Destiny – Light, Factions, Farming and more

Destiny is an interesting FPS console experience, one that hasn’t really been presented before. It’s more of an MMO than a straight up shooter and a large reason for this has to do with Destiny’s “end game,” that is to say, what you’ll spend your time doing once you reach level 20.

It doesn’t take very long to reach level 20, especially if you’ve been playing as much as I have. But beyond level 20, Destiny changes up the formula and it can be a bit confusing to figure out at first. I went over this briefly in my earlier review, but now that I’ve had more experience with the end game myself, I can speak to what you’ll need to do once you max out your experience levels.

Destiny is designed to keep you playing and to maximize your abilities, levels and gear, there are several important factors you need to take into consideration.

Light level

Once you hit level 20, you have the capacity to earn armor pieces with Light attached to them. Light is a stat much like Intellect or Strength on armor pieces but what it dictates is you level past 20. Until 20, XP earned from kills, mission rewards and bounties dictates your level but at 20, Light is the only thing that will level you up meaning – you’re going to have to really work for your levels past 20.

Light can be attached to Rare armor and up (Legendary and Exotic being above Rare). I’m not sure if it can be attached to weapons, as I haven’t found any with a Light rating. There are several ways to earn these armors:

-They can be dropped by enemies

-They can be earned through Crucible matches

-They can be found in engram drops or bought from the Cryptarch

-You can farm certain areas to accumulate drops or glimmer (more on this later)

-You can earn Vanguard marks through bounties and strikes or Crucible marks through the Crucible and purchase Legendary gear from the various Tower vendors

Now, if you want to go the route of buying gear through your Vanguard or the Crucible, know that it will take a long time with lots of hours sunk into playing. Completing Patrol missions will earn you 10 Vanguard rep while bounties will usually earn you 50-100 Vanguard rep. You need level 2 Vanguard rep to buy armor and level 3 to buy weapons and each level is, I think, about 1,500 rep. And that’s just to earn the ability to buy legendary armor from these vendors – you’ll also need marks.

Marks are a currency earned from the Daily Heroic Mission, Weekly Heroic Strike and the Strike Playlist. You’ll typically only earn about 5 marks per completed mission/strike and a single piece of armor usually runs about 150 marks. On top of that, you’re capped at earning 100 marks a week.

The Crucible has similar limitations, where you need level 2 Crucible rep to buy armor and level 3 to buy weapons. Earning Crucible marks is much quicker, in my estimation, as completing a mission can take anywhere from 15-30 minutes while a game in the Crucible will only be about 8-10 minutes. Winning a Crucible match will earn you 3 marks, while a loss will still earn 2.

It’s up to you to decide how you’ll want to go about earning these marks. But there are other vendors who will take Crucible marks – the factions.

Factions

Right now, there are three factions in Destiny – Dead Orbit, Future War Cult and the New Monarchy. Each faction has specific armor and weapon pieces that give you various stat increases (Dead Orbit armor gives Strength and Discipline, Future War Cult gives Intellect and Discipline and the New Monarchy gives Intellect and Strength).

Much like Vanguard and Crucible vendors, you need reputation with these factions in order to buy items from them (level 2 for armor, level 3 for guns). To earn rep for a faction, you must first purchase a class item from that faction and have it equipped when you earn reputation and it will be applied to that faction. For instance, you can complete bounties but when you go to turn it in, make sure that you have your faction item equipped when turning it in.

There’s allegedly going to be two more factions eventually – Osiris and Seven Seraphs. And speaking of vendors, there is a unique vendor who only shows up at the Tower between Friday and Sunday. Named Xur of the Agent of the Nine, he has a selection of legendary and exotic items but these must be purchased with a currency even more rare than marks. Xur sells exotic armor for 13 Strange Coins, exotic weapons for 23 strange coins and an exotic engram for 23 Motes of Light. Strange Coins and Motes of Light are rare drops and can only be obtained from rare engrams, mission rewards or Crucible rewards.

Farming

If you’ve read all the above and feel like it’s going to take a long time to purchase legendary armor – well, you’re right. Which is why many YouTubers out there have discovered several methods of farming uncommon (green) and rare (blue) engrams as well as glimmer.

There are several spots in throughout Strikes and Missions where enemies have a higher chance of dropping green or blue engrams. There are several I’ve found (which you can find on YouTube by searching terms like “Destiny farming” or “Destiny engram farming”) and they usually have similar characteristics. For instance, these locations are where a large group of enemies have a seemingly higher chance of dropping green or blue engrams. They also feature a respawn point right before this group of enemies, which allows you to farm the enemies for items, die, and farm again the quickest way possible.

I’ve also found a good spot for glimmer farming (which also sometimes drops green and blue engrams). Glimmer farming would also work in conjunction with the cryptarch. After farming for a substantial amount of glimmer (between 20,000-25,000), visit the cryptarch and purchase green or blue engrams. Decrpyting and buying engrams raises your cryptography reputation and with each new level, you’ll receive a package through the postmaster which can contain rare and legendary engrams.

If this is a method you’d like to pursue, I’d say look into them as soon as possible because Bungie will no doubt catch wind of people exploiting these methods and eventually patch them out. But for now, if you don’t mind tedious activities and don’t have any qualms about whether or not these methods are legitimately earning these items, make use of these farming techniques while you can. You can even use these farming spots to quickly complete bounties. Just this morning, I farmed over 25,000 glimmer and completed two PvE bounties (kill 10 Hive majors or Ultras and kill 3 or more enemies with your super charge 30 times) in only about two hours.

Utilizing this info and these farming methods, I’ve accumulated enough Light to reach level 21 and am halfway to 22. Almost all of my gear is of blue rarity (weapons and armor pieces) and with new farming methods I’ve found, a legendary piece of gear is well within my grasp.  

Raids

Beginning this week, players can take part in a massive mission called the Vault of Glass. Taking place on Venus, this raid mission can only be undertaken by a group of six Guardians who are all at least level 26. Bungie has said these raids should only be undertaken by a team of players with the utmost level of teamwork as raids do not have much direction as to objectives to be completed and are hours long. Plus, there is no matchmaking for raids either and you must enter into one with a party of six made up of players you actually know.

I’m not sure what you earn from raids since they only went online this week and I’m the highest leveled of my friends, and I’m only level 21. I’m sure there will be YouTube videos of the Vault of Glass as well as people streaming it on Twitch so be on the lookout for those if you’re in the same boat as me (that boat being the one that doesn’t know enough people, or high enough leveled people, to attempt a raid).

Despite spending almost every waking moment I’m not working playing Destiny, I’m still completely addicted. I’m obsessed with trying to get better gear and weapons and I’m sure as soon as I’ve got a set of legendary gear and weapons, I won’t be satisfied until I get exotic stuff. Bungie is doing a great job of adding Daily/Weekly updates as well as creating incentives to play different modes. With DLC on the horizon and the competitive multiplayer of the Crucible, I could be playing Destiny for a very long time.