Probably 2/3 of that is from just doing bounties. I'll run 25-30 bounties per character per day, I can usually knock out 90ish bounties in about 2 hours. Put a guiding light ghost on and grab a quick strike or something and then turn them all in at one time.

Oof...yeah, I'm not sure I'm gonna invest that much time per day in something that's going to go away at the end of the season anyway. I do some bounties but it's not the highest priority for me; I'm at 106 or 107 (+13 on my artifact, it actually might be +14 now) now just from playing the game. One of the guys I started playing with recently is all about leveling up; he constantly runs bounties and when those are done he hounds everyone to do a 100k nightfall or the new raid. I'm pretty sure he doesn't understand the 100k Ordeal is a once-a-week thing for Pinnacle gear (which is all he wants now, pinnacle gear). Now that the dungeon is out, is that giving pinnacle gear too? (I haven't looked yet)

If it is, he's gonna be hounding us to run that one too...I'm pretty sure he hasn't done the math that even if he does this every week once a week, his gear is still going to, at best, max out at 953 or 954 by the end of the season, assuming he gets lucky and gets one drop per slot and not any duplicates...

I have no desire to pursue pinnacle gear. You need 80 PERFECT drops to go from base 950 to 960. There isn't really any content that requires that additional power either. Yes, the artifact power grind is a slog but it's a more reliable way to increase power. Shadowkeep is a good expansion but it is VERY light when it comes to new loot and gear. There's nothing really for me to chase at the moment.

The raid is fantastic both from a visual (best ever IMO) and encounter/mechanics standpoint. It's probably the single best part of Shadowkeep.

Yup, once I got my characters up to 950+, about a week or two ago, I realized...why am I still grinding the same Vex Offensive, etc stuff when I'm already max level on everything (except armor, which I'm still slowly infusing my way up to...) I mean, how many outlaw/rampage or outlaw/swashbuckler subguns and feeding frenzy/dragon pulse rifles from the Vex Offensive do I really need

The biggest stumbling block I'm running into though it armor, honestly. Finding a decent armor piece that isn't +22 Mobility, +2 Resilience, +2 Recovery, +2 Discipline, +2 Intellegence, +23 Strength (or similar to that) is proving to be fairly difficult. Throw in that you need to cover all the elements for all the mods, then throw in that some armor pieces will fit the Dreambane mods, others will fit the Calus/Hive mods, and then the Dreaming City stuff will fit the Dreaming City/Taken mods...I'm assuming the Dreambane stuff fits the Fallen mods, but I don't have any to check...so if you want to cover all the bases, you need 3 of each type of armor, so off the bat that's 9 helmets, 9 chest pieces, etc etc etc. The Menagerie at least gives you the ability to grind for the Dreaming City and Calus armor, while the Dreambane stuff is a bit more random (you can re-roll but you can't choose your affinity). It's just finding good rolls that I'm running into issues with. I'd rather have an across the board more-or-less even distribution of points than everything being sunk into two stats that may or may not play off each other. I'm sure I could craft some armor builds using those lopsided armor pieces, but that's just more thought than I really want to put into it at this juncture..especially if they're going to be redoing the affinity system next season anyway.

I love my "... reserves" mods; it makes 21 Delerium sing, with 2x reserves mods on the old system...455 rounds ready to go? Yes please

Plus, grenade reserves and fusion rifle reserves come in super handy, especially since there's no more flat "special ammo finder" or "heavy ammo finder"...so you're left scrambling for specific mods with specific affinities if you plan on using your heavy or special a lot. It's just...annoying.

And if anyone thinks "surely he's dipping into hyperbole with the armor being lopsided like that..."

Nope

This is actually one of the better rolls I've gotten in the world

I've been rocking basically an all void armor setup. Stacking tons of sniper mods for high level PVE content, Better Already for the class item, and using Oppressive Darkness grenades. I prioritize intellect and recovery as they are both super important but also the mods for the other areas cost less to equip (2 vs. 3 energy cost). Most of my "best" armor from sheer overall stat rolls was after dumping Iron Banner tokens into Saladin.

I've also scrapped any armor that isn't "seasonal" or capable of slotting raid mods in the 4th slot.

