D2: Shadowkeep economy & prep

Houndish video snapshot

One of the new challenges in Shadowkeep will be the Nightmare Hunts, and Guardian power levels will need to rise once again. For example, the recommended power level for Nightmare Hunt: Servitude is 860. Hoarding bounties for the purpose of carry-over, that may pay out max power, is one way to go ... however, hoarding power in the "ways of old" certainly brings no guarantees going into Shadowkeep.

Earning power will be quite different in D2: Y3, which is accomplished through the main artifact mechanic, The Gate Lord's Eye. Another consideration is to ensure you acquire / employ a ghost shell that features the Guiding Light intrinsic (whereby all XP gains are increased by 10%) ... for example, the exotic Totem Shell.

Bottom line: Upgrading Armour 2.0 pieces to level 10 power will be astronomical in terms of cost, compared to the current system. Armour upgrades will require a plethora of materials: Glimmer, Legendary Shards, Enhancement Cores (EC), and Ascendant Shards. Obviously, the "wealthier" you are now in terms of prep, the better off you'll be when Shadowkeep launches.

In Shadowkeep, vendors like Banshee-44 (Tower Gunsmith) will offer material exchanges, likely for a hefty price. Preparing prior to Shadowkeep includes picking up Banshee's, Hawthorn's and Spider's bounties that pay out ECs, just for starters. By Houndish's calculation, with three characters, you may be able to hoard up to 300 ECs by the time Shadowkeep drops on October 1st ... if you chase all of the vendor bounties that reward ECs, both daily and weekly (that's about 100 ECs per character).

Another thing you could do is "bank" Glimmer using exotic items. The exotics trick allows you to break down specific exotic items (e.g. Sparrows and ships) into Glimmer (remember, these exotic items can be reconstituted). The Glimmer cap in Shadowkeep will be increased, but the spending will be somewhere in the stratosphere. If possible, use any ghost shell that rewards Glimmer while playing.

How about buying Simulation Seeds from the Spider; if using Legendary Shards to purchase them, you can get a "rank-up" with Brother Vance (Mercury vendor) for about three shards. From that you will get a shader which, upon dismantling, returns one of those shards and some legendary gear to dismantle ... and often, you will get Masterwork drops, which then can be dismantled for ECs. This is a bit convoluted in terms of farming, but it's an option to think about.

Don't forget, you can also direct-purchase mod components from Ada-1 (Tower, Black Armory vendor) to add to your mod stash now, and [hopefully] they can be carried through to Shadowkeep.

If you're looking to hoard mod components, you can clear weapons out of your inventory; go into your Collections specifically looking for "blues" that likely dropped from Adventures. Dismantling them has a low, cost-return ratio, and the chances of mod component drops is good.

Note too, that if you have any Year 1 legendaries sitting in your vault, they will consistently yield mod components upon dismantling, since they were deprecated with the start of Year 2. Also delete shaders and Eververse gear sets that you don't want, and generally clean-up your vault holdings.

If you want to stack up on Bright Dust, do Eververse bounties to clear up any bounty notes you may have forgotten about. Let's not forget about the option of levelling yourself "down" (power-wise) to AFK the Forges ... yet another farming method featured in an earlier post.

Watch Houndish's video on YouTube [7m 40s]