I've played about 30 hours and haven't seen one yet. I'm level 23, do I have to be a higher level to get more of them?

Nope. Completely random. Best to buy the items using Vanguard points or the equivalent if you're desperate. I just got my first Exotic drop after 40 hours, had to buy my other piece of Exotic gear from Xur. Legendaries I've had a few of, sounds like you're just having awful luck.

get used to it, im level 25 and i got my first legendary weapon today.

Trying to find legendary engram drops is generally a pretty inefficent way to gear up. Even if you find a legendary engram there's a still a pretty low chance of it actually being a legendary.

Exchanging Vanguard and Crucible marks is much easier. You can get 100 a week, which is enough to get at least one piece of arm, leg, or chest armor each and close to a second. Weapons are much more expensive, but weapons don't give light to level you up, so blue weapons are generally just fine.

You can also get free legendaries for leveling up the various NPCs. For example, every time you level the cryptarch after three you get 2-3 free legendary engrams. The chance of them being anything good is still low, but it's still better than trying to find them yourself. That's also how I got my first exotic.

The easiest way to get legendaries though is to level up the other factions. Once you hit rank 3 (and every rank after I believe) in Vanguard, Crucible, or the other PvP factions you are guaranteed a free Legendary item.

Lastly you can randomly get exotic weapon bounties when turning in bountis, which guarantees you an exotic weapon when you complete it. They require significantly more work than normal bounties, but generally it's just a matter of time.

I've had a few legendary engrams drop but they have yet to actually give me legendary items.

They are pretty rare for sure, I got an Exotic drop from a second legendary engram I decripted, but other than that it's really much quicker to buy the gear. And thge fastest way to do that is to pick a faction and use the class item to convert all the reputation gains tothat faction (otherwise you are splitting the rep between crucible and vanguard, the faction item funnels all in one progress bar).

Good luck.

I've had a handful of legendary engrams drop and not one have actually been a legendary item. I just bought my first one from a vendor today which seems like a much more reasonable way to get it and I was lucky enough to get an exotic bounty today as well. Zeiks comment above sums it up pretty well.

The best way to gain items is to constantly do bounties and gain rep for factions as well as marks.

@zeik: everything is a pretty inefficient way to level up. I've played for hours and hours and hours and I've gotten 23 Vanguard marks. Still 42 to go for the cheapest Legendary piece. :|
I heard the Crucible is a faster way to gain gear, but I'm not planning to play that for hours on end.

4 legendary engrams in my career, all of them just materials for upgrades. Ironically, a blue engram gave me my first legendary item today. 35 hours played, and ONE legendary drop. If you really want purples, grind for the ones you can buy.

i got a legendary engram today when I was shooting the endless enemies coming out of the cave on earth. I went to the tower to decode it and all I got was a blue cape.

I get legendary engrams one in a great while, but only one was actually legendary (a rocket launcher). I'm level 23.

I'm quickly starting to burn out on this game. I don't buy DLC for games I don't plan on keeping, and I've resolved myself to the fact I'll probably never get to play the raid since I have all of two friends with the game. There really isn't much reason to keep it after I get these last couple story missions out of the way.

@dussck: Vanguard marks are harder to get than Crucible marks, since there's only a handful of PvE activities that actually give you them, but if you focus on them it doesn't take that long to get what you need. If you want to stock up on Vanguard marks then you should do the level 24 strike playlist and the daily heroic quests. If you can actually get a group of people together then the weekly strike and nightfall missions will also get you a decent amount of marks.

@zeik: The only problem is I can't play the level 24 strikes, because I am level 21 and to level up I need better gear that drops from those strikes. Holy vicious circle, batman.

@dussck: Oh, I thought you said you were level 23. Well you can still do the level 22 strikes, which give you a decent amount. Keep in mind you're also guaranteed some rare gear after you complete it, which should have some light on it to help you level further. Getting to level 22-23 is pretty easy with just blue gear.

@zeik: Hm, I've been doing those strikes over and over again. I'm all blue geared and every item has some light on it, but I've never seen a (light) upgrade to what I have now. I guess RNG fucked me over.
I now wish you could also buy blue stuff with light on it from vendors. My friend has it even worse, he ran by my side and is only 20,5.

@dussck: Are they fully upgraded? You get a little extra light for upgrading the defense. Most end game blues should give you around 13-15 light when fully upgraded.

