The new destiny DLC just released and i'm interested into getting back into the game but i haven't played since a bit after the "Dark Below" came out and never bothered to buy any dlc at all. As someone with a level 28 light 126 hunter, how should i go about getting back into it? If I boosted to 40 through one of those level packs would it make TTK obsolete? or would i be better off getting TTK and playing through that stuff to get up to RoI level to play that later?

@theoddmonster: So monetarily speaking you are best off buying Destiny The Collection for $59.99 that includes all prior content and Rise of Iron. That will include everything you need as far as the game goes. Now, once in the game, it's totally up to you. The Taken King Story is pretty good so I would recommend playing it through, especially if you played The Dark Below. It gives a lot of closure to that particular DLC and ties into it heavily. Then you should hit up the new Rise of Iron stuff. Keep in mind you will need to be Level 40 and 290 Light Level to start the Rise of Iron Quests. That is compared to the Taken King stuff that starts around Level 25. So go ahead and use your new Spark of Light to go directly to 40. The Spark of Light also gives you Light Level 280 Rares on every gear slot so you should be able to hit Level 40 and LL 280 with it instantly. So doing this will allow you to start making actual progress as soon as you jump in. The new goal here is 385, and your already a long ways from that. Make sure you are doing a Daily Crucible and Public Event. Legendary Marks are key to early leveling to 350 via buying the vendor gear in The Tower. Doing both of those, even at such low light will guarantee you 30 Marks per day. You can also hit up the Weekly Crucible for 10 Marks for each of the first 3 wins. Once you hit 350 LL you can also do the Weekly Heroic Strikes for 10 Marks (x3) and the Daily Story for 15 Marks each day. I posted a guide on how to level in Rise of Iron here. You should give it a quick glance if you care to optimize your time grinding towards 350. I'll try to update it with the most up to date information as soon as possible. One big thing to note, especially tonight is that you can buy, if you are sitting on a stash of Strange Coins, 350 Exotics from Xur which will save you a ton of Marks and allow you to hit 350 much quicker. Tonight he is selling a Chest, Gloves, and a Primary. Other class Exotics can be infused into your Legendaries, so you will just need Legendary gear to have those Exotics to be infused into. The Primary being sold, Mida Multi Tool, is a great Scout Rifle so you may just want to keep it for now if you don't have one. Use the rest of your Strange Coins to grab a stack of 3 of Coins. Those allows you a chance at an Exotic for every Elite enemy kill (Bosses), it tends to be roughly 1 out of every 7-9 uses. Other than that, enjoy yourself. Your were around for the Dark Ages of Destiny. Things are much brighter now, so you will likely enjoy yourself much better on this return visit.

If you're buying the Destiny Rise of Iron complete edition (which you basically have to do without owning all the previous DLC), that includes Taken King and the year 1 DLCs.

The Taken King has a ton of great content, so you should play that. The Taken King quests start at level 25, so as a 28 you're good to go. Playing through the Taken King campaign and post-campaign missions should get you to level 40, putting you in a good spot to start Rise of Iron stuff.

@hestilllives19: Wouldn't he be better off just buying Taken King for $20, Rise of Iron at $30 and saving $10? Assuming he didn't sell his copy of Destiny.

And the way the levels work in the game makes it so that even if you are over leveled it doesn't matter as much. You only get a few levels above the enemies before they basically limit the effects of being over leveled, so that even low level enemies still give you a little bit of a challenge. It would be a lot easier obviously if you were lvl 40 with light lvl 350, but an enemy can still get you if your not paying attention.

I would probably recommend just playing though leveling regularly with your main to get more of a challenge out of the game, and using the level boosters on your extra characters if you use them, but it doesn't really matter either way. It would be faster and less grinding if you just jump to 40 and buy the 350 light gear from vendors from the start obviously.

