With a new season coming, we will have multiple players who might return to D2 or just players who pick up the game anew for a fresh challenge. As such, players often find themselves in a position where their light level is low because they may have been inactive for a season or more. This guide will talk about basic activities you can do to increase your light level and get to the pinnacle cap.

What does light level mean for your character:

Light level is a basic parameter of your power level. The higher your power level / light level is, the easier you will find it to kill monsters and the lesser damage you will receive from their attacks. Of course, while there are other factors in play (as covered by the armors and stats guide written by ZeroxShadows), the basic premise is that the higher your light level, the easier you will find the game. This is the exact same reason Grandmaster Nightfalls are difficult to do. The enemies do not change, it’s just the game capping your light level 20 levels under the enemy power level. Meaning, you are weaker, they are stronger.

How is light level calculated:

Light level is a simple mathematical calculation the game performs. It is the average of the 8 items you have equipped on your character:

Light level = (Energy wep + kinetic wep + power wep + helm + chest + gauntlet + boot + class item)/8

Meaning, if you get an item in each of the above slot with + 1 power level, your overall light level will go up by 1 correspondingly.

What are light level caps:

Every season introduces a new light level cap. These are split into 2 categories, soft cap and pinnacle cap, as explained below:

• Soft Cap – This is the maximum light level at which you will obtain legendary engrams and umbral engrams through the season. As of season 19, this is capped at 1580. If you are below this light level, this will be the maximum light level you can achieve by doing free roam activities or activities which award Powerful or Legendary engrams
• Pinnacle Cap – This is the highest light level at which Prime Engrams can drop or the highest light level you can achieve on each of your 8 item slots. As of season 19, this is capped at 1590. To achieve this, you will have to do activities which will award Pinnacle Gear as that gear always drops at a higher light level than you currently are at (capped at 1590)

So, how do I level up quick:

The very basic answer to this is to concentrate on doing the following activities, which I will explain further below:

• Bounties
• Seasonal Quests
• Pinnacle Activities

Before we explain anything further though, lets understand how you get XP. Completing bounties, seasonal quests or normal quests awards you XP. Gather enough XP, your artifact goes up by 1 light level.

• This increases your character’s light level by 1.
• This farm is not capped and technically you could keep levelling up your artifact endlessly however, each progressive level requires exponentially more exp to level.

XP is distributed into 3 categories, XP+, XP++ and XP+++. The values for these vary for bounties and Challenges (seasonal weekly challenges). The values are as below:

Bounty XP:

Challenger XP:

XP Multipliers:

D2 allows us to increase our XP gains through 2 methods (screenshots below).

• Blinding Light mod on your ghost shell
• XP boost and Fireteam XP boost through your seasonal journey

TIP: to maximise your XP gains, always put on a 12% XP gain mod on your ghost shell and always claim challenges or bounties when you’re a part of a fireteam.

What bounties do I focus on:

The answer is simple, focus on bounties which give you max XP. These are weekly bounties and can be found with Variks on Europa and Shaw Han on the Cosmodrome. They each have 2 weekly bounties which award XP++. These bounties can be completed per character so you can effectively do 6 bounties each from Variks and Shaw Han on your 3 characters resulting in a total of 12 XP++ bounties.

The first 2 bounties in the images below are the weekly XP++ bounties

Beyond these, you are free to pick up and complete any bounties you feel like completing.

What seasonal challenges should I prioritise:

Again, focus on the ones which give you the max XP gains.

Meaning, XP+++ > XP++ > XP+ challenges. Examples below:

Focus on any/all which give you XP+++ first, then XP++ and then finally XP+ challenges.

Pinnacle Activities:

Easily identifiable by activities which list down rewards as Pinnacle Gear (example below)

These activities are:

• 3x Vanguard Ops (singe based) playlist activities
• 100k Nightfall / Grandmaster NF if available
• 3x Gambit matches
• 3x Crucible matches
• 100k score in Throne world Weekly Mission
• Master Wellspring (Throne World)
• Preservation (Throne World)
• Master Vox Obscura (Throne World)
• 250k Dares of Eternity
• Spire of the Watcher dungeon (as of Season 19)
• Kings Fall Raid (as of Season 18)
• 2^nd weekly rotational dungeon
• 2^nd weekly rotational raid