Gearing up info. How to..
#1
Tue, 09/16/2014 - 15:06
Gearing up info. How to..
I am asking the folks who have made it to lvl 26 and beyond.
Did you grind reputation (gain favor with the vendors in the tower)?
Run crucible till your eyes bleed?
Srtikes, strikes, and more srikes?
what is the best way you have found to get there?
For me, lots of strikes, bounties, and patrol missions with some crucible mixed in
thanks Yem!
Most of my legendaries came from the crucible. Your gear with light will level when you upgrade them and I believe via XP
Im sure this is obvious to most people, but just in case:
When you turn in bounties, EQUIP THE WEAPONS AND ARMOR YOU WANT TO LEVEL UP FIRST. At early levels, some bounties are enough to fully upgrade an item. At 20, they are enough to give you an immediate one tier upgrade at least. Turning in a bounty with a maxiumum upgraded item equipped is just a waste.
Can someone explain to me why I need to fam for loot when I can walk over to the vendor and buy all the purple stuff I want? It's not like the store bought stuff is weaker or something, they all have the same attack and number of perks.
Bounty hunting is boring to unlock purchasing.
Doing 30 strikes and getting no purple drops is also boring.
I finally got a purpledrop last night. Crucible, not a strike. First in 2-3 days I think. Decoded to a crap blue weapon. I also made the mistake of using future war cult during bounties. I realized he doesn't sell auto rifles.
Aside from one game, I have yet to play any PvP and hit 25 tonight. Strikes, bounties, public events, patrol missions and so on. There's also the added benefit of being able to farm resources as these become necessary when upgrading legendary gear.... that whole killing two birds with one stone thing. It was a grind, sometimes even groan worthy when you are doing The Summoning Pits for the 5th time (not a fan) but it's a more casual experience compared to PvP grinding, IMO. OK, getting your ass handed to you by a mob is an obnoxious turn of events in most people's book, but it beats the hell out of the frustration that can come with PvP.
As far as gear goes, I neglected to take bounties and patrols seriously early on, and I'm fairly confident I'm paying a price for that now. I have one legendary piece that I bought from the Hunter Vanguard and the rest is all lvl 20 rare. Only recently did I get my Vanguard Rep to 2 and acquire enough marks to purchase anything. I have a feeling if I had jumped on those Vanguard related bonuses right out of the gate, my gear situation would be a different story.
With regards to PvP, I've heard enough people talk about how the drops in PvP are much better and reliable - PvE seems to want to get your hopes up with rare/legendary engrams and all they turn out to be are uncommon garbage. At least they're good for weapon parts and materials I guess. And someone correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that win or lose you still get rep and marks (I believe it's cut in half if you lose, but it's still better than nothing). Another benifiet I could see is the time spent completing each round is significantly shorter than say doing a Strike, and in theory, that should mean quicker progression to meet vendor requierments. But take this all with a grain of salt as my knowledge of PvP progression is from others experiences.
From experiences in other real MMO games (yeah, I said it. It looks like MMO, it progresses/grinds like MMO. But it's not. It's just not
), PvP was not a necessity, but had its perks. I guess it really all depends on what your play style is, how much time are you willing to grind for something, and what you're wanting to get out of the game. Personally, I would rather not touch PvP with a ten foot pole, but I will just to double dip my gear progression and speed this process up a bit. I find it frustrating and it takes away from the fun factor for me. Others love it and feel that PvE is their personal bane.
From what I've seen of purchasable gear, or even random exotic drops (working on the Depleted Hand Cannon bounty to acquire Thorn), we're not looking at truly legendary end game tiered gear until we start getting more raids (the Vendor gear is nothing like WoW legendary gear with insane buffs and what not, but word is the raid tiered gear will more closely resemble that lvl of buffing that will really set the classes apart.
I guess the bottom line would be do what you want to enjoy the grind. It's a grind, pure and simple. But that doesn't mean it has to feel like one. I would say the only absolute must do, regardless of whatever you decide, grab bounties, participate in public events, do the dailies, take on the weekly strikes if you geared up for them, participate in any events playlists that they make available. Frankly, it's this added fluff that will speed up your gear progression. I didn't and now I'm grinding just for marks and it sucks.
So, yeah, that's my long winded two cents on the matter lol.
Thanks for your suggestions!
Rep is one thing, but you still need vanguard marks to buy gear. Do you get marks in Patrol? I thought you only got marks from the Strike playlist.
I was wearing the FWC bond so I could get their rep, but then I noticed I could get the same gear (Light, Int, Disc) from the vanguard. Also, it seems there is more variety with the vanguard due to having the mentor and the quartermaster, so I switched back to vanguard until I get my rank up.
Here's a question though. Can you still get vanguard marks (in the playlists that list marks as rewards) even if you are wearing for another faction? I know you won't get vanguard rep, but I wonder if you can still get the marks?
Yes, I was a rank 2 with FWC before switching back to my Vanguard this morning. No problem getting the marks for the week wearing the FWC warlock bond.
There's only vanguard or crucible marks, so you have no choice but to recieve vanguard marks no matter what faction banner you wear.
And yeah, the guaranteed legendaries are nice. And it's not a stupid engram the asshat can turn blue for you, they just hand you a purple helmet and gun or whatever.
