Why am I getting green engrams on my 310+ light character?

Question

So I currently have two characters over 310 light on my account.

The first, my main, is just over 320 light. And for a long while now, I haven't had any green engram drop. Probably since I hit level 40. The lowest engram that will drop is a blue. Update: Since Rise of Iron, all of my accounts now drop greens.

However, on my second character, I still get green drops from a fair number of enemies. It's really annoying because greens end up being ~190 light max, and that is nowhere near what I want. But if it were blue I would at least have a shot of getting something good (either legendary, or high light).

I haven't done as many quests with this character, but I should be most of the way through the game at this point. I'm level 40, and, as I said, over 310 light. So why am I still getting green engrams as drops? Is there a particular point or trigger that causes me to stop getting greens?

Answer 1

There is a lot of conflicting opinions (all over reddit and the official forums) and no one has been able to determine what causes green engrams to stop dropping. Some say it's dependant on the cryptarch level which is I am most likely to believe but no one has any hard evidence to support it.

After a certain point (I believe high enough light level) however, all green engrams will drop automatically decrypted meaning you can scrap them for materials as soon as they are picked up.

Answer 2

So the issue was actually backwards, according to Bungie at least. Greens were supposed to continue dropping but stopped after a certain number of kills. However, this was "fixed" in Rise of Iron so now greens should drop for all accounts. From the Rise of Iron patch notes:

• Fixed an issue where, after enough kills were accumulated, players would never see Uncommon item drops again

  • This resulted in players being starved of weapon and armor materials
  • Uncommon drops will be in addition to, not in place of, Rare and Legendary drops