The Taken King: How to get to level 40 super fast – speed leveling guide

Speeding toward level 40 in The Taken King first seemed ridiculous to me. However, the more I observed about the universe of Destiny, the more it becomes obvious that the game doesn’t really open up until you hit that last level. The Taken King is no exception. Even though light is still important in your character’s ability, advancing through level opens up bigger and better weapons and armor. And who wants to play with green weapons forever?

If you are under 34, this will obviously take longer (don’t forget to take your consumable given to you for characters under 25). However the steps are the same.

Anyway, the easiest way to get to 40:

First starting out, make sure you go to the Tower and trick or treat your way around to pick up all the goods. And then:

1. Claim your allegiance to a faction. 
2. Spend your given Vanguard and Crucible commendations to level up that faction’s rep and if you hit a new tier, claim your prize (usually a level 40 weapon or armor).
3. Throw your prize in the vault along with most of your beloved weapons cause they’re about to be useless. You need to make room for green ones (but don’t fret because this is why you’re leveling up, to get the good loot).
4. Exchange your armor materials (sapphire wire, hardronic essence, plasteel plating) with the Vanguard Quartermaster or donate them to your faction for more rep. (it takes 1000 units of armor materials for a complete rotation around the rep counter).
5. Grab all the bounties. ALL OF THEM ‘CAUSE THEY FIT NOW.
6. Grab as many missions as you can from Warlock, Hunter, and Titan Vanguards. There won’t be many available now, but get what you can.
7. Leave the Tower.
8. Start the story! Laugh at the funny narratives! Enjoy the story that makes some sense this time around!
9. Play through the story while focusing on completing your bounties and missions. You can turn in your bounties as you complete them. Don’t forget to “track” your bounties so you can just pull out NolanBot to view your progress.
10. Once you finish the story (doesn’t take too long), go patrol somewhere (if you have a bounty to collect things on Venus, go there, duh) or run the strike playlist. 
11. Play around in the Crucible to complete those bounties. This time around, the Crucible bounties are much more do-able for filthy casuals such as myself.
12. Do what you can with those missions. The missions are fairly long and may not be fully completed in one day depending on how long you can stand the tedium. 

That’s it. That’s 12 points but between leaving the Tower and finishing the story and bounties, you should have either reached 40 or stand somewhere around 39 and a half (if you began at 34). It took me about 5 hours, and I took my time. Comparatively, this is much better than sitting at 29 and praying and grinding to get something better than a stupid +32 light gauntlet for 2 (TWO!) weeks.

If you began at 25, keep on doing bounties and finishing missions. Patrolling and killing the hell out of everything while grabbing beacon missions will not only help XP, but also faction rep. If you haven’t done all the strikes, do those and then keep doing them. Yeah, its grinding, but the quicker to 40, the better your weapons and armor become so you can do the really cool stuff.

Do you have any tips or strategies that you’d like to share?