Getting raid ready (365LL)

[Jason 1,245]

Stole from reddit, decent guide to getting to 365 light level so we can start raiding. I personally ran 320 strikes for blues and then opened legendary engrams at 363 or so. Finally opened Exotics at 364/365 and I'm at 366 max possible light. 

 

 

 

Warning! This is going to be very wordy but hopefully 10 mins here will save you hours of grinding the wrong activities.

So, I made a post yesterday about how crucible seems to be the best way to get 366+ gear without raiding. A lot of the comments were from people stuck in the low 350s and 360s. I figured I'd write up how I got past those 2 humps without having to raid or overly grind.

A few things to understand first: 

Items drop higher than your total light, not the light of a specific item. If you are light 350 total with boots, as an example, at light 353 chances are any boots that drop for you will only be around the 351-353 level.

Levelling up from 335-350 works pretty much the same as year two. Items drop several points over your max light.

At light 350 a sort of 'soft cap' kicks in. Items only drop a point or two higher instead of up to 4 or 5.

That soft cap seems to ease up at 365 and gear will start dropping at 3-4 levels higher.

Most people are held back by their Ghost or artifact.

So, let's tackle these problems in light order.

No one should have issues hitting 340. Blue engrams from any part of the game, old or new, will decode up to 340.

The next issue is 350. First you'll want to buy a 350 ghost from a vendor. Next you want to complete the artefact quest to unlock a 350 Iron Lords artefact. This gives you a solid base to work from. Now comes the easy part. Just play Heroic strikes. The rare gear that drops from the bosses will be up to 2 points higher than your max light up until 365 and your first strike of the week guarantees a legendary engram. Again this will be up to 365. Don't forget to pop a 3 of coins on the bosses but keep hold of any exotics. Dont decode them!

Mid 350s is the first struggle for most. All your weapons and armour are around 355 thanks to Heroic strike drops but your artifact , and maybe Ghost, are still stuck at 350. Bottlenecking your progress. 

This is almost certainly the reason why you can't progress

Let's deal with the Ghost first. There are 2 ways to get a Ghost up to 365. - Heroic strikes do drop them, they just seem incredibly rare. I was getting more exotics than rare Ghost drops. I got maybe 2 in 20 strikes. - Every faction/vanguard/crucible package has a chance to drop a Ghost. Again they seem quite rare.

Artifacts have similar issues. - Strike loot chests after the boss seem to have a decent enough chance of dropping a higher light artifact. I've opened 4 and got 2. It's down to RNG. The hard part is getting a chest key to drop. Once you're fortunate enough to get an artifact in the low 360s save your keys from now on - Ranking up Eris has a chance of an artifact from her rewards package. Again it's all RNG. I wouldn't go with Eris just yet unless you are really desperate. I'll explain more later.

My best advice to those stuck at the mid 350s is grind Heroic strikes with a vanguard rep boost on and a class item with rep boost. It'll take about 2 hours to rank up the vanguard and 3 to rank up a faction. Giving you your shots at a Ghost. Every boss you kill has a chance for a Ghost. Every boss you kill has a chance at a treasure key for an artifact. Every boss you kill with a 3 of Coin has a chance for an exotic (keep them!). And you'll be swimming in infusion fodder from all the rares you get. It's sadly RNG behind RNG again.

You can farm Omnigul for this by selecting the 320 version from the director. I won't go into detail, there's plenty of guides already out there. I wouldn't recommend it though after you get a decent Ghost. She doesn't drop exotics and non heroic strikes seem to have a low drop rate for chest keys making artifacts harder to get.

By now you will be in the 363 range. All your weapons and armour will be 364/365 and you'll have the same issues you had in the low 350s. That damn Ghost and artifact!

This is Destiny, and it wouldn't be Destiny without the grind. Your best option here is to repeat the whole process again until you get a 365 Ghost from a boss/package and a 365 artifact from a chest. Not much comfort I'm afraid. Your other option now is to rank up Eris to see if she'll be kind enough to give you an artifact. If that's the route you're going then it's back to Crota's End or the Court of Oryx to grind out rep. Again, pop those 3 of Coins on the court bosses! Eris dropped a 367 artifact for me when I was 364. Once you've got an artifact in the high 360s, again keep hold of those treasure keys.

Ok! So we've ground out strikes for what seems like forever and finally hit 365! Success! But what's this? Bungie are dicks and recommend 370 for the raid. Its Crucible time.

My guide for the Crucible was posted here yesterday so check that out to start getting 366+ legendaries.

It's time to cash in on those exotics. Hopefully by this point RNG has eased up on you and you've got a few in your vault.

There's a trick to getting the highest light possible out of exotic engrams that most people don't seem to know. Remember at the start I mentioned items decode higher than your total max light? When you decode exotics you'll want to decode an engram for your lowest light gear first. So if your max is 367 but your arms are holding you back at 365 decode a gauntlet engram first. This way it will give you arms anywhere up to 6 light higher than your current (up to 5 light higher than your total) Infuse, rinse and repeat until all your gear is around the same level then start hoarding again until there are noticeable differences once more.

I'd recommend hitting up strike chests and Eris maybe every 5-10 light levels to try and keep your artifact topped up. Same with Ghosts from faction packages. This will prevent the bottleneck you hit in the 350s and 60s.

And there you have it. It'll be grindy at times and RNG will take ever opportunity to screw you over. But play smarter instead of harder and you'll start flying through light levels again.

Hopefully some of you stuck it out to the end and this was some help to a few of you. Apologies for any formatting issues, this stuffs hard on a phone!

Any questions, I'll try and answer.

Edit: So this blew up a lot more than I anticipated! I appreciate the love. I'll still try and reply to individuals looking for advice or clarification but hopefully by now most of it should be answered somewhere. And I really should do some work! Also fixed a few things thanks to autocorrect not being as smart as it thought it was.

[The3rdWalker 1,263]

That's a really good easy to follow guide. Nice post Sheasley!

[GazzaGarratt 10,899]

That's a great find @jSyn66! Heroic strikes it is first then!

When do we all think we should try it? Do we really need to be 370? Or just a few of us?

[BO7H B4RRELS 2,450]

18 hours ago, jSyn66 said:

There's a trick to getting the highest light possible out of exotic engrams that most people don't seem to know. Remember at the start I mentioned items decode higher than your total max light? When you decode exotics you'll want to decode an engram for your lowest light gear first. So if your max is 367 but your arms are holding you back at 365 decode a gauntlet engram first. This way it will give you arms anywhere up to 6 light higher than your current (up to 5 light higher than your total) Infuse, rinse and repeat until all your gear is around the same level then start hoarding again until there are noticeable differences once more.

That's a good tip right there.  

Nice guide Jason.  Good find.  

[techno 3,478]

Haven't done many heroic strikes as yet but hasn't taken long to get almost 360 using sepiks perfected and some crucible .

 

As said I'm held back by an artifact.

[Jason 1,245]

I think 365 is good enough to start.