DESTINY 2

POWER LEVELING GUIDE


Before We Begin

Destiny 2 has been out for almost a couple weeks now and aside from really enjoying my experience with this game, a lot of theorycrafting has been going on with myself and some of my clan mates to try and figure out the most efficient way to level up your characters. That being said there still might be some gaps in our logic and I invite you to send me your thoughts as to how this leveling guide can be improved.


Clans

Becoming a part of a clan gives you an extra milestone that rewards you with another powerful engram that you’d not have the ability to get otherwise. So try joining a clan as soon as you can. There are also weekly clan rewards that if one group within that clan accomplishes will acquire that reward for everyone else in the clan. It’s basically free legendary gear. So join one!


Road To 20

This part is pretty straightforward. Simply move through the main story, occasionally doing public events in between missions. Whenever you need to up your level to move onto the next mission, public events with net you the most amount of experience in the shortest amount of time from what I gathered. Also, if you take out your ghost you will see markers for patrol missions nearby, pick up the “item” or “kill” missions. Usually, this ends up being the same enemies you’ll be fighting in the public events anyways. This entire experience can go much smoother and quicker with another player. So I’d suggest finding a friend to level up your character with you.


Something to note is that you can’t group up with anyone until after you have received your first subclass ability.


First Exotic Engram

Once you complete your main story quests and head to the tower. Zavala will have an exotic engram for you. It is very important that you do not pick this up as this engram scales according to your current soft cap. So it is in your best interest to leave that engram with Zavala until you reach your soft cap and have completed all your powerful gear milestones. More on soft cap and powerful gear milestones down low.



Soft Cap

I will be referring to a soft cap at multiple times throughout this guide. The typical level that you will reach the first soft cap with your first character is at power level 265. At this point, any gear drops or legendary engrams you receive will most likely drop at this soft cap of 265. Occasionally gear will drop one level higher than your current soft cap. You can imagine how slow leveling up your character will become after reaching this soft cap. Then we begin to rely on powerful gear milestones to bump our characters power level past the soft cap.


Milestones / Powerful Gear

After you reach level 20 and talk to everyone you need to at the tower and not picking up the exotic engram from Zavala. You are now ready to start doing your milestones. Milestones are missions that reset once a week and give rewards when completed. Do all your milestones, however, it is also very important that you do not complete the milestones that reward you “POWERFUL GEAR” until you reach your soft cap.


These powerful gear rewards are going to be the most important factor in leveling you up past your current soft cap.

Each powerful gear reward will up your soft cap by 5 levels and you should, if you haven’t taken that exotic engram from Zavala, have only two powerful gear milestones to do. Do these two milestones and pick up your powerful gear reward from their respective NPC’s. Then and only then do you grab the exotic engram from Zavala. This engram should be 10 levels higher than your current soft cap. Keep in mind that exotics have an extra 5 levels due to them being equipped with a legendary mod attached to it. But the base item level will be 10 levels higher.



Last Powerful Gear Milestone

After you pick up the exotic engram from Zavala he will give you your last Powerful Gear Milestone for the week. This will be completing the Nightfall. Not much to say about this just get it done and receive your last Powerful Gear of the week.


Exotic Weapon Quests

Luckily we still have a bit more we can do to push our characters even further. This would be completing the exotic quests.


Visit this site to learn about the exotic quests on each planet/moon:

Eurogamer.net

Second and Third Characters

This is where the power leveling really comes in. On your second and third characters, you simply need to repeat the process all over again. There are a few differences that I will highlight:

Once you get to level 20 on the new character, transfer all of your highest level weapons to that character. *Again wait to grab the exotic from Zavala*

Your soft cap will be higher than it was before so just keep on doing public events or strikes until you feel as your gear drops have reached the soft cap. Once that happens, move forward with completing your powerful gear milestones.


That’s it! Do the same thing for your third character. You may notice that each new character you make will be a bit higher than the first. Take note of this, as when the weekly reset happens on Tuesday, try and do whatever character you want to be the highest power level (your main character) last.

Caution

You must create all different classes in order to benefit from the legendary powerful gear engrams. In my clanmates experiences, who have made, for example, two hunters in my case, the powerful gear dropped at the same level as my current soft cap. Which means that powerful gear rewards are limited to one per class not one per character.


Another thing to note is that if or when you get legendary gear that contains a legendary mod in it. It would be best to save those as they will assist in your leveling. Save all your blue rare mods so that once you get to level 280+ you can exchange them for legendary purple mods with the gunsmith.

Level up through main story quests.

Once level 20 do not take the exotic engram from Zavala.

Wait till you reach soft cap (265 for your first character) to do your powerful gear milestones

Pickup exotic from Zavala and do final Nightfall powerful gear milestone.

Work on exotic weapon quests.

Rince and repeat for alternate characters. Always equipping highest level weapons at 20.

All characters must be of a different class to benefit from powerful gear milestone rewards.



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