Some things to consider for the Xpac...

[Marrkin]

From GameInformer:

What’s Old Is New Again – Upgrading Exotics

The recent Destiny patch brought some notable changes to exotic weapons, but next week’s expansion offers some additional big adjustments. Specifically, exotic items will become available for an upgrade to keep them in line with the new top-tier gear.

Here’s how it works. Upgrading exotic weapons and armor is completed by interacting with the weekend vendor, Xur. When he arrives every Friday morning, he will now have a new option to upgrade one of your equipped exotic items. Each week, he’ll offer some (but not all) exotic items as being available to upgrade.

You’ll need three things. First, you need to own the original version of that exotic item, and turn it in to exchange for the upgraded version. It doesn’t matter if this old version of the item is brand new or fully upgraded. To complete the upgrade, you’ll also need to turn in an exotic shard. This recently introduced new material is available for purchase for seven strange coins from Xur, or by breaking down another existing exotic item in your inventory. Finally, each exotic upgrade costs a hefty dose of cash – around 7000 glimmer as of my playthrough of the expansion in mid-November. After turning all three of these things into Xur, he’ll hand you a brand new version of your item with a higher defense or attack value cap.

It’s important to note that this process resets the upgrades on your exotic item, but you’ll now have a new higher damage or defense cap to work towards – so you’ll need to decide if you’d rather keep your fully upgraded old version of a weapon or armor piece, or start over. With that said, the process of upgrading exotic items is now faster, and does not require ascendant materials. Instead, the last slot requires one additional exotic shard, as revealed in Monday’s patch.

Also:

.... " your older purple legendary items are left behind with the expansion"

Raid Loot and Legendary Acquisitions

Some small but important changes are on the way to raiding and the loot that comes from raiding.

After the initial launch, Bungie noticed that many players were choosing not to fully upgrade their standard legendary gear, and instead were saving the shards and energy for the powerful gear that might drop for them in the raid.

To encourage players to embrace initial upgrades even as they wait for raid drops, ascendant materials are now used primarily to upgrade non-raid legendary gear. Raid gear is instead upgraded with radiant shards and energy, which are acquired in the Crota’s End raid. To put it another way, the raid has its own internally consistent upgrade economy.

In addition, if you don’t get the specific energy or shards you’re hoping for, Eris Morn offers an exchange, allowing you to trade in one for the other. Another way to get radiant shards and radiant energy is to break down unwanted items acquired in the raid.

Perhaps most importantly, the loot raid drops for Crota’s End have been refined from what we experienced in the Vault of Glass. Specifically, the game will pay closer attention to the drops you’ve already had, as well as how long it’s been since you get a “fun” drop (as opposed to just materials). While there’s still a significant component of randomness, Bungie strongly implied to me that players should have a more consistent reward experience with the raid than what has been experienced in Vault of Glass when the Crota’s End raid launches on day one of the expansion. (HELL YES)

Full Article can be viewed here: Game Informer: Dark Below info

[Furiel]

Tl;dr - don't bother upgrading exotics you want to keep any more. It'll take 2 exotic shards to get and upgrade a current exotic fully, one at trade and one once it's xped. It'll be a process since you can only afford 3 before you bankrupt yourself. New raid items upgrade with drops from within the raid. Drop tuning has been done for the raid.

[Marrkin]

All that hard work using copy/paste reduced in seconds

[Marrkin]

Alrighty... now DeeJ says this Game Informer info contains misinformation, though the Bungie blog doesn't really spell it out:

http://www.bungie.net/7_The-Dark-Below- ... ?aid=12442

But then on Twitter DeeJ says GI got it correct, so IDKWTF is going on....

[Furiel]

Also means stock up on shards from Xur this weekend cuz you'll need them.

[Dashl]

How many of us have the expansion?

[Furiel]

How many of us have the expansion?

That I know of: you, me, Cuspar, Maarkin, Starel. I'm sure there are more I'm not aware of.

[Furiel]

I hope that the misinformation he mentioned is the statement about only being able to upgrade certain exotics on certain weeks. Makes me wonder how long it'll be before we get to upgrade things like jellyhorn and icebreaker. Because that's one way to keep people from using those items, don't let us upgrade them for a long time.

[Furiel]

DeeJ clarified on reddit, you can update more than 1 exotic per week as long as it's one of the 6 armors and 6 weapons on his lust per week. Everything else is supposedly correct.

[Marrkin]

DeeJ clarified on reddit, you can update more than 1 exotic per week as long as it's one of the 6 armors and 6 weapons on his lust per week. Everything else is supposedly correct.

I'm glad you found it lol... I am not versed on Reddit so I couldn't locate his stuff!

[Staris]

DeeJ clarified on reddit, you can update more than 1 exotic per week as long as it's one of the 6 armors and 6 weapons on his lust per week. Everything else is supposedly correct.

So I don't want to think about what Zur is doing with the old one then???

[Furiel]

Found this "gem" on reddit as well, reposted from the Bungie Blog

New Rank Commendations In addition to Crucible or Vanguard Marks, purchasing new Legendary items will require a Crucible or Vanguard Commendation Commendations are received in Reputation Reward Packages delivered by the Postmaster upon reaching a new Reputation Level

So you will now need to grind 2500 faction in addition to the marks to get vanguard gear. This is a fucking ridiculous un-needed gear gateway. I'm sure it's intended to keep people from buying all their armor and getting 2 guns on day 1 if they have both their crucible and vanguard marks both capped on Tuesday across 3 characters, but it's a huge gateway to the casual gamers, which lets be honest, is the majority of the players. Of all the changes, this is the one I'm most pissed about.

[Marrkin]

How many different effing 'currencies' do they need? Seriously Bungie....

[Cuspar]

This all seems like... Shit.

[Staris]

My guess is that is a brand new faction that you have to level up.

[Furiel]

Eris does have her own faction rep, it already shows on the app under factions.

They did confirm that the lack of public event packages is a bug at least.

[Furiel]

Ok, y'all know I'm a little crazy, but just to give you a more full idea I'm going to lay out for you everything I plan to do over the next few days to prepare for the expansion. So allow me to introduce you to the Furiel Plan For Expansion Readiness.

Shelving my unleveled exotics.
Fully XPing all of my legendaries then breaking them down if they are a duplicate/spare. For weapons if it's fully XPed even if you haven't bought any perks you get more energies back plus a decent shot at a telemetry.
Getting as many factions to within 10 of a level as possible on all my characters.
Storing as many 100/5000 bounties as I can.

The last 2 work in conjunction. I want to be within 10 so 1 patrol mission will level the faction, then I go get the packages and hope for new, good items in them. Then using the commendations and other items in the packages equipped I go turn in all the big bounties so I get a nice boost on leveling the new items immediately along with a good start on my next faction level as well.

[Dashl]

I didn't have to download a patch or an update this morning. Postmaster had a package, 2 blue armor, 2 shards, 2 energy. New vendor Eris, on the left of the starting tower spawn, has four bounties. Looked like the nightfall was devils lair, so I guess they reset the pattern, although that was very early this morning and I might have dreamed that part. You can't do the weekly strike (which is different from nightfall) until you start the mission for Eris.

[Furiel]

Both the nightfall and the weekly were locked for me when I was on briefly before work. Supposedly they are both the new strike thus week which is why they are locked until you do Eris's quest chain. Takes like an hour from what I've read.

I also got all my faction packages before work, the game wants me to play a huntard apparently. 2 Hunter chests, 1 Hunter boots, scout rifle and 2 sharts from the 5 of them.