Get out while you still can

Understandable. Bungie---in an effort to keep barriers to new players low carved out 2 years worth of campaigns from the game---and is still trying to figure out how to best bring new players into a game that is pretty complicated. Think of it this way....if it helps. The game is divided into four basic sections: Open World (planetary locations, lost Sectors, pub events, patrol, etc..), Core playlists (Strikes, Crucible, Gambit), Seasonal Events (The Dawning), and End game (Raids, Nightfalls, Dungeons, Trials of Osiris, and Iron Banner). Open world play used to struggle for a purpose, But Bungie is slowly turning it into a place aimed primarily at solo players. Both to level up by doing bounties. To farm necessary materials either directly or by completing bounties....and to farm LOOT (Lost Sectors, Empire Hunts, Wrathborn Hunts, etc..) Core playlists are serve many of the same functions as Open world, but is more geared towards people who want to play with others. So you level up with bounties. Farm for necessary materials through bounties...and farm for the lowest tier of loot in the game "World Loot pool". The vendors also have a dedicated set of armor...and a weapon that you can only get in each playlist. Seasonal events are here to help celebrate hollidays, and spice up the game by giving us simple things to do that are different than what we do every day. Right now The Dawning is going on (hence the cookies you're baking). Right now we're getting seasonal cosmentic, a few seasonal themed weapons....and there is like another quest that we are slowly (as a community) unlocking as we hit achievement milestones. There is generally at least one seasonal event per quarter. End-game. These activities are dedicated multiplayer activities that are targeted at the best players, represent (usually) the most difficult content...and where you go to get (most) of the game's best loot. Most of these activities are not matchmade, so part of the process of participating in them is forming your own fireteam of 3-6 players. The tools for this in game are rather meager. But LFG sites and Clans are somewhat helpful in this. These activities are usually on a WEEKLY loot cycle and require you to progress to near-level cap. Now here's where it gets complicted. Seasonal Content (versus Seasonal events). In order to give us a semi-continuous stream of things to do, Bungie divides the year into four seasons apart form the annual expansion. Each season can be purchased seperately. Season of the Hunt revolves around the Wrathborn Hunts...and the loot we get from that activity. Bungie has also been experimenting---and imo largely succeeding---in using the Seasons as a means to continue to advance the story between expansions. [spoiler]The Center piece of this Season is the story of The Crow...the Lightbearer who is the resurrection of a HATED figure from the game's past. Prince Uldren of the Awoken. Uldren murdered Cayde-6...Hunter Vanguard (leader of the Hunter Corps) and beloved character. So the fact that he was brought back among people who remember who he was and what he did....even though he can't....makes for interesting and sticky storytelling. [/spoiler] Now here's where it gets down right crazy...the progression system. Sigh. The progression system in this game is BROKEN...and intentionally confusing...and Bungie so far has been unwilling to fix it beyond slapping band-aids on it. Its left this way, imo, to artificially extend play becasue the game struggles to produce enough loot to rely on loot-farming to keep play going . Anyway.... a. Progression to Soft-cap. This is the first system you interacted with. Your gear will progress (these are teh 4 digit numbers you're seeing. The two-and-three digit numbers are people's rank on the Season Pass and are meaningless to game play.) By simply playing ANY part of the game...and this is how you leveled up from 1050 to about 1200. Its called the Soft cap, because once you hit that soft cap the majority of the game will stop dropping loot that will progress your character...and if you play those parts of the game they will drop loot that has a LOWER power level than where you are currently. This is to force you to interact with the next system. b. The Powerful drop system. Which is how you'll progress to the "Hard Cap" (1250). This is a list of specific activities in the game (used to be called "Milestones") that drop "Powerful" drops. These loot drops will progress your gear from 1200 to 1250. Like the end-game this is a weekly cycle with limited loot drops (its purpose is to slow us down in reaching the cap) Once you get the powerful drop from an activity you are basically done with that activity (progression to hardcapwise) for the week. Once you reach 1250 then if you want to go on.... c. The Pinnacle drop system. This system is the worst aspects of the Milestone/Powerful system on steroids. Now you're dealing with a system of drops that only involve a very tiny list of activities (mostly raids) that drop the gear what will progress you from 1250 to the "Pinnacle cap" of 1260 (Absolute gear level cap). The goal of this system is to exert even more control over what we play, and slow down progression even more. Now...as if all this weren't bad enough....now come the band-aids. In typical Bungie fashion, in their effort to control the player and orchestrate game play....they broke proression 2 years ago when they introduced teh Milestone/Powerful drop system. Players stopped playing because once you complete the drops for the week, nothingwill progress your character. Plus progression became an RNG affair where you gambled your time and effort in return for the hope of somethign that will progress your character. (I once got stuck at a level for three weeks because I kept gettiing nothing but kinetic weapons and boots as my powerful drops) 1. Prime Engrams. These are essentially Powerful/Pinnacle drops that drop in teh game at random. So there is no way to really target or farm them. They were added to the game to keep us from bailing once we'd exhausted the Powerfuls or Pinnacles for the week. They've smoothed out the Poweful systems flaws somewhat, but not so much with the Pinnacle system. 2. Seasonal artifact. This was also added to smooth out the RNG nature of progression for the average player. (This is why so much of the game is focused on bounties) Bounties are the fastest way to level up the Seasonal artifact. The artifact is designed to replicate (somewhat) the EXP based levelling you see in most RPGs. Thus releiving some of the throttling that the Powerful and Pinnacles systems bring to the game. The levels you unlock with the SA gett added on top of your gears power level to give you additional "total power level". Its why you see content that is 1280 for Nightfalls and Lost Sectors despite the fact that the hard cap is supposed to be 1260. Grinding hard to wring 20 or 30 levels out of that artifact is the only way you'll be able to enter the highest level content without being at a significant power disadvantage At the end of each season, the Seasonal Artifact will reset....and any power gains you accumulated from it will be lost. Though any power that you've infused your gear up to will be retained. This is all VERY complicated....and the progression system **ridiculously** so. But I hope this helps you learn the game.

