Destiny 2 Shadowkeep Power Level Guide: How To Power Level Past 900 And Get Raid Ready

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  The Soft Cap

  Gaining over 150 power levels in a few days seems intense, given that each season used to raise the power cap by only 50 points. But what matters is actually the new “soft cap,” which is set at 900 power.

  That means that any drops you get while playing Destiny 2, no matter their source, can potentially help to increase your power level all the way up to 900. That even includes the normally worthless blue items that come from completing public events, simply killing enemies, and dozens of other sources. There are exceptions to this–for example, if your overall power level is 800, but you have one slot with a high outlier number like 810, drops for that slot likely won’t help you until the rest of your slots catch up. But for the most part, you can simply play the game normally, completing the new story elements and exploring the Moon, and hit 900 with relative ease.

  One important thing to note is that it’s best to save any potential powerful drops until after you hit 900. For example, you should wait until you hit 900 to pick up Hawthorne’s clan rewards, which are considered powerful drops. However, this doesn’t apply to prime engrams, whose levels are set the moment you pick them up or they arrive in your postmaster.

  

  Of course, if you want to speed this up and hit 900 more quickly, you have some options. For veteran players, the best course is to simply spend some time trading in materials for vendor gear. If you have a surplus of items like Crucible or Vanguard tokens, or even destination materials like Dusklight Shards and Microphasic Datalattice, you can trade them in with their respective vendors and receive random loot in return. Vanguard and Crucible tokens are probably your best bet, since you might have several thousand of them, and they serve no other purposes in the game (unlike destination materials).

  But even new players without a huge surplus of these materials can get to the soft cap of 900 without breaking a sweat, simply by farming public events on any destination, completing old story content (if you’re a New Light player), or doing other world activities (like killing the Trove Guardian knight on the Moon and looting the chest his death opens a path to).

  How to Get Powerful Drops Above 900

  Now that you’re 900 power, the easy part is over. Progressing above the soft cap is always a challenge in every new season of Destiny, but this time it’s thankfully not too bad.

  First off: Make sure you’re actually 900 power, without the extra levels from your season artifact being factored in. To ensure this, you can hover over your power level in the character menu and see your power from gear and your power from the artifact laid out separately.

  Throughout the power grind, you’ll be able to see “powerful” gear sources on the map and destinations director, and even more will appear to you once you hit 900. These specially named engrams are guaranteed to award you armor or guns that are above your current maximum possible level. They even have tiers now–Tier 1, Tier 2, etc.–to indicate exactly how much of a boost they’ll give you.

  Even so, there’s bound to be some confusion around exactly where you can get powerful gear, because many old sources from the past year of Destiny 2 no longer count. For example, you can still play old raids to get legendary weapon and armor drops–and even new, Year 3 Armor 2.0 versions of old raid armor. But those drops will act the same as basic world drops, getting you up to the soft cap, but not helping to progress you beyond it.

  There’s one major caveat to this: Thanks to changes in Shadowkeep, non-powerful drops can potentially still help you even after you pass the soft cap. That’s because normal, everyday drops now arrive at levels much closer to your current power, even after you get above 900. For example, if all your gear in every slot is 915 except your helmet, which is lagging behind at 905, a blue helmet that drops in a patrol zone or from a public event would still be helpful, because it might arrive at 912 or 914. It’s below your overall power level, but higher than your current helmet.

  

  Lastly, in previous seasons, players who wanted to get raid ready as quickly as possible often used complicated processes to juggle gear between three characters. Basically, you get as much powerful gear as possible on one character, then transfer your highest guns to a second character, which then starts the whole process with a boost in power compared with the first character. Then you do all powerfuls again, which should get the second character higher than the first, and repeat with your third character–the one you intend to raid with.

  Strictly speaking, this still works in Shadowkeep. However, it shouldn’t be necessary for Garden of Salvation, since the “contest” modifier that will be active for 24 hours starting from the raid’s launch time on Saturday will cap all players at a maximum level of 920 in the raid’s final encounter. If you’re going for a day one clear, getting above 920–which is extremely easy to do before Saturday–is completely pointless. So you might as well stop there.

  Every Source for Powerful Gear

  Since many existing sources of powerful gear–including old raids, Menagerie, and Black Armory forges–have been deprecated, where exactly should you start looking for high-level drops once you pass 900 power? So far we’ve discovered the following sources:

  • Clan engrams: If you’re new to Destiny or simply haven’t joined a clan yet, go find one. Simply being in an active clan ensures you multiple powerful rewards per week. (The unofficial Destiny 2 PC LFG discord server is a great place to start looking for a clan.)