So Ive been stuck at 24 for a few weeks now. I do 10 or so strikes every day and i never end up with anything that increases my light level. So, what am I doing wrong?

I think we are in the same boat. I think that my problem is that i don't have the time to raid, therefore I don't get to level up.

Yea, I haven't played in a while but was gonna ask of you've bought gear from any of the vendors (esp vanguard).
Xur.
Nightfalls.

Yeah once you hit rank 2 in either Crucible, Vanguard or a Faction of your choice you should be able to jump levels quite fast by buying it from the vendors. If you're repping a faction it might be a bit easier, as all the rep will go to one spot instead of 2 different places depending on what you play. If you want to grind rep you can do Assassination patrol missions which give 25 rep per (32 with the Nightfall bonus, but you're a ways away from that), in addition to doing as many bounties a day as you can. Basically you just need to grind.

@genfuyung: Start by doing as many Crucible and Vanguard bounties as you can every game session so you hit rank 2 in both vanguard and crucible reputation. Focus on doing bounties that give the highest amount of reputation. While you're doing bounties, you need to collect vanguard marks by doing public events and the vanguard playlists and crucible marks by playing crucible matches. You need 150 marks of one and 200 of another. Once you have hit rank 2 and collected enough marks for vanguard and crucible, it's time to buy your level 32 gear. Select two of the armor pieces you need from each faction vendor and focus on armor that gives you intellect/discipline to have the most amount of supers/grenades.

-Bounties

-Strikes

-Use Vanguard Marks to Buy Gear

You should shoot that guy.

quickest way is to pick a faction and rank up their rep.

which abilites do you want a quicker cooldown for? Future War Cult armor boosts super and grenade, Dead Orbit is grenade and melee, and New Monarchy is super and melee.

Buy the class item from whichever one you want to go with, equip it, then do the daily bounties, both vanguard and crucible, and whatever else you feel like, strikes and whatnot, any rep you earn will go towards your faction rank, when you hit rank 2 you can buy the armor pieces they sell, equipping all four will get you to 32.

however, you need crucible marks to buy this armor, which will accumulate if you're doing the crucible bounties, but if you don't like playing crucible at all then forget the factions and just focus on ranking up your vanguard rep, it will take longer as you've only half the available bounties each day, but you can just use vanguard marks to buy similar armor from your class mentor or whatever they're called, you don't need to equip anything, just do those bounties.

most players, over time, rank up both vanguard and crucible separately, as well as level up a faction, for greater choice of what to buy.

exotic armor pieces can be bought from Xur on the weekend for strange coins, and are easy to level up, using exotic shards which he also sells, but you can only equip one exotic piece at a time.

to get from 32 to 34 you can either do the lvl 32 Prison of Elders each week, which will get you one armor core, which can be exchanged for whichever armor piece the PoE vendor is selling that week, OR you can use etheric light to upgrade your equipped lvl 32 armor, etheric light is awarded for lvl 34 and 35 PoE, also a certain amount of wins in Trials of Osiris, also it can drop in nightfalls (which you do not need the expansion for). all these activities require pre-made team-mates, but the 'DestinyLFG' website is a quick and easy solution to that, or finding a clan is pretty easy too, you can ask again on here, or try 'the100.io' website.

I've been stuck on lvl 30 for months

@hh: I've mostly been focusing on Vanguard marks, but is the faction gear ultimately better? I have a dead orbit cloak, but I haven't even gotten it to rank 1 yet (I only started playing again in earnest like a day or two ago though) and my vanguard rep is already like level 3

Considering Destiny is kind of light on content it's still convoluted af

@tajasaurus: faction gear just allows you to pinpoint your build better, because each one services specific stats, but ultimately it doesn't make much difference, vanguard armor works the same, you just don't get the same level of choice between strength, discipline, and intelligence. sticking purely with vanguard is perfectly fine.

Once you hit rank 26-30 you can also start doing raids. Great for gear. If you want to run with a GB group just give us a shout!

Everyone's advice is pretty much on point, but Zevvion already posted a great in depth guide here. It's a bit outdated but most of the advice is still good. Ignore Commendations, as those are not in the game anymore. Vendor Armor now starts at 36 light, which will get you to level 32 if you obtain all 4 pieces. Ideally you will obtain 3 Legendaries, and 1 Exotic, like someone mentioned earlier. Follow Pyro's advice, it's the same as it is in the guide for your Legendaries.

*That was copied from an old thread.

Note, it is possible to get a free Legendary Armor from running strikes as well from a drop or decrypting a Rare into a Legendary. Also, for Xur at and after rank 3 and all vendors, you may also receive a free Legendary Armor each time you rank up them up. This could potentially save you hours if the RNG decides to bless you. Another thing you may consider, if you have two solid other PVP players, you may be able to bypass some of this with Trails of Osiris, and already get 42 light gear. For the Exotic, if you have 23 motes of light, buy the Engram first and hope it decrypts into armor for your class (head piece is ideal because those are the most expensive in terms of marks). If not buy the one he is selling for your class. Below is a list of the Exotics you are looking for since they are the best for each class for 13 Strange Coins. A * is next to the best piece for that subclass in my opinion, other players opinion may vary. Note that Don't Touch Me's (Bladedancer) and Claws of Ahamkara (Sunsinger) take a close second in their class.

