Exactly. Not just the fact that it's easier, but the fact that it's the only place to spend Vanguard Marks. If you suck in PvP, then I'm guessing you won't be playing much of it. So you might not earn enough crucible marks to even make it worthwhile to shift to the indys.

But, there is one more way to earn marks, both crucible and vanguard, without PvP: Material Exchange. You can trade 50 Spinmetal, Helium, Spirit Bloom or Relic Iron in for 5 marks, 25 Rep, and 250 Glimmer. Since there are far more ways to get vanguard marks than crucible, I'd suggest only doing this for crucible marks.

If you're gonna farm public events, it's also a good idea to farm these items. Most of this harvesting is done on Earth, since there's a really good cycle of public events to farm, and a shitload of spinmetal to grab while doing it. The area around the walker drop is full of spawn points to circle around while waiting for the walker. It can be tedious grabbing all that stuff, but you're going to need it for armor upgrades anyway. Plus, you get all those weapons and armor from chests, engrams, etc. They will suck, but weapon parts and armor materials come in handy when you're trying to rank up.

No problem! If you see me on, I'd be happy to help you run thru some story missions or whatever. I actually just finished Venus and haven't even started Mars yet. I mainly leveled by doing bounties and 1 Public Event each time I was on.

You really only need to get your Vanguard to rank 2, which is when you'll have access to legendary armor. Just make sure you get your 100 marks every week so you can actually buy something. And when you start buying, start with the gloves and boots. You have to assume the queen will be back at some point with helms and chests.

The Vanguard guns are at level 3.

If you aren't doing multiplayer and getting crucible marks, there's no reason to level up the factions. I'm doing it just because they send me something at every rank...and there's no harm in it.

And to Decker's question, no, all of this is really obtuse and really poorly explained, but once you wrap your head around it, the game becomes quite a bit more fun IMO.

Perfect. Somebody is giving you good advice.

That's the reason why I like you Chess...

...all kidding asid I actually feel a bit of your pain. Me and the Cryptarch don't get along well at all. Leveled him twice today with the Hunter doing the (25) Strikes...five Rares. In the last 7-8 times I've leveled him up I've seen one Ledgendary engram a couple of motes of light, few coins and everything else has been rare items from the Postmaster.

I have more hadronic essence and weapons parts than Walter White had money

my Cryptomaniac is like level 23 and he still hates me

I am so clueless.

I am not going anywhere near the crucible. Suck at it and its no fun at all for me.

I know what the daily and weekly strikes are.
I know about the Vanguard strike playlists.
What exactly are the public events? And where are they? On the map?
And where do I find raids? I know I am not ready for them but where are they? On the map?

I have all blue armor and weapons. So for me, not touching the crucible, the best way for me to get better gear and increase my light level from the current 23 is......?

Crucible.

If you do not want to play pvp, the best way to get better gear is to level up vanguard.

http://www.destinypublicevents.com/ shows where the events can spwan. Right now the only raid is Vault of Glass on Venus.

The Queen's Events got me a ton of purple armor. But those are over, so your best bet is:

Strikes and Daily Heroics.
Get your max 100 Vanguard marks per week and buy items you need from the Vanguard vendor.
Get enough Strange Coins to buy one exotic piece of armor from Xur (the weekend vendor).
Do the Public Events every day to have the materials you need to upgrade.

Public events are things that happen during the Patrol missions on each planet. So you would go to the map for earth for example, and select Patrol Cosmodrome. Once there, you get those green lights flashing everywhere, which are the patrol missions. However, every so often at certain parts of the map, there will be a special mission that pops up: this is the Public Event.

Earth is the easiest to find. There's a large open area called the Divide. At around 15 and 45 of each hour there will be a giant walker, like in the Devils' Lair Strike, there to destroy. Be there early. On other parts of the map, you'll find events such as Eliminate The Target, where you're trying to kill one enemy with a LOT of hit points and a very fast shield. There's also Defend the Warsat, and Defeat Extraction Crews. They're all on a clock, so once you do a cycle or two on earth you ca get an idea of where to go and what to do. If you succeed, it's 4 Vanguard Marks, and sometimes Ascendent materials. Plus, you get a bonus for the first one you complete each day back at the Tower.

OK, Xur has arrived with his weekly gifts of awesomeness.

He's located on the Hangar side of the Tower. Once you get to the walkway toward the vendors on that side (Dead Orbit, FWC, Vanguard Quartermaster, etc.), instead of heading left toward all of them, look right. He's right there.

As for what he's offering:

Titan gets the Armamentarium Chest Armor, which gives you a second grenade, and allows you to carry extra ammo for all your Special and Heavy Weapons.

Hunter gets the Symbiote Helmet, which adds an extra bullet to the Golden Gun. So if you're a gunslinger, it's a decent upgrade.

