Valid questions. I'll do my best to answer. To level up, you must equip pieces of armour that has a 'light' value, much like strength, intellect, and discipline. If you remove that armour, your light value will drop accordingly, so attempt to equip armour with similar, or better light. Armour with light is found the exact same way as before: Rewards for crucible, decrypting engrams etc Exotic stuff is exciting stuff, and is arguably the best gear in game. As with legendary items, you will need rare materials to fully upgrade them. One catch to exotic, however, is that you can only have one exotic weapon, and one exotic armour equipped at any given time. E.g. I have Plan C (an exotic fusion rifle), and Ghallarhorn (an exotic rocket launcher), in my inventory, with only Ghallarhorn actually equipped. Does that help? Feel free to ask anything else :3