There is actually one other thing I forgot to mention though, the special vendor that shows up on weekends. You can trade him 13 strange coins for an exotic piece of gear (which changes every week) or 23 motes of light for an exotic engram. Since you get motes of light just for getting exp after level 20 pretty much anything you do will help towards getting that.

@zeik: Jep all of them are upgraded. I know about the motes of light and such. Same story as the marks, got nowhere near enough of them to get anything. I guess I just haven't played enough, although it feels like I've been stuck for a long time now. Maybe I'm just getting tired of the game. I feel it's not worth my time to play things over and over again just for getting a new item so I can play the same stuff over and over again. :)

I have a feeling you start getting more legendary engrams by level 25. I got my first while 25 and since then I've gotten six or seven drops (none of which were from the farming cave in Old Russia). Even then I only got about three legendary items (auto rifle, chest and boots).

I just did a couple of playlist-runs (strikes), brought back 12 engrams, 2 of those purple - zero legendary drops. It leveled my cryptarch to lvl 15 and I got a postmaster package - 200 glimmer and two more blue engrams containing green items. That's basically last two hours down the toilet.

Yeah, it was over 30 hours of playtime for me before I got my first legendary drop. Still haven't had very many of them, though. I ended up just buying an exotic and some legendaries from vendors.

Oh, and boy do I hate the word gotten.

My first legendary lotto card dropped from a level 4 shank on Sunday. It was a blue cape in the end. The raid-mindset in me wishes that legendaries didn't drop outside of the raids/heroic strikes and that you had to buy them from vendors.

Same.

53 hours across two characters.

I did buy one piece of Exotic armour and one piece of Legendary armour over the weekend, though.

All of my two purple engrams turned into fucking nothing.

I am level 23 and have had 5 purple engrams so far (2 from crucible rewards and 3 from spending about half an hour at that loot cave).

One turned out to be a legendary fusion rifle, another was a legendary class item and the rest were just rares.

Just hit level 24, I think I have found 4 legendary engrams now and 1 of them gave me a legendary. The other ones rares or materials, don't remember exactly.

For the record I played Diablo 3 almost daily for the first three months after it launched and I found precisely zero legendaries. So technically Destiny has had better loot for me!

I recently played through the Diablo 3 expansion one time and got around 8 legendaries so I know they changed it a lot since I played it. :P

How the hell do I even get past level 20... It just feels like there's nothing to do, and the Crucible is awful.

You can either do the level 18 strikes and hope for blue drops that have the Light stat. Or you can go to Earth and shoot into that cave for hours on end where you will also get a bunch of blues. I'm level 21 and neither is giving me gear that will raise me past 21.

Can't wait!

Is Legendary the rarest level of stuff? I'm just wondering because it seems like there's a really different level of expectation for loot in this game than say like WoW. Most people who have played WoW for years and years will never see a legendary drop, nor expect to really ever get one, at least a useful one that isn't 2+ expansions old.

I have 2 legendary shotguns, 1 legendary sniper rifle, a legendary chest armor and legendary gauntlets. Also I got a legendary boot drop for a hunter even though I'm a Warlock.

I would recommend trying to do the Queens Wrath stuff, it's been my experience that you're guaranteed to get a legendary chest piece or legendary helmet for your class.

There's one more tier called "exotic". When people reference a legendary drop in Destiny, they are referring to a purple engram. Rather than being a guaranteed piece of gear, this is an item that you have to decode at the tower. In the end, it could end up not being a legendary item at all (or even a usable item).

Not to mention that, unlike WoW, getting legendary items by random drops is the only way to acquire the gear outside of grinding rep and currency for hours and hours.

@mattthadude: @humanity: do some of the queen's bounties that are on this week, so you can unlock the queen's kill orders playlist. 100% guaranteed to get a legendary drop when you finish one of the queens kill orders missions.

Best thing to do right now at 20 is this.... Go do vanguard strikes until you have all or almost all level 20 blues, this should get you lots of vanguard rep. Then you do crucible, strikes, public events, and resource turn in's to get 100 of each kind of mark. Get Crucible and Vanguard to level 2. You pick one of the two and use your points for the one you choose to buy arm, leg, and chest armor. From the other faction you save for a helmet. After two weeks you should have enough marks to be in all legendaries regardless of drops or events.

That said as a new 20... DO NOT USE A FACTION CLOAK!!!

