Well it's a new week starting today so it'll be not only Daily runs but a shot at Nightfall as well tonight. With Election day I might be later than normal (around 6-6:30 central).

This week, I don't plan to run any dailies, public events or bounties until after I've run my weeklies, nightfalls and raids (1 normal, 2 hard).

Until I get some more raid armor or weapons, I really don't have anything I'm dying to level up, so it's not a great use of my time.

Is there a good guide anywhere to the difference between all of these? I am getting confused trying to keep these all straight. (other than the ones that are on the map of each planet)

Dailies: Daily Heroic. A story mission you do at Level 20/24/28. The higher levels reward Ascendant Materials (which you will need to get past level ~26).

Public Events: destinypublicevents.com The sky turns dark purple and you have x minutes to kill a target, defend a satellite, etc. Doing this once a day guarantees you Materials (via the postmaster in the Tower), and they often provide bonus ones (right as you finish). Best place to "farm" public events is Earth, as there is usually always one going on.

Bounties: Taken from the Bounty guy in the Tower. You get an XP reward (useful to level up weapons/armor once you're past 20) as well as Vanguard rep (which you want to get up to Level 3 to be able to buy legendary weapons and armor).

Weekly Heroic: A weekly heroic mission, which at the highest tier (Level 28), rewards you with 9 Strange Coins. You will need a second or third character at a high level to do these more than once a week. Doing it at 28 twice a week nets you 18 coins which is enough to buy whatever Exotic Xur sells each weekend.

Nightfall Strike: A weekly strike mission with a boss at the end. There's only one difficulty: 28. There are a lot of skulls (modifiers) which make these a pain in the ass if you don't have the right weapons. Rewards can be exotic weapons or armor, plus an XP bonus that runs all week. If you've completed it your character's head glows blue flames.

Raid: Currently only one: Vault of Glass. Level 26 is the minimum, but 28 with all exotic/legendary weapons is highly recommended. This can be run as many times as you want but you only get rewards once a week the first time you run it on each difficulty (Normal or Hard/30).

Order I would do stuff in:

Pre-Level 20: Do the Public Events and Bounties every day. I usually get the Public Event wherever I am in Patrol for bounties that day. I try to stack other bounties, like melee kills, 100 kills w/o dying, etc. I don't bother with the final boss bounties as it's usually more trouble than it's worth.

Level 20–24: Do the Public Events and Bounties every day and the Daily Heroic at the highest level you can. The Daily Heroic at 24 will give you a nice XP boost, a chance at a good engram, and some materials. At this point, on a weekly basis you want to max out the number of Marks you can get. You can either get Vanguard Marks (from doing Strikes, the playlist available on the planet screen) or Crucible Marks (from doing PvP, which also nets you a chance at better weapons/armor). Mileage varies but I find Vanguard Marks much, much easier to get (and quicker to boot).

Level 26–27: At this point you should be able to participate in the Weekly Strike as well. Your goal is to earn enough Strange Coins to buy the weapons and armor Xur sells every weekend. It's honestly easier to just have two characters going on at this same level because you can complete the Weekly at the lower levels (3 and 6 coins) and between that and Public Events, hopefully get enough SCs each week. The FIRST exotic armor you should worry about leveling up is a helmet, because that's the hardest piece of raid armor to get (more on that later). Once you are at this level, you can also get carried in Nightfalls and other missions at level 28, meaning you get more chances at Exotics and Legendaries.

Level 28: This is a search for a ton of Ascendant Materials (which you should have since you've been doing Public Events with 3 characters for the last few weeks), armor materials (breaking down armor you don't need), and planet materials (helium, relic iron). Max out all your armor (with a starting Light of +18) AND max out your legendary helm, and you'll get to Level 29.

While you are doing this, you can start doing the Raid. Find a group of experienced players who can help guide you. A good group will make it clear where you need to be and what you need to do. Even if you don't beat the Raid the first time around, there's a good chance at getting some legendary weapons or even Raid armor (which you want to replace your current armor). While doing all this, you're doing your Dailies, Weeklies, and Nightfalls at the hardest setting. Within two weeks you should be able to get to Level 29.

