I've spent over 100 and still have more than I started with. 80 of those cores could have been bought from Spider at 2 cores a day. Also there is absolutely no reason to infuse every piece of gear to max level immediately, this is what Bungie means by meaninful choices.

The revelry , vanguard and crucible package deletes has been a good way for me to keep a solid inventory of cores . I’m maxing our 3 toons and have been using the powerful weekly drops from the revelry . Usually have an issue with cores but not as of late . Seems like cores are dropping pretty regularly along with the core boons.

What you’re doing wrong is masterworking armor, as it practically has no difference in defense for upgrading and costs like [b]FIFTEEN[/b] shards? I haven’t spent a single Infusion Core on a piece of armor, and I get by just fine. I have exactly enough cores to infuse my gear if needed when I need to, and if I need to infuse gear I get them back from legendaries or Finest Matterweave I break down or use. Do the bounties from Spider and you can get 3 then do the Verdant Forest and you get another 2. Do this on all 3 characters and you just got 15 shards. Do this every day of the week, congratulations you just made 51 shards in 1 week, and that’s not including dismantling all the legendaries you got during this time and the Finest Matterweave you used during this time. I used to believe the whole “Shards are rare and nonsense and shouldn’t be used for infusions” but then I started playing smarter and not harder. I don’t mean that in a negative way towards you OP or anyone else, sometimes I’ve been in a situation where I don’t get a shard for like 3 days, but you just gotta make sacrifices on gear sometimes if you want to finish that gun you already have.

Well u have to do the core bounties from Spyder and the striker bounties and then change in all of your materials at gunsmith and various npc’s None of those are end game activities They are just time burning activities which is cool if your a streamer Hey guys join up to do spyder bounties etc I have noticed that you also get cores from dismantling the 700 level gear sets on a more regular basis I have 143 cores but that is no way enough to level up revelery gear and the new gambit gear for 3 characters

There is absolutely no reason to have every weapon and armor at max light. Even if there was I have been at max light since week 2 and have had just about every weapon and armor except exotics drop at 700. I have had a lot of the exotics drop as well. I started at about 700 core at the start of season dropped down into the high 500s and now have over 900. It is not hard. If you are not in a clan join that is 21 core for about 6 hours of play time.

Go play 5 matches of pvp and get another 90 cores

lol. Why would you infuse 45 items when you only need a couple sets at 700 for the reckoning and gambit prime.

[quote]I’m down to ten. I had 90+ and have hit max light, begun to infuse all my preferred gear up to max. And you know what? I DONT HAVE ENOUGH CORES TO USE WHAT I WANT, EVEN THOUGH I WAITED UNTIL MAX LIGHT. What kind of terrible game design is this? I don’t have enough to haul my gear up to the max level (for the THIRD TIME thank you very much), and where am I supposed to get the cores to be able to even THINK about Masterworking my Weapons? If your answer is Spider or Vance then keep scrolling. One is a sidetrack from actual fun gameplay, and the other is an exploit. Both are MIND NUMBINGLY BORING and I REFUSE to do either. There’s other, more fun things to do in this game. I encourage anyone to tell me what I’m doing wrong. I have over 1,700 hours in Destiny 2. I have three characters, EVERY EXOTIC CURRENTLY IN GAME, Luna’s, Recluse, Mountaintop, you name it. I play this game religiously and this is where I find myself? I have multiple load outs per character. All of my armor and weapon slots are full save for one slot, and I love every piece of loot because they’re all useful in their own situations. Yet I can’t use what I want when I want because I just don’t. Have. The. Cores. And streamers like Gothalion who claim cores are proportionate to gameplay hours (he has around 600 hours in D2.) are full of it. If I don’t have enough cores with my amount of playtime then there’s something wrong. It means that cores aren’t bound to playtime like they ought to be, and how Goth claims they are, they’re bound to specific activities to act as a timesink that nobody likes. Infusion was fine how it was. I struggle to keep enough Glimmer and ALKANE DUST as is. But cores are a whole different level of insanity. Loot costs too much in a looter shooter. Because THAT makes sense. Edit to clarify: I have 14 legendary weapons at 700 and a couple left to infuse. 7 exotic weapons, a couple left again. 21 legendary armor pieces at 700, around 7-8 left to infuse. 5 exotic armors at 700, with 5 left. ON MY HUNTER ALONE. So just my Hunter, I’ve spent let’s see, 14X2= 28 cores on legendary weapons, 7X3= 21 cores on exotics so 49 cores on weapons alone. 21X2 for legendary armor is 42 cores for armor, and 5X3 for Exotics is 15, so 57 cores on armor. I’ve used 106 cores already. To infuse each piece ONCE up to 700. Sure there’s outliers like same gear piece costing zero cores and infusing exotics into gear costs one Core, but we’re still looking at around 100 cores spent already. On my Hunter alone.[/quote] Maybe one day you will learn how to master a simple material economy in a children's video game. https://i.imgur.com/HtOdhaG.jpg