Titan: Head - Helm of Saint-14 (*Defender) and Insurmontable Skullfort (*Striker). Chest - Crest of Alpha Lupi (both) and Armamentariun (Striker, but both useful).

Hunter: Head - Achlyophage Symbiote (*Gunslinger) and Mask of the Third Man (*Bladedancer). Gloves - Don't Touch Me (Bladedancer). Chest - Crest of Alpha Lupi (both).

Warlock: Head - Light Beyond Nemesis (Sunsinger, but both useful), Apotheosis Viel (both), and Obsidian Mind (*Voidwalker). Gloves - Claws of Ahamkara (Sunsinger, but both useful). Chest - Heart of Praxic Fire (*Sunsinger) and Voidfang Vestments (Voidwalker).

Also, you'll need two Exotic Shards to upgrade your Exotic Armor piece to 42 light (only old gear, new Exotic gear drops at 42 already, only requiring 1 Exotic Shard). Speaking of Light, each new armor needs 42 light to get you to the new cap of 34. A total of 156 light for level 33, and 168 for level 34. You can get 42 light armor from buying the Prison of Elders armor from it's vendor with Armor Cores (this week is Boots with Heavy, try to get this done this week because those boots are good for you), Trials of Osiris for 5+ wins on a scorecard (this week is Head), or using an Etheric Light on existing gear. Big suggestion, run one of the two raids and obtain boots since all of the raid boots have the perk Heavy Ammo, and use your Etheric light on that (this is only if you don't buy this weeks PoE boots). Each upgrade is worth 6 light, or half a level. But all of that stuff is pretty far above your head for now though so I wouldn't worry about that until you hit level 32.

As far as groups go, like SolidWolf52 (from old thread) said you can find groups on LFG sites such as Destiny LFG or Reddits Fireteams. Another great source is to find groups here at Giantbomb like the Cerberus Wolves or Lincoln Force. I've had great luck with fellow GBers and play regularly with several of the top posters on this forum like Zevvion, Pyrodactyl and II_Exile_II. You can add me if you want if you are on PSN, hestilllives19 is my PSN and XBLA tag, same as on here. If you need any help let me know, and good hunting.

@tajasaurus: I think it's pretty hard to argue that Destiny is light on Content at this point. Even after finishing all of the story of each DLC, which is probably 25+ hours at this point, and only running 1 character, there is easily 6+ hours of the larger unique content (Vault, Crota, Nightfall, Weekly, all 3 PoE challenges, and Trials) to do each week that resets. That's if you don't even touch regular Crucible, or do all of the daily bounties/missions to level up gear. You can easily put in 20+ hours a week just doing every single piece of unique content in that week, only on 1 character. Considering you could easily spend 6 hours leveling up the two other classes to 20 (or running 3 of the same class), you can multiply that time spent by 3. One could argue that the unique weekly content isn't varied enough, but light on content isn't Destiny's problem anymore.

@hestilllives19: idk if i would call the same missions over and over with difficulty modifiers 'unique', but that's just semantics i suppose

to each him own

@tajasaurus: Maybe "unique" wasn't the right term to describe it, because all of Destiny's 40+ hours of original, not reused content, is repeatable missions with many of them having difficulty modifiers now, that vary week on week. That was meant more as unique to each week, but even if you only played through everything in Destiny once, it's a lot more original content than most games + DLC for the $95 people have spent so far. Obviously it doesn't compare single player RPG's, but it's well beyond the scope of any FPS's content before it. Even Diablo 3 has a shorter campaign/DLC than Destiny's, and that's seemingly the gold standard for this type of loot based game in most people's mind lately. Then add to that the fact that you have a ton of content designed to be repeated with different modifies to behave uniquely each time you play that content, and then you have a player base that averages 400 hours in Destiny.

I can't even play the DLC I paid for though because the base content only got me to 24 and trying to play any of the DLC at that level is impossible.

Gearing up is super fast now. I went from level 25 to like 33 in a few days, when I returned to the game. I just bought Vanguard gear, which brought me to 32, and then got an Exotic from Xur, which got me to 33.

It seems to have been fairly well-covered now, but to reiterate again buying gear is the best and easiest way to get up to a level where you can do the end-game content. If you've been doing strikes for a few weeks and bounties alongside those then you'll probably be around the right reputation level to start buying gear from the tower vendors; it's just a case of earning the marks to buy them.

Just to remind the OP that Xur is coming to town at 5 a.m. EST so hopefully he brings something good for you to help boost your level.