Hi guys. I hit level 27 a couple of days ago which is currently the highest achievable level without ascendant level upgrades. It's going to be very slow going from here on up but I thought I'd share a few things that I've learned along the way. [b]Upgrade materials from gathering: Earth: Spinmetal, Moon: Helium Filaments, Venus: Spirit Bloom, Mars: Relic Iron[/b] The important thing to know about these is that as well as spawning in the wild they are also found in chests, and by far the quickest way to farm most of these (except for spirit bloom as it's very easy to spot from a distance) is by doing chest runs. Do a google search for the various planets' chest runs and watch the videos and you'll be able to collect enough of these to satisfy your upgrade requirements without wanting to slit your wrists. It is also useful to know that you can double your collection rate by achieving 2500 kills on the area's grimoire card. I believe this is specific to a certain area of a planet and not the whole planet. (e.g. Ishtar Sink on Venus, rather than the whole of Venus). [b]Upgrade materials from dismantling weapons and armour. Armour: Hadronic Essence: Warlock, Sapphire Wire: Hunter, Plasteel Plating: Titans Weapons: Weapon Parts: All classes[/b] These materials come from dismantling Uncommon and Rare armour and weapons. Please don't waste your glimmer on buying them from the Cryptarch, Class vendor or Weaponsmith, they will drop aplenty on missions and patrols and also in the crucible. There is a trick that can increase your yield of parts. If you level a weapon or armour (only use glimmer of course, any upgrades requiring materials would be self-defeating) before dismantling it you will often get 3 or 4 weapon parts from a green weapon rather than the usual 1. Armour seems a little less rewarding but there is still a definite increase in yield. The best time to do this is when handing in bounties. If you have no item that you actually want to level up to use in a certain slot then equip your green/blue rubbish, hand in your bounty, level it up and then dismantle it. Obviously be very careful not to dismantle your good gear by mistake, I don't think there's any way to get it back if you do. [b]Ascendant materials[/b] Ascendant energy is used for the last 3 upgrades for weapons and ascendant shards are used for legendary armour. (There is also an upgrade material called an ascendant mote which does currently not exist in game but is required to upgrade FWC Hunter faction armour - Bungie have stated that this is a bug and will be fixed.) Ascendant energy and shards are rare and difficult to farm and each upgrade level usually requires 6 of them (7 for raid set gear). The best way to get them is normally to run the daily heroic on level 26 (rewards 1 material) or 28 (rewards 2 materials) difficulty. They are also awarded after completing public events with a Gold rating, but this is only on the first completion of the day at that rating. Of course they also appear as rewards in Vault of Glass. You will also get them from dismantling legendary gear, I have so far only dismantled one legendary item (a "Devil you know" hand cannon). I levelled it to the first level with glimmer and received 3 ascendant energy for the dismantle plus 8 weapon parts. I have no evidence that levelling legendaries/exotics increases the yield, but I felt it was a sensible thing to do just in case. ***Breaking News*** The Queen event is now live. Completing one of her bounties unlocks a special level 24 epic story mission (random). Completion of that mission rewards legendary gear. You may run the mission every time you complete a bounty. Sharding these legendaries ***no longer yields ascendant shards***. The missions always have a "Burn" modifier which provides 300% damage to one type of weapon damage, arc, solar or void. Make sure you have secondary and/or heavy weapons with all 3 types before entering. Also, returning to orbit will spawn a different mission at random. Some (like Restoration) only take 5 minutes, it is therefore worth using this tactic until you get a quick mission. *** Hope this information helps somebody somewhere!