“Guys I hit max light and can’t infuse literally infinite items without running out of cores”

I personally don't get it. Do Spider's bounties. They give several cores a day. Also, if you farm Crucible or strikes and dismantle the loot you get, this usually drops scrapper bounties for the activity you're in. That's easy cores. Do raids. Curated rolls drop all the time. Farm activities that have curated rolls like Reckoning and Nightfalls. They drop very frequently. Cores also drop somewhat frequently (RNG I know. Some people get them like crazy and some don't) just by dismantling legendary gear. Just play the game and you get cores. Now I get it. Not everyone can put 4 hours + a day into the game, but there are a lot of options on how to get them. They can literally come from any activity. Someone who plays an hour a day isn't going to have the same gear and desired character of someone who plays 6 hours a day. That's just a fact and that's how it should be.

[quote]I’m down to ten. I had 90+ and have hit max light, begun to infuse all my preferred gear up to max. And you know what? I DONT HAVE ENOUGH CORES TO USE WHAT I WANT, EVEN THOUGH I WAITED UNTIL MAX LIGHT.[/quote] Then what exactly did you use the first 80+ cores on? Good on you for waiting until max Light to Infuse, that's the best way to save cores, but you then used them all at once and are somehow surprised that your supply isn't as large as it was beforehand? I'm struggling to see how you can make the jump from you using 80+ cores at once on at least 26 Legendary items or equivalent (three full sets of gear and then some) to that being bad game design. At the same time, infusing a powerful item (700) into the same item at lower Power only costs Glimmer, infusing an Exotic into it costs 1 core if it's a Legendary item. I don't know what items you use but if you use an item you know you can get a powerful variant of, and are conscious of cores, then you can save yourself those cores if you get what you want. It's RNG, but so is the rest of this game.

“Can’t use” lol okay your gun doesn’t have to be 700 light in order to use it. I have never had a problem with cores because I’m smart about infusion. I’m only going to masterwork weapon’s that actually need it. This is what Bungie wants players to understand. There are ways to be smart about infusion and master working all while having sufficient cores.

Where’d they go? Did you spend them? That typically is what happens to currency like that.

I've never had an issue with cores... I always just wait to infuse until i find the same piece of gear at 700, with worse perks. Doesn't even take long.

That's a lot of load outs. I'm not defending the core situation but you've got all that time in this game and you can't get a armor piece with multiple synergies on them?

You aren't doing anything wrong. This is not a bug...its a FEATURE of Bungie's poor-and-misguided game design. The goal here is not to SATISFY you as a player. The goal is to FRUSTRATE you...and let the frustration of withholding anticipated rewards (getting to use the gear you want) to motivate you to continue to play. The goal (Bungie's) is for a SECOND grind to kick in now. One where you now have to grind masterwork cores so that you can level up the gear you want to play......or to have you keep grinding MILESTONES so that you can get duplicates of that gear, and infuse for glimmer. The goal is to keep all forms of progression so elusiive and unpredictable...so that you keep playing all the way to June (when the level cap goes up, and this shit starts all over again).....no matter what. Whether or not you enjoy this, or feel that your efforts have been reasonably rewarded, simply be damned. NOW you are seeing why the player base is so angry....and why we get even ANGRIER when people get in our faces and tell us "Oh you're just playing wrong. You just need to stop infusing every 1 or 2 level jumps". YOU are now seeing that this is simply a system that is irredeemably broken,unless you play the game in a extremerly narrow and extremely (for most people) unsatisfying way. You are seeing that this system DESTROYS build making, in a misguided effort to keep people who leave once they reach level cap in the game.

If Bungie wants to burn it down let them!!! You can't fix stupid!!!

It just pisses me off that people actually find ways to defend this piece of shit system. They are either 1) children who haven't played video games that much or 2) blatantly ignorant of how video games should be designed. I am not a developer, but as someone who has played games all my life(and games like Destiny) it pisses me off that this system exists. It doesn't matter if it works for me or other people just fine, because at the end of the day, this system is objectively bad for a game like Destiny.