Whether or not you just hit 20 or are stuck at one of the +Light bumps (21, 25, 27) and don't know what to do, this guide should help you get a good process going for jumping up in Light levels quickly. Yes, this write up is long and verbose, but I wanted to be as clear as possible, and if 15 minutes of reading can save people 20+ game hours of guesswork and grinding, then it’s bloody well worth it. [b]12/21/2014 The Dark Below edit - This actually is all surprisingly still valid, except now this kind of works up into 30 because of the now upscaled vendor gear.[/b] [b]Prep steps[/b] Determine which of the four Crucible factions you care the most about (usually relates to the two stats that faction adheres to, or Crucible for any stats): Crucible, NM, DO, FWC. If one of the latter three, buy one of their “rep sashes” for 2500 glimmer. I [b]strongly[/b] recommend running a PvP faction for reasons I will explain shortly. Suffice it to say it’s way easier to abuse the “rep sash” for free Legendaries later than it is to run basic Crucible rep. Ensure every map point is unlocked on every map, and do every quest. I know some people get to 20 long before they do Mars or even Venus because of PvP, but unlocking everything is paramount and doesn’t take very long. Prepare this checkpoint (so you can later just go to the mission, hit resume, and start at the grind point). ([b]I am not responsible for any unintended content in these videos, as they are not mine, view at your own risk[/b]: “We’ve woken the hive” The Dark Beyond, Moon – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIEiCU0BtiU [b]8 days to 26[/b] Sure, you can get there faster with some luck but this is a guaranteed way to do it in a 100% reliable fashion with no RNG. You can only get 100 Vanguard and 100 Crucible marks a week. To get four purple pieces of gear in 8 days, you need to get 130 in one, and 185 in another. This can be done in as little as two days during a weekly reset crossover (e.g. Monday, then Tuesday). However, getting the marks is the easy part. Getting your rep to rank 2 is the hard/long part. Ignore the “rep sash” instructions if you are doing basic Crucible rep. For PvP marks grab all the PvP bounties, put the “rep sash” on and do PvP and bounties until you max out on Crucible marks since it kills three birds with one stone (rep, marks, gear). Then do the Easy Patrol Grind below until your eyes fall out, or just wait till the next day and do new Bounties. There’s no need to rush rank 2 until just before the week rollover. For Vanguard marks, take the “rep sash” off and do Vanguard bounties and run playlist strikes [i]at or below your level[/i] for the same reasons as the PvP stuff above. The reason you do strikes at or below your level is because there’s nothing to be gained really from “pushing the envelope” for harder stuff except a lot of pain and wasted time because of the level differential on damage. Additionally, the Strike playlist is the only way to [i]guarantee[/i] a +Light item, and this will probably bump you up to level 24 (4 fully upgraded level 18-20 +Light rares) before you even cap at 100 marks. Once capped on marks, the fastest and most effective way to get rep up comes from two sources; bounties and patrols (neither of which directly give you marks, which is why you do the former). The Easy Patrol Grind is as follows: Go to the Moon patrol. There are 3 beacons right at the start. If any are [i]not[/i] the slow/time consuming go to X ones (e.g. not the Ghost or Compass icons) then do them. There is enough stuff nearby to finish all kill/collect patrol missions. If you get a VIP one, save it for last, and when you finish it go to orbit and come back (they tend to take you deep into Hive bases, and are worth 25 rep per so they’re totally worth doing). Once all the good ones are done, go to orbit and come back anyway so it instantly refreshes the 3 beacons. On top of this being the fastest way I have found to do Patrols, the Defend the Warsat public event shows up quite commonly right in the same general area! If you are doing the “rep sash” thing and happen to hit rank 2 Vanguard before the PvP faction, you can put the sash on and grind patrols out for them as well. Once you hit rank 2 in both, and have the aforementioned mark totals, you can scoop up four pieces of Legendary gear in one go and jump right to level 26. [b]12/21/204 The Dark Below edit - Not sure what you now get to, possibly 28 outright with the higher scaled vendor gear. This can still be done, but one has to remember that the HELMET and CHEST both take requisition tokens. Thus, you will need to buy, say, Vanguard HELMET + BOOTS and Crucible/PvP CHEST + GLOVES to knock this out without having to grind to level 3 for armor in either.