Not Ready for Raid? Skeleton Keys and Nightfall
As you may already know, there is a way to get even more powerful rewards from strikes that only drop base rewards up to 385 in Destiny: Rise of Iron. Whenever you beat a boss, you have a chance at obtaining an item called a Skeleton Key. These keys are used to open chests that appear after defeating a Strike’s boss while running in any of the SIVA Strike Playlists. When you open one, you’ll find raid specific loot drops as well as the chance for other goodies such as an exotic weapon. Any of these drops can be up to 400 Light. Your weekly Nightfall reward can also drop at up to 400, but you can only get that once a week per character.
That means you can grind Strikes and potentially reach the new Light Level cap without ever setting foot inside of the Wrath of the Machine raid on Heroic, or even on normal. Of course, this can be pretty time consuming. One thing I’ve noticed is that keys seem to drop more often when playing on the normal SIVA playlist as opposed to the Heroic one. If you have any three of coins while running strikes, make sure to pop them as Exotic Engrams can decrypt up to max Light.
