Light Level is no more in Destiny 2, now it’s all about your Power level. This works exactly the same as it did in Destiny 1: your Power is the average of your weapon and armor Power levels. With late-game content requiring a minimum of 240 Power, it’s important to know how to level up past 265 Power with the main goal of reaching 300 Power.
Before you start thinking about reaching Power 265 and above, you need to ensure you begin your plan either before you finish the campaign or immediately after, as there are quests and missions you should avoid if you want to maximise your efficiency. If you’ve already completed a few Exotic Quests and other Activities, don’t worry, you can still reach a high Power level, but it might not be as high as your friends’.
You should save the following Milestone Activities until you’re at least 265 Power:
- Nightfall
- Flashpoint
- Crucible
- Cayde-6 Stashes
- Exotic Weapon Quests
Levelling to 265 Power
After finishing the campaign, you may find yourself anywhere between 150 and 220 Power, however it’s more likely you’ll be on the lower end of those figures. The best means of reaching 265 Power is to farm Heroic Public Events, so make sure you know how to activate Heroic Public Events.
Heroic Public Events will always drop Blue Engrams as rewards, and the map has a timer so you know when one is about to begin. While searching and waiting for Public Events, you can also kill high-priority targets, as highlighted by yellow health bars. Once killed, these enemies will drop loot chests with gear.
Lost Sectors are another valuable source for reaching 265 Power, and are relatively easy to complete, even when solo. Kill the boss within, open their loot container, and run out. As soon as you reach the loading zone for the Patrol area, you can turn around and head back in to respawn the boss.
Planet-side Vendors are another valuable source of higher Power gear. As you complete Public Events, be sure to loot the planetary materials and open any chests, as these items can be handed to the Vendor to increase their ranks. You can also save your consumables until after you reach 265 Power, and then hand them all in at once.
Levelling past 265 Power
Once you make it to 265 Power, you can begin completing the Activities you’ve saved, specifically leveling Vendors, the Nightfall, Flashpoints, Crucible, Cayde-6 Stashes, and Exotic Weapon Quests. These activities reward you with “Powerful Gear”, a very specific kind of Legendary Engram called a Luminous Engram or Exotic Engrams, and both decrypt at the highest levels.
Saving these is ideal as they are the only items that are guaranteed to drop at high Power levels, such as 270 Power and above. Upon finishing these Milestones, leveling past 265 and 270 Power becomes difficult as you will need to either wait until the Weekly Reset for the Activities to refresh, or spend time farming for Exotic Engrams.
The main goal is for you to reach 280 Power, as this allows you to purchase Legendary Mods from Banshee-44. These mods increase a piece of gear’s Power by 5 Levels, which will help lift any lower gear up and help push higher gear further.
If you’ve completed all the Weekly activities, made it to 285, don’t have any Exotic quests left, and don’t want to farm Heroic Public Events, you can always create another character of the same class. Use this new character to finish the campaign and then complete the Weekly Milestones to receive the rewards, then transfer these rewards to your main character. This is a time-consuming and boring way of leveling your Power, but it certainly works.
After reaching 285 Power, you should be at a fairly safe spot for the raid, based on the assumption the raid is a similar difficulty to the Prestige Nightfall, which has a recommended Power of 300. However, even a 270 Power character will be able to hold their own in the Leviathan raid. Leveling past 265 Power isn’t too difficult, though it is a time-consuming process and if you want to do it efficiently, does require some planning.
