How does gear affinity work? New player

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Me and my GF just started playing this, we're enjoying it but the new player experience is confusing to say the least. Quest tracking is a nightmare, so many pop ups, not knowing what anything does, etc etc.

One thing we really don't understand though is what effect affinity on gear has. As I understand it, weapon affinity deals more damage to shielded enemies if they match, but what about armour? What does the affinity on the armour do? Is there any benefit to matching it with your sub-class affinity or just mix and matching?

[Leto]

armor element determines what kind of mods you can equip
void is focused on sniper, handcannon and precision stuff
arc is focused on shotgun, bows, swords and stuff
solar the rest i guess i never use it... fusion rifle, grenades this kind of stuff

so it's pretty important, but wait to reach the higher lvl before upgrading stuff, it will become obsolete very quick..

about the quests, yeah..im a new light player also and it was the biggest mess i ever experienced in a game.
i'd suggest to go see amanda in the hangar and do the main quests first

[Mister Wiggles]

Guessing you mean element type when you say affinity?

If so then its pretty simple, the 3 elements have their own specific mods with them. They use to provide a resistance to that certain element too but to the best of my knowledge this is no longer the case, you have to equip the element type resistance mod in the first slot which is not worth it outside of niche instances.

For a basic example of mods, void has sniper, smg and grenade launcher mods (as well as other weapons but those 3 are major ones) Arc has LMG's, shotgun and swords and solar fusion rifles rocket launchers etc. Thats basically it really, some seasonal mods require a specific element piece to even be slotted.

[Soul]

Originally posted by Jamie:

Oh, ok that's a lot more simple than I was expecting. Do you guys by chance have any tips for us, as new player starting out? There's a lot of things we're unsure of. We're essentially just running about not knowing what to do.

Should we be taking a lot of bounties? What do the quest colours mean? What does reputation do and how should we choose who to give our materials too? So many things we're just like ???? at :)

The affinity system is really just a gate for the armor mods. They struggled to fit all the armor mods into one UI, so put them behind different affinities to separate them up. It's not a popular feature and one that will hopefully be taken away at some point.

As for what to do...Really you just want to farm bounties. That's pretty much the end game right now. Get your season pass levelled up and the quickest way to do this is bounties. Go grab all the ones from Zavala and Banshee, plus the ones from the machine next to the drifter. Go run strikes to do all the bounties, then do the same but for crucible and so on.

There isn't really much more to it. You can branch out and do end game content like raids, but you'll need to find a group for that. The LFG on Bungie can be hit or miss and you might get a great group or a bunch of kids that give you a headache. I'd suggest looking for a gaming community to join as they will usually hold teaching runs for the harder content like raids. Google is your friend here, or try the one I'm in, Sundog gaming.

There's also dungeons, which are like mini raids and are aimed at 3 man teams, although you can do them alone but they are challenging and there's triumphs for doing this (especially without dying). There's one in dreaming city (shattered throne), the moon (pit of heresy) and the tower (prophecy).

I've not played the new light experience although I've heard it's pretty crappy for new players. They are updating this signifigantly in beyond light and making it more like the D1 opening to the game, which should be a lot more user friendly, so it might be worth holding out until november if you want a better new user experience.

[shrek, eater of children]

Originally posted by Jamie:

Oh, ok that's a lot more simple than I was expecting. Do you guys by chance have any tips for us, as new player starting out? There's a lot of things we're unsure of. We're essentially just running about not knowing what to do.

Should we be taking a lot of bounties? What do the quest colours mean? What does reputation do and how should we choose who to give our materials too? So many things we're just like ???? at :)

i would mainly focus on completing activities that give you powerful gear each week and then completing activities for pinnacle gear and bounties are very very good. i would spend a good bit of resources on upgrade modules to upgrade gear and i would check out destiny item manager if you ever have any questions about if armor is good or not and if you have good weapon rolls