Just wanted to make a post about what you can do at level 20 and beyond and some things I've personally learned so far reaching level 25. [b]My Clan - Prime Darkness is no longer recruiting, until further notice.[/b] [b]This post will be edited as time goes on and new things are discovered or outdated.[/b] [b]Things To Do:[/b] 1. [u]Bounties:[/u] Treat them as daily quests, log in knockem out. They provide a lot of rewards mainly experience which yes you still need past level 20. Also, recently discovered there is a random chance when turning in bounties to get an exotic bounty for an exotic weapon as the reward. 2. [u]Weekly’s/Dailies:[/u] Get your weekly (level 22) heroic strike done each week as well as the daily heroic story missions done each day. Don’t forget to be on the lookout for resources when doing your daily story missions. Another weekly Heroic strike opens up when you hit level 24 it’s called the "Nightfall Strike" it requires level 28 and can be completed weekly for unique rewards, once you are strong enough to do this you should also be completely this weekly. 3. [u]Vanguard/Crucible Marks:[/u] Each week you can earn up to 100 of each and this 100 mark threshold resets weekly at a set time. Make sure you're getting all 100 of each per week as these are your currency for gear from rep vendors. 4. [u]Raids:[/u] The first raid "Vault of Glass" will be opening up Sept. 16th with a normal mode and hard mode w/ a recommended level of 26. It was said by developers that the normal mode won't be that challenging its more for learning the fights and mechanics of the raid and then hard mode will be very hard. There will be lockouts per week for the whole raid as well as per boss for loot. This means that once you kill a boss and receive loot from that boss you can no longer receive loot from that boss until the raid resets. I believe normal and hard modes do not share any lockouts so you can do both 1 time per week and get loot from each boss on both difficulties once per week. *Will 100% confirm this at a later date* 5. [u]I need Purples NAOOO!!!? (Gearing):[/u] There are a few ways to gear yourself up after hitting level 20, I will list a few and there benefits as well as the way I find to be the best at the moment. This is what I do once I have knocked out everything with a timer IE: Bounties, Daily Missions. A. Vanguard Strikes - I find this way to be the most efficient for gear farming at the moment, if you have played other MMOs think of these as Heroic Dungeon farming before the first raid to get gear to be able to actually complete the raid. Strikes loot tables for lower level strike missions have been buffed that means don’t waste your time in level 22 or level 24 strike missions just because they're available when you're only level 20, be efficient with your gear farming, if you can own a level 20 strike but struggle on 22 don’t keep doing level 22 strike missions just because you think you'll get the epic lootz, progress upwards. Whatever you do though, try to at least be doing level 20 strike missions as level 18 strike missions do not award vanguard marks. I'm currently farming level 24 strike missions with ease at level 25 and am finding a considerable amount of blue engrams and at least 1 person in the group finds 1 legendary engram every few runs on average maybe. Also since you find so many blue and green engrams that you ID at the Cryptarch you also level your Cryptarch considerably fast by farming Strikes which then in turn gets your rank 3+ Cryptarch rewards via the mail for even more possible upgrades. (Read below for more information on these rewards). B. The Crucible - Matches have a chance to award a random piece of loot/resource or engram from completing a match, it’s completely RNG though which makes this inefficient in this manner. However you do receive Crucible Marks & Rep which you then can use to purchase PvP gear from the vendor once you reach Rank 2 for armor and Rank 3 for weapons. Problem with this is that Crucible Marks are capped per week to 100 and with every piece costing 65 Marks and the helmet costing 120 and weapons being 150 as well it means you have to wait weeks just to have the currency to purchase these regardless of rep making this inefficient as well. 6. [u]I Need Materials bro!!! (Farming Resources):[/u] I personally haven't done this too much as of yet and haven't found a super-efficient way of doing this just yet, I will update this with anything I find in the coming days/weeks. Currently I just go to the zone that drops the materials I need, I go to free roam and just drive around on my vehicle as it zooms you out a bit making it easier to see things and i drive around at normal speed to see the ground better and just look for the resources on the ground. After a while you will learn the good spots in the zone and the bad spots and