(Image credit: Bungie (via Shmegeh))

With the release of Destiny 2: Shadowkeep, all players, current and new, were immediately bumped to Power level 750. Lapsed player languishing around 500? Now you're 750. Installing Destiny 2 for the first time ever? Boom, 750. It's like you got tickets to a taping of Oprah and midway through tells everyone to look under their seats, but instead of a PlayStation or a Volvo or whatever, it's 750s all around.

But the whole point of Destiny 2 is to push that Power level higher, a process lovingly known as "grinding." But if you really don't want to horse around with that, it's now possible to purchase a power boost for your characters that will push you all the way to 900 for 2000 Silver, which translates to $20 in real money.

There's one big caveat: The booster is only available after you've got at least one character to Power level 900 the old-fashioned way. The idea, presumably, is to enable players with more money than time (or patience) to get their full roster to the soft cap without having to grind to it three times over.

It's purchasable from the character select screen for any Guardians under 900, and once purchased will be immediately activated and cannot be refunded; if their inventories are full, the Power level 900 weapons and armor granted by the booster will be sent to the Postmaster instead.

What's surprising about this isn't that it's doable, but that it costs so much for such a small payoff. Power level 900 is now the "soft cap" in Destiny 2, which means that for all practical purposes it's where the real grind starts: The only way to surpass it (which you'll need to do if you want to roll in any endgame content) is through powerful gear drops, which can get you to 950, or pinnacle gear, which will take you to 960.

Being able to jump from 750 to 900 might have a whiff of "pay to win" about it, but Power level 900 is really nowhere near the big leagues. More to the point, it's not at all difficult to get from 750 to 900 through gameplay anyway; just show up and play, which you presumably want to do anyway, and you'll basically fall backwards into it. And because it's only available after you've reach 900 on at least one other character, it's not as though you're not doing—you're just not doing it again.

Even so, the high price makes me wonder if Bungie is trying to passively discourage people from using it. There might be some value to it for players who want to skip straight to the real grind for their third character, but if I'm running three character then I'm probably pretty dedicated to Destiny 2 anyway—and for 20 bucks a pop I think I'd rather just play the game. Oh, and if you are looking for some power leveling assistance, our guide has you covered. Honestly, if you move your high power weapons from your main to your alts you get a big boost without spending a dime.

Update: In case you thought we were exaggerating about the ease of leveling a character from 750 to 900, Phil just did it in 15 minutes.