@lego_my_eggo: Amazon was selling The Taken King for $19.99 before Rise of Iron came out but the only place I could find right now for that price is Walmart Online for Xbox One only. Obviously do that if you are getting it for Xbox One. But if you are getting it for PS4 there are a couple things to consider. Do you want a disk? You could go with the Destiny the Collection straight from PSN and have it on your Hard Drive for the $59.99. Or you can go the physical route and get it for $29.99 plus $29.99 and have a useless disk, or just buy the Collection for $0.01 more only have the one disk to deal with. To me that's not worth the 2nd disk of Taken King hassle. Personally I would just go Digital with it, since all of the updates will be required to be downloaded and installed anyways, so your not really saving HD space or download cap.

If the plan is to level up a 2nd character by all means save the Spark of Light for that. But going ahead and using it will not only instantly level you to 40 but gives you a set of 280 LL gear. This would also allow Rares to start decrypting into usable gear. Light Level is a long grind and it would be better to get started on that front as it doesn't negatively impact you using it, only allows you to progress faster. Because like you said enemies scale and so no matter what level you are above them, their difficulty will be the exact same. The biggest reasons to hit 350 is it unlocks a lot more of the content like Weekly Heroic/Daily Story/Nightfall (LL 360)/etc.

@hestilllives19: If he has a copy of Destiny, the DLC for Taken King is still only $20 on PSN. Its just another option for him if he wanted to save some cash. But when Taken King came out i was also considering just buying digitally as well just to toss my disc out, but luckily a friend managed to get me a code for free so that made my decision for me.

@lego_my_eggo: It didn't sound like he had House of Wolves, so going that route unless he bought the original season pass would cost him another $20.

@hestilllives19: The Taken king still has all the past DLC bundled with it, just not the base game. So he should be able to get TTK and Rise of Iron and be fine if he has access to the base game, otherwise the collection is the best bet.

I'm actually going to ask what you want out of playing Destiny again. If you're not looking to do the endgame stuff, then I have to admit I have no advice for you. I don't fully understand what people get out of the game by just doing story missions and a couple of Strikes.

If you actually want to do Raids, Nightfalls, Iron Banner and Trials of Osiris though, you have two options. Quickest is to use the level 40 boost and bang out Strikes to boost your light level. Remember to equip your highest light gear when doing Strikes and when decrypting engrams. Your current light will dictate how high the light will be on your loot and it will always be even or higher than what you have equipped (total). So if you don't equip higher light stuff, you'll keep getting low light gear and you'll never progress. There's tons of stuff to do besides Strikes like field testing weapons, bounties, weekly's, daily's etc. but Strikes are the core of leveling up. When Xur comes around on friday through sunday morning, be sure to check his inventory for Exotics you might want. Also buy a shitton of Three of Coins and use them on each Strike. You should get roughly 1 Exotic engram every 6ish Strikes. Dismantle the ones you don't want. You'll need the Exotic shards to level up the ones you really like.

Second option is to not use a boost and continue the story where you left off. I believe The Taken King missions start somewhere around Level 25 recommendation, so you could move through the story missions neatly that way and experience leveling up. I would probably do this, because the story missions are kind of fun and it's a neat way to progress. After you're done with the story, move to option one and start doing Strikes etc.

@lego_my_eggo: That is only The Taken King Legendary Edition, which is still $29.99 on PSN, I just checked. The Taken King for $19.99 only includes The Taken King itself, not the entire Destiny catalog that came before it. It would be for players, like myself back then, that already owned Destiny + The Season Pass, which is why it is $10 cheaper. Like I said, it he did buy the Season pass back in Y1, then yes, buying The Taken King and then Rise of Iron would be $49.98 as opposed to $59.99. Otherwise it's just going to be less hassle to buy The Destiny Collection.

@zevvion: The only problem with not using the Spark of Light is once you hit 40 you cannot use it. Since it also comes with Light Level 280 gear he would instantly be skipping Light Leveling from 190ish to 280. That's likely 10-15 hours of mindless grinding for no reason just to get into Rise of Iron, which is why I'd recommend using The Spark of Light immediately. This is all if Leveling works the same way it used to in those ranges and similarly to how it does now between 335-349 and 366-385. If it is a higher % of Light increase per item, then that time might be shorter, but since I don't know, I wouldn't risk it.

OP said they never bought any DLC so yes The Collection is the cheapest way to get ROI.

