Hey yo, today’s the day the Final Shape drops, so why don’t we go over a quick refresher course on all the changes to power level. A lot has changed, especially if you haven’t played in a while. We’ll also briefly touch on XP farming if you’re into that.

Power Level Overview

As of today, all the gear on your character and in your vault has been raised to the new floor of 1900 power. Matter of fact, why don’t we put up all the important numbers you may want to keep on the mental back burner.

Power Floor and Soft Cap

Right now, the Power Floor is 1900. The Soft Cap is now 1940, meaning as long as you’re just playing the game and earning basically any kind of gear, you’ll be creeping towards that new Soft Cap of 1940.

Powerful Cap and Pinnacle Drops

The Powerful Cap is now 1990, meaning once you’ve hit the Soft Cap of 1940, you’ll need powerful and/or Pinnacle Drops to climb all the way up to 1990. Fortunately, if you’ve been out of D2 for a really long time, the game does a pretty good job of telling you what activities will give you powerful gear.

Pinnacle Cap

The Pinnacle Cap is 2000. After you’ve hit 1990, only Pinnacle Drops can help you reach 2000. Some people like to be extra efficient and not go after any Pinnacle rewards until they’ve hit 1990. You can do that if you want, but it definitely won’t make or break you.

Efficient Power Grinding Tips

One extremely easy tip for efficient power grinding is that when you jump into the Final Shape, hike up those big boy pants and choose the campaign on Legendary difficulty. Doing so will give you more end-of-mission gear, and at the end of the entire campaign on Legendary, you’ll get an entire set of power level 1960 gear.

Legendary Campaign Recommendation

I’m going to strongly recommend that you at least try the campaign on Legendary. Get a bunch of gear, get a free exotic—win-win. If you’re interested in doing the day one raid, remember that after completing the campaign on Legendary and getting that 1960 gear, you’ll not only be above the Soft Cap but also within five power levels of being totally day one raid ready.

Day One Raid Preparation

1965 is the highest power level you can be in the new Salvation’s Edge raid for the first 48 hours. If you didn’t know, the first 48 hours are contest mode, so even if you go full-on beast Grind Mode and manage to hit 1990, it won’t make you any stronger in the first 48 hours of the raid. If the contest mode raid emblem is your main goal, you’ve got a pretty straightforward path: grind out the Legendary campaign first, then grind activities that give powerful rewards to get you to 1965. Make sure that all your favorite day one raid gear is infused up to 1965.

Pathfinder System

One new way to get gear is the Pathfinder System that Bungie is dropping into the Final Shape. It’s kind of a Choose Your Own Adventure, connect-the-dots reward system. Open it up in the directory and inspect which path seems the easiest or the most fun, and then do the challenges from left to right until you’re finished.

Pathfinder Menus

There are two Pathfinder Menus in the Final Shape: one available to all Guardians that replaces the bounty systems and weekly challenges for core ritual activities (PVP, Gambit, and Strikes), and a second one for the Pale Heart of the Traveler, the new location tied to the Final Shape campaign. When you’re completely done with the first path, you’ll get a tier three powerful engram, which is awesome, and an exotic. You can actually get two exotics after completing the Pathfinder System, the second run-through, which is good to know if you want more exotics right up front.

Weekly Rewards and Limits

Remember, though, that even though the first completion gives a tier three powerful engram, repeated clears in the same week will not. It’s good to include on your path to being day one raid ready, but repeated Pathfinder farming during the same week will give diminishing returns. If you’re confused about what a tier three powerful engram is, here’s an explanation.

Powerful and Pinnacle Engrams

Just remember, there are three different levels of powerful engrams: tier one, tier two, and tier three, with tier three engrams giving the strongest power boost out of the three options. Pinnacle engrams don’t have tiers like powerful engrams, so don’t worry about that as much.

Powerful Cap in Final Shape

For a long time in Destiny, ritual activities had a chance of dropping a powerful reward for players between the Soft Cap and the Powerful Cap. In the Final Shape, that now extends to essentially every reward source in the game, according to Bungie. This means, in theory, players should eventually reach the Powerful Cap no matter what activity they want to grind.

New Account-Wide Power Feature

One really important thing to remember when hopping into the Final Shape is the New Account-Wide Power Feature. For the first time ever, the gear that drops on any character you play will be relative to the highest power level character on your account. For example, let’s say you do a little day one power grinding on your Hunter and stop when he’s around power level 1963. Then you hop over to your Warlock, who hasn’t touched Final Shape at all. Thanks to account-wide power, your Warlock’s gear will drop at 1963. That should make it really easy to be raid ready across multiple characters if that’s something you want to do.

XP and Artifact in Final Shape

Let’s talk about XP real quick. If you’ve been out of the game for a minute, remember that XP is different from power level. Power level is the combined numeric average of all your weapons and armor, while XP is mainly for unlocking everything in your artifact. If you haven’t taken a look at it yet, the artifact in the Final Shape looks pretty good. Not the design, but the perks are really strong. If your goal is to do the day one raid, you’ll definitely be able to do that without needing to unlock the majority of the artifact. That being said, the more of the artifact you have unlocked, the better you’re going to be in combat because you’ll be able to do more cool things.

XP Farming Strategies

If you were a tryhard and did bounty prepping before the Final Shape, resist the urge to pop everything when you first log in. Ideally, you want to wait until you get the artifact and then be in a fireteam with other people before turning in all of your hoarded bounties. The reason is that if you’re in a fireteam, you can take advantage of the shared wisdom boost, which gives you extra passive XP gains for free.

Fireteam and Ghost Mod Tips

Also, do not forget to have the Blinding Light mod applied to your Ghost before turning in those bounties. If you come home from work or school and want to turn in your hoarded bounties but you’re several hours late to the debut of Final Shape, that’s fine. Get your artifact first, then if you can, very politely ask to join the person on your friends list with the highest season rank possible. They likely have more fireteam XP buffs unlocked on their season pass, which will give you more passive XP when you turn in your hoarded bounties.

XP Farming Without Hoarded Bounties

If you haven’t hoarded bounties and did other things like touch grass or spend time with loved ones, here’s what you can do if you really care about XP farming. Honestly, I just say play the game, but seasonal challenges in particular usually offer big chunks of XP, so try to target those right away. On top of that, go for weekly bounties from easy vendors like Shaw Han in the Cosmodrome. Remember, weekly bounties are 12,000 XP, daily bounties are 6,000, and repeatable bounties are 4,000.

Repeatable Bounty Strategy

Even though repeatables are the lowest, they’re potentially the easiest to complete repeatedly, especially if you get into a rhythm. One strategy that still works is to go to Eris Morn or any vendor, get a ton of repeatable bounties, complete them, and then repeat. This is really mind-numbing and boring, but it does work.

Pathfinder System for XP

Apparently, each individual objective on the Pathfinder System also gives 4,000 XP on completion. In theory, if you found a Pathfinder really easy or fun, you could just do that over and over for an XP and loot farm, but repeatable bounty farming will probably be easier. There’s going to be a lot of new info dropping today; if I get any additional tips, I’ll share them later.

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