Efficient Power Leveling in Destiny 2: Edge of Fate
Greetings. My name is Librarian Husky. Leveling in this new era of the game appears to be much more simplified. The biggest change to leveling is that it is now almost completely uncapped. You don’t need to look for powerful drops or pinnacle drops; you can grind as much as you want to get all the levels you want.
The Grind to Level 200
Your first goal is to hit level 200. From level 10 to 200, you can do anything you want and you will get levels. Your first 100 levels or so will probably be earned in the campaign, assuming you purchased the campaign.
The Basics of Gaining Power
As you play, you will earn drops from doing pretty much anything, and these drops will slowly increase in power. You can infuse these items into your current gear with an enhancement core, which will bring up that item’s gear level to whatever the infused piece’s item level was.
The Campaign
Doing the legendary version of the campaign is more lucrative because you get more item drops, which translates to more levels. Many players finish the legendary campaign around level 125, but it is possible to finish at a much higher level.
The Portal: Your Primary Leveling Hub
The main way you will be leveling from now on is through the Portal. The Portal is broken down into a few subsections: Solo, Fireteam, Pinnacle, and Crucible, and all have their own activities within.
Portal Playlists
Solo is a new playlist with activities like lost sectors. Fireteam is similar to the Vanguard Ops playlist. Pinnacle consists of things like exotic missions or more complex activities, and Crucible is PvP, through which you can level purely if you would like.
Understanding Ratings and Modifiers
When you select an activity, you will be given an estimated rating. To get higher scores, you will likely need to add negative modifiers for a higher multiplier. You can also add positive modifiers, but they will take away score multipliers at higher difficulties.
Strategic Leveling in the Portal
Some activities in the portal will have a green engram icon, which means they will give an extra drop upon completion. You should try to focus on these bonus loot activities. If you’re looking for a specific item slot, hunt it down to target that piece directly.
Advancing Beyond Level 200
Once you hit level 200, things change a little bit. To level up from 200 up to the cap, you will need unstable cores, which are essentially just enhancement cores, but for the level 200 to level 550 range.
Unstable Cores and Seasonal Resets
The main difference, besides their icon, is that unstable cores are reset every expansion, so you can’t hoard a giant stockpile anymore. In addition, every expansion will reset everyone back to level 200; if you didn’t hit 200, you will not be adjusted.
Evolving Portal Strategies
Once you unlock higher difficulties in the portal, getting those A ranks will get a little more difficult because the modifiers change. The game plan is still the same: make the activity as hard as you are capable of completing while trying to maximize rewards.
The Path of Least Resistance
For the purposes of efficient leveling, go with the easier option. There is no reason to run an expert solo ops when it’s going to take longer versus the advanced version if your ultimate goal is to just get levels. Run what gets you items fastest.
The Purpose of Leveling: Tiered Loot
You might be asking, what is the point of leveling? As you level up, the tier of the loot that you will have access to will increase. Loot has been split into five tiers now, with tier five only available at endgame difficulties.
Armor Tiers Explained
For armor, as you increase in tiers, you will get more stats on said gear. A tier one item might only have 55 of a stat, but a tier three will have mid to high 60s, giving you access to more stats which makes you more powerful.
Weapon Tiers Explained
For weapons, as you increase in tiers, you will get more enhanced traits and perks. Tier five gives you even more perk options, enhances the origin trait, and gives some unique cosmetic effects.
Other Important Systems
Beyond your power level and gear, there are a couple of other systems that influence your progression and rewards. These include the new gear system and the reworked Guardian Ranks, both of which are more relevant than ever and worth paying attention to.
The New Gear System
The new gear system tries to incentivize people for using literal new gear. The more new gear you use, the greater the benefits that you get, which you can see by hovering over the artifact. New gear loses its new gear tag when a new expansion starts.
Guardian Ranks
Your guardian rank can affect the quality of rewards from mid-activity chest drops or randomly dropped rewards from challenging enemies within portal activities. There is very little reason not to ensure that you are leveling your guardian rank as much as possible.
Efficient Farming and the Meta
While you can play what you want, a meta for the most efficient leveling will always develop. This often involves finding the activity that gives the most loot for the least amount of time and effort, creating a “best” option for any given day.
The “Lake of Shadows” Effect
One exotic mission was giving six to seven drops in about 15 to 20 minutes. This is an insanely high amount of items compared to other things on offer, creating an effect where people simply want to run the fastest activity for the most amount of loot possible.
Finding the Daily Best
When the daily reset hits, things get shuffled and some activities will have bonuses that make them the most efficient leveling activity of the day. There will likely always be some sort of best option for a given day, so it can be useful to check with the community.
Other Key Mechanics
A couple of final mechanics are important to understand for playing with others and leveling alternate characters. These systems make it easier to play with friends of different levels and to catch up with your other characters.
Fireteam Power
Fireteam power brings up your level to within five levels of the highest leveled person in your team. This means you can still play with friends who are way ahead of you, but you’re not able to skip a lot of the grind as your drops will still be at your own level.
Alternate Characters
Levels are account-wide. When you switch to a second character, the level of gear you get will be based on the highest level stuff that you own across all characters, which makes catching up on alts much, much easier.
Conclusion
That is the gist of how leveling now works, as it is much more simplified. There are no more weekly lockouts; just pick some stuff that you want to play and go. No more worrying about pinnacle sources or powerful sources, just hang out and run stuff in the portal.
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