POWER-LEVEL YOUR GUARDIANS

11 easy steps to get you levelled-up and ready for Rise Of Iron

01 CONSIDER THE SPARK OF LIGHT

The Taken King gives every new and returning player a single consumable item called a Spark Of Light. Using it instantly boosts one Guardian to level 25 – the minimum requirement to start playing through The Taken King’s missions. If you’re a returning player and all your Guardians are already at 25 or above, forget it: it has no purpose. If you're lower than that, it’s an easy way to rapidly boost your level. We’d strongly advise only using it on a second or third Guardian, however: first time through the game you’ll want to play every mission as intended, levelling up and unlocking class abilities naturally as you push through the pitchperfect difficulty levels. Do that with your primary Guardian and you’ll breeze past level 25 with ease, leaving you the Spark Of Light to speed-boost a secondary or tertiary character when you focus on a different class.

02 THREE OF COINS IS AN ESSENTIAL ITEM

Every weekend, travelling merchant Xur will appear somewhere in one of Destiny’s social areas (check out GamesRadar.com on Fridays to find out where he is and what he’s selling). But whatever Exotic armour and – if you’re lucky – weapons he has with him, you should always stock up on a fresh, weekly supply of Three Of Coins. He always has them, and thus, so should you. These are the backbone of your path to greatness.

TOC boosts your chances of getting an Exotic drop upon defeating the next boss you face. Simply activate one at the start of a Strike and plough on. If the Exotic doesn’t drop, just start a new Strike and pop another. Every time you fire one up, the chance of that gleaming yellow delight will increase, the stacking probability buff only resetting once you actually score one. As long as you have enough TOCs in your inventory, you cannot lose. Exotics always drop at a decently high Light level, and even if they aren’t what you want, the Infusion system means that they will be useful for your overall growth.

03 MAKE THE MOST OF STRIKE-STREAKS

Strike playlists exist for a reason, and that reason is the Strike-streak. These streaks ensure that you’ll get progressively better random drops throughout Strikes so long as you don’t boot back to orbit between completing one and starting the next. If you enter a playlist and stay in there – allowing the playlist to keep serving you one Strike after the next – you’ll notice those green Engrams rapidly being replaced by blue and purple ones. It won’t even take too long. You’ll see the benefits manifest after three or four Strikes in a row, meaning that after just a few hours you’ll be returning to the Cryptarch with dozens of Legendaries just waiting to be popped.

Obviously, you should combine this mechanic with Three Of Coins. A massive pile of purple Engrams is a very exciting thing, but a pile of purples with a couple of yellows on top is positively scintillating. Given that better weapons have higher Light levels and raise your Guardian’s Light level when equipped, every drop matters.

04 EQUIP YOUR BEST CURRENT GEAR WHEN IN A STRIKE

Destiny will always try to give you drops that are at least as good as the gear you have equipped. But remember, this system calculates its output based on the gear you’re currently wearing and carrying, and not the stuff you have sitting around in your vault or waiting to be equipped in your inventory. If you’ve got it, flaunt it, and you shall be rewarded.

While most of the drops in Strikes will come from Engrams, there’s always a chance of decent end-of-mission rewards – the ones that land during the final score breakdown upon completing a Strike. So if you need to, you should re-equip at the start of every Strike during a streak-run to ensure you’re always using your highest Light-level gear. Switching from trusted favourites to unknown equipment can initially jar, but it’s a temporary measure and will serve you well in the long run.

05 FORCE THE CRYPTARCH TO GIVE YOU THE BEST GEAR

In the early days, the sole Cryptarch was more the purveyor of legendary trolling than Legendary gear. Master Rahool promised to be Santa, but all too often played the part of Krampus, converting your exciting Engrams into low-level pap and dust. How times have changed. Perhaps spurred on by fresh competition, Destiny’s current Cryptarchs are beholden to the same ‘equal or higher stats’ drop rules that govern the rest of the game. Which means that it’s time to game them out of their top stuff each and every time you visit. Always be sure to equip your best gear – whether it’s part of your regular loadout or not – when you start the decryption process, and back out to equip anything better that might turn up, whenever it turns up, before you continue. Whatever you do, avoid hammering the button to burn through the whole Engram pile. It might feel great at the time, but you’ll score better results if you take a more methodical approach. Also, decrypt your Engrams in the right order: green first, then blue, then purple, and finally yellow. That way it’s entirely possible to find blues with higher numbers than the supposedly more prestigious stuff, and you can quickly equip your more common but surprisingly highlevel Engram goodies to further elevate the strength of the incoming purples and yellows.