Jesus, that guy who's been hounding me and another guy for pinnacle runs with him, has his artifact at level 400....damn, I guess we've all been slacking

When I told him that the best he could hope for by the end of the season was to be at 953 or 954, assuming he hit every pinnacle and didn't get a single dupe slot item, it was like I slapped him in the face He never did the math on it..

My Hunter and Titan has a dungeon final boss checkpoint on PC (or PS4) if anyone wants to just get the Pinnacle gear without spending the time getting there.

Yup, I stopped doing pinaccle after the first couple drops and saw it'd take weeks to MAYBE get to max light. However, they did announce some changes that will be in a hotfix on 11/7 that sound pretty good. From the weekly update:

"Dev Team: When we designed the pinnacle band of Power for Season 8, our intent was to provide an aspirational progression that reflects participation in some of the more difficult and time-limited content of Destiny 2. This was meant to be a slower progression than the powerful reward band, but one that wasn’t a gateway to accessing content.

We’re not hitting our goals for the availability of rewards in all slots for the pinnacle-level rewards. You may have experienced getting duplicate Energy weapon drops from these sources, which is compounded by the need to get a drop in all slots in order to gain enough Power to raise your character’s overall Power by 1. To mitigate this, we have increased the Power granted by pinnacle rewards to +2 instead of +1.

Once this change goes live, only four slots will be needed to increase your character’s average Power, at which point your powerful rewards will allow those slots that you might have missed to catch up. Our goal is that the pinnacle band remains a reward for tackling the more prestigious challenges, but takes some of the sting away from receiving multiple drops in the same slot. We appreciate all the feedback that we’ve received on this, we and hope to hear more from you on how this band of progression feels with the new change.

PLEASE NOTE: As this change is currently planned for next Thursday, players should wait to earn their pinnacle rewards until this hotfix is available so they can take advantage of the +2 change.

Alongside the changes to pinnacle rewards, we’re also adding the Season Pass weapons (Pluperfect and Temporal Cause) as possible rewards from the Vex Offensive activity. While players may currently unlock the chance for these weapons to drop with random rolls from the Crucible, Gambit, and strikes, we wanted to add them to another activity to give players more agency in earning random rolls."

edit: also, keep in mind altars of sorrow has the potential to drop masterworked weapons and the dungeon pinnacle is a MW piece of armor, so already worth it IMHO, even more so once it's 952.

Xenophage is kinda neat...MG reserves only give it 4 rounds more per, though, and you can't put a mod (like Backup Mag) on it. So it's effectively a 13 shot handcannon that comes as standard with a total of 26 rounds (including the 13 loaded)...without recoil or bloom, really. And it explodes on impact.

So the skeleton of something super fun is there...but, no crits, and it's not quite got the ammo capacity to make it really..."useful"

No worries - Sunday crazymike and I did the Xenophage thing, and today we finished the rest of it (two manned it). The Xenophage witch was tougher than anything else I think The first encounter was no big deal, the 2nd took a little while to get our bearings on but we figured it out. The PITA was which door to open for xenophage...that took most of the time. I actually wound up opening up all 3 doors to the 3rd encounter before finally opening the xenophage door; it actually really helped as the ogres finally STFU after that...but when we wiped in the witch's chamber, well, those doors were locked again. That was annoying but oh well.

It took us a little while to get the pattern down for the 3rd encounter (totem of death, ooooooooo) but I think we got it on our 3rd or 4th try. We were so busy giving callouts and trying to get those assholes in the balconies before they could do us that we didn't even count the orbs we dunked, until it just...ended. The 4th encounter was just running around and looking for your radar to pop, basically...go that way as best you can, avoid the demented Canadian logger playground set toys that Satan left all around, kill everything, repeat. Finding the exit was a treat. The last encounter...well, I read this and decided to try it out (Two-Tailed Fox and a fusion for me, I forget what crazymike was running but it wasn't that). Big mistake. Maybe that way worked for that guy, but for crazymike and I (tether hunter and bubble titan, respectively)...that was stupid. I did more damage I think with my Loaded Question than I did with that rocket launcher. If I popped a bubble and amped things up with WoL, then it helped a lot, but otherwise...meh. A charged up Wendigo or other spike GL with a boss mod would have worked better in hindsight; Jotun would have worked better too IMO.

