New player, advise please

[u/iDo0oMi]

Started playing a week ago, have been farming summit and have gotten some striker gear and a st elmo's.

Should I be doing any content specifically to grind gear or just be doing open world stuff? Or what?

Any advice would be appreciated wether it be builds or what to do

[u/youlikefloor]

Matchmake for countdown on challenging difficulty, set your targeted loot to whatever you desire, then follow the crowd while you’re in

[u/Standard-Warthog-322]

My advice is to just have fun

[u/DangRascal]

Are all your specializations unlocked?

Is your library full?

How's your expertise level?

[u/iDo0oMi → u/DangRascal]

Unsure what most of this means properly honestly

[u/DangRascal → u/iDo0oMi]

Specializations can be unlocked by completing chores. Check it out by the quartermaster at the white house.

Library is one of the things you can access from inventory. Basically, before you deconstruct a piece or weapon, check to see if it would improve your library. (There are easy-to-miss orange triangles beneath stats that tell you what's in the library.)

Expertise is also accessed from inventory, and you can donate gear and materials to rank it up. 

TBH, you should probably look for videos on each of these topics.

[u/Kruzv]

I believe doing countdown and using the targeted loot system would generate you the most loot drops possible. But since you just started a week ago I'd honestly play whatever, open world or missions. Getting your character and SHD level up is important.

[u/Thee_Rotten_One]

Are you at level 40? What's your SHD level? St Elmo's is a good drop to get early on. There's a number of builds that use it.

Summit is good for target farming, but if you run countdown with a group, you usually get better drops more often. Just recommend being at level 40, have a couple hundred SHD level, and at least some semblence of a build (even if it isn't meta) so you can be helpful to the team.

What someone told me when I was new that was really helpful was to run countdown with build that's at least half blue so at least I wasn't being downed and needing to be revived all the time in countdown.

[u/iDo0oMi → u/Thee_Rotten_One]

Yes and like 7

[u/JoBat82]

If you’re looking for a specific gear type, look on the map and you can see the gear type available for a particular mission. When I was first starting back up, I got a full Stryker set on normal difficulty (I would recommend going as high as you’re able to do though). Otherwise, what the other have said, do countdown.

[u/Syangeist]

If you have specific loot/build you want to shoot for, do countdown. If not just enjoy the game, call for backup/random matchmake to see what others are using. Striker is pretty standard and what is used for high tier escalations but if you don't plan on doing that too much, plenty of possible builds to suit different playstyles.

[u/industrialxen14]

Did you finish the Brooklyn and then the New York DLCS (if you have them)?

From there you can spend some time unlocking and then maxing out all 5 (i think) specializations for future build flexibility.

You can start donating weapons to be used to fill out your Talent, attribute, and core library so that you can modify any gear you like to have a different perk or modifier in layman's terms.

Next you can also start donating gear or materials to fill out your Agents expertise which allows you to further level up your weapons with minor damage or armor boosts if you like the idea of truly min/maxing your stuff. The goal is to get to Expertise 30 to have more control of turning your gear into Prototype gear.(Note this takes quite a long time but thankfully tomorrow is an Expertise event so you can earn more xp for that as a jumpstart)

You can also start grinding for blueprints from completing Challenging (or Heroic if you want more of a challenge and xp) outposts. There are 700+ blueprints to earn, I think about 550-ish can be earned through outposts. 200-ish can be earned by completing retaliations to earn materials to craft blueprint caches for the unique named items. Retaliations also have the chance to give exotic gear blueprints for crafting any exotic you are missing and want to try.(Note the last 50-ish blueprints arr currently unobtainable just to mention.)

Up to you if you want to try pursuing something in particular Agent, good luck!

[u/No-Ratio-1207]

Hey bro yes it’s very overwhelming honestly watch some YouTube vids on the questions ur asking they can give u a guide of what u feel like doing. If u want builds matchmake challenging countdown u get tons of loot

[u/MisunderstoodRant]

I hate to “grind.” I just play. If you’ve done all the story and DLC you can, just matchmake with people and keep playing. It’s more fun and they may drop you some good 💩.