Level 27 Grind....are my estimates correct?

[iw5000]

I am almost done with this silly materials farming. I do have it down to a science, like being able to find up to 35 Helium Filaments in about 10 minutes with very fast set routine. Just kind of sucks, because now I have no use for those routines lol. But all in all, once I do one more run tonight, I will be at or around 94 Light Pieces. About four light pieces away from Level 28.

So all that's really left in terms of needing, is the Ascendant Shards. And based on my present armor of 1,203/(27), I should be to reach around 109 to 110 Light Pieces full maxed out., putting me at Light Level 29 with defense of 1,390. Which is my goal.

I looked at this board and spent to much time reading. I have watched to many videos. It would appear there are only a few ways to get these ASs. One, breaking down Exotic/Legendary Armor I have (I have none to spare). Buying Legendary Armor and then breaking it down. Buy 'Exotics' from Xur and break it down. Get lucky on Public events (%odds), get lucky on loot chest (lower%odds), and last, do the VoG.


So I did some math. I need 58 Ascendant Shards to max up, reach my goal. (I have none now). The easiest way seems to be to just grind for Vanguard Marks. Get Marks. Then use those marks to buy Legendary armor at 65m a pop. Then break it down for 2 Ascendant Shards. I did some math. That comes out to around 1,855 Marks needed doing that method. At a 100 mark cap a week, that's 18 weeks.


18 weeks of endless grinding for Marks.



I don't even want to figure out how much time that requires each week. Every night for a few hours? All for what? To hit a number of '29' I suppose the above 'grind' could be shortened by getting lucky here or there. GEt lucky and find a Shard every night (which never seems to happen) Do the VoG down the road (but that requires huge time commitment) Maybe luck from the Destiny gods. But all that, maybe at best takes it from 18 weeks to 9 weeks?


So someone please tell me my math is wrong. What am I missing? I am aware of the second/third character boosting technique, to get around the 100 cap a week, but that still takes time playing a second character from level 2 to 20. That adds another layer of time too.

[TheHawkNY]

Doing the raid can give you raid armor, which is Legendary armor, but has additional bonuses for the raid, and give more light, which can give you a boost.

You can do the Queen's Wrath missions to unlock legendary armor. Those cannot be broken down for shards, but you can also replace existing armor with Queen's Wrath armor, and dismantle the old armor for shards. Of course, you don't want to replace raid gear with Queen's Wrath armor, as raid gear has less light.

Vanguard Marks are capped at 100 per week, per character, as are Crucible marks. Essentially, the theoretical max number of marks you can earn per week to purchase Legendary Gear is 600, not 100.

What many of the players in the Den PS4 clan have done is two more characters that are the same type as their original character. This way, all they have to do is get the characters to level 20, then they can just switch the armor from their first character to immediately take the character to the max level they have achieved. This allows them to: Do a public event and the daily heroic story three times per day for a reward; and do the weekly raid, the nightfall, and the raid three times per week for the rewards. This allows them to max out the rewards that they receive, and earn shards at a fairly good rate.

Personally, I have created three different characters. I don't have quite the time or desire to do that level of grinding. It allows me to easily hit up three public events per day for rewards, and slowly level up those second and third characters. I might push to get my second and third characters up to a higher level this weekend to do some of the Queen's Wrath missions and get Legendary armor for them before the event ends.

[iw5000]

Thanks Hawk

I already have a Queen/Legendary Chest amor, plus an Exotic Helmet. The one piece that would seem to be weak (my boots), it doesn't seem like there is anything better out there. Like the Queen stuff doesn't give out boots.

I have thought about the Crucible. But then I need to reach Crucible Level 2 to be able to buy Armor (to then break down). That's a lot of rep point grinding and time. If I want to play lots of PvP FPS'ing...I've already decided Destiny isn't my thing. PvP in Destiny kind of sucks. I can do a bit here and there, but i'll stick to CoD and TF for more fun PvP.

I've thought about the 2nd character, but again, time. That's a week to level one character up to 20. Maybe longer. Two characters at least three weeks. That just puts me where I am already at right now. And thinking about it, I really don't know if I can max out the 100 Vangard Marks in a week. That's 15 a day? IF I get some playing in a day, 15 to 20 is my max. And I don't play it every day.

Like you, my issue is time. Doing those numbers this morning, ...made me realize just how much Bungie requires of people to play this, to level up to the top. The game has been out 24 days, I would swear some people have got to have close to four plus days spent already. Maybe even up into the 5 to 7 range. I just can't do the four to six hour a day pace. I've been getting in an hour or two in the evenings, most evenings. I don't think I can even keep that up. Is this what is going to keep being required?

