Destiny: The Taken King Leveling, Light and Engrams Tips

After spending many hours in Destiny: The Taken King we’ve discovered several leveling advantages to keep in mind. These are mostly tailored for players getting started with the new content, but even veteran players may find some of these suggestions worth investing into.

Leveling and Light

The biggest change to Destiny is how light works, and knowing the difference between level and light is very important.

Character leveling is straightforward, eventually players will reach level 40 if they complete quests and kill enough enemies. You should make it a habit to pick up bounties frequently, once you hit 40 the good stuff starts happening. If you’re new to the game players can choose to level their Guardian to level 25 from the Postmaster. Use the Spark of Light and ding, level 25.

Once reaching level 40 your light score will determine your defensive and offensive abilities based on your Guardian’s overall equipment. The better your gear the higher your light.

Infusion

Infusion is used to improve your gear and ultimately comes down to your own personal choice.

First use infusions on items you like, but has a lower light value than you want it to have. To improve the value select a second piece of gear from that same slot that you’re willing to give up. Select the weapon you want to improve, select the Infusion option in its upgrade screen and then the item you want to sacrifice. This expendable item must be a blue or purple item specifically from The Taken King DLC and a higher light value than the item you’re seeking to improve.

Infusion will ultimately rest on how many Legendary Mark you’ve adquired from completing bounties. Infusing weapons and armor while short on these marks if not recommended. So for example you have a 260 fusion rifle you love and have two weapons, one 290 and the other 270, that you want to sacrifice. To maximize your light you should first give up the 270 then the 290, but in doing so cost more Legendary Marks. However sacrificing the 290 first will push your rifle to the 280 mark and cost you less marks but sacrificing the chance of getting it to 290. 

Use Engrams Wisely

Engrams play a massive role in Destiny, and now they’re more valuable thanks to The Taken King expansion. 

Unlike Year One it’s worth the extra time to look at each new item after it decrypts and deciding whether to equipped it. If the light value on that item is higher than your current equipment, you should equip it before decrypting another Engram. Destiny’s backend loot system pays attention to your current light value and often tries to offer new rewards to replace your older gear, better gear currently equipped the better chances of getting something more powerful.

If you’re playing with multiple characters you should choose which one to use for decryption. For armor and class items you need to decrypt it with the character you want for that specific avatar. If you want a Warlock chest piece than use your Warlock to decrypt the chest engram. This doesn’t work with weapons, instead use your character with the highest light valued weapon to increase your chances of getting something better.

Legendary Marks Are Important

Legendary marks are your friend in Destiny, they’re key for building Year Two versions of your old Year Old exotics, infusion of your items and buying new legendary gear.

One of the easiest ways to collect marks is by completing the daily heroic story mission and crucible playlist each day. You should also complete every major story mission that opens up in the primary questline of The Taken King. A lot ofadditional story missions, specifically the ones labeled “The Taken War”, often provide more legendary marks. More is always better.

Using your marks once again is all about personal taste. However I have a few suggestions.

First off if you’re looking to improve a single exotic blueprint to Year Two status than it may be worth the investment. However this is very fickle, use it on items of high value and useful perks. For example the Suros Regime is worth investing into Year Two.

Second, spending marks on legendary purple ghost shell with a high light value is wise. Over the course of the game I found that these ghost shells are harder to come by than other gear slots. In addition these feed into your light value, which becomes immensely important once you reach level 40.

After that using your marks to purchase vendor gear is recommended but don’t go crazy. The Taken King offers a good supply of useful blue and purple gear as natural drops within the world, so overspending isn’t advise.

Having a solid loadout and switching over to infusion is a good place to invest Legendary Marks. This way you can build your own perk layout and start investing light into what you find useful for your playstyle. 

Invest in the Right Gear

When you reach level 40 it’s important to pay close attention to each new piece of gear you collect. As I stated before Destiny will reward you gear based on what you have equipped, so constantly be alert what you have at hand. 

Your intelligence, discipline and strength is all tailored to your armor, class item and artifact. The Taken King has adjusted how these stats work with intelligence decreasing your super's cooldown, discipline allows you to use grenades more frequently and melee becomes more powerful the higher your strength is. Pay attention to what gear changes what stats,once your character has several builds that keep them at 290+ light you can experiment more.

Further Recommendations

You should spend the 2500 glimmer to pledge yourself to a faction early in the game. All you have to do is head to the Tower and talk to one of the leaders. Getting to a high level with a preferred faction, and those who played Destiny previously no longer have to wear the class item to gain reputation.

The Gunsmith Banshee for example has a reputation system where if you perform weapon tests you can order a purplelegendary weapon that will arrive the next Armsday (Wednesday). Just be aware once ordered it’ll take up a slot in your inventory.

Xur: Agent of the Nine doesn’t carry any Year One merchandise anymore but you can still take advantage of his sales. Xur will have Year Two items for your Guardian and Three of Coins which increase the chances of getting rare gear from bosses. When in doubt get the Three of Coins.

However despite all the leveling, infusions, light gathering and equipment awareness the primary goal of Destiny is to have fun. Build your Guardian into the ultimate warrior, and The Taken King is built to let you do that. It’s filled with new quests and ways to play, so don’t stress yourself out and go shoot some aliens!

Adam Siddiqui, NoobFeed
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