380 now :) (Destiny)

by Chappy, Arlington, VA., Friday, May 18, 2018, 19:46 (2618 days ago) @ Beorn
edited by Chappy, Friday, May 18, 2018, 19:50

Raiding is the key to fast leveling right now. The regular weekly milestones only provide 5 powerful engrams a week (Flashpoint, Nightfall, Heroics, Call to Arms, and Clan XP if left with Hawthorne). Trials of the Nine can get you an extra 4 per week (Win 3, 5, 7 and Flawless). Resetting your Crucible valor gives another 4. If you run a Prestige Leviathan and a Lair, however, you get *15* powerful engrams.

You can leverage second and third characters to amplify these gains, because weapon power is calculated regardless of power.

Power leveling from DLC release:

On an alternate character:

• Complete public events on the flashpoint until reaching level 30. Use a Fire team medallion and the cosmos shell for speed
  
• Turn in vanguard tokens to get 340 level gear, and infuse rewards into existing gear until 345 in every slot.
  
• Complete the first two DLC story missions (granting a powerful weapon selection after the second mission)
  
• Run the nightfall (granting a powerful drop), then turn in the milestone (granting 1 or 2 more powerful drops from Zavala)
  
• Turn in the Flashpoint milestone (granting 1 or 2 more powerful drops from Cayde)
  
• Run 3 Heroic Strikes, then turn in the milestone (granting 1 or 2 more powerful drops Zavala)
  
• Complete Call to Arms and turn it in (granting 1 or 2 more powerful drops from Shaxx)
  
• Complete the first encounter of the "Eater of Worlds" Raid Lair, go to the tower and decode the powerful engram
  
• Complete the remainder of the "Eater of Worlds" Raid Lair (granting 1 powerful engram, 1 exotic chance, and 2 powerful gear drops)
  
• Complete the first encounter of the Prestige Leviathan Raid, go to the tower and decode the 2 powerful engrams
  
• Complete the remainder of the Prestige Leviathan Raid with Challenge (granting 1 exotic, and 8 powerful gear drops)
  
• If any gear slot starts to fall behind after any of these steps, do public events until you get a blue or purple drop to catch it back up.
  
• Complete a Flawless card in Trials for 4 powerful gear drops from the Emissary.
  
• Continue in Quicklplay until you can reset your rank for 4 powerful gear drops.

If you have the time, repeat all of the above on your second alternate character.

Finally, do all of the above on your main character, with a couple of exceptions:

• You might want to actually finish the story and adventures.
  
• Note that the normal Leviathan raid can drop weapons, while the prestige raid seems to only drop armor. To truly optimize things, complete the raid once on normal difficulty to get your weapons as high as possible, and then complete the raid again on prestige difficulty to get your armor just a bit higher.

I did NOT do all those steps, and I hit 376 by the end of week one. I did do all the weekly milestones, 1 normal raid, 3 prestige raids, 3 raid Lairs, and one trials card.