So I played a lot of Destiny. Like days and days of in-game time over the 2-and-a-half months following it's release. There wasn't a lot to do back in the early days and the pursuit of Lvl 30 Light burned through me, unrequited to this day, as I ran Vault of Glass on a weekly basis with randoms from DestinyLFG on all three of my characters.

Then I stopped. Cold. A few weeks before The Dark Below came out. And I haven't played since. But now... Now I want back in.

I picked it up again yesterday and my goodness, it still feels so solid to play. One of my absolute favorite FPS "game-feels." But I'm without the two expansions and the Fallen King is a month away. Important side-detail - I'm cheap. I found the disc "legendary" version of the Fallen King on Amazon for $50 and saving the $30 bucks over buying each piecemeal won out over dropping $40 now and potentially another $40 in a month's time.

So I come to the GB forums with this question in mind: What have I missed in Destiny? Are my small stockpiles of Ascendant Materials and Shards worth jack anymore? Is Etheric Light the end-all now? Is it even worth upgrading my non-expansion guns without Etheric Light?

And just as importantly, what should I be doing now in Destiny? Trading Vanguard marks for materials seems like a tremendously convenient change, but with the forthcoming end-of-Year-1 sweeping economy changes should I be investing my materials in upgrades now, or hoarding them for when the conversion to generic upgrade materials happens? What will become of my formerly-precious Ascendant mats?

Thanks for reading, duders! Any and all advice and knowledge will go quite appreciated.

Ascendant is worth jack unless you want to use etheric on older weapons, for example: VoG stuff like Praedyth's Revenge or Invective or Fatebringer. However, you can now trade for ascendant materials if you need to with the Speaker.

What should you be doing? The same things, only now with more options. Prison of Elders is a great way to rack up new weapons. If you do Prison weekly and get to the point of at least doing level 32, you can save up Armor Cores and spend them weekly, resulting in a complete set of armor that gets you to level 34.

For the most part, if you liked Destiny before, its A LOT better now. I'm currently taking a break, and unsure if I'll get Taken King. Since you've been gone, I'd wait to get the first expansions and Taken King all at once.

To be honest, now's kind of a bad time to be getting back into Destiny. When the Taken King comes out in a month, the game is basically resetting with an entirely new gear and weapon ramp. Green items you get in the first mission of the Taken King will be better than any non-exotic items you'll get in the next month. Etheric Light will, as far as we know, serve no purpose going forward, nor will most everything else.

This is super not true.

but no current legendaries will be usable after the expansion launches (as far as we know right now) so it's pretty much the same effect.

If you've ever been through a WoW expansion or Borderlands DLC you know the drill. Anything you get now that's not exotic will be essentially useless in everything but PvP, and with extensive balance changes on the way there's no guarantee that currently OP{ weapons in PvP will even be viable in the new meta. If you want to get back in I'd say ease in with some weekly heroic strikes (which have matchmaking now) get some strange coins, buy some exotics from Xur, and dive back in fully when TTK comes out.

We don't have enough information at the moment to make claims like this. In fact, it's likely that some weapons will at least be upgrade-able, since Bungie insisted that people shouldn't dismantle their weapons in preparation for TTK and wait for more news.

@liquidprince: true, they have hinted at possibly keeping some legendaries around, but we don't know for sure. Personally I'm in the camp that is in favor of making the old gear obsolete because the power creep just got too real. There are guns right now that can have 4/5 of the their stats pretty much maxed. Where do you even go from there?

If you are getting back in HEAD TO XUR RIGHT NOW BECAUSE HE'S SELLING GJALLAHORN!!! Seriously enjoy it in all of its glory before the nerf.

As for jumping in I believe everyone in TTK will get an item that will boost your character up to the appropriate level so you can jump right into the new stuff or something. I'd say it's still worth getting geared up. I imagine our older gear will last us, at least a while, before it's outclassed. Plus it's super easy to gear up now anyways so no harm.

hold on, legendaries became fully upgradable in the last expansion, why would they suddenly reverse that trend? it would undermine the whole re-roll system which HoW was more or less built around. surely it's highly unlikely that legendaries will not be equally upgradable in the next expansion. @alucitary: comparisons to wow and borderlands re outdated weapons may have applied before house of wolves, but not anymore.

@omniscientcajun: there's a good up-to-date leveling guide here, it's worth a look through for what to prioritize.

It is true, confirmed by Game Informer in their hands on.

To quote the article I just linked:

"This is the first time they’ve really reset the weapon and armor economy. We were getting new green weapons that out-powered our best raid gear from Year One, even after the first mission."

It has been 100% confirmed that current legendaries will not be upgradable. There has been mention of a system to upgrade new weapons by feeding them other weapons of the same type, so that will be a use for old stuff, but none of the year one stuff will itself be upgradable.

