With the release of Rise of Iron, Bungie has revamped the Light Level system to a more incremental system. While trying to increase your light level, you will be trying to get each piece of gear up approximately 5 light levels at a time.
ENGRAMS:
- Green engram will drop with gear up to 190 light. The main intention of this is to create a new route for players to get weapon and armor materials.
- Blue engrams will decrypt up to 340 light. Actual blue item drops (already decrypted) from strikes will decrypt up to 365 light
- Purple Engrams will decrypt up to 365 light.
- Exotic Engrams will decrypt up to 385 light
Vendors:
- Purchasable vendor gear (including items Xur is selling) has a starting light level of 350
Steps to Leveling:
Step 1: buy what vendor gear you can with legendary marks. With a maxed out 200 legendary marks, you can buy two pieces of armor. If you hoarded legendary items in your vault, you can get a full set of armor, a ghost, a class item, as possibly 1-2 weapons from breaking down items.
Step 2: After completing the Story missions, make sure to complete the quest for Shiro to unlock the new Strike and the new version of The Devils Lair stork (Sepiks Perfected).
Step 3: Run the Sepiks Perfected strike over and over. Each run will net you 2-3 decrypted blue items. These items (as mentioned previously) will decrypt up to 365 light.
[NOTE: Reason for doing this strike is that there are 2 stopping points prior to the boss, and all other areas you can bypass the enemies on your sparrow or just run by them, allowing you to complete a run in around 15 minutes.]
After a run is complete, go back to orbit & equip the blue items you received that have higher light values. DO NOT infuse each item into legendary gear or you will run out of legendary marks quickly.
[Note 2: DO NOT decrypt any Legendary (purple) or Exotic (yellow) engrams. You will want to wait until you hit around 360 light. At this point you can use the legendary engrams to help get you to 365 light. If you don't hit 365 from legendary engrams, continue running Sepiks Perfected till you do, or are close]
Step 4: Once your at 365, you have more limited routes to gaining higher level gear as this is the point that is considered "End Game" leveling. Below is a list of things that will give you drops higher than 365 and up to 385 light:
- Exotic Engrams
- Gunsmith Packages
- Vanguard Packages
- Crucible Packages
- Faction Packages
- Eris Packages
- Petra Packages
- Variks Packages
- Elder Sigil rewards
- Nightfall Rewards
- Hoard Chests at the end of strikes (needs skeleton key)
- Wrath of the Machine raid
This will be the grindiest time of the new content.
- Run heroic siva crisis playlist
- this allows you to have a possibility for getting skeleton keys for the hoard chests
- hoard chests are one of two spots currently you can get a higher light artifact
- Use your exotic engrams incrementally
- Don't use your exotic engrams all at once. Wait to see what you get from Vendor/faction packages, then see where you're lacking in light level and decrypt those engrams
- Run Court of Oryx
- the other spot to possibly get an artifact is from a Eris Package. Run court of Oryx and do the Eris bounties on the Dreadnaught to level your rep with her. It takes approximately 30 antiquated runs to go up 1 level with Eris
- Run Challenge of Elders
- Rewards from challenge of elders are up to 385 light. This will give you one armor piece and one weapon a week per character
- continue running challenge of elders to rank up Variks rep. His packages will give up to 385 light level items
- Run the nightfall
- dont run the nightfall until you are over 365 light
- this is just another route to getting higher gear when the game slows
- Do weekly Petra bounties
- turn in heavy weapon synths/materials/motes to factions for packages
- Run the Wrath of the machine raid
