Edit: Info confirming this from DeeJ http://www.bungie.net/7_The-Dark-Below-Preview/en/News/News?aid=12442 With the new DLC there will be an interesting new feature: upgrading exotics. Now let me quote a destiny dlc tester. "Here’s how it works. Upgrading exotic weapons and armor is completed by interacting with the weekend vendor, Xur. When he arrives every Friday morning, he will now have a new option to upgrade one of your equipped exotic items. Each week, he’ll offer some (but not all) exotic items as being available to upgrade. You’ll need three things. First, you need to own the original version of that exotic item, and turn it in to exchange for the upgraded version. It doesn’t matter if this old version of the item is brand new or fully upgraded. To complete the upgrade, you’ll also need to turn in an exotic shard. This recently introduced new material is available for purchase for seven strange coins from Xur, or by breaking down another existing exotic item in your inventory. Finally, each exotic upgrade costs a hefty dose of cash – around 7000 glimmer as of my playthrough of the expansion in mid-November. After turning all three of these things into Xur, he’ll hand you a brand new version of your item with a higher defense or attack value cap. It’s important to note that this process resets the upgrades on your exotic item, but you’ll now have a new higher damage or defense cap to work towards – so you’ll need to decide if you’d rather keep your fully upgraded old version of a weapon or armor piece, or start over. With that said, the process of upgrading exotic items is now faster, and does not require ascendant materials. Instead, the last slot requires one additional exotic shard, as revealed in Monday’s patch." This implies: 1) We'll have to wait some time to be able to upgrade our favorite exotics 2) You have to max out the same weapon again 3) You will need 7000 glimmer and 2 exotic shards (edit: actually one for xur and one to max again) Everybody will have accesd to this upgrade process but only DLC players will be able to get the new gear from xur. To upgrade or not to upgrade, that is the question. Edit: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2014/12/03/stare-into-the-dark-below-new-details-on-the-destiny-expansion.aspx?utm_content=buffer08682&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer&PostPageIndex=1