[/b] You can then repeat this stuff until you hit rank 3 in both, for weapon access. Secondly, and this is why [b]I strongly suggest picking a rep and running it[/b] every rep level from 3 on gives you a free Legendary in the mail. However, this Legendary seems to only come from that faction’s loot pool, so your mileage may vary. Now that my Vanguard is at 3, I just leave the faction sash on at all times (since it double dips rep from PvE [i]and[/i] PvP now for maximum rep grind efficiency) and cash in my free Legendary and, if I don’t like it, I just nuke it for free ascendant materials. Finally, a nice side effect of doing all the bounties every day is the frequent turn up of Exotic Bounties for Exotic Weapons, though having more than one running at any given time makes it considerably harder to sweep the PvP bounties quickly since it takes a freaking bounty slot. [b]Daily/weekly tasks[/b] The low level Daily Heroic task is really just there for Vanguad marks and an Engram. At level 26 it gives you an Ascendant Material (Shard or Energy). Level 28 one gives two. The weekly heroic strike may sound intimidating but as long as you pay attention to the modifiers (and abuse the crap out of the favorable ones like “arc damage hits harder”) then it’s not very much harder than a regular level 22 strike. You just need to be slightly more careful. Do your “Daily public event” every day, because it’s by far the most reliable way to acquire Ascendant energy/shards/strange coins/motes of light. [b]Making the leap from 26 to 29[/b] 26 is where you end up with all but Final Column upgraded purples. If you want to bump past 26 you will have to dump all the Ascendant Shards you’ve been farming into the gear, but I advise you to wait a little bit and get 13 strange coins (or 23 motes of light and luck out) and wait for Xur (Friday 9am – Sunday 9 am, random location at the Tower) so you can buy an Exotic armor piece (or pray on an engram). Then, 27-29 is just a matter of filling out all the last upgrade bits of each piece you have, with an incredible amount of Ascendant Shards. [b]”Exploiting” alts[/b] So, you have a main class. Let’s say you want to all-in on him as fast as possible. If you want to absolutely maximize your speed and potential, you have to make two alt characters and level them to at least 6 (I prefer 10 for ease), and unlock the Earth patrol. Each character can perform the stuff in the “Daily tasks” section once a day, meaning you can get three “first public event” packages. Even at level 6 it has the capability of rolling ascendant energy/ascendant shard/strange coin/mote of light. So, doing three a day maximizes your gains for these endgame currencies. If you really want to go all out, bring two alts to 26 without using any ascendant pieces to level Legendary gear up and have them also do the “Daily heroic quest” at 28 (or just at 26, to be safe). If you [b]really really [/b] want to make this easy, level 2 copies of your main class so you can share gear for the 28 tier. [b]Misc. tricks[/b] Switching equipment (including your subclass) before dropping off completed bounties is a great way to boost their XP. Similarly, maxing out Uncommon equipment before dismantling it provides considerable additional resources. This is an awkward yet effective way to basically convert glimmer to weapon parts/armor parts. This does not seem to work for Exotic/Legendary equipment, don't bother leveling it first. Ranking up the Cryptarch past level 5 gets you 1-3 Rare/legendary engrams in the mail every time. It’s basically just best to dump a few thousand glimmer at him whenever you ar near the 25,000 glimmer cap, as there is next to no other use for it outside of vanity stuff. If you intend on getting an Exotic fusion rifle from the exotic bounties, you should save 10 Rare fushion rifles in your vault for later. One of the steps of that quest is to dismantle 10, and trust me it was a huge pain in the arse to get them on the fly when I got to that step. Vault/save Rare/Legendary [i]armor[/i] engrams you get on your primary for alternate characters so you can quickly spring up in Light level when they hit 20 by cracking them open on the fresh 20. Bounty easymode: Here’s another location link Venus engram farming - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24rYwDgDy5Q (Continued on first comment) [b][/b]