Warlock gets the Light Beyond Nemesis Helmet, which allows you to revive teammates faster, and they revive you faster. Looks cool, focuses on Strength.

The weapon this week is The Truth Rocket Launcher, which aggressively seeks it's target and explodes based on proximity to enemies.

The Engram is for Chest Armor

I bought a Truth, and will buy the Engram, and then see where I go from there. I'd love that Titan Armor, but I have two exotic helmets for my Titan, and no Legendary. I guess I could buy one...we'll see.

OK, so I bought the Engram with my Hunter...and I got the same chest armor I already have. So I broke it down and got 2 Shards. Lame. I bought the Symbiote helmet, so now I can swap a bit.

Xur is pretty lame this weekend.

I bought the rocket launcher, because why not. I already had Armamentarium, and it's pretty good. The Warlock helm looks cool, but I can't see it replacing either of my current exotic Warlock armors as a practical matter.

I had enough for two chest engrams and was hoping for heart of praxis fire for my warlock. Got the Lupe chest for both titan and hunter. LOL/sigh. It's a mild upgrade for my hunter though. Should get her to 27 or maybe even 28.

Yea...I just was reading up on what he has this week and many say that rocket luncher, The Truth is actually pretty good. It does have Void damage with tracking which would be great with any Vex missions. But some say the Gjallerhorn is a bit better with the clusters that turn to sentries. Last week I went on a shopping spree getting the Helm for the Titan, Chest for the Warlock and Ice breaker which is by far the best spent coins period. If anything I might be temted to buy the Hunter's Helm and put it away....he's up to Level 16...and that extra round in the Golden Gun could be useful.

Yeah, I got Lupe Chest too. It's a great looking piece of armor, but I'm not a huge fan of Strength. With that armor, my Bladedancer melee is almost instantly cooled down, so that's nice.

And of course since the Warlock helmet was also Strength, I passed on it (As I did on the chest gear from last week). I already have my Warlock at 29 though, so I'm not hard pressed to change much at this point.

I bought the Armamentarium, so now I have 3 exotic pieces for my Titan (2 Helmets and this)

Armamentarium is solid for either Titan subclass. It's probably going to stay a fixture on my Titan for the foreseeable future. I'd recommend a buy.

I feel pretty good about where my Hunter is and don't like her enough to spend the coins on her.

My Warlock is kind of stagnant. I have pretty decent gear, but I don't want to invest ascendant mats on non-raid gear, especially when my other two need them more.

Yeah, I could do one more upgrade on my Warlock to max out my light at 111 (no Raid gear max that is), but there's not much of a reason do that. Getting to 29 was the big deal there. So now my shards go to my Titan, then Hunter. I wanna get them all up to 28.

I had to buy cheap white Titan Helmet just so I could start upgrading the Armamentarium. That bumped me down to 25. At the same time, My Titan is almost maxed out in both subclasses (1 circle left).

I bought that symbiotic helmet for my Hunter 2 weeks ago. How much is that Rocket launcher going for? I wouldn't mind retiring both my legendary ones for it if its stronger.

I was thinking the same thing, then I remembered the raid helmet only drops on hard. The rest of the gear can drop on normal. If needed the exotic helmet can get you to lvl 30

not shopping with Xur this week
he can do better

after never seeing an exotic bounty until this week I had my second come up late last night
now have 2 loaded up and running
thing is like most with this game, by the time I get those 2 bounties possibly completed I could of had countless other bounties loaded up in their slots to finish

It's going for 17 coins.

Looks like I'll be running some missions and stacking strange coins.

That's a good point about getting to 30, but as a practical matter, I think I'd rather be a 29 with either Praxis or Sunbreakers on a Sunsinger or Voidfang on a Voidwalker, so it's hard to justify the purchase.

Still...your point is worth some thought, and I might just buy it to have it. Thanks.

I skipped on spending coins but went ahead and rolled the dice twice on the Exotic Engram. One a total waste and the other I need to research it....

Warlock - got the Voidfang Vestment Chest pc...problem is it's the same one I bought last week. The Warlock now has (3) Legendary and (2) Exotic Chest pcs.

Titan - Got the Armamentarium Chest but last week I got the Helm of Most Light and I'm about 75%leveled up on it.

I've done probably 12-14 Tiger Strikes in the last two days and have got nothing....maybe two Shards and that's it. I still haven't seen an actual Legenday Engram drop in two weeks. I finally got one today thru the Cryptarch....the second one in nine tries. I need to got "Shard Farming" since I'm out and cannot level anything up.

Looks like I won't be getting anymore strange coins due to the one mission they're available in wants me to run it solo. Yeah, that's not going to happen, because it's on hard. Why did it stop generating other players?

I guess I'll just focus on Crucible points, because I'm almost at level 3 for the New Monarchy and they have a nice Auto Rifle that I can get.