Weapon and Equipment Upgrades

Weapons and gear have their own set of perks and upgrades that gets unlocked after earning enough experience points. Once unlocked, some perks need to be activated in exchange for glimmer and materials. Glimmer is the default currency of the game while materials can be obtained from dismantling unneeded weapons, gear or collecting them from the planet they're native on.

There are some weapon upgrades that you can only activate one at time. This applies to the scope or sights, which you can freely swap to modify the weapon's range and stability as needed. Once unlocked, these kind of upgrades can be selected or deselected as the user sees fit.

For higher quality weapons and gear, each upgrade may need more glimmer and materials at the same time.

Materials
There are several type of materials that you need to keep, if you want to upgrade your equipment.:

Ascendant Materials
These are used to upgrade Legendary and Exotic weapons and armor. There are two types:

Ascendant Energy

You'll have the chance to get this by completing Public Events, daily Heroic missions, decrypting Legendary Engrams, dismantling Legendary or Exotic weapons, completing sections of the Vault of Glass Raid, and completing Crucible matches. There's also a very small chance that players can also get this via loot chests.

Ascendant Shard

You'll have the chance to get this by completing Public Events, daily story missions, decrypting Legendary Engrams, dismantling Legendary or Exotic weapons, completing sections of the Vault of Glass Raid, and completing Crucible matches. There's also a very small chance that players can also get this via loot chests.

Dismantled Materials
You'll get these materials by dismantling weapons and armor. Take note that the type of material you'll get from dismantling armor pieces will depend on your class's exclusive armor.

Hadronic Essence (Warlock armor)
Plasteel Plating (Titan armor)
Sapphire Wire (Hunter armor)
Weapon Parts (Weapon)

TIP: Before turning in your bounties, equip any weapon and gear that can be leveled up - even if you're planning to scrap them later on. Swap them to your maxed main weapons and gear, turn over the bounties to unlock their perks, activate those perks using glimmer, then scrap them. You'll get more materials doing this way than dismantling them outright.

Resources
There are four types of resources, one for each planet. You can get them during ordinary story missions but they're quite bountiful in Patrol. You can also get them from normal loot chests scattered in various areas. Aside from being used for upgrades, Resources can be traded to certain NPCs in the Tower in exchange for marks and glimmer. You can trade 50 resources in exchange for one of the following: 5 Vanguard/Crucible marks, 25 Vanguard/Crucible Rep, and 200 Glimmer.

Tip: If you rack up 2,500 kills on any enemy on a planet/moon, your material gathering will be doubled, most of the time.