I'd suggest not using the level 40 boost unless it's for a secondary character or all you care about is the end game content. The story missions in The Taken King (and even the two prior DLCs) are pretty great so I'd start at your current level and play the story missions in order.

@dayve86: What is the point of not using the Spark of Light though? If you are at Level 28 already like he is the content is the same difficulty more or less as he is already overleveled for it. Leveling from 28-40 is easy, one way or another. But going from LL 200 -280 is pretty rough the last time I had to. Maybe that has changed since Rise of Iron and it goes quicker than it use to, but I wouldn't take my chances on that. You could also be knocking out progression towards LL 280+ and actually accumulating Legendary Marks for the Quest that give them from The Taken King. Holding onto a Spark of Light only has one use and that is to immediately level a brand new secondary character to 40. Something that, in my experience, would take far less time than grinding from 200 LL to 280 LL. And that's only useful if a casual player even wants to run 2 or 3 character, something I would highly recommend against unless you plan on playing at least 10+ hours per week of Destiny.

@hestilllives19: Taken King missions are a mildly fun challenge at their respective difficulty requirements. Much beyond that they are extremely easy and might be less enjoyable. You're assuming he wants to play endgame content. I don't know if he does, but if he's approaching this as a single player game, he should most definitely not use the boost because he will be overleveled for every single thing he is going to play it for.

Again though, if he is indeed playing it as singleplayer with no intent of playing endgame content, I don't think the game is that much fun.

@zevvion: "Again though, if he is indeed playing it as singleplayer with no intent of playing endgame content, I don't think the game is that much fun."

This is part of my point. Destiny isn't a fun game played that way anyways for the most part. But also, mildly difficult I think is a vast overestimate of base missions. I think they are roughly the same difficulty at level as they are over the level requirements, which is to say pretty easy for the most part (outside of hidden missions he will likely never play). Much of the difficulty stems from not knowing or understanding the encounters, which is true no matter your level. Take a look at Level 8 Dregs on the Cosmodrome, they can rip you apart if you are screwing around, that's just how Destiny handles leveling, it drops your 7,500 damage Scout Rifle down to 118 damage on the Cosmodrome to match those Level 8's.

@hestilllives19: Really? This is showing in the description that it has all the expansions, it even says "Now includes expansion l and ll" in the store icon.

Destiny: The Taken King, now also includes Expansion I and Expansion II for Destiny owners at one great price. Includes level 25 character boost to get you immediately battle ready. REQUIRES DESTINY, SOLD SEPARATELY.

Includes:

• Destiny: The Taken King

• Expansion I

• Expansion II

• Level 25 Character Boost

• April Activities Update: New Challenges and Rewards

@lego_my_eggo: What? Yeah, you are entirely correct. When did they add Expansion I & II to that? For all of last year that only included The Taken King itself and it required you to buy The Legendary Edition for the DLC I & II. They must have changed it recently. Maybe to entice original Destiny players back in now, though they haven't said anything about it, just had ads and stuff about Destiny The Collection. You would still have to have Destiny base but that would in fact save you $10. Good catch. What in the world is the point of selling The Legendary Edition of The Taken King now then? I guess it's just the most up to date full version of the game for PS3/360?

@hestilllives19: Polygon had news about it from December of last year. I remember seeing posts about it, but i don't think Bungie really advertised it, even the Polygon article makes it look like it was a stealth update. Its something easily forgettable if you already owned them, because why would it matter to you at that point?

Oh wow I didn't know they added those older expansions in the base Taken King package either. I even bought the game last December in disc form because I didn't have those expansions (but had the base game) and at the time it was the cheapest option for getting all three. Must have only missed them getting added in by a few days.

@dayve86: I assume they did this right before Rise of Iron a couple weeks ago because to my knowledge it hasn't been like that for very long at all. People were having this exact discussion on Reddit a few weeks before Rise came out and nothing was said about this.

@hestilllives19: Nah its been some time, its just Bungie didn't advertised it and no one looked apparently.

@hestilllives19: Thanks a lot man, couldn't ask for a better answer!