My friend and I are about to start playing Destiny. What are the differences between buying the original one or the expansion straight away?
Is the Taken King meant for high level players who want extra content or does it have something for new starters as well?
I'm not sure if you can even buy just Destiny anymore. I'm not sure about PlayStation, but on Xbox you can only buy the Legendary edition - the base game isn't available separately. Amazon only has the base game in stock for PS4.
Regardless, I'd recommend buying the Legendary Edition if you're just starting out. This gets you the base game plus all DLC released to date for much cheaper than buying them individually. There isn't much to do once you've reached the level cap if you don't have The Taken King as well.
I recently bought a PS4 and Destiny and the physical copy of Destiny (purchased at Walmart) was just the base game. I had to purchase the Taken King on PSN. I would recommend going to the Taken King straightaway. You can do the year one content first. Frankly, there's not a lot of it and it's not that great compared to the newer stuff. With your purchase of The Taken King you'll get an item that will bring 1 character to level 25 (high enough to start TTK content) and a set of level 25 gear.
As far as difficulty, most of the TTK content (story quests and strikes) aren't significantly harder than the old stuff, other than higher level gear. The main "hard" content are the raids, and those will require some learning.
One thing to note is that the item that levels you up does not level your sub-class, so you'll still need to learn your skills at the same rate.