But, 4 or 5 damage phases later, we finished it up anyway and got the stupid emblem. And got a masterworked +1 chestpiece, which was nice. Didn't get the pulse rifle though.

Thank god for momentum control. Knocked out the last 60% of kills and medals to get my Randy’s today.

I thought Momentum Control was great fun.  Not as much fun as Mayhem, but still...

Yeah, the Jade Rabbit snipes aren't fun, but I was also one of those doing the sniping, and got Randy's Throwing Knife and finished The Mountaintop quest. I just enjoyed not having to run from supers all the time, and kills the only way to regen abilities. I guess put me in the group of liking the game mode. I played way more hardcore TDM in Modern Warfare than I did normal, so maybe that's why I like this so much. I'll probably jump back in after getting IB done to work on Suros and Vigilance Wing catalyst's, and some of the other crucible weapon triumphs.

Wow, IB is currently either "I am a sweatsicle and I will outsweat everyone in my 5 stack"...or "I have never played this game or against other people in a video game in my life! What does this button do?"

And nothing in between those two extremes

In the second camp. Started with Shadowkeep so I'm a noob in Destiny and I don't ever play PVP games. I'm actually shocked my K/D is positive.

Having a blast though. Mostly in the PVE.

You probably pick up PVP fairly quick though...things like "we should capture this point", etc

Last night, I kept getting shuffled around to teams where I was either the odd man out in a 5 stack, which was fine...or I got dumped on a team with people who literally didn't know how to play the game; they'd respawn next to an open capture point and...run the other way. They wouldn't even camp; they'd just stand around and run around (literally) until they died, without shooting; if they did shoot, it was ineffectual.

Maybe it was a Friday night thing...who knows.

Ok yeah I've got that part down lol.

Actually really been enjoying Iron Banner and capturing vs the regular Crucible modes I played a couple rounds in.

If you have to ask "should we capture this point"  The answer is YES.  Always YES.

Thanks to an IB loadout of Erentil & Jade Rabbit, I'm at %100 medals and %30 of the scout rifle kills done...those scout rifle kills are a bitch no matter how you slice it.  I almost want to run MIDA just to keep radar.

You know, I don't know why it didn't occur to me until now, but Skyburner's Oath counts as a scout rifle and it's a lot easier to rack kills with when you spam a capture point from afar without even really aiming at it

It is funny watching the New Light players trying to figure out the game.

I actually used a Black Scorpion for the majority of my scout kills. And most ~80%ish during the last iron banner.
Mine has auto loading, and snapshot sights. Works very well for me anyway.

That and a Night Watch with overflow and explosive payload. Great for the snipers who like to lane certain maps.

This IB I have had more fun running a sidearm, bow, and sword.
An odd loadout, but so far very effective.

Before or after we take their stuff?

I'm not a fan of charred armor.. just sayin.

Don't forget C: Bungie made all of the dreaming city events totally worthless to veteran players. So there's none of them around that actually know how to do things.

I don't need character.. or to smell like a burnt eggo.

But I do like stuff, so..

RIP Recluse

RIP console/controller players and precision SMG shots.

Pretty sure I'm not getting the undying title. Just not enough time in a little over 3 weeks.

Would have liked to but it's my first season and spent a lot of time in the beginning just figuring out how to play.

So, the new expansion was on sale. I bought it. Heaven hell us all.

Sadly...all of this, really. Before this season I would spend a lot of time just grinding things out, playing for loot that I don't yet have, etc. Now with this season...the loot isn't all that good, the leveling thing is beyond stupid, the pinnacles out there are "ok" but I'm not real sure I want to finish grinding for some of them, etc. I didn't even start the game yesterday, and I had the day off from work. I'm probably going to start it today just to see if I can find a couple other people to run the new dungeon with again (new week, new pinnacle/masterworked armor)...and maybe run it two more times with my other toons...but that's about it.

At least before there were all kinds of ways of getting powerful gear and most of them were even a bit fun, like Blind Well, Forges, etc. Now those things are all dead unless someone is grinding for a very specific reason. (Or someone is doing the free to play campaign now)