I’m in your shoes so I wanted to post this for what it’s worth; I transferred all my secondary characters stuff to Vault, deleted it, and started fresh. Game still started me off at 1600 light and even has a whole new intro. So essentially, deleting a character and starting over was similar to starting as a returning player (I stopped before shadow keep). It’s a whole new campaign thus far. Not sure when (what expansion) this happened or why exactly. No Ghaul/red legion campaign. So my main in a Hunter, and Titan is secondary. I transferred all my exotics over and restarted my titan. Starts you right at 1600 light. At least this way I can play Shadow Keep - Lightfall on my secondary character. May be worth doing if you’re dying to play like I was. I really didn’t lose anything I cared too much about. But I wouldn’t dare do this with my main Hunter.