06 MAKE YOUR PURPLE ENGRAMS WORK HARDER FOR YOU

If you’re finding that you’ve hit a bit of a plateau when it comes to unlocking significantly boosted gear, stash your higher-level Engrams in your vault for a bit and come back to them later. Once you’ve got a few decent, random drops from the likes of Three Of Coins-powered Strikes, equip that new stuff and repeat the Cryptarch process from before. Behold, your Legendaries have now fermented in the cool, dark cellar of your vault and are likely to deliver better stats when you decrypt them.

07 PASS ENGRAMS AROUND MULTIPLE CHARACTERS IF YOU ARE ABLE TO

Do you have multiple Guardians who you’re trying to Light-level-up? Then this trick is utterly essential for level 40 Guardians: pass your weaker characters’ Engrams over to your main character through the vault, decrypt them via the Cryptarch, then pass them back for super-powerful gear.

If your alternate characters aren’t yet level 40 or above then it may be worth your while to consider sending items the other way to help speed up that initial race to the level cap. Use the vault to post legendary Engrams from your main hero to your developing Guardians who can then crack them open to receive great gear; gear which they’ll get to actually use rather than just stare at for hours until they’re powerful enough to equip them.

08 INFUSE LIKE CRAZY

The Infusion system is key to succeeding in Destiny: any unwanted weapon or piece of armour can be infused into a preferred bit of kit to bring the favoured item up to its level. Do this as much as possible, because you’ll no longer need new gear to upgrade your Light level. Feel free to get attached to a favourite piece of armour, safe in the knowledge that you can now focus on long-term, strategic class-builds by infusing it with better gear, rather than knowing you’ll need to drop it the moment a piece of kit comes along with a better Light rating.

The usual logic applies here: use all of the previous strategies to maximise the quality of your decryptions and drops, then simply infuse that new, high-level Light fuel into your favourite gear in order to boost it to truly obscene levels.

09 DON'T FORGET YOUR GHOST SHELLS AND ARTIFACTS

The level-boosting Light stat isn’t just reserved for weapons and armour: Ghost shells, class items and artifacts all contribute to your Light level. Make sure you keep that stuff up to date. Those three extra factors also come with individual Intelligence, Strength, and Discipline ratings, making them just as vital as weapons and armour when it comes to levelling up and customtuning your Guardians.

“GHOST SHELLS, CLASS ITEMS, AND ARTIFACTS ALL CONTRIBUTE TO YOUR LIGHT LEVEL.”

10 ATTACK THE COURT OF ORYX

When you’re ready to start properly exploring The Taken King’s Dreadnaught during Patrols, the Court Of Oryx is a particularly useful spot. Here, you’ll use the various Runes you gather up from elsewhere on the ship to summon high-level bosses into the Court’s arena. And what is your reward for doing so? Fat, tasty loot chests. These fights can be mighty tough, and are all specced for co-op play, though it’s worth remembering that their difficulty – and the respective rewards – scale up with the rarity of the Runes you use to initiate the fight.

Fortunately, you’ll usually find a small queue of Guardians lined up to take them on, meaning that you’ll rarely be short of (decently high-levelled) help. For players unable to devote the time needed into Strike playlists in a single sitting, this is the fastest way possible to rank up your stats. Just always remember Court etiquette: wait your turn before loading up a Rune of your own, and always stick around for a while to help out others once you’ve bagged your own rewards. Only the Rune-user gets access to the loot chest, so if you take your own prizes and then don’t assist others in getting theirs, well, that’s just not on.

11 LOAD UP ON BOUNTIES AND MAKE FRIENDS WITH A FACTION

This final tip is dynamite, especially if you’re still trying to boost through to level 40. Always, always stock up on Tower Bounties every time you play. This will rattle up your XP, as well as your Reputation with the Tower’s Vanguard and Crucible representatives (the Reputation bonuses also furnish you with free, Legendary gear every time you hit a new milestone), and if you constantly play with a full set equipped, you will hit the basic level 40 cap in a matter of hours. With a bounty cap of 12, you can pretty much carry one for every occasion, meaning that almost whatever you’re doing, you’ll pick up XP without even trying. Though it’s never bad practice to deliberately target ticking them off while you play, either… Once you hit the basic level 40 cap, start thinking about Faction loyalty. There are three special vendors in the Tower, representing Dead Orbit, Future War Cult and New Monarchy. Pledge allegiance to any of these NPCs at their stalls and the Reputation you gain from Bounties will be poured into Rep increases with that Faction. As you level up here, you’ll gain access to higher-level gear purchases, and also, on each spin around the clock, a freebie.

Again, equip this stuff if you like it, infuse if it’s not powerful enough, or use it to charge up gear you do like. The important thing is to pick a Faction that blends well with your playstyle. Each sells – and gifts – gear with a particular focused combination of Intelligence, Strength, and Discipline stats, so we recommend making sure you’re loyal to one whose wares fit your character build and favoured tactics.