[hebbnh]

Do the daily story missions on level 28. Guaranteed 2 shards or energy every day. Public events reward shards/energy randomly fairly often, plus I'm pretty sure you're guaranteed to get 2 from the postmaster for the first public event you complete each day. That's 4 per day at a minimum for very little effort. Weekly nightfall strike can reward up to 12 at a time. Get lucky on loot chests and engram decodes. Do the raid and you can get a bunch, even though that probably means you missed out on raid gear and got shards instead. Raiding is not that huge of a time commitment if you have a group that's done it before, which a lot of the bros here have. Buying gear just to break it down is probably the slowest and most wasteful way imaginable.

I have 51 shards (and already spent another 16 fully upgrading an exotic helmet) in 4 weeks playing a single character, and only 6 of those were from Queen's Wrath gear before that method got patched out. Plus 1 week of that was just playing through the story without really trying to do anything. It's definitely not the ridiculous 2 - 4 month grind you make it out to be.  For reference, the companion app says I have 3 and 1/4 days played.  That's probably more than average, but doing just the daily story and 1 public event should only take around 30 minutes, which it sounds like you have plenty of time for.

[iw5000]

Thanks Hebbnh

My schedule is only keeping me to an hour or two at most in the evenings. VoG isn't really an option now.

I wasn't trying to make into looking like anything. I was just trying to plot out what i need to do, while sitting here waiting for an earlier work appt. I plotted out that one path (via Marks) and it seemed crazy. So i came on here, needing help.

[hebbnh]

No problem! Like I said with just doing the dailies you should be in pretty good shape fairly quickly (although you're still only going to get shards 50% of the time, and energies the other 50%), then anything extra that you're able to find time for is just a bonus. If you ever need help running dailies or nightfall strikes or whatever just hit me up. I'd be happy to help out.

Also, on the VoG you can do parts of it at a time and resume later, so you don't have to commit to a set time block all at once if you don't have 2+ hours free. The first part takes about 5 minutes, so you can get some quick loot that way even if you don't have time to do anything else. We did the whole thing in 2 hours last night with one person who'd never done it before, and I hadn't done the 2nd half before. Once you get a group that knows what they're doing and has their jobs down, it will probably average an hour or so, if that.

[iw5000]

As an aside, awesome tip with the phone app. Thanks! More ways to waste time!!! (not sure if i should thank you for that)

It looks like I have 1d 2 hours played. I wish they would have hidden this stat :-(

[wings]

Queen's Wrath only gives out a helmet or chest armour. I used to farm them when you were actually given shards for dismantling them. They are still handy to save a potential purchase though.

[iw5000]

Oct 3, 2014 12:32:57 GMT -5 wings said:

Queen's Wrath only gives out a helmet or chest armour. I used to farm them when you were actually given shards for dismantling them. They are still handy to save a potential purchase though.

Thanks. Then i am tapped out on the Queen stuff.

[malgato]

So Xur is back and I am trying to figure out if I should spend my coins.

My options:

Red Death, pulse rifle for 23 coins

Warlocks gloves for 13 coins

And/or Exotic Helmet Engram for 23 Motes

Anyone have advice? Is Red Death worth it? Does the Exotic Engram turn into any class item, or will it be specific for my class? Should I just feel sad that I didn't have enough coins when Suros Regime was for sale?

For context - level 27 Warlock. All legendary (non-raid) gear. Legendary Scout Rifle. 2 legendary rockets. Exotic Machine Gun (really good advice).

[wittyscorpion]

To iw5000:

IMHO (and I am definitely the minority here), you can stop grinding once reaching level 27/28. At these levels, you will be able to play whatever content you want except for VoG hard. If I were you, I will stop doing what Bungie wants me to do and just do what I enjoy the most.

We are now exactly 1 month before AW comes out, you probably won't play this game much after that . Why not take this month and do what you like?

Just my 2 cents.

[TheHawkNY]

Oct 3, 2014 15:30:38 GMT -5 malgato said:

So Xur is back and I am trying to figure out if I should spend my coins.

My options:

Red Death, pulse rifle for 23 coins

Warlocks gloves for 13 coins

And/or Exotic Helmet Engram for 23 Motes

Anyone have advice? Is Red Death worth it? Does the Exotic Engram turn into any class item, or will it be specific for my class? Should I just feel sad that I didn't have enough coins when Suros Regime was for sale?

For context - level 27 Warlock. All legendary (non-raid) gear. Legendary Scout Rifle. 2 legendary rockets. Exotic Machine Gun (really good advice).

