1. Play story from beginning to end (including strikes.) 2. Do vanguard bounties each day + crucible bounties if your into PvP. 3. After reaching Lvl 20, focus on raising Vanguard Reputation to Rank 2. Do this with bounties, patrols, dailies, weeklies and nightfall. Also complete at least (1) 3 Gold Star Public Event each day. Use destinypublicevents.com to find the location of the events. 4. Once, you reach Vanguard Rank 2, buy legendary armor you like. This will only get you to Lvl 28 or 29. To get to 30, you must have at least 3 Raid Legendary armor pieces + 1 exotic or 4 Raid Legendary armor pieces. You can tell the difference between normal Legendary and Raid Legendary because Raid Legendary have a maximum Light of +30 as opposed to +27 for Normal Legendary armor. Xur visits the Tower each Friday and Saturday and often sells Exotic armor. Pick up a piece from him. I recommended a helmet as the only way to get the Raid helmet is from the Hard Raid which is obviously more difficult and there is no guarantee it will even drop. 5. Once you reach Lvl 26/27 try the raid every so often as you will get raid gear and some cool weapons with elemental damage. You can also do Vanguard Tiger strikes to get Vanguard marks and gear. The reason I say to use the Vanguard over the other factions is because I feel Vanguard marks are easier to attain than Crucible marks.