Farm Vanguard Marks, Crucible Marks, Faction Reputation, and Strange Coins.
Buy Legendaries from the Vanguard, Crucible, and/or Faction vendors.
Buy an Exotic armor piece from Xur on the weekend, and/or an Exotic weapon.
In 8 days you can have 130 of each Mark, that's enough to buy a helm and two other armor pieces for 250 marks total, or if the Exotic you get is a helm, you can buy three other pieces for 195 total and save the extras for Legendary weapons/armor going forward (or a rare Sparrow that you can upgrade to Legendary with Xur!).
I see so many people getting frustrated with farming engrams, only to be consistently disappointed by the Cryptarch when he decodes engrams into other classes legendaries/exotics, or (more often) more blue items or materials.
I also see people despairing that they're stuck at light level 24.
The Marks are there as your primary, guaranteed means of gearing up in full legendary gear, and Xur guarantees you'll get at least one Exotic a week. If you're lucky with Strange Coins or you farm a lot, you can get a weapon and armor from him on the same day. It's 13 coins for armor, 23 for a weapon. If you have spare Motes of Light, you can gamble 23 of those on an Exotic Engram... but don't be surprised if you get another classes Exotic with it (no big deal, it's Motes of Light for that).
I absolutely agree that the current loot/reward system and the psychologically hateful and pointless identifying of Legendary Engrams into blues/other classes items is really terrible design, but you are not at the mercy of the RNG for your Legendary gear - the Marks system will get you what you need in a little over one week of effort, and minimal grinding.
You can earn Vanguard Marks from Vanguard Strikes and completing Public Events (which also award you some Ascendant Materials, both in the mail from your daily gold reward, and from simply completing them).
You earn Crucible Marks in Crucible matches.
You can earn Vanguard or Crucible Marks by doing Material turn-ins at the Vanguard Quartermaster or Crucible Quartermaster.
In addition, doing Material turn-ins rewards experience like turning in a Bounty. This is a great way to level up xp hungry legendaries and exotics.
You can earn all of your weekly Vanguard/Crucible marks simply by playing Strikes and PvP, but I like to mix it up by doing patrol runs on each planet while farming public events and chests - doing so earns you Marks, faction rep, rare ships, materials, ascendant materials, glimmer, and the odd rare/legendary engrams.
Completing any patrol or Material turn-in with a factions class item equipped earns you rep for that faction, so you can rank up Dead Orbit/New Monarchy/FWC in pve or pvp, though keep in mind that for pure Crucible reputation you need to do pvp with no mark equipped, or do Material turn-ins with no mark equipped.
It isn't well advertised but earning enough kills on each planet gives you a chance to earn double materials from chests and resource nodes. You'll easily unlock this upgrade just by completing patrols/public events and chest farming no each planet.
Once you have the upgrade, you'll get 50+ materials on every run in a very short span of time, plus all the chest goodies you loot. If you totally hate pvp, this is also a way to cap your Crucible Marks every week without pvping.
You earn 6 Vanguard Marks for a level 24 Strike, 4 Marks for a Public Event. You can do 10 Strikes and 10 Public Events and cap your Marks for the week, ignoring any weekly Strikes that you tackle.
For pvp, you can play 25 matches (win or lose) and turn in 500 materials (or less, depending on wins, thats 10 or less patrol/chest/pe farming runs) and cap your Marks for the week.
Spread that out over a week and you will easily cap both Marks with minimal grind every day.
Strange Coins are simple, you'll earn them from decoding all of your legendary engrams your rare+ engrams, from completing daily/weekly missions, and from pvp matches.
Getting your reputation to rank 2 or 3 with Vanguard or a Faction is quite easy, Crucible will take you a little longer just because you can't earn Crucible rep from planet patrols, but you can earn a little extra from Material turn-ins, again if you really don't enjoy pvp but you want rank 2/3 Crucible items.
Finally, to the best of my knowledge, when you hit rank 3 with Vanguard, Crucible, or any Faction, you are awarded a guaranteed Legendary weapon from their arsenal. This part may be RNG, but I got a Vanguard Legendary Weapon when I hit Rank 3, and I know a friend hit Rank 3 FWC and got an FWC Legendary Weapon. Likewise, all faction reps continue to mail you awards past rank 3, just like the Cryptarch.
So then. Cast off the shackles of the hateful RNG god. Gear up in Legendary armor of your choice, earn some free Legendary weapons, and buy yourself an Exotic or two.
Treat Legendary and Rare Engram drops and Strike and PvP rewards as a a bonus, not as the primary method of gearing yourself up and you'll be much happier with Destiny. If you still want to farm mobs, go for it! But don't feel you need to spend joyless hours suiciding yourself while farming mobs in one spot to gear up, because you don't!
Hopefully in a few weeks Bungie will relent on the slightly crazy Cryptarch decoding, but by then you'll already be packing a full suit of gear and any upgrades from him will be the same as the rest of the rewards - a bonus.
Good luck out there Guardians!
edit: Thank you for the Gold kind sir or madam
edit: Some additional details on material turn-ins and Grimoire rewards. By 'materials' I mean Spinmetal (Earth), Helium Coils (Moon), Spiritbloom (Venus) and Relic Iron (Mars). All can be gathered from resource nodes or chests.
For turning in The Crucible Quartermaster on the left as you go down the stairs below the bounty tracker accepts materials for Crucible marks+rep+xp.
The Vanguard Quartermaster in the shipyard accepts materials for Vanguard marks+rep+xp.
You'll earn Crucible or Vanguard rep by default, but if you have a Faction Class Armor item equipped, the rep (and all other rep gains) will go towards that faction instead. Each faction vendor sells the Class Armor item for 2500 Glimmer - New Monarchy is near the Speaker, Dead Orbit and Future War Cult are by the shipyard vendor.
For the material bonus, go to your Grimoire -> Places -> Planet -> Area name. Then click the little 'stats' button in the bottom right of the card.
So for example, Old Russia:
http://i.cubeupload.com/hwl5YP.png
There is also a resource reward for patrol missions, unlocked by completing enough VIP kill patrols, from /u/drummerdudeX (see:
http://i.cubeupload.com/CFMMXm.png)
"Another thing that isn't very well known is that if you complete 25 VIP Patrol missions (tasked to kill a specific enemy, the mission icon looks like star in a circle) "Additional resources are now granted for completing City tasks in any destination" (quote from the Grimoire card). Additionally, VIP missions give more faction rep than other patrol missions (25 rep instead of 10). Basically, while doing patrols, take special interest in the VIP missions, it'll pay off in the long run."
And there's a permanent 20% weekly bonus to all xp and rep gains for completing the Nightfall Strike - if you need help for it, hit up /r/fireteams or your Destiny forum of choice and look for some buddies. Everyone should want to complete it at least once a week, so you shouldn't have trouble finding people to tackle it with.
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