Destiny 2 is all about gaining Power and finding that sweet loot. Here are our tips for farming reputation, earning Luminous engrams, applying Legendary mods and more. Destiny 2 makes some subtle but important changes to a loot-based progression system honed over the three years of D1’s refinement. Let’s kick off our Destiny 2 guide…
Destiny 2 is all about gaining Power and finding that sweet loot. Here are our tips for farming reputation, earning Luminous engrams, applying Legendary mods and more.
Destiny 2 makes some subtle but important changes to a loot-based progression system honed over the three years of D1’s refinement. Let’s kick off our Destiny 2 guide with a quick rundown of how to level up fast, what the Power cap is, changes to systems and more.
You can also find more tips and guides for Destiny 2: Forsaken on our ultimate guide page.
We’ve recently rewritten this page to try and clarify Destiny 2’s nebulous endgame levelling system, but we start off with some basics for beginners – so scroll down if you’re in endgame and just looking to escape The Plateau and hit 600. We’ve also got a section on how Legendary mods fit into endgame levelling right at the bottom of the page.
The most important thing you need to know if you’re a newbie is that there are two progression metrics – level and Power. Power is both a measure of your overall progress and the base calculation for how much damage you’ll do with your special abilities – melee, grenade and Super.
Your Power goes up as your overall gear score increases – that is, it is derived from the average attack value of your equipped weapons and the average defence values of your equipped armour. In D1, this concept was known as “Light”.
Power has nothing to do with your level. Your level goes up from one to 50 as you acquire experience from kills and activity rewards, and doesn’t mean much at all. Some activities and equipment pieces are level-gated, but that’s all – and your Power can increase much, much higher than the value you’ll have when you first hit level 50, the current cap.
So, you get it – your goal in Destiny 2 is to get your Power as high as possible so you can kick butt all over the place. How do we do that? In three simple steps. Before we get into that, though, a couple of important warnings: Don’t hoard your engrams to cash in later
Destiny 2 sets loot values on pickup, not decryption. Go cash in your drops as soon as you can, so that your subsequent loot drops are as high value as possible. As long as you don’t dismantle your best gear, you’ll keep getting better drops based on your maximum possible Power. Don’t infuse anything before Step 3
Your next drop will probably make whatever it was redundant, so it’s a waste of resources until you hit The Plateau. Just equip whatever you have handy and pop your favs in the vault to infuse later.
Finish the story campaign as quickly as possible. You’ll hit level 20 for doing so, at the very least. Completing the two DLC available will bump the level cap up to 30, and Forsaken extends this to 50.
I know I just said your level doesn’t matter, but all the best rewards and activities are locked until you reach level 20 and complete the Red War campaign. Your best bet is to achieve both as quickly as possible so you can start reaping your rewards.
Sometimes you’ll hit a level gate in the story campaign and will need to earn XP fast. You can earn XP in any Activity in Destiny 2 you like, but here’s what we suggest if you’re in a hurry: Complete Public Events
Public events award a lot of XP – especially if you trigger Heroic objectives. Unlock and then complete Patrols and Challenges
If you’re far enough through the story that you’re in touch with Cayde-6 and/or Ikora, you can earn extra XP on the side. Challenges are available everywhere as soon as you chat to Ikora on the Farm, but you’ll need to do a little quest for Cayde-6 to unlock Patrol missions. Complete Adventures
Adventures, or side quests, are available at each destination and are the quickest way to fill your boots with XP between missions. Weirdly, later Destinations have easier (lower Power) Adventures than early ones. Be warned, though; some Adventures include story spoilers.
An hour or two of this sort of thing should get you back on track and racing to the end of the campaign.
Before you finish the campaign and reach level 20, you’re reliant on random drops for new loot. Once you pass this point, you open up the world of engrams.
Engrams are loot drops you either have to return to a social space to decrypt or which are unlocked through vendors as a reward for increasing your reputation with them. You earn reputation for completing quests and Challenges related to the vendor’s area of expertise, and for trading in gathered resources and reputation tokens.
