So most, if not all, of us are pretty pissed at the Exotic shuffle that is going to happen come December 9th when the Dark Below DLC hits
It got me to asking:
“What am I gonna do with my 19 exotic weapons?”
Owning all the Exotics except for Monte Carlo and having all except Patience and Time, Bad JuJu, and Plan C maxed; the news that all of my weapons would need to be reset if I want to buff them to the next cap burned my buns in a bad way. I should be one of the first in line for a ticket to Bungie’s Complain-Train
But that got me to thinking…
Just to put it into perspective; in my case anyway… I am still miles in front of the basic Destiny player. One who joins after the DLC hits might get a free rexurbished Icebreaker eventually, but I’ll still have my old one I can hope to upgrade and still have 18 other exotics on the side I can still play with waiting for Xur to sell the DLC-Tier version or the Upgrade for it. In layman’s: the hardest factor of RNG is mitigated by you already having the exotic weapon; the only RNG you have for “Maxing” is waiting on Xur for a few weeks
What I’m trying to say here is that it’s not all that bad. Just getting the Exotic you want is WELL more than half the battle, and if you already own it.. WHOOPIE! That’s enough to celebrate because come rexurbishing time; you’re good to go granted you’ve been keeping Glimmer on hand
AND YOU HAVE THREE MONTHS
So needless to say; Bungie is screwing the pooch right now, and that pooch is us, but it’s not as bad as it seems.
- Xur is confirmed to be selling DLC-Tier Exotics
- Mentor Missives will reward DLC-Tier Exotics
- Exotic Drops will all be DLC-Tier
- Xur will sell a slew of upgrades every week
- Strange Coins are aplenty and Exotic shards are only 7 coins
- Motes of Light now drop from just.. like.. breathing (during public events anyways :] )
What does this all mean? It means, my unupgraded Bad JuJu is just a free shard when I end up getting the Mentor Missive again and redoing it for the DLC-Tier Shut Up Juice. In perspective, my Missive just “gave” me a fully upgraded Exotic because of the shard from my Pre-DLC weapon (after leveling of course)
Xur hasn’t sold the exotic upgrade for your Maxed Pre-DLC Tier Gjallarhorn? Well good thing he is selling the DLC-Tier Gjallarhorn. Buy the new one and get a free shard for maxing your new Gjallarhorn. You just saved 7k glimmer you can now use to upgrade the new guy. Hello big 302 and eventually 331!
Haven’t gotten lucky with drops and Xur hasn’t sold the DLC Icebreaker yet? Good thing he’s selling the upgrade! And at a measly 1 shard and 7k glimmer, it’s yours
Need one more exotic shard, but don’t have enough Strange Coins? Good thing Motes of Light are so much easier to get now! Buy the helmet engram for a “free” shard! Holy Crap! It’s Mask of the Third Man! And a high-stat roll! Now I have a DLC-Tier helmet and I can still shard my old Pre-DLC Tier MotTM for that free shard!
Look… I know everyone is all up and arms about the whole gear-grind treadmill starting up again, but let’s be real; 70% of the sub already has max a character, and most of them have close to max Alts: if you’ve been a busy-bee, you could open up a bank with how many strange coins you have, meaning you can pretty much buy 10 Exotic Shards right off the bat. Motes of Light are a dime a dozen, so you should gamble on the armor engram every week: you might get lucky and get a free upgraded DLC-Tier chest you wanted to replace your old Pre-DLC tier chest (and pretty much means you got a free shard/max-upgrade too). On top of that, all Exotics are DLC tier from now on, so if you already have most of them (like me), every time you get one to drop, you’ve pretty much got a free max-upgrade (cause of the shard)
But, because the glimmer requirement for upgrades is near ludicrous levels, the only Exotics in dire-worth of the upgrades early on as is the Gjallarhorn, Icebreaker, and arguably the Mythoclast. This means you won’t be upgrading every week of course, giving you time to save up Glimmer/Exotic Shards/Strange Coins/Motes of Light
I know. The Exotic upgrade patch is bad for Veteran players, but it isn’t as bad as it first seems; there are ways to use it to our advantage for free stuff/upgrades
In Summary:
- Stock up on Exotic Shards but make sure you have enough strange coins to get whatever weapon Xur has available the next week. If you blow all your coins one week, it’s not the end of the world; next week always resets the weeklies, so you’ll have a shot at more Strange Coins
- Gjallarhorn, Icebreaker, and possibly the Vex Mythoclast are the absolute priorities for Rexurbishing; if you already received them in Tier-2 variety/don’t have them, work on your favorite/other exotics
- Redo Mentor Missives for free sharding of old exotics to max new ones. It might take a while, but the trade-off for time is worth it in the long run
- Buy DLC-Tier exotics you want and shard the old ones for a free upgrade. I’m hearing reports of double Shards if you breakdown leveled Exotics so you might get lucky and actually save Strange Coins by spending them. Don’t buy extra Primaries if you already have them, just rexurbish your current ones. Don’t waste time on Armor yet as the the only Lvl32 content is SoC HM which won’t be released for another month. WEAPONS ARE THE PRIORITY
- Wait until AFTER Dec 9th to turn in your Mentor Missive Bounties for Exotics! They will come Pre-upgraded to DLC-Tier quality
- Use Motes of Light for a shot at DLC-Tier gear or at the very least a free shard without having to use coins
- Exclusion Zone farm with Resupply Codes
Thanks for checking out another Destiny Tip, let us know how we are doing in the comments!
via Reddit.