You're right about ranking up via crucible or vanguard, but one main thing that you need to do in order to pass certain strikes and attain better gear for the game is finding a fire team.

Doing certain strikes alone for the first time can be very daunting especially if completing it offers you strange coins, gear or weapons that help you later on.

It seems Bungie have made it that you need to have friends to play the game either by learning from them about missions and weapons and to complete certain tasks. Such as VoG and Crota with 6 players to complete.

Also since getting Destiny on my PS4. I have purchased a used Vita to remote into it to buy stuff via Xur and yesterday I got a PS Tv (the wires and chargers for it are bigger than the device itself) so I won't be hogging the main tv.

Also about "shit has gone down" I highly recommend the Bungie Ride along. It really shows how much effort they put in to environment to give you a feel of what happened.

Hopefully once I stop upgrading my gear I may have enough glimmer to purchase special ammo Invective...