Level 29: Max out the damage on your weapons and your new raid armor. Keep doing the raid to get a full set of armor.

Level 30: Profit.

It looks like an error since it was just the plain old Iron Banner.

How was the Nightfall? It sounds tedious this week. My least favorite Strike.

Not too bad, decent places to hide with cover

Perfect, thank you so much.

I think the reason I was so lost is because I'm still sub 20.....

Thanks Bus!

Need some guidance. I'm working my Warlock thru level 26. I have Voidfang Vestaments (yellow - exotic chest), rare (blue) helm, legendary (purple) vanguard boots and gloves, and 1 legendary weapon; a fusion rifle (rest are rare). The Voidfang Vestaments and legendary boots/gloves are leveled up to the point where I have to start spending Ascendant materials on it, and the rare helm is fully leveled.

If I can get some help with Nightfall this week, I will have 18 SCs.

So, assuming Xur has these for sale soon, should I buy an Exotic Helm before an Exotic Primary? Should I spend Asc mats on leveling up the Voidfang Vest or wait since the Exotic Helm is more important and I have a limited supply of Asc mats? And, the raid helm will be out of my reach for a long while.

Both my Titan and Warlock each have a Exotic Helmet & Chest pc. If you can afford it I would recommend it since you're covered on two slots and plus any good Raid armor that drops is usually Gloves, Chest and Boots. My Level 30 Titan has Exotic Helm and three Raid Legendary armor and my Warlock has a Exotic Helmet and two Raid Legendary Armor. lso pay attention tonthe armor attributes with ammo for certain weapons or other bonus features.

all good info Bus
I'm up for knocking out the Nightfall and Weekly tonight if you are on
same time as usual for me, around 9:00 CT

by the way, thanks for the relic iron farming spot weeks ago (chests in the bunker area) .... I needed to do a major run there yesterday to get that material which I have hardly ever needed before

Gooter: keep in mind you can only have one exotic piece of armor equiped on a single guardian
I would get your armor up to level 28 on your main so you can feel comfortable doing nighfall/weekly/dailies at the highest level ... maxing out 1 exotic and close to maxing out 3 legendaries will do the trick
after that you are going to need to get raid gear to work your way higher in a way that will be beneficial

Your armor is far more important than an Exotic weapon. If you have a choice between a better helmet or gun, take the helmet. That being said, you don't have to have an Exotic helmet, but you do need to get a Legendary one at the very least. The Raid Helmet can only be acquired in Hard mode. If you have enough marks, I'd buy a Legendary Helmet and max out the Voidfang...for now.

It comes down to how much you're playing, and how many characters you're running. You can get 6 Ascendent materials everyday from playing the daily Heroic mission on Level 28 with 3 characters. You can also get them from public events. Sometimes you'll get a big drop on Nightfall (a partner of mine got 10 shards earlier).

While the end goal is getting to Level 30, there are many benefits to getting to 28 or even 29. It makes running the daily and weekly events easier. It makes the Raid less of a nightmare. You might go weeks in the Raid without getting the armor you need. Saving shards isn't a bad idea, but you can always earn more.

I'll use my Warlock as an example. For a long time, I only had one exotic piece of armor, a helmet. So what's the first Raid armor I got for him? Yup, the Helmet. I now have 2 exotic helmets (one at 30, the other 25), Sunbreakers at 30, and Voidfang at 27. Plus I have the Raid helmet at 30. I even maxed out Legendary Boots, Gloves and chest armor, each at 27. I spent a lot of shards I could have saved for Raid armor, but instead I have a versatile wardrobe with an Exotic in every slot for mixing and matching.

Thanks for the tips.

I know about the "there can only be one" rule regarding Exotics. That is why I was fretting over whether to dump Asc mats into Voidfang or wait for an Exotic Helm. Also, I will have enough marks this week to buy a Legendary Helm so that is good news. However, I could also buy a Shadow Price or Doctor Nope auto rifle.

