Super Good Advice
An unofficial guide for Bungie's Destiny 2

Portal Ops & raising your Power

Last updated: August 23, 2025

This guide covers the new Power and Portal Ops systems added in Edge of Fate. These two systems are closely linked, as Portal Ops are intended to be the main grind source for increasing your Power level, as well as the main source for rewards with gear tiers unlocked by raising your Power level.

What Power is (and isn't)

Every weapon and armor piece has an associated Power number with it. Your character has a Power level that is the average Power of your currently-equipped gear.

Crucially, Power level does not affect difficulty scaling in 99% of content. You will not actually get "more powerful" as you increase your Power level. This is different from what you may be expecting from other games, or even past years of Destiny.

Your Power level also does not unlock any unique content in this game. All Raids, Dungeons, campaigns, Exotic missions, and more can be done at any Power level. The only exception to this are a few high-difficulty variants of activities, listed below.

Instead, Power unlocks higher-tier gear drops. Gear tier dictates what perks are available on guns and what stats are rolled on armor - see the loot guide for more information. Higher-tier does not mean any unique weapons/armor that isn't available at a lower tier - all gear is available at any tier.

The Power level of the gear you earn is based on your best in slot Power level - the hypothetical Power level you would have if you were to equip the highest-Power gear you have in every slot. You'll earn drops that are around 1-3 Power above this.

Power cap & seasonal bonus power

The soft cap of Power is 200. Any activity's drops will get you up to this number. Until 200, focus on just doing whatever you want; there really is no need to power level your Power level. If you happen to have the newest expansion, you should progress somewhat faster on this grind in its campaign, but honestly, just do whatever.

Once you hit 200, any further Power is considered a "Seasonal Power Bonus." That is: you can grind for gear up as far as 450 (and 550 when the September 9 update hits), but all of that gear will reset back to a maximum of 20 at the start of the next season when the new expansion releases (December 2).

As you can imagine, the intended grind here: play for a season getting your Power up to get better gear, get sweet gear by the end of the season, reset hits, grind again to get back to getting sweet gear.

Increasing Power over 200

Only certain activites will drop loot over 200 Power:

  • Portal Ops (up to the current max Power)
  • Kepler activities at Fabled & Mythic difficulties (up to ?, requires Edge of Fate)
  • Desert Perpetual Raid (up to ?, requires Edge of Fate)
  • The Sieve, unlocked after completing Edge of Fate's campaign (up to 300, requires Edge of Fate)
  • Rewards from the Portal Weekly Rank, Rewards Pass, & event rewards

Additional Power unlocks

A few additional things are gated behind upgrading your Power besides loot tiers:

  • Special Conquest missions in the Portal. This is the closest thing to "unique content" that Power unlocks, but these are just extra-hard versions of other Portal missions.
  • Higher campaign/world difficulties for Edge of Fate. You need 150 Power to access Fabled and 200 to access Mythic.
  • Tier 4 and Tier 5 loot on Kepler, by purchasing upgrades at 350 Power and 450 Power respectively.

Portal Ops

Portal Ops are a new system in Destiny 2 as of Edge of Fate. This replaces the old playlist system, but has the same purpose: it has a bunch of repeatable instanced activities you can grind to increase your Power level and get new gear.

Portal Ops gear tiers

There are several "bands" of your Power level that correspond to certain tiers of loot that are dropped from Portal Ops:

  • 200 Power: Tier 2 gear
  • 300 Power: Tier 3 gear
  • 400 Power: Tier 4 gear
  • 500 Power: Tier 5 gear (only available after midseason update)

However, earning higher-tier gear is not as simple as just running any activity in the Portal once you hit these thresholds. There's a system of Rewards Multiplers in the Portal that determines a score (C, B, or A) you'll get from running a given activity. Your goal is to get an A rank, as it guarantees you the tier for your corresponding Power band.

Additionally, with an A or B rank, you have a chance of getting gear that is one tier higher than your corresponding band in a "Prime engram" (which don't really show up in any special way, they just... are one tier higher). That chance is, according to Bungie, higher with an A rank, but no one seems to know the exact numbers on this.

Portal Ops Power increases

Increasing your Power level requires playing activities that are "at level" in the Portal and getting certain score ranks. The levels are pretty easy to see in game, corresponding to different Power levels: Advanced (100), Expert (200), Master (300), Grandmaster (400), and Ultimate (500). Once you hit the corresponding Power level, you have to play activities at that difficulty or higher to increase your Power; otherwise you'll be capped (e.g. Expert difficulty has a cap of 300).

Once you've picked the right difficulty, your Power reward is going to be based on your score. A C/C+ will get you at-Power rewards, B will net you +1, B+ will net you +2, and A will net you +3.

This gets weird once you hit 400 Power, though. Past 400 Power, you'll only get a Power increase from Prime engrams (T5 items). This will change in Ash & Iron, where the Power cap increases from 450 to 550. At that point, an A rank up to 500 will get you a +3 increase. 550 will require Prime engrams.

Also in Ash & Iron, Solo Ops rewards will be limited to +2 Power levels in a bid to get more people to run other types of activities.

How Portal scoring works (and why your rewards may not match what it predicted)

Portal scoring is weird and still a bit in flux right now, so I'll try to keep this broad.

You'll notice there's a "Reward Score Forecast" when you select a Portal activity. For PvE activities, this Forecast is based on you (and your team) getting a 10,000 point score in the activity. This is why you can have a "Forecast" B+ rank and wind up with an A or a C: if you fail to do bonus objectives in a Solo Op you might wind up with a lower score, or if you get the time bonus in a Fireteam Op you might eke out an A rank. PvP is weirder and seems to just give you arbitrary scores based on how good you are; I could not tell you what the system for that is.

Notably, something catching most players off guard is that most Fireteam Ops are scored based on enemy kills. This kind of flies in the face of a decade of Destiny history of speedrunning through matchmade activities, flying past any non-required enemies, and burning down bosses as quickly as possible to prevent their adds from spawning. This stuff is really in flux and seems like it's going to get adjusted a lot, but for now, when doing those activities, slow your roll (and don't worry about the time bonus; it's not a big deal in Fireteam Ops and half of the timers are impossible to beat right now anyways).

Infusion: Raising your old gear's Power level

You don't need to leave a piece of gear behind just because it's low Power level. You can infuse lower-level gear with another piece of gear in the same slot. Do this by inspecting your gear on the Inventory screen (right click with a mouse).

If the piece of gear you're infusing with is the same item - like you're infusing a Tech-Sec Vest with a Tech-Sec Vest - this only costs 1000 Glimmer. If you're below 200 Power, infusion will cost a few Enhancement Cores, which are relatively cheap.

Above 200 Power, you start using Unstable Cores, which are a seasonal currency that's reset at the start of the next season. The only thing these are used for is infusing your gear. Dismantling 200+ gear will grant you a number of Unstable Cores relative to the level of the gear.