you also find a lot of chests doing this. 7. [u]Farming Rep:[/u] If you strictly want to farm reputation I haven’t tested different ways as of yet but so far it’s looking like the fastest way to do free roam patrol missions over and over, there so fast and easy and you get 10 rep per mission, doesn’t seem like a lot but you only get 25 rep for a full strike clear and these missions take a couple minutes if that. *will update this later if i find a better way* I don’t recommend this for anything but rep farming as you receive no marks and it’s not really good for gear farming either. You will however find a lot of resources so i recommend doing patrol missions on whichever planet you need resources from. [b]Things To Know:[/b] 1. [u]Factions:[/u] There are 4 Factions, the rep you will gain will default to vanguard rep unless you go to the other factions vendors within the tower and purchase a cloak for 2500 Glimmer that turns all reputation gains that you receive while wearing it into rep for that specific faction. Each faction sells unique items to that faction and the stock will never refresh so the items there will always be there. I recommend going to each faction vendor and checking out the items and seeing if there are any you really want to get and if so grab that cloak and start getting reputation with them. I personally am just sticking with vanguard rep for now as i am already almost to rank 2 with them. 2. [u]Experience & Why it’s still important at level 20:[/u] Your subclasses or spec or talent tree or whatever you would like to refer to them as are leveled by experience even past level 20 so to keep gaining experience especially early in the game is just as important as leveling was. Experience also is what levels up your equipment allowing it to be upgraded which is very important while were getting so many upgrades daily. So to keep these leveling up swiftly I highly recommend completing all the bounties daily as they reset every 24 hours, think of your bounties as daily quests you need to repeat every day. They provide a ton of experience as well as reputation and other things. 3. [u]Ways to Increase Your Level Past 20 (Light Levels):[/u] This is done by 2 ways I've noticed so far, 1. Simply equipping gear with +Light stat on it. 2. I discovered that when you upgrade your armor to increase its defensive power (Armor) it also increases your light level. 4. [u]Materials & You:[/u] If you haven’t noticed already each planet has its own specific resource or material that it has on that planet. This makes it very easy to farm specifically which ones you need. While in orbit if you click one of the planets and hover your cursor over the free roam I believe it will tell you which resource that planet will provide. These will eventually need to be farmed by everyone to be able to upgrade your weapons and armor as well as other things within the game so I highly recommend if you're ever on these planets for any reason, bounties, patrol missions, or just free roaming be on the lookout for these resources, you will need them. If you are still leveling I highly recommend keeping your eye out for these as you're going through the missions. 5. [u]Resources & Should I Spend Them?:[/u] Don't spend ANYTHING, save your glimmer(1 exception for Glimmer mentioned below), save your materials, and especially save all of your resources such as Relic Iron, Weapon Parts, Plasteel Plating. I personally didn't think it would be that important to save glimmer because of how much you get on the daily but it turns out Legendary and Exotic Item upgrades cost a lot of all the things mentioned above and if you're spending them as you're leveling up you won’t have them when you really need them. I already had to go farm about 40 Relic Iron to upgrade my Legendary Helm. 6. [u]What Do I Do With All This Glimmer, all this Glimmer?:[/u] Me and a couple friends discovered there is a 25,000 Glimmer Cap. If you find yourself with excessive glimmer which can happen if you aren’t making any armor or weapon upgrades just yet. I recommend keeping it up until the cap and then once you're close and still have nothing to use it on really just yet I highly recommend spending 5-10k glimmer on Green Rank 1 Cryptarch Engrams for Cryptarch Reputation. I recommend this because once you hit rank 3 with the Cryptarch you get mail from him containing multiple engrams with a chance to be blue or legendary that you can immediately identify for possible upgrades. Every rank 3 and up will award you with another piece of mail containing more engrams. This how I got my legendary Pulse Rifle last night. I also recommend if you are ever within a few points from ranking up with the Cryptarch to go ahead and spend a little bit of glimmer to rank it up as you could immediately net an upgrade. Leave any feedback below and good luck guardians! <3