1. Run through the entire story. Leveling up to 20 is where you learn to play the game. After you hit level 20, the game changes and the real fun begins. 2. Stop and smell the roses. Or, slow down and explore. If you are in a group and running with a partner, ignore this. But, if you are running patrols to finish bounties or running the storyline solo, do a little exploring. There are chests and materials all over the maps, many chests are up on a ledge or in a cave or room you will never need to go into. 3. ‘Cherry Pick’ your bounties. There are bounties easy to finish or they have areas where you can farm them easily. One example: Kill 10 Hive Ultras or Majors. On this bounty, you can finish it in about ten minutes every time on the Patrol in the Cosmodrome. From the spawn point, turn left. 100 yards ahead are some mobs and a small building. Down the stairs in the darkness are three Hive Ultras. You can kill them, then go up and kill the ones topside. Head back down and they will have respawned below. I recommend you level up some if you are solo. 4. Equip you un-leveled weapons and sub-class when turning in bounties. If you have cleared several bounties, these are worth good XP and reputation. If you fight with your favorite weapon and have it maxed out on upgrades, switch to that weapon you just found. Any equipped weapon will gain potential upgrades when you turn in bounties. 5. Materials. Save your materials. You can turn in materials to the crucible quartermaster for reputation, and for the first 22 levels it seems there is no use for them. When you gain Legendary or Exotic gear, you will need a lot of materials for upgrades. 6. Practice with all of the weapons. At first, I used the Auto-rifle almost exclusively. Learning how to use each weapon will help in the long run. Even the crappy pulse rifle. When completing a bounty for precision kills, the scout rifle works best. When running a strike where you know a bunch of thralls come out to play, the auto-rifle and machine gun do best. Certain bosses can be hit easily with the rocket launcher. One of my favorite weapons now is the hand cannon. Find your niche, and to do that you need to practice with them all. 7. Tier Events. Go do them. If you are any level and running a patrol, a random event may occur. The sky will go dark, the ground will shake, your Ghost will inform you something big is about to happen. These are tough, but most likely everyone logged in will run over to complete it. Even at relatively low level you can join in and reap the rewards. 8. Xur. There are a few things the story line doesn’t ever show you. Xur and the Special Orders chick are two of them. Xur is a special vendor in the Tower who sells things for Strange Coins. You get these as rewards for higher level strike and sometimes on and Engram drop or completing a Tier Event on patrol. Xur is only in the Tower from Friday to Sunday, and he spawns in a different place each week. He’s not too hard to find, and only deals in Exotic gear. All Exotic gear rocks, go find this guy. Special Orders: just to the left of the Tower spawn point is a vendor. She has a free Emblem for all. If you ever get a truly unique item in the game, she is there so you can get that item across all of your characters. At my low level, and having never run a Nightfall strike or VOG, the only item I have seen with this is the new speeder from the Expansion. I got it on my main with the Expansion, then logged into my two alts and bought the speeder for them from her for not too much Glimmer. 9. Reputation and Points. For each faction, you can build reputation and earn points. - Reputation is how you level up in that faction. Points can be used to buy gear from vendors in the Tower. Some gear cannot be purchased until you gain a certain level in the faction. Also, when you reach a level in any faction or the Cryptarch, you get a reward. You start out in the storyline gaining rep with the Vanguard. You can change this by acquiring a different Class item and equipping it. Cloak for the Hunter, Mark (Lanspede likes to call this a skirt ) for the Titan, and Bond (Armband) for the Warlock. - Points. You can earn points running strikes and other missions. You use these to buy Legendary gear. The higher the strike you can run, the more rewards you get. 10. Engrams. These are fun items that drop on missions or you can buy them from the Cryptarch in the Tower. You gain levels with this too, every time you take an Engram to the Cryptarch to decode, you gain rep with him. Higher levels in this means better Engram drops. This is a good way to get new gear and gear to dismantle for materials. Plus there is the fun factor of, “what am I going to get?” OK< just a short top ten things I noticed as I leveled my first character. Please feel free to respond with your own observations! Kadian