Request for Super Good Advice (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 15:26 (1862 days ago) @ marmot 1333

1) What are people's strategies for getting the most out of their playtime? On a Tuesday reset, what do you go to do first? What activities seem to be the most worthwhile for getting powerful rewards?

Thanks to the way they've tweaked loot drops, just about any activity in the game will help you climb from 750 up to the soft cap of 900. Even random Blue drops will come in slightly above your current level. If you have any vendor tokens in your inventory, you can spend those and level up quite quickly.

Once you hit 900, a selection of Powerful Reward activities will appear on the director (similar to how they would pre-shadowkeep). You can get a couple from the various crucible playlists, strikes & nightfalls, gambit, the weekly flashpoint, and a few other locations (there are several weekly powerful rewards tied to activities on the moon).
In general, getting up to 900 is pretty smooth. You can just play whatever you want to play. After that, the director makes it crystal clear what you need to do to get powerful drops.

2) I have no idea what I am looking for with the new armor. I have gotten a ton of armor and I've been throwing it in my vault, but I am rapidly running out of space. How do I know which armor is worth keeping?

Armor is tricky at the moment. Every piece of armor you get will have a stat roll (these are the intellect/discipline/strength/etc numbers) as well as an elemental affinity.

For the stat rolls, you can look at how many points a given piece of armor has in the stats that you care about, or you can also look at the total point score (which is displayed just under all the individual stat ratings). Some armor pieces of more total points than others, meaning they effectively have better total properties. I don't know what the highest possible stat total is, but the highest I've found so far is a pair of boots with a stat total of 57. Anything 50 or up seems to be decent. Keep in mind that adding mods to armor increases the stat total by 10, so a piece of gear with a stat total of 58 and no mod is actually a higher roll than a piece of armor with a rating of 65 with a mod installed.

Aside from the stat rolls, there's also the elemental affinity. Each piece of armor will have a solar/arc/void affinity. This plays into damage resistance against each energy type, just as it used to, but it also dictates which mods can be applied to any given piece of armor. Certain mods can only be applied to armor with specific elemental affinities. For example, the Enhanced Hand Cannon loader mod can only be installed in a set of gloves that have Void affinity (I'm pretty sure I'm remembering that specific example correctly, but if not you still get the idea). So if there are specific mods you are interested in equipping, you'll want to look into which elemental affinity those mods require, and then keep your eyes peeled for armor drops that have the elemental type you need, and ideally a high stat roll as well.

This can all potentially add up to needing a boatload of different armor pieces. Personally, I've decided not to pay any attention to what an armor drop looks like... I just look at the stat roll and elemental type, and then I use the decorative ornaments to change how to armor looks. My goal is to have 1 piece or each armor type (helmet, gloves, chest piece, boots, & class item) in each of the 3 elemental affinities, all with good stat rolls.