Tokens are the most controllable sources of reputation. You need 20 tokens (or in the Gunsmith’s case, weapon parts) to level up and earn a new engram from a vendor. It is very easy to farm engrams by doing whatever the heck you want; nearly every activity rewards reputation tokens you can cash in.
What you want to do is farm engrams, doing whatever you fancy, until you find that your Legendary Engram drops no longer make you more powerful (that’s what we mean when we say “hit The Plateau”, and when you move onto Step 3).
Here’s how we go about earning reputation tokens and collecting loot from level 20 to The Plateau: First, go shopping at region vendors to raise your Power to 200 across the board
With all those story missions under your belt, you should have plenty of Glimmer. Check with the region vendors to see if they can bump your Power with a quick purchase before you start picking up engrams. Region vendor stock is capped at 200 Power, so get everything up to that point before you turn to RNGesus. Raid Lost Sector chests
While you’re out and about, always be sure to open the chests at the bottom of Lost Sectors for better-than-average loot. Complete Challenges
Once you complete the story mission on Io, Ikora will return to the farm and offer Challenges – basically, a set of tasks to complete at each Destination, in Strikes, and in the Quickplay and Competitive Crucible playlists. These challenges reset every day – a bit like the Bounties from D1. Tick them off to earn reputation tokens. Complete Public Events
If you pass a Public Event, stop and participate. Loot can be very good, especially if you trigger a Heroic objective. Earn engrams through reputation levels
Here’s a list of vendors who offer Legendary engrams as rewards, and how you can increase your reputation with them:
Devrim Kay (EDZ region vendor – resources, region tokens, quests) Sloane (Titan region vendor – resources, region tokens, quests) Failsafe (Nessus region vendor – resources, region tokens, quests) Asher (Io region vendor – resources, region tokens, quests) Banshee-44 (gunsmith – dismantle weapons and equipment for parts) Shaxx (Crucible – Crucible tokens) Zavala (Strikes – Vanguard Tactician tokens) Ikora (Meditations – Vanguard Research tokens) Faction leaders (Faction tokens – only available during the Faction Rally event)
As you can see, there’s loads you can do to push your Power up in Destiny 2. Whatever activity you like best will earn you goodies – although some are better than others. The token earn rate in Crucible is a little grim, for example, while the Faction Rally event just rains them down on you.
As we mentioned above, don’t hoard your lovely engrams: head to a social space as soon as you find or earn one, and cash it in to earn loot. Cha-ching! These Activities will quickly help you push your Power up high enough to handle almost anything Destiny 2 throws at you.
But! There will come a time when that changes and all your Legendary engrams are dropping at the same level as the gear you have equipped. What can you do?
So you’ve hit Power 240, or 260, or 280, and your Power gains have slowed to a trickle. Every now and then you get a good drop, but they seem few and far between, and everything else you find is either on your level or even way, way below it. What’s going on?
This is The Plateau, and your time of just levelling up at random are over. You must now master the Luminous and Exotic cycle of The Plateau.
The key points to remember about The Plateau are: The Power value of vendor Legendary engrams at any time is your current best drop value (BDV). Your BDV is dependant on and lower than your maximum possible Power (MPP). Therefore, increasing your MPP increases your BDV. Luminous (and most Exotic) drops always have a higher Power value than your BDV, and therefore increase your MPP. Your BDV increases alongside your MPP.
So getting Luminous and Exotic drops is the key to raising your MPP, you get it. But why do we care about the fact that increasing your MPP also increases your BDV?
The answer is that your MPP will also increase ever so slightly if you ensure that all your gear is at or above your current BDV. After you get a Luminous or Exotic and raise your BDV, you should go out of your way to collect a few vendor Legendary engrams, see what your new BDV is, and make sure you own an item in every single equipment category that lives up to your new BDV.