The numbers next to players are their season rank, there's a visual bug where your own shows as 1 when you die, but others will see your season rank correctly. The target is to get to power 1260 for end game content. Just playing the game you'll get weapons and armour dropping at higher levels than you have equipped.

Welcome to the game. It's definitely a little tricky getting started. Here are some things that might be helpful. Bungie's New Player Guide is full of basic information about the game. It's worth looking at, but I'm sure you've already figured out a lot of it. https://www.bungie.net/Guide This is a YouTube video that does a pretty good job of explaining things and seems to be current. https://youtu.be/Id9wMN7yb7I Speaking of current, Destiny has been around a long time and there has been a huge amount of content made about it. Just Google or search on YouTube and you'll see. But there have also been a lot of changes to the game over the years. That means a lot of the guides and information available is outdated. Make sure that the information you're getting is up-to-date. For instance, Amanda Holiday is no longer the place to pick up your starting Mission. You should have automatically been directed to Shaw Han after you made your character. From your profile I believe you've already done that. I'll give you some places to go for more help. First off, while this is the official Destiny forum, you should definitely check out the 10 or so subreddits dedicated to the game, starting with... https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame This subreddit has almost 2 million members and I think you'll pick up on the differences from here pretty quickly. Destiny is a game of community. To get the most out of it you'll probably want to play with other people and eventually join a Clan. I play on Xbox so I can't personally help with that but there's lots of places that will. One of my favorites is the lfg site The100. The100.io When you join for free you'll be guided to join 3 groups. It's a great way to find people to play with. In my experience it's a lot better than the lfg in the Companion App. And often the best way to find things out is to ask another Guardian while you're playing. You might also check out... https://www.reddit.com/r/Fireteams https://discordapp.com/invite/destinygame https://t.co/CZVkI3whfU?amp=1 (Discord pc lfg) Finally... https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/wiki/destinysites I've got to be honest with you. The ftp version of Destiny is really designed to give you a taste of the game and hook you enough to spring for the paid content. As such there's a lot of things in the game you don't have access to. If you like playing enough you might want to go for it. Either way, I hope you enjoy the game. Feel free to dm me if I can help further.

Quests are mainly exotic quests or events and the main game consists of doing your powerful and pinnacle drops, the legacy gear you should not buy but you should buy any exotics that you don’t have and missed out on (it will always flash green if you have an exotic cipher in your inventory) and the levels are based off of your season ranking in the season pass. The goal of leveling is doing higher end content like nightfalls and raids or endgame pvp like trials of Osiris. Also I’m shocked you like gambit because I think it’s the worst thing to ever come into destiny.

If you want to do legacy stuff, there’s a kiosk to the left of the postmaster. It’s kind of tucked away. That being said, any gear you get in the legacy quests (aside from exotics) will be useless.