I'm not making judgements here, I'm just trying to be clear what the materials limitations are. [i][b]1. Weapon Parts[/b][/i] [spoiler] [i]Gained by[/i]: dismantling weapons (only) Green weapons - 1 or 2 parts Blue weapons - 2 or 3 parts Purple weapns - 2 to 4 parts* (TBC) Exotic weapons - 3 to 7 parts* (TBC) [i]Spent by[/i]: levelling weapons (15 per legendary), infusing weapons (10). Average weapon infused twice, total cost 35 for a legendary gun to become useful. Average drop per hour of play? (excluding time spent shuffling gear at the tower, which is around 20 mins per hour of play) Somewhere around 15 engrams, of which 10 will be items, 5 of which will be guns. One hour will return around 15 motes. Therefore each Legendary gun takes 3 hours of grind to become useful. [b]Purchase options:[/b] Green weapons - Gunsmith - 2400 glimmer, Vanguard Quartermaster 1500 glimmer. For 3 motes get 2 parts each, so exchange rate: 5400 Glimmer, 3 Motes, 6 weapon parts (note - Gunsmith only sells 2 weapons at a time now, may take several visits to get a range of weapon types). Purple weapons - Gunsmith - 2500 glimmer. For 12 motes, get 4 parts each and 6 motes returned, so exchange rate: 7500 Glimmer, 6 Motes, 12 weapon parts (note - only one purchase per character per week) Exotic weapons - 2500 glimmer + 1 exotic shard. Levelling ??? motes? Too expensive. 7500 Glimmer, 3 shards for 9 weapon parts. (note - cannot buy exotic shards any more, this is a valuable and limited currency now) OR 23 strange coins from Xur for 3 weapons parts and 1 shard.[/spoiler] [i][b]2. Exotic Shards. [/b][/i] [spoiler] [i]Gained by[/i]: dismantling Exotic items. [i]Spent by: [/i] 1 per exotic bought 1 per exotic "reroll" 1 per exotic infusion It takes in general 2 infusions to get an exotic to a higher level - one to get within 5 of the top-level donor item, one to hit that level. For example - if you have an Invective (280 light) and a blue fusion rifle (301 light) and a raid shotgun (303 light), to hit 303 you need to infuse twice. Boots and Chest pieces take on average 2 rerolls to get right (33% start okay, 22% after 1 infusion, 15% after 2 etc). So - existing exotics require 2 - 4 donor dismantled exotics received from Xur or dropped using 3 of Coins. 3 of coins gives 1 exotic per 10 (ish) attempts, Xur sells 3 of coins for 7 for 5, or one exotic item for 13, so say 13 strange coins per shard. Therefore, each exotic gun costs around 26 strange coins to level, Each exotic chest costs around 52 including getting the right element. (This excludes the high-level items consumed) Upgrading an exotic weapon costs 30 weapon parts. Infusing to useful level costs 20 weapon parts. So a complete Exotic Weapon purchase, from blueprints, costs around 3 shards, 42,000 glimmer and 24 motes of light to become viable. [/spoiler] So - if I play for 3 hours,[i] at most[/i] I'll try out one new gun, be it exotic or legendary. Filling in the perks is just too expensive to do unless I already know I'm going to use it. 90% of all legendary guns I receive, including Gunsmith ones, I will dismantle without firing once. If this is the behaviour Bungie wish to encourage, then good. I suspect, though, that they are obsessed with the players who have 1000+ weapon parts in storage. I can promise them that making weapon parts a scarce resource will not encourage the hoarders to exchange them for, say, faction rank. Quite the reverse - the more scarce these items become, the more people will hoarde them. I burned my store of weapon parts in rerolls. I now bitterly regret it.