Destiny 2: The Final Shape (2024)

glancr said:

Thanks for these responses! Very helpful. I'm getting the hang of things - as planets unlock in the story, I can also choose to hang around that planet and run side missions, bounties, whatever.

Next questions:

- How do mobs levels work? For example, if I'm 800 and my teammate is 1060, and we fight some basics dudes on Earth, are they scaled to my level? Or his? Or at all?

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God, scaling works weird in Destiny. I'm about 95% this is correct (except for ratios) but someone will straighten me out if I'm wrong. Basically, activities have recommended power levels. Let's say you're running something that is 800. You are at par with it, so you deal/receive damage at a 1:1 ratio (pulling numbers out my ass here). Your buddy goes in at 1060 but Bungie caps him at Recommended level +100 so the game views him as 900. He deals damage at a 1.5:1 ratio and takes damage at 0.75:1 (or whatever). So while he gets a bit of a benefit, he isn't necessarily one-shotting every single enemy. Going into an activity at a lower power level handicaps you, obviously. If he goes in to the Prophecy dungeon, he's doing 1:1 for the encounters; I don't think you'd even be able to go in at 800, but if you could you wouldn't be able to damage the enemies and they'd all one-shot you.

That's more or the less the gist of scaling. You can probably find more in-depth stuff on Reddit/Bungie's site from some old TWAB (This Week At Bungie).

- My buddy is a returning player from way before, and I'm new. We both started at 750, although his character had existed before and mine is from scratch. We've been doing the same exact content, yet his drops are about 50 levels higher than mine - why would this be?

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So, do you have the Season Pass? Have you claimed the armour from it? Has he managed to score some higher power gear from something (

Gaming Prime, for example. Xur, maybe?)? Destiny looks at all available gear for your character and bases the power drops on that. So if you have multiple characters with one you focus on (me and my Hunter who is maxed at 1060) and others you don't focus as much (me with my Warlock and Titan), the alts are still going to see higher drops because they could use my 1060 weapons that my Hunter has, even if they're being used by my Hunter. They couldn't use his 1060 armour though, so I'll still have to earn armour for them.

If you want to see your max power level, go to Destiny Item Manager (aka DIM) and log in with your Bungie account. Once you're in, it'll show you the max power level you can reach under your character banner, eg. my Hunter is 1079 = 1060 (power from gear) + 19 (power from seasonal artifact). This will affect what some of your drops are. At 1060, my prime engrams drop at 1060 (or focused Umbral engrams). Legendaries and blues are still maxed at the soft cap of 1050 power, though.

You can also click a button to 'maximize' the gear on your character. If you ask your friend to do that, I bet he has a couple items that he has received from somewhere that are pulling his max level higher so he's seeing those +50 drops from that.

- Any point in worrying about keeping vs. scrapping legendaries at these lower levels? Just upgrade, scrap the old thing and move along?

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Depends. If you get a roll on a weapon you like (there are 'wishlists' you can load into DIM which will tell you if rolls you have are recommended and for what (PvP/PvE), or check Light.gg for recommended perk rolls) you can hang on to it and infuse it up in power as you earn higher power items using Upgrade Modules (purchasable from Banshee). For armour, look for higher stat rolls (60+) with a focus on your preferred stats. Recovery is always a good one to focus in. Some people like to focus on their class specific stat too (mobility for Hunters, resilience for Titans, I think, and no clue for Warlocks).

If you're starting new, you can throw stuff in your vault as it's probably relatively empty. You could then pull it or shard it later down the line.