Destiny: The Taken King Guide - How to Get Exotic Shards and Strange Coins

Strange Coins are arguably one of the easiest resources to get in Destiny: The Taken King, aside from Motes of Light, which you get each time your experience bar fills up. 

In spite of the redundancy of Ascendant Energy, Ascendant Shards and other materials, Strange Coins remain one of the game's most important currencies and are just as important to players as the new Legendary Marks are.

You can acquire them through the following means:

• As end-of-round rewards for playing in the Crucible
• Completing Bounties
• Decoding Engrams
• Faction packages from leveling up your Faction
• Opening Dreadnaught chests
• Opening Prison of Elders chests
• Participating in the Court of Oryx and winning
• Completing Strikes in the Heroic and Nightfall playlists

The easiest and cheapest way to get Exotic Shards

Exotic Shards are a resource required to upgrade Exotic weapons and armor through the infusion process. As you can imagine, they're relatively expensive, as you won't be able to find them as regular drops. 

Amassing Strange Coins will allow you to buy items from Xur, which in turn provides you with a limitless resource of Exotic Shards by dismantling excess Exotic gear that you have no plans to actually wear. 

If you have gear you intend to upgrade, be sure to stock up on Exotic armor, which costs 13 Strange Coins each, and break them down for Exotic Shards. 

It's certainly more reliable than depending on Exotic Engrams to drop.