Packing Heat

Fully upgrade an Exotic weapon.
Trophy Type: Silver

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n order to fully upgrade an Exotic or Legendary weapon you must do two things: acquire the necessary upgrade materials and unlock every upgrade node via leveling. Each node takes roughly 20,000 experience to unlock.

The total amount of upgrade materials you will need for both an Exotic and Legendary weapon are as follows:

32 Weapon Parts
Weapon parts are the simplest thing to get out of the required materials. They are found every time you dismantle a weapon of any kind. The best way to stockpile them is by leveling up multiple weapons before dismantling them. This is accomplished by equipping a weapon prior to turning in a bounty. At level 20 Greens will always give 2 parts when upgraded to max, blues will always give 4 to 5.

Obviously you do not want to equip a weapon for this purpose if your main weapon in that slot still needs experience, so be sure to pay attention to their respective upgrades.

80 Upgrade Materials (Either Spinmetal, Spirit Bloom, Helium Filaments, or Iron Ore)
There are four different types of upgrade materials in total. Each one can be found exclusively on a specific world in the game. Spinmetal is on Earth, Helium Filaments are on the Moon, Spirit Bloom is on Venus, and Iron Ore is on Mars.

The material needed on each weapon will always be random unless it is purchased from a vendor. For example, I have found two Shadow Prices (Legendary Assault Rifle) and one requires Helium, while the other takes Spinmetal. Because of the randomness you will want to go well out of your way to pick up any materials you see while playing. Doing so will save you a lot of time and effort down the road when you must upgrade your armor for additional light levels, and weapons for trophies/efficiency.

18 Ascendant Energy
This is one of the rarest components in the game and is considered raid tier. You can get them by dismantling legendary and exotic weapons, from legendary engrams, level 26 and 28 Daily Heroic Story, Nightfall Weekly Strike rewards, raids, and oddly enough from gold tier public events.

The first gold tier public event that you complete each day will mail you a special reward for completing it. Inside is a random raid tier upgrade material such as an Ascendant Shard or Energy, or two. Furthermore, you can even get a single Ascendant Energy as a reward for completing additional gold tier public events.

Also here are two ways to get exotics fast
1)Xur's shop, he's this guy who pops up at the tower (fri-sat only) and he sells exotic armor and weapons for strange coins. Also exotic engrams in exchange for lite of motes.

2) Complete 30 bounties and you should receive an exotic bounty which once completed will reward you with an exotic weapon.