I'm also going to try and start a second character soon (a Titan).

soon to be 32

Stick with the Voidfang for the foreseeable future. Get a helmet before a rifle. There seems to be a relationship between your level and the drops you get, and you'll get a gun soon enough...maybe from Xur. FYI, Shadow Price is quite a bit better than Doctor Nope.

If you haven't already, start leveling up the Sunsinger subclass. It's super useful in high level content. And on your Titan, just start with Defender. Less flashy, but again, useful in high level content.

If the boots/gloves match what you want out of them (they boost/buff the right weapons), then sure. I would focus Ascendant mats on the exotic helm since you are unlikely to replace that (at least until it randomly comes up during a Hard Raid).

My understanding is that most exotics are not a huge difference from the Legendary for PvE. Something like Icebreaker is an exception.

At one point you will hit a point where you need to do more damage, regardless of what your armor rating is.

Would I buy the Suros Regime over a helmet? Probably (if I liked Auto Rifles). But if the Helmet has some nice bonuses, get that.

Also: if you have the extra funds, buy your armor from an engram first. The stats on the engrams are randomized and will be better than what you get from Xur... it's just you can't select what class you will receive so you may need to buy multiples.

I have to admit I really prefer playing the Sunsinger. I'm leveling up his Void right now and the fun just isn't there.

My Hunter is great but I can never have an entire room engulfed in flames while I cackle, having just been returned from the dead.

I like speed runs
will be following the plan tonight

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I'm down for a dvdtalk raid tonight. Again, never done a full one before but am looking to learn the ropes.

I actually got invited into a random one the other night right before the Gatekeeper. No one was telling me what to do, but I finally figured most of it out. they weren't big on giving instructions and leading, more just about complaining. But we got to Atheon and then 3 of the 6 bailed. TheKing actually signed on at one point, but made the right move and quickly left.

Had a very productive day today, 2 Nightfalls, 2 Weeklys, 2 Dailys, 2 Public events, 2 Raids started. 1st one ended at Gate Keeper, 2nd one I got pulled in at Templar and got to gate keeper as well.

I'm going to say Tues night usually isn't the best to start a raid as most want to knock out the Nightfall and Weekly first (daily and PE next) and some for multiple characters

we've had a difficult enough time getting clan only runs going on other days of the week with pre-planning

19K and I ran through it 3 times pretty much just like the video. We did it with our Warlocks each time. When we got the final boss down to a sliver, we changed characters out. Well, I did once, as I had run the Nightfall with my Titan before he came on. But it was a great way to get my Hunter through the messy parts. I ended up getting a really sweet Fusion Rifle from New Monarchy, a FWC Rocket Launcher, and a second Arc Caster that I ended up scrapping for Energy (I have too many Auto Rifles)
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Oh yeah, I remember that! What happened was that I was down to my Hunter as my Titan and Warlock had already ran the raid. Plus, I had already beaten Atheon with the Hunter, but hadn't run the rest of the Raid with her. So when I saw you were at the final room, I left. But yeah, from what I heard in the chat, it didn't sound like it was going well. Had it been closer to the start, I would have stayed.

Hopefully, we can get a group together here tomorrow, as yeah, everybody wants to get the Nightfall out of the way so they get the XP boost on everything else.

Understood. Thought I saw someone mention earlier about doing a raid tonight. Might have misread.

Pretty much the way we did it. Did it with my 30 Titan both times but switched out to my Hunter at the last minute on the first run. You can actually ignore a lot of the enemies before the tank and just snipe the three shield bros with Ice Breakers.

Got a shitty legendary pulse rifle and a Gjallarhorn. God damn right Gjallarhorn! I almost feel bad for the raid enemies.

Not a bad start for a new week yesterday....

Got (2) nightfalls (thanks Chess), (1) daily, all three public events and finished a Raid with my Hunter in his first playthru at Level 27. Got (10) Shards, (6) Energy, killed Fred, another Vison of Confluence Scout Rifle and some cloak called Shattered Vault Cloak. It's neat looking but I really was hoping for one Raid Armor pc.

Think tonight I'm running one more Nightfall, try to get in all the dailies but might have time for a RAID with my Warlock.