Destiny 2: how to level up, get more Power and kick butt – fast

By Brenna Hillier

Destiny 2 is all about Power, and that means it’s all about loot. I’m sorry, you were expecting…?

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.

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 20 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 20, 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. Note that you don’t need to equip them, though! As long as you don’t dismantle your best gear, you’ll keep getting better drops.
• Don’t infuse anything before you hit step 3
  Your next drop will probably make whatever it was redundant, so it’s a waste of resources until you hit the soft cap of Light 260. Just equip whatever you have handy and pop your favs in the vault to infuse later.
• Don’t complete anything in your Milestones menu listed as providing “powerful loot” until step 3
  You’ll see why when you get to that stage of the guide – just trust me on this one.

Step 1: play story missions to get to level 20

I know I just said your level doesn’t matter, but all the best rewards and activities are locked until you hit certain level milestones. As such, your best bet is to hit level 20 as quickly as possible so you can start reaping your rewards.

Just shooting goons is a very, very slow way to level up in Destiny 2. Here’s what we suggest instead:

• Play story missions
  Story missions award lots of XP, and unlock vendors and services you’ll need shortly. Just get it out of the way.
• Complete Adventures
  Sometimes you’ll hit a level gate in the story campaign and need to level to proceed. Adventures, or side quests, are available from the region vendor at each destination, and are the quickest way to fill your boots with XP between missions.

That’s all! You should reach level 20 by the end of the main story campaign. If not, just do some more Adventures or complete side content until you do; it won’t take long. Onto the next step!

Step 2: farm engrams in Activities to get to 260 Light

Now that you’ve hit max level, there’s nothing preventing you pushing your Power score up by collecting engrams and activity rewards of the best possible value for your current Power. It’s not too hard to push all the way up to the soft Power cap of 260 just by doing anything and everything in your power to bring in Legendary and Exotic engrams.

Before we dive into this, there’s one more thing you need to know about engrams and loot. Until you hit the soft cap, drop values are designed to be equal or more often slightly better than your best piece in that equipment category, not your overall Power value.

For example, if your best chest armour is at 220 and your other bits are at 260, your next chest drop is likely to be in the low 220’s, not 260.

On the bright side, this means you won’t get shitty low Power drops on your other bits and pieces just because your chest armour is lower than average. In any case: if you have a big hole in your build, go shopping and try to fill it in. On that note, here’s how you should go about pushing your Power value up to the soft cap:

• First, go shopping at region vendors to raise your Power
  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.
• Check out every drop
  Hopefully this is obvious, but until you hit the soft cap almost every drop has the potential to improve your overall spec, so don’t ignore green and blue loot and engrams dropped by trash mobs.
• Max out each region vendor
  Complete Adventures and Lost Sectors, harvest resources, open Region Chests, take down High Value Targets and complete public events, then cash in all your Region Tokens at the vendor. Once the bar fills, which should happen pretty quickly, you’ll get a Legendary engram. This feature is locked before level 20.
• Raid Lost Sector chests
  While you’re maxing out each region, 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 rewards.
• Complete Strikes and Public Events
  You have a reasonable chance of getting good loot from Strikes and Public Events.
• Earn engrams through reputation levels
  Zavala, Ikora, Banshee and Shaxx all offer Legendary engrams in return for filling your reputation bar. Do this by pursuing their associated activities (Strikes, Meditations, dismantling equipment, Crucible matches) and trading in materials and tokens.

As we mentioned above, don’t hoard your lovely engrams: take them to the Farm as soon as you can, and cash them 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.

Step 3: enter endgame to reach Power 300

Once you hit the softcap of 260, you’re in endgame territory. From here on, regular loot drops won’t help you get stronger. Happily, there are multiple activities that do drop gear of 260+ Light and above.

Activities which drop endgame loot will be flagged with a tooltip on you Director (map), so be sure to check in with them. Here are the ones we know of so far

• Weekly Milestones
  Once you reach the soft cap, weekly Milestones begin to reward Guardians with 260+ loot drops. There are currently four weekly Milestones you should aim to complete each reset, preferably on all your characters, until you hit cap:
  • Flashpoint
    Cayde-6 issues a Flashpoint challenge each week, which just means completing a number of Public Events at a set destination.
  • Call to Arms
    A weekly Crucible quest with varying objectives, issued by Lord Shaxx.
  • Nightfall
    A tougher version of a Strike, with nasty modifiers.
  • Clan XP
    Now that Clans are active in Destiny 2, you can earn a Legendary engram by reaching the individual contribution cap (5,000 XP) each week. Since you earn clan XP for petty much everything, this Milestone can’t be saved until you reach Power 260, unfortunately.
• Leviathan raid
  Raids were D1’s first source of endgame gear, and we expect this tradition to continue. Multiple loot opportunities throughout the raid mean many chances to bump your Power. Get in there and get some special goodies when Leviathan launches on September 13.
• PvP events
  Trials of the Nine kicks off on September 13, and Iron Banner will return in October. Look for these and other, seasonal PvP events to reward endgame gear as thanks for your participation.

We fully expect Bungie’s live team to expand the endgame activity roster as the months roll out, and to raise the level cap when the first Destiny 2 DLC hits, probably sometime in December.

But for now, as far as we know, this is the progression path in Destiny 2. See you at the Power cap, Guardians.