Engrams

General Information

Engrams are unidentified loot items randomly dropped by enemies or awarded from missions such as Strikes in Destiny. Players can bring the Engrams to the NPC Cryptarch in The Tower to decipher the Engrams and recover the weapons, armor and other items within. Deciphering Engrams also increases your Crypto-Archaeology Reputation. Sometimes engrams will yield material items such as Ascendant Energy, Ascendant Shard, Motes of Light and Strange Coins with rarities corresponding to the rarity of Engrams.

Majors and Ultras enemies have greater odds of dropping engrams.

Engrams can be purchased directly from Cryptarch. As your reputation with Cryptarch increases, you can purchase rarer Engrams.

Each Engram is of a specific rarity, indicated by its color, and contains a specific type of weapon or slot of armor.

Note that Engrams sometimes contain items of a different rarity. It is possible to decipher a rarer item but not a less rare one.

Year 2 Mechanics

After the release of The Taken King, engrams, especially engrams of higher rarity (rare and higher), are deciphered based on the Light score of your equipped gear. The higher your Light level at the moment of decryption, the higher your decrypted item will be.

Players can recommended to decrypt 1 engram at a time. Decrypt it, go to your inventory, check it, if it’s an upgrade then equip it, go back to the Cryptarch and decrypt the next one.