I'm wondering about the Red Death myself, anyone have it?

The exotic engram can be a helmet for any class. That said, unless you're aching for some of those emblems from the speaker, there really isn't much else to spend Motes of Light on, so you may as well go ahead and get it. If I were you, I would purchase the helmet engram, and see what I got from it. Whether or not you get a Warlock helmet you like will change how you feel about what to spend your strange coins on.

[TheHawkNY]

Oct 3, 2014 10:56:51 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

Thanks Hawk

I already have a Queen/Legendary Chest amor, plus an Exotic Helmet. The one piece that would seem to be weak (my boots), it doesn't seem like there is anything better out there. Like the Queen stuff doesn't give out boots.

I have thought about the Crucible. But then I need to reach Crucible Level 2 to be able to buy Armor (to then break down). That's a lot of rep point grinding and time. If I want to play lots of PvP FPS'ing...I've already decided Destiny isn't my thing. PvP in Destiny kind of sucks. I can do a bit here and there, but i'll stick to CoD and TF for more fun PvP.

I've thought about the 2nd character, but again, time. That's a week to level one character up to 20. Maybe longer. Two characters at least three weeks. That just puts me where I am already at right now. And thinking about it, I really don't know if I can max out the 100 Vangard Marks in a week. That's 15 a day? IF I get some playing in a day, 15 to 20 is my max. And I don't play it every day.

Like you, my issue is time. Doing those numbers this morning, ...made me realize just how much Bungie requires of people to play this, to level up to the top. The game has been out 24 days, I would swear some people have got to have close to four plus days spent already. Maybe even up into the 5 to 7 range. I just can't do the four to six hour a day pace. I've been getting in an hour or two in the evenings, most evenings. I don't think I can even keep that up. Is this what is going to keep being required?

Like hebbnh has said, it's all about prioritization. On Tuesday, do the weekly nightfall - beating it give you bonus XP and reputation until it resets on the next Tuesday, so you'll want to do it first so everything else you do gets bonuses. Every day, first do a public event and the daily heroic story on level 28, to get your daily rewards. If you haven't done the weekly heroic yet, then do that. After that, it's really up to you. If you want to earn Vanguard marks, the Tiger playlist gives you 6 per strike, so you may be able to get to (or close to) 100 per week in the amount of time you're looking to play. And as hebbnh also mentioned, you don't have to do the entire Raid to get rewards - this week I've currently finished the third and the final parts, and received the rewards, but because I jumped in to the raid group when they were halfway through, I'm still eligible to go back and earn the rewards from the beginning.

As for the second character, you don't need to get it up to level 20. It takes less than a half an hour to do the story missions in order to unlock Patrol. Once you've unlocked Patrol, you're free to hop on that character at any time and jump into Patrol and do a public event. I'm slowly leveling my other two characters that way, and it allows me to get the public event bonus 3 times per day instead of just once.

As for the time investment - all those 4-6 hour a day players that have been rushing to get to level 30 are going to have nowhere to advance until December. In the meantime, players such as yourself have plenty of time to catch up to them. I'm fairly certain the system will be set up to make it so this continues to be the case, as letting players get too far ahead would make the game far less accessible to casual players, which would limit their revenues significantly. If anything, Activision is very good and making sure they reach those casuals.

[wings]

I wish they stop moving his location. It is like a mini game of Where's Wally.

[TheHawkNY]

Also, regarding Crucible points - once you reach Vanguard level three, put on the bond for another faction (Dead Orbit, New Monarchy, or Future War Cult). When you do that, any Vanguard or Crucible reputation you earn will be applied to that faction, rather than Vanguard or Crucible. Once you reach level 2 with a faction, you will be able to buy armor from them using Crucible marks. You don't actually need to play Crucible to earn Crucible marks - you can exchange Spinmetal, Helium Filaments, Spirit Bloom, and Relic Iron for Crucible marks (I believe the exchange ratio is 50 material for 5 Crucible marks, so it would essentially take 650 to earn the 65 marks required to buy a piece of armor). This way, between an overabundance of materials you may acquire, and any games of Crucible you may play, you could end up earning Crucible marks and being able to spend them on armor/weapons without having to play the amount of Crucible required to reach level 2.

[TheHawkNY]

Oct 3, 2014 16:14:41 GMT -5 wings said:

I wish they stop moving his location. It is like a mini game of Where's Wally.

More like a mini game of Google his location during the tower loading screen.

[malgato]

Oct 3, 2014 15:54:13 GMT -5 TheHawkNY said:

Oct 3, 2014 15:30:38 GMT -5 malgato said:

So Xur is back and I am trying to figure out if I should spend my coins.

