Oh god you're going to make me work today aren't you? *sigh* Let's get this over with. [quote]"What is he on about?" "Is the darkness actual darkness like the stars are dieing or something?" "Are the fallen human? Are the Vex Fall, Darkness, Or robots?" [/quote] You're going to have to be more specific in regards to the first question. The Darkness is the cosmic Physical manifestation of all negative energy in the universe. It is the shapeless, formless, intelligence that desires to destroy the Traveler and the Light simply due to being the polar opposite of it. Your best example of the Darkness is the miasma at the end of the Black Garden Mission on Mars. No. The Fallen are an alien race of scavengers and pirates. They are not human in any way. The Vex are mechanical Robots of mysterious origin who believe that worshiping the Darkness is the only Logical outcome as they don't understand it enough to make any sort of other call. It is not a Subscription MMO. It is a Always Online game. While you do need to be online to play Destiny, no such subscription is required to access or play it. However consoles these days require a subscription to access their multiplayer servers which allow you to play with others on the same system as you. If you are playing as an Awoken they do recognize you. They recognize you as an "Earth-Born" Awoken. This makes you a lesser second class citizen and beneath the attention of the Reef-Born. Not everyone is born equal in Awoken society. You mean you are playing as a Hunter. The difference is that Titans are a very up close and personal "In your face" class designed to get in close and start hammering physically on their opponents. They need thicker armor to survive giving them more of a "Heavy Tank" feel. They hit hard but at the cost of speed. Titans are not very mobile. The know only "Advance Forward." Hunters are the opposite. They don't quite hit as hard meaning they have to hit smart. Speed is their main advantage allowing them to slip into the cracks in hit and run tactics. They're better as flankers, darting in up the side and hitting the enemy from the side and behind where they're vulnerable. Hunters are the stalkers, finding the weakpoint and exploiting it. Motion and positioning are what Hunters do best. While the story events are set in public space, the stories themselves were designed around the solo experience to tell the story of your Guardian. It the "Multi-protagonist" Paradox that plagues games set in open social gaming yet makes everyone the sole center hero. You've played together and done the same things but you do not kill equally. If you kill 8 dregs but your friend only kills 3 Vandals, you gain more XP then he does simply for having more kills. XP is awarded per kill and is not shared between people who haven't tagged the target. Anything you kill is yours alone. Unless you both shoot it, the XP per kill will not be shared. This is why you are leveling up at different times. Trading is a question we have no answer to. Likely it was done to kill off Gold or Item Farmers. They get everywhere. Beta was level 8. Live is level 20. You need to look for Rare armor or higher with Light stat to push your level higher. You don't get new skills past 20. The Light level is designed to fool the formula that calculates damage values. Oh boy, now you're REALLY going to make me work aren't you? Weapons first then. Rifles come in three flavors, Auto, Pulse, Scout. The difference between them is how they fire and their effective ranges. Auto Rifles are hold down the trigger. The longer you hold down the trigger, it continues to shoot until the magazine is empty. They tend to suffer from steadily increasing recoil and increased bloom physics the longer they're fired making them more inaccurate the longer you hold trigger. They're better at short to mid range. Burst firing can increase the range and accuracy slightly. Pulse Rifles are three round burst fire weapons. One trigger pull gets you three rounds and no more. You must release the trigger and fire again to get another three round burst. They have a better range then Auto Rifles and more accurate but tend to be more unwieldy at shorter ranges due to time to aim to ensure you're hitting with the burst rounds. Scout Rifles are the traditional Semi-automatics. One trigger pull gets you one shot. This makes them precision weapons and better at mid to long ranges since aiming at close range to take precision shots is tricky due to their size. Their damage for this per shot however is better then the other weapons making them a little brother to the Sniper Rifle. The forth weapon, the Hand Cannon, is your usual pistol/sidearm weapon. Due to it's smaller size and limited ammo it belongs to the same family as the Scout and Sniper Rifles. However being of smaller size making it only good at close to mid ranges, it also has the fastest time to acquire while aiming to overcome the problem of being a precision weapon with high damage per shot. With the low magazine capacity however, they tend to be unpopular until later levels because you need to make your shots count. The skill tree is the same until higher rarities where more of the exotic qualities of a weapon is made available. You have a scope, an attack power increase, and depending on the rarity of the weapon, one, two, or three things that make the weapon have different effects. Each one is randomized when a weapon is generated. Quick summery of the story. Humanity first found the Traveler on Mars where they witnessed it terraforming for the first time. The Traveler gifted Humanity with "The Light". A form of Space Magic. Though this, Humanity prospered and spread to the stars. The Darkness, the Traveler's polar opposite and moral enemy, came looking for it and Humanity got caught in the crossfire between the Traveler and the Darkness, battling proxy forces such as the Hive, The Fallen, The Vex, and The Cabal. Humanity's Space Empire that flourished during the Golden Age was destroyed and the only planet left safe for them was Earth. Over Earth the Traveler made one final stand against the Darkness and dispersed it but at the cost of itself. It went comatose to rest and repair. The survivors of this War between the Traveler and the Darkness (known as the Collapse, so named for the Collapse of Humanity's Empire), gathered under the Traveler inside it's protective shields and built The Last City. The only safe haven in this post apocalyptic universe. As a final act before succumbing to it's Coma, the Traveler created the Ghosts. Little machines to seek out and reanimate individuals to create The Guardians. You are one of these reanimated Guardians. The Darkness is returning to finish what it started. You must stop it and wake the Traveler. The bosses do not drop the kind of loot you are looking for or expect. Bosses tend to drop pyramid shaped engrams that are very small and easy to miss. These engrams tend to be tokens you turn in at the Cryptarch for 200 glimmer. Sometimes they're glimmer increase items instead. It could also be said that the bosses don't drop loot for you to pick up but rather, the loot is awarded to you in the scoresheet at the end of a mission after you defeat the boss.