).

 

If you can find some people on LFG to drag you through the Nightfall (because it's piss-easy this week) then definitely go for it. The extra experience and rep will come in handy. If I'm on, I'm down for helping provided there's another high level player to make a third.

 

Since you didn't play The Dark Below, you'll benefit hugely from buying some new vendor gear, which will bump your light level up loads and probably help you get onto the more rewarding activities. You'll also need some new weapons, since anything doing less than 320-ish is not so hot.

 

Of course, it probably means playing a load of simpler stuff just to get vanguard marks for buying gear.

 

My main advice for some sort of progress is:

1. Start by playing the highest level strike playlist you can. This should give you marks and hopefully some weapon/armour drops. Buy whatever helmet, gloves, boots you can from the vanguard (I think you have an exotic chestpiece, which we'll come to in a bit). Also tackle the HoW story missions if you can, since the first will give you a new 331 special weapon.

2. Grab the Reef bounties. The blue ones mean hanging around in patrol, waiting for a "Pack of Wolves is prowling" message and killing waves of guys until you get the boss guy (try and find a group of people nearby also waiting to do it). After you kill him, you get an "ether key". Somewhere in that area a special chest will have spawned, race to find it before the timer on the key runs down and you should also get some goodies. The chest should have a little golden ray of light shooting up out of it to help spot it.

3. When Xur comes tomorrow (Friday), check out what he's got. Grab an exotic shard and that will allow you to ascend your exotic chestpiece (no exotics require etheric light, so this works for weapons too) which might bump you up a level just for that. Xur might have a better piece of armour too, or if you have enough motes of light, grab an exotic engram and see what that gives you first. If you're short on strange coins, you can run the weekly like before (but now it has matchmaking!) Otherwise...

4. Grind the hell out of level 28 Prison of Elders. If you have treasure keys, you can keep opening the big chest at the end and nabbing some more 331 damage weapons as well as strange coins and motes of light. To start with, you get one key from completing all the HoW story missions, another from the first Reef bounty you complete each week, plus a chance to get one from the small chests to either side of the big chest at the end.

 

If you manage to get to level 32 quick enough, you'll be able to tackle the first PoE challenge and net an armor core, which will enable you to buy this week's highest level piece, which is a helmet. This'll then get you on your way to 33 then 34!

[TheMightyEthan]

When I ascend stuff does it reset that thing's level to 0?

 

*Edit* - Cause I have enough strange coins to ascend my chest as soon as Xur shows up, so if it doesn't reset the thing's level that'll bump me up to 30.

Edited June 4, 2015 by TheMightyEthan

[Hot Heart]

It won't reset anything, no. So you should be good for that.

[CorgiShinobi]

Ethan, if you ever wanted to try Prison of Elders, I've never done the higher levels. I'm not thrilled about LFG stuff, so still have never done the raids. Don't have many gamer friends either, so there's that too.

[TheMightyEthan]

I did VoG a couple times with LFG and it worked well.

[TheMightyEthan]

Alright, got to level 31 on my main, and now I need to start working on Prison of Elders to get Etheric Light for ascending my shit. When does the cap for marks reset? I'm maxed out for this week.

[CorgiShinobi]

Tuesday is the weekly reset for everything. It's why I'm going to be playing my butt off in Iron Banner a little more.

[TheMightyEthan]

That's what I thought.

[Strangelove]

If you play Iron Banner tomorrow and buy that experience buff you should be able to get to rank three(for an etheric light) in handful of matches. I'm guessing it would take about 3 or 4 IB bounties to turn in.

Should be the easiest way.

[TheMightyEthan]

Not a big PvP fan, but I'll consider it.

[Eleven]

I got questions!

 

On my Warlock I got my first blue armor for everything, with light and all. #1 Should I be opening armor engrams for him or saving it for my Hunter and possible Titan? Is there a point to it? Let's say I got Intellect and Discipline already on it. Will I be getting better armor from it (I'm mainly thinking something that holds more light so I can level up) or is it better to just save up on whatever is in the stores and let my alts open them up for them to get better armor?

 

And #2 What do I do with the blue armor/weapons that I don't want? Just break them down for parts after leveling them up?

 

And #3 what are class items for? Are they just for show?

[TheMightyEthan]

1 - You should be looking for purples (Legendaries), they're the next step up from blues (Commons).  And you can have one yellow (Exotic) armor and one yellow weapon equipped at a time, which are for the most part at step of from purples.  If you find purple engrams then open them, but you can be buying equipment too.  As far as blue engrams, if you've got alts that still need a blue armor piece in that category then I'd had it over to them to open, so they can get better gear too.  Otherwise just open them on whichever character finds them.  If you want to really try to be efficient you can open all your extra engrams on the same character to rank up your Cryptarch level faster, but that's more work than I'm willing to put into it.  Purple and yellow armor engrams will give you a random class' armor piece, so it doesn't matter which character you open it on.

 

2 - I just break them down without bothering to level them up.

 

3 - Pretty much just for show.

[Hot Heart]

Alright, got to level 31 on my main, and now I need to start working on Prison of Elders to get Etheric Light for ascending my shit. When does the cap for marks reset? I'm maxed out for this week.

 

You only get Etheric Light from the level 34 and 35 Prison of Elders challenges. What you'll need to do - besides getting lucky with etheric light from nightfalls - is do the 32 challenge to get an armor core and buy the new piece that Variks is selling each week until you can get a full armor set, where each piece has 42 light. That way you'll be able to get to 33 (I think an ascended exotic, one piece of Elders gear and two 36 light pieces will get you to that) and then 34. So, that can still take a couple of weeks.

 

 

Not a big PvP fan, but I'll consider it.

