Beyond Light experience & Power leveling guide: how to get ready for Deep Stone Crypt raid, fast

The release of Beyond Light is only a few short days away and it's always a good idea to set yourself up in a way that ensures you'll be ready for anything the new expansion has to throw at you.

This leveling guide is aimed at those players who want to be high enough Power level to be able to tackle the new raid when it goes live on November 21 at 10AM PST. For this raid the ideal Power level to be is 1230 which will require some preparation, a lot of play time, a great deal of efficiency, and just a little bit of luck.

For Beyond Light the Power caps are as follows:

• 1050 Minimum Power - The minimum starting Power level of all characters in Destiny
• 1200 Soft Cap - Until you reach this Power level all gear drops will be a higher
• 1250 Cap - Only Powerful/Pinnacle rewards can be used to reach this Power from 1200.
• 1260 Pinnacle- Only Pinnacle rewards can be used to reach this Power from 1250.
• 1260+ - Only Artifact Power granted from XP will increase your Power.

Here’s what you need to do to ensure you are as high a Power level as you can be when the new raid goes live:

Bounty Hoarding

There are still a few days left before Beyond Light releases, which is plenty of time to travel around the solar system on your characters to pick up and complete all manner of bounties.

Keep these completed bounties in your inventory until Beyond Light releases and then hand them all in after you have received the Artifact from the Story missions to receive a massive amount of XP. It’s also a good idea to equip an XP boosting Ghost Shell before handing the bounties in which is covered in the next step.

One thing to be aware of is that Bungie has stated that all bounties tied to a destination that are being vaulted, such as bounties from Ashir Mir or a Gunsmith bounty tied to Mercury, will disappear once the expansion goes live. So it’s best to avoid completing these bounties as it will be a waste of time.

The purpose of having all this XP banked up is not to gain Artifact Power, as that will be disabled in the raid for the first 24 hours, but to acquire the mods from the Artifact. The mods later in the upgrade path can be extremely powerful and can be a must have when it comes to more difficult content. If there is anything like Oppressive Darkness in the new Artifact mods then this could be the difference between clearing an encounter or being stuck on it for hours.

Another small thing to mention is that according to Bungie, if you are hoarding a lot of old Crucible or Gambit bounties and the handing in of them gives you enough Valor/Infamy to receive a rank up, this reward will drop at 1060.

Equip an XP Boosting Ghost Mod

Ghost Shells are being completely reworked when Beyond Light releases and will become more akin to the system used with Armor 2.0. Essentially, any Ghost mod will be able to be used on any Ghost Shell, provided you have upgraded the Shell enough to have enough energy available.

In the TWAB that talked about these changes to Ghost Shells it was mentioned that basic level mods would be available once the change goes live but that certain ones would only be available through different activity completions. A screenshot is also present in this TWAB that shows a perk titled ‘Blinding Light’ that gives an extra 12% XP and costs 6 energy.

It’s unclear if this mod will be available from the beginning of the expansion or whether it will have to be acquired. This Blinding Light mod has different levels of bonus XP taking up different amounts of energy. It's likely at least some of these levels will be available from the get go so just equip the highest XP bonus you can.

Another aspect that isn't totally clear is if this change to Ghost Shells will apply to Shells that are currently in the player’s inventory or if it will just change newly acquired ones and ones pulled from the Collections tab. If it's the latter, be sure to equip an older Ghost with the ‘Guiding Light’ perk as this gives a 10% bonus to XP and could end up being a greater bonus than the lower levels of Blinding Light, this is if the 12% bonus isn't available yet.

Be sure to equip an XP boosting mod before handing in all the bounties you have saved up!

Complete Story Missions/Any Other Content

Completing the Story missions is something you should be doing anyway but not only will this slowly level you up to the soft cap of 1200 but also has the possibility of unlocking more sources of Powerful rewards through Exotic quests and the like.

Complete Powerful/Pinnacle Rewards

Now this is where it can get a bit complicated. Currently, there is a limited amount of Powerful and Pinnacle rewards available each week so for each previous race to be raid ready it was impossible to reach the recommended level by just using one character.

In Beyond Light, Bungie has introduced a new system that will continue to reward the player with Powerful rewards for continually playing the core activities like Strikes, Crucible and Gambit. However, it is unclear what the drop rate for these Powerful rewards are and so it could still end up being an impossible task to reach 1230 by only using a single character.

So for Beyond Light it is still greatly recommended to use 3 characters to ensure an abundance of Powerful and Pinnacle drops to speed your way to 1230.

The single biggest rule to follow when completing Powerful and Pinnacle rewards is to start on your least favourite character.

Once you have exhausted the sources of Powerful and Pinnacle gear you then transfer the high Power weapons over to the next character. Since this character is starting with weapons of a higher Power than the previous character it means that all Powerful and Pinnacle rewards will drop at an even higher Power.

Do the same on your main character and you will see that after completing all the Powerful sources they will end up at a much higher Power than the character you started with.

An amazing source of Powerful rewards is actually Survival in the Crucible. This playlist gives both Valor and Glory so this gives double the amount of ranks ups which each give a Powerful reward. If you are a fairly good PvP player, and have played a decent amount of competitive PvP before, winning a match will give you a huge amount of Glory in order to boost you to the rank in which you should be. This can result in a large amount of Powerful gear after only a handful of matches.

You will have 11 days from Nov. 10 to Nov. 21 to reach the Power cap for the raid of 1230. Follow the above steps and you should make it with time to spare.