My options:

Red Death, pulse rifle for 23 coins

Warlocks gloves for 13 coins

And/or Exotic Helmet Engram for 23 Motes

Anyone have advice? Is Red Death worth it? Does the Exotic Engram turn into any class item, or will it be specific for my class? Should I just feel sad that I didn't have enough coins when Suros Regime was for sale?

For context - level 27 Warlock. All legendary (non-raid) gear. Legendary Scout Rifle. 2 legendary rockets. Exotic Machine Gun (really good advice).

I'm wondering about the Red Death myself, anyone have it?

The exotic engram can be a helmet for any class. That said, unless you're aching for some of those emblems from the speaker, there really isn't much else to spend Motes of Light on, so you may as well go ahead and get it. If I were you, I would purchase the helmet engram, and see what I got from it. Whether or not you get a Warlock helmet you like will change how you feel about what to spend your strange coins on.

Researching the gun a little more it sounds like it is good for PvP. Not sure about PvE.

[malgato]

Is the Xur exotic engram always for a helmet?

[wings]

Speaking of grinds, I now have all three of my characters to Vanguard Rank 3 bitches!

[wings]

Oct 3, 2014 16:57:54 GMT -5 malgato said:

Is the Xur exotic engram always for a helmet?

Yes. It's a bit expensive for that many Motes of Light because soon people will end up having dupes. I actually thought of getting one of those robe things from the Speaker instead because I can get shards with public events but I decided they were too expensive this early in the game.

[iw5000]

Oct 3, 2014 15:43:28 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

To iw5000:

IMHO (and I am definitely the minority here), you can stop grinding once reaching level 27/28. At these levels, you will be able to play whatever content you want except for VoG hard. If I were you, I will stop doing what Bungie wants me to do and just do what I enjoy the most.

We are now exactly 1 month before AW comes out, you probably won't play this game much after that . Why not take this month and do what you like?

Just my 2 cents.

You know me Witty...i am very goal focused. Once i get a few goals in my head, just can't let it go. Like Kirstie Alley with a all toppings pizza!!!

[daftpunk]

Oct 3, 2014 16:57:54 GMT -5 malgato said:

Is the Xur exotic engram always for a helmet?

I wanted the exotic helm for my Titan but im keeping my coins for an exotic weapon , so i bought the engram and lo and behold i got the same helm , RNGesus love me....

[daftpunk]

Oct 4, 2014 7:08:37 GMT -5 iw5000 said:

Oct 3, 2014 15:43:28 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

To iw5000:

IMHO (and I am definitely the minority here), you can stop grinding once reaching level 27/28. At these levels, you will be able to play whatever content you want except for VoG hard. If I were you, I will stop doing what Bungie wants me to do and just do what I enjoy the most.

We are now exactly 1 month before AW comes out, you probably won't play this game much after that . Why not take this month and do what you like?

Just my 2 cents.

You know me Witty...i am very goal focused. Once i get a few goals in my head, just can't let it go. Like Kirstie Alley with a all toppings pizza!!!

Witty is right though, ive got my Titan to lvl 27 , got a full set of legendary armour , an eoctic helm and shotgun , now my goal is just to get more goodies , levelling up higher is not my priorty its just an added bonus...

[ZedNine9]

Just a quick tip... You can hit 28 with three non-raid legendaries plus 1 exotic. You upgrade the exotic all the way (16 shards) then upgrade one legendary minimally (once or twice?). At this point, you can do anything including VoG. If you want to level past 28, you should do VoG for raid gear without spending any more shards. The raid gear you get will make the trip to 29 easy. Then, the shard grind is limited to upgrading your raid gear.

[wittyscorpion]

Oct 3, 2014 18:40:12 GMT -5 wings said:

Speaking of grinds, I now have all three of my characters to Vanguard Rank 3 bitches!

In that case, do the same for all 3 factions, on all 3 of your characters

That will keep you busy for a while…

[wings]

Oct 4, 2014 10:08:48 GMT -5 wittyscorpion said:

Oct 3, 2014 18:40:12 GMT -5 wings said:

Speaking of grinds, I now have all three of my characters to Vanguard Rank 3 bitches!

In that case, do the same for all 3 factions, on all 3 of your characters

That will keep you busy for a while…

I don't lose my progress with the Vanguard do I? I will probably join them soon as I have all the gear I wanted to buy and I find the ammo bonuses to the armour quite limited. Being able to not have to enter the menus to activate a synthesis pack during a boss fight would be nice.