This is how your loadout will look before playing your first games. Since you want to become one of the strongest guardians this clearly needs to change as fast as possible.
There are two main ways to become stronger:

• level up your guardian
  
• raise your item level

In this guideline I will mainly focus on the second point, since you simply gain XP while playing. The higher the difficulty, the more exp you can earn is the simple rule. However, when you find items with the extra XP stat you can equip them to level up faster.





















And this is the number you want to raise:

• Use the serverbrowser to find games and play together with others. Try to avoid joining games that are very far above your item level. You will not do any damage, die fast and disturb others.
  
• Since the community is really nice you can always politely ask for help and will probably find someone.
  
• Being nice should be more important than fast progress.
  
• Do not steal items.
  
• When you are asked to leave a game for a good reason please do so.
  
• Say hello when you join a game.
  
• Avoid running in front of your teammates, since you can block each others shots.
  
• Do not be an A**.
  
  These are no strict rules, but accepting them makes missing features like a kicksystem or trading less bothering and allows you to find others to play with.
  
  Keep in mind the sheriff will punish the bad ones.

After choosing to PLAY ONLINE you will spawn somewhere near this table.

Playing with friends:
When you have a friend to play with, you can invite him by pressing Esc then choose friendlist and search his name. Click on the +and she/he should recieve a partyinvitation. Afterwards the partyleader can start a game like he was alone and she/he and up to three friends get in the same instance. If this does not work, you can start a game alone and then simply invite your friends via Steam. This should work in 100% of the cases.



Use the table to CREATE a GAME, choose any map you would like to play, select gamemode HARVEST and choose the right difficulty. You should be fine on MEDIUM, if it is to hard play on EASY.


After a few games you should have all your items around level 50. Your enemies will then be on a higher level when you start the next round. This is what you want to achieve since the stronger enemies also drop higher level loot. Just continue playing and rising your item level this way until you reach level 400.

























DO NOT CRAFT.yet
Since your aim is to reach item level 600 and then get legendary equipment you do not want to waste any valuable ressources on stuff you do not need. Use the items you find to improve your guardian.

There is one exception. You should craft legendary belt augments.

There is one bonus stat you really want to have. 100% increased magic find allows you to get way better items while playing and even the ones you do not need are worth it because you can break them down for higher quality materials you will need to craft your final equipment. About 1/3 of the belts you craft will have this stat. It is expensive to craft these augments but will give you a big boost and allows you to progress way faster.

From this point raising your item level becomes harder. On the low difficulties you can not improve anymore. You will need to go for INSANE or REDIK. The names are already show what awaits you. Even with good level 400 stuff you are going to have problems. You can try it solo, with friends or try to find level 500 INSANE games via serverbrowser which is probably the best way. Since there are many enemies on INSANE it shoud not take to long to get a full set of level 500 equipment. Once you got this you can try to find a group to play REDIK. You will need stronger teammates to finish a level 600 game, but every item you get is a win. Keep white and green stuff until you get better ones. Your focus should be to get a level 600 item for every single slot of your guardians loadout. You can ask your teammates after this game to exchange some items after the game to get your set finished. Communication with your team and being polite are the keys to reach your goal. Keep that in mind and you will have a great time for sure.

Generally there are four ways to get your final gear:

• playing on REDIK with a lot of magic find
  Use your luck and hope for good stats on the dropped equipment.
  
  
• crafting the augments you want
  The best way to get the equipment you want. The problem you will meet is missing great scrap. The fastest way to get scrap is playing on MEDIUM. Fast runs, many chests to open.
  
  
• opening legendary lockboxes (bought or crafted)
  A bit cheaper then rerolling the augments you can choose. Good when you got close to nothing on legendary. Later on not the best way to enhance your equipment.
  
  
• trading with other players
  Since there is no tradesystem yet it is a bit risky, but especially for the ability augments it can take you forever to get the one you want without trading. Healing flamethrower, rockets and grenades for the turret and taking no damage while cloaking are strong and needed so if you got them twice you can use them to trade.

The simple answer is NO.
There are still many things to do.

• Did you find the achievement section and complete everything?
  
• Have you reached level 50 with every guardian?
  
• Are you owning the the best stats for every type of augment?
  
• Are all your guardians equiped with their own stuff?
  
• Have you finished all daily and weekly quests?
  
• How about helping new players to get through there first levels or to get some cool equipment parts?
  
• Have you ever considered hiding some level 600 items in the orbital command and then let everyone else search for it? It is fun.
  
• Are you top one on every single leaderboard?

See? You still got a lot of stuff to do.

In the future there will be raids in ORION.
It is likely that there will be ruby loot, better then legendary, maybe two bonus stats.
Item level 700 is not confirmed yet but also likely to come in a later version of ORION.
Please keep in mind that I am speculating. There are only indices, no proofs.

Guides I can recommend


You can find all the real basics here:
http://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=697691838


To find out which legendary augment bonuses you can possibly get use:
http://steamoss.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=635933474



Thanks to Ronean for helping me out with some Items and taking time to support this guide.

Influences of the ELITE status are not included yet. It does not seem to be an advantage for this topic at the moment.