@ll_exile_ll: damn that sucks, i thought the whole point of the weapon re-roll system was to get our builds more personalized, and now that's all out the window?

@hh: I imagine the re-roll system will still be in place for Year 2 weapons. They just don't want people clinging to their old weapons, and forsaking the new stuff.

They haven't said anything about re roll which should read as ''no easy, quick way to re roll guns in the next expansion''. Re roll kinda broke the weapon balance anyway. You had a couple of rolls for PvE and PvP that was optimal and everything else was trash. When everyone could get those rolls easily it meant everyone had the same guns.

@pyrodactyl: i don't know what rolls you're talking about because i don't know what other people were rolling for, and i had different requirements for each of my builds, i certainly wasn't optimizing them all for pvp or whatever. you're undervaluing the system they introduced imo, and overvaluing the meta, which only really matters for trials of osiris.

@hh: Reforging is one of those weird things that was great for PVE weapons, but broke the Crucible wide open. I loved being able to reroll PvE shotguns, fusion rifles, etc. But the Crucible was kind of broken by everyone either having a perfect roll shotgun, sniper, and rocket launcher. If you don't currently have a Shotgun with Rifled Barrel, Aggressive Ballistics, and Shotpackage, you are going to lose every up close battle if the other player is even decent. Everyone also now has a Her Benevolence with Hidden Hand. Every rocket launcher, mostly Radagast or Ash Factory's, with Tripod and Horseshoes. So what ended up happening is since Last Word and Thorn have the lowest TTK you end up only fighting Thorn Shotguns and Last Word Benevolences each with fire and forget Rocket Launchers. It has kind of made Crucible stale. I'm just now getting in to Crucible over the past couple months so while it's been fun, I think more weapon variety would greatly increase the fun in Crucible, and dropping Reforging is, sadly for PvE, the best way to do that.

@hestilllives19: i've noticed the prevalence of certain shotguns alright, and i'll be glad when the new balancing comes in to shake things up, but my crucible performance has remained consistent despite sticking with shorter range/full auto shotguns and high stability mg's on my hunter etc. i think regular crucible is situational enough and varied enough that even thorn is not as essential as people make out. trials is a different story though.

I would take that with an enormous grain of salt. Game Informer is the publication that hired Dan previously, it's worth noting... But on a serious note, I highly doubt a green weapon with only a single perk would be able to best something like Fatebringer which has 2 perks and a bonus raid perk.

Some of what I've gleaned:

1) Right now, until we know more about The Taken King, I shouldn't bother upgrading my current Legendary Weapons.

2) Furthermore, with the economy changes, I'd be better off converting my Ascendant Energy into Ascendant Shards and then convert all my Ascendant Shards into Motes of Light. Is there a reason why I shouldn't do this at this point?

3) It seems as though the smartest thing to do until we know more, is just to hang on to my mats (potentially converted to the more general upgrade mat with the economy changes) and my vanguard marks.

And sadly, no Gjallarhorn for more. Upon jumping back in, I only had 7 Strange Coins and I've only been able to add 2 more in two days of fairly heavy play. AND, as the Weekly Strike is part of the Dark Below DLC and I don't have it, it's unlikely I'll stumble upon 8 more Strange Coins in the next day and a half. It's OK, I'll just gather my dozen or more other exotics around me to keep me warm while I sob by myself (like I said, I played a lot of this game in the first 2 months).

@liquidprince: The green will be better because of increased damage compared to fate bringer. They're leaving the old purples behind which means they will progressively feel like pea shooters as you go through the new content.

@omniscientcajun: if you plan on playing TTK you need to own both previous DLCs if I'm not mistaken.

@pyrodactyl: that remains to be seen. Unless the damage scaling is getting a complete redesign, then just having higher damage numbers isn't going to mean anything. A 300 Fatebringer can still easily hang with other 365 weapons. So it stands to reason that a 365 Fatebringer shouldn't be completely outclassed by the next expansions legendary items, let Lone the green items.

Man, I have been wanting to go back to Destiny for a while now, but it has been so long that every time I think about it, it seems like an overwhelming wall that I can't seem to climb.

I'm not sure what it is - finally got high enough level to do the first raid but never followed through. I love the world, I love the feel of the combat, but the lack of content and variety of missions really did get me down. I think I just burned out and I don't have the willpower to go back.

Maybe the new expansion will add some new mission types and that will be enough to pull me back.

@omniscientcajun: Don't feel too bad about the Gjallarhorn. Being able to experience it before the upcoming nerfs is a nice novelty, but it wont be nearly as useful post TTK. the new rail gun exotic has been shown to have more damage output already, and I personally prefer the 3 rocket mag of Truth for general use in both PvP and PvE.