After the last patches and the launch of HoW, Bungie seems to have removed the common sources of Ascendant materials (Ascendant Shards and Ascendant Energy). Problem is they are are still required to upgrade "old" gear. Prior to the House of Wolves you could get ascendant materials from: - Completing a Public event - In Public event packages - Completing the Weekly Nightfall Strike - Decrypting Legendary Engrams - Dismantling legendary weapons and armor - Very rarely from random chests during patrol I know that the Speaker can convert between Ascendant Shards and Ascendant Energy, but this assumes you have enough of one material in order to convert it into the other and that's not my case. I only have 3 ascendant shards in my vault and zero ascendant energies. So right now I have a total of: - 14 legendary weapons that need 234 ascendant energies to become fully leveled ; - 6 armor pieces that require 87 ascendant shards to become maxed out; Bungie made us work in one kind of currency, changes it in a sudden move and now everybody that was in the middle of leveling their gear gets -blam!-ed up.