In Destiny, a lot of your gears and abilities are tied to your character’s overall ‘XP Level’. Additionally, the best game content- the endgame content- is only available for players who have hit the level cap of 20. Then, on the other end, we have your Power Level, which determines your overall effectiveness in combat.
It is clear that you should work on raising both these values and hitting the level cap as soon as you can- the question is, how, exactly, do you do that?
That’s where we come in.
Raising Your XP Level
Raising your XP level may seem daunting – it looks like it takes forever to level up, and with a cap of 20, you might expect that you are expected to spend a long time hitting it- but it really is not that hard to raise it (in just a few hours of play, I was already at Level 10). Your XP level increases for kills and events you participate in- so the best way to raise it is to just play the game, and to focus on the campaign (since it has a lot of XP gains). While playing the campaign missions, if you encounter an event, go participate in it! That will give you some good XP too (and also some good high level loot).
Raising Your Power Level
Power Level is a composite average of the defense and attack ratings of all the equipment you have on- in simpler terms, it is dependent entirely on what gear you equip, and is a quick summation of how effective that gear is. Power Level gates end game content like Nightfall Strikes and Raids, and has a soft cap of 260, with a hard cap of 300.
Really, there’s not much I can suggest here- this is dependent on your gear, so my advice is to equip the best gear possible? On the whole, remember that the higher level your gear is, the better your Power Level will be- so focus on that, and you should be able to hit the soft cap of 260 reasonably soon, at least.