You should never use a faction cloak until you are level 3 vanguard. Why? Because faction gear can only be bought with crucible tokens. So even though your strike work etc can level your faction rep only the vanguard vendors take vanguard marks so all those marks those activities are earning you are useless if you have no vanguard rep. Additionally both the Vanguard and Crucible Vendor's have a vastly superior variety of items to buy weapon wise and even sell the best sparrows if you care about that.

Lastly save your strange coins for Xur, get 13 and you are a 100% lock at an Exotic. Additionally if you want use motes of light to buy a 100% chance exotic engram, but be warned, the class is random.

You can also watch out for special events like queens wrath to get easy legend helm and chest, and or pray to get luck on engrams and event rewards. In all honesty I have around 65-70 hours in the game now mostly on one character and I have never gotten one exotic from any event or engram. All my exotics were bought off Xur. Don't listen to the stories, they are dumb luck. Strikes give you a 100% chance of a blue at the end, no chance of failure. They are the easiest way to get to light level 23-24 and once at 24 your drop percentages get good enough you should start seeing some legendary engrams if you want to roll the dice.

Personally I have found over 20 legendary engrams. Out of the 20+ I have found I got upgrade mats once, a crap ton of garbage loot, 1 legend pulse rifle, 1 legend machine gun, 1 legend shotgun, and two legend armors for classes I don't even play. So that is 20-25 engrams for three usable items. If you think those sound like good odds go for it, but I wouldn't waste my time on that cave or any other farming nonsense you see posted.

@mrfluke: how many bounties to unlock the playlist and is it something a lv21 can do solo?

@humanity: Far as how ive seen it work, 1 completed bounty = 1 mission. considering this event is going til october 6, and its guaranteed legendary drops. id say that's fair.

as for it being missions someone can do solo, well they are level 24 missions (and its specifically the missions that end with a boss fight) and one of the modifiers makes it so that some of the enemies have shields.

im going to say for a level 21 probably not?, i soloed one of the missions but my character is level 26 and still died quite a bit.

im just also going to leave this site here for folks. plan out a good route on one of the planets with that site, and you'ill rack up more vanguard marks this way than doing the strike playlists. (highly recommended doing this through vita remote play while doing something else)

this way you''ill have vanguard marks to get legendary gear from your vanguard class master

I got a legendary rocket launcher the other day (lv23). I may be wrong, but it seems like purple gear takes much longer to upgrade. There are like five damage upgrades on this thing... gonna be sweet. Unless I find a better one before I fully upgrade, then have to start over. :/

Go try the loot cave (look online for a vid if you don't know where it is). I've gotten a few purple drops there, though none have panned out. Hopefully they make some changes in a future patch. I don't mind legendary loot being super rare, but don't tease me. Either make the purple drops super rare with 100% chance of legendary or better or make the purples drop more often. I say the former option is the better one.

This thread should be called:

Are Legendary Weapons Too Legendary?

It should be a poll and the right answer is 'yes'.

@r3beld0gg: That's correct each perk takes longer to unlock on higher tier of gear. So while a single bounty may be enough to unlock a single perk straight away on a green armor item, legendary progression is much slower, exotic gear even more so, especially the weapons.

I got my first one the other day, and of course it was for a separate class.

I not only got a legendary engram earlier, it turned out to be an Exotic!

For the wrong class.

Fuck this nonsense.

This game is a giant tease.

@karkarov: I did the exact opposite and donned a faction cloak as soon as I could.

Here's why though: Their gear was superior in stats. I compared and the faction gear had better slightly better stats on all armor slots. So while it takes longer due to only being crucible marks, I won't have to keep going and replace it at a later point.

Also on that note, if you want gear that min maxes certain bonuses, like intelligence over strength, its best to get on using that factions cloak asap so you can get that gear over the others. I didn't realize each faction had gear that had higher bonuses until after the fact. But I wish I would have noticed this before going level 3 in vanguard. As I don't want that gear. I wan the faction I am grinding for now.

I got my first legendary engram about a week ago and it turned into an exotic rocket launcher. I've gotten a few more legendary engram recently but they all turned into blue gear. The only legendary piece of gear I own is a pair of boots that I got from a blue engram.

Got my first two legendary engrams today.

• Mote of Light
• Ascendant Energy

:\

@mrfluke: well that explains why everyone is talking about getting purples the first day and in left wondering how they got level 2 through bounties so fast. I really don't know how to get better light gear faster, I think I just need to start seriously grinding the crucible for those points because a majority of the content they're releasing is too high level for me and it sucks not being able to participate.

I more annoyed because I have gotten like ZERO fun with Destiny