 

Although, again, keep in mind that level advantages are enabled, so you'll be going up against a bunch of level 34 Thorn-users, most likely.

 

 

Eleven, blue armour is kind of stepping stone for the purple/legendary stuff. It's still useful because to upgrade the legendary gear you'll need the hadronic essence you get from dismantling all those blues. I'm at a stage where I have 800+ because I only had one warlock for ages, and my other characters fall short of being able to upgrade bits of purple armour immediately so I do pass all the blue armor engrams to them.

 

Also, those blues might decrypt to strange coins or motes of light. Save those up and look out for a guy called Xur on Fridays and Saturdays. He appears somewhere in one of the social spaces carrying an exotic piece for each class for 14 strange coins, as well as an exotic engram for 23 motes of light. There's a guy on YouTube called DattoDoesDestiny who reviews each week's offerings (and where to find Xur), so you'll get a sense for what's worthwhile. Depending on what DLC you have, I can give you a general idea of what warlock pieces are good.

 

If you've finished the story, it sounds like a case of doing the strike playlist suited to your level to get vanguard marks for buying some purple gear while hopefully getting some decent drops along the way. The daily heroic story looks pretty rewarding too, so if you ever see me online and I'm free, I don't mind running you through that (since it's level 32).

Edited June 8, 2015 by Hot Heart

[TheMightyEthan]

 

Alright, got to level 31 on my main, and now I need to start working on Prison of Elders to get Etheric Light for ascending my shit. When does the cap for marks reset? I'm maxed out for this week.

 

You only get Etheric Light from the level 34 and 35 Prison of Elders challenges. What you'll need to do - besides getting lucky with etheric light from nightfalls - is do the 32 challenge to get an armor core and buy the new piece that Variks is selling each week until you can get a full armor set, where each piece has 42 light. That way you'll be able to get to 33 (I think an ascended exotic, one piece of Elders gear and two 36 light pieces will get you to that) and then 34. So, that can still take a couple of weeks.

 

I thought you could get Etheric Light from the chest at the end on any difficulty?

[Hot Heart]

Nope. Wish it were true. Only things you'll get from end chest are Queen's weapons, motes, strange coins, and exotics. I thought it was only weapons and not armour, but I got some exotic hunter boots last night.

[TheMightyEthan]

Poop, so it's gonna be a long time before I'll have all my Legendary weapons either ascended or replaced...

 

*Edit* - Is the 32 PoE going to be doable at level 31?  The reason I ask is because I'll have to get 2 more 36 Light armor pieces to get to 32, and they cost 120 marks each, and you can only get 100 marks each week...

 

*Edit 2* - I may look at the Iron Banner despite the level issues, because if I could get one Etheric Light then ascending one of my old Legendary Armor pieces would be enough to bump me up to 32.

 

Man, it's weird that I have Exotic Shards coming out of my ears, but Etheric Light is so hard to find.

Edited June 8, 2015 by TheMightyEthan

[Strangelove]

32 is possible at 31. The boss is kind of bullshit though, but if you have 2 34s or 33s with you who know what theyre doing it should be easy as anything else.

34 is actually easier than 32, as far as skill goes. 2 good 34s could probably get you through that one too since youll probably die a lot.

 

All thanks to ghorn. For the most part.

[TheMightyEthan]

I actually have a maxed out Thorn, and as soon as Xur gets back I'll be able to ascend it.  I didn't realize it was considered good now, back when I last played it was kind of lame because it had a small clip and took so long to reload.

[CorgiShinobi]

I actually have a maxed out Thorn, and as soon as Xur gets back I'll be able to ascend it.  I didn't realize it was considered good now, back when I last played it was kind of lame because it had a small clip and took so long to reload.

 

It's a very popular PvP choice after its buff from long ago. Mainly, the DoT is satisfying on a Hand Cannon because when an enemy runs off and they still have a sliver of health left, it finishes the job. Also an easy way of earning Postmortem. Hawkmoon is still a good choice (on Playstation), but unless you're getting and landing those lucky shots, Thorn is the next best Hand Cannon.

 

 

P.S.

I don't know if someone still has it floating out there, but it was leaked on the subreddit that The Taken King is releasing Sept 15 and will introduce the remaining third subclass. The mods asked for proof, guy PM'd them proof, the mods were shocked and could only say it was legit. So legit that it's no longer posted on the subreddit.

 

EDIT: http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/391rhj/the_taken_king_will_be_released_on_91515_spoiler/

Edited June 8, 2015 by Atomsk88

[Hot Heart]

This week's 34 PoE boss is such an awful design. Urrox and Qodron were actually p cool to play legit once you figured them out, but Kaliks Prime is just pure bullshit unless you burn the fucker with Gjallahorn.

 

At least it means a super-easy 32 next week...

 

That's the only problem with trying to do 32s as a 31 (or 34s as a 33); a few of the mechanics really rely on that extra damage dealing. And Qodron really requires an Invective and Icebreaker somewhere in your fireteam.

 

 

I actually have a maxed out Thorn, and as soon as Xur gets back I'll be able to ascend it.

 

And, yeah, Thorn got altered and everyone loves it now. If you've got a load of exotic shards, you shouldn't need Xur to ascend it, right?

Edited June 8, 2015 by Hot Heart

[TheMightyEthan]

Well, I had a load of them.  I may have gone a little ascend-crazy...

[TheMightyEthan]

What we know so far about The Taken King:

 

 

Apparently Oryx leads a new enemy force called the Taken.  I'm gonna go out on a limb and predict right now that the Taken are the same race as the Fallen, just somehow conquered or enslaved by Oryx/the Hive.