*Let me preface this by saying that I'm not a fan of PvP and the following is really PvE focused. I'm willing to bet the same principals could be applied to PvP, I just wouldn't know how. Maybe someone with more PvP knowledge could fill that gap? I would also like to say that this method could be useful for anyone and any play style. I personally find the hunt for gear to be the best part of these games. For me, it's all about the end game and that's what I focus on. But this can work for the casual, less obsessed player as well. If grinding and farming isn't your idea of a good time, this should help speed things up so you can get in the raids with little effort. I make no claim that this is the best way to get your gear. This is all just my suggestions/opinions from research and experimentation.*
As far as I know, and from the link that that DEEP_NNN just posted, the secondary factions legendary gear is all purchased with Crucible marks. I'm honestly not sure if you'll still acquire Vanguard marks while grinding for faction rep though. Either way, to even purchase gear from any of these vendors, you'll need to get your rep up to 2 for gear and 3 for weapons. Taking that into consideration, and that you guaranteed 1-2 free pieces of free stuff when you hit rep 3 (and again every time you rank your rep up!) I personally see marks as a secondary goal.
Let me explain, that even though I 100% agree marks are important, why I see them as a secondary goal. I'm currently sitting on 64 Vanguard marks. 64 and I'm capped for the week. I wanted to set the house on fire once I realized that for the rest of this week, I can keep playing knowing that no matter what I do, I'm 1 mark short of being able to purchase anything from my class vendor and there's nothing I can do about it. 1 mark! *deep breath* So, yeah, there's a 100 cap on marks you can earn in a week (Crucible and Vanguard). But..... no restrictions or cap on rep!
If you do the math, ranking up rep can be insanely fast and easy. Hit the dailies, strike playlists, bounties (Vanguard and Crucible will both count towards the factions rep) and the one that I see offering the biggest bang for your buck, patrol missions. Each one you complete is worth 10 rep (I believe) and you can grind each patrol out in almost no time flat. As an added bonus, you'll have public events to participate in (yay, more free crap). Also, as long as you're out there, farm for caches and resources - you might get lucky with an awesome drop and Legendary gear is not cheap to lvl up. Save those resources!
The second point that I want to make why I strongly recommend rep grinding to get your gear is the concept that random gear farming (Crucible, Strike rewards, farming zones, and so on) is equivalent to gambling. I've noticed a lot of information on the nets regarding grinding this way, and this is just wrong and will get you nowhere fast. Yeah, maybe you'll get lucky, but again, you're gambling. Why is this? The Cryptarch is a grade A dick!
If I could somehow attack NPCs, I'd shoot him in his stupid face and shove an engram right up his ass!
Seriously though, the engram system isn't unfair or broken...... just very misleading and poor way to integrate loot drops. Here's some [b]stats[/b] to show how these systems work (stats are specific to this game, but pretty much the standard for MMO/RPG/random loot drop systems) The fact that you're getting rare/legendary engrams leads you to beilieve you're getting rare/legendary gear and that's where they messed this up IMO. If you've ever played other MMO or loot driven games, e.g. Borderlands, you know that the odds of high lvl gear dropping from common mobs is very, VERY, low. People who aren't familiar with these games/systems can see this as broken, unfair, frustrating and think, "If I just keep farming, it'll pay off! Maybe I'm doing something wrong?" Nope. You're getting exactly what you should from a random loot system.
Where Bungie really screwed this system up, is instead of having the higher end gear just drop, thus better illustrating the rarity, they created this decoding system instead and it's very misleading. The truth is, it functions exactly the way it should for this genre.
Bottom line, if you're grinding for gear - regardless if you think it's an enjoyable part of the game or not - this method will give you better results, is relatively easy, beats the hell out of farming locations praying for a good drop, and can be fun and social while limiting the brain numbing parts of grinding.
You can earn vangaurd marks whether you're in a faction or not (100 per week)
Rep is a different story. You'll only earn for one or the other, depending on which bond/cloak/badge you're wearing
LOL!!! I hear ya.
my wife has had one "legendary" engram, one purple weapon. Today a blue engram, purple weapon.
today for me.....3 "legendary" (purple) engrams......ALL BLUE ITEMS......WHAT A DICK HE IS! Lol.
Just play the game. There are a few obvious farming spots out there, but if you play the game and churn through the content, you'll level your stuff up.
Saw a fireteam of douchesticks farming a spot last night while I was running patrols. There was a cave on the cosmodrome by a public event dropsite where they just stood there pumping rounds into. I went over there during an event and popped a few snipe rounds to get some headshots for a bounty and they got all pissy with me. These guys were all level 26 plus. Can't imagine how boring that would be to sit there firing bullets in a hole for hours on end.
You were probably too close and fucking up the spawn. That spot can be a little finicky, and if you're too close, it only spawns the Acolytes and not the Thralls too. That's why they were pissy.
Fun fact: you don't have to actually be shooting at the target to get the engram/experience. You can just stand there. You won't level up your weapon/armor, I don't think, but you'll get base EXP.
I did about 3 or 4 strikes tonight, alsost level 21.
FI has an article on Legendary acquisition.
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2014/09/17/destiny-how-to-get-guaranteed-legendary-and-exotic-items.aspx
AKA: just play the game.
That's good to know. Once I get enough rep for the vanguard armor, I may switch back to FWC.
Anyone know of an easy way to farm the materials? I have some purple armor that I can't upgrade. I don't mind running patrol missions actually, but some seem really rare (like helium and relic iron). Spirit Bloom is easy to find because it glows.
Helium is found on the moon and glows as well. I've been grabbing all the resournces I see since day 1 not knowing that they are for. Just keep your eye out.
Relic iron isn't too bad to find. It glows a bit too. And, it's been respawning in the same places as long as I don't go back to orbit. I need a lot of spinmetal. For some reason Spoonman runs through my head while looking for it.