yup, the absolute fastest and "best" way to level up is to do public events as much as you can (get to 100 weekly vanguard cap that way), PVP as much as you can (100 crucible cap), and then spend the rest of your time at the loot cave AFK or plinking away at level 5 mobs. you don't even have to run into the cave to loot anything, all purple/blue engrams will be in your mailbox when you go back to the tower. and yeah get those story missions done so you can unlock every planet.
Doing as many bounties as you can is good too, although skip any that seem impossible (and are literally impossible, like run salvage PVP when mode is a weekend only random one) since there is a small chance for any bounty turn in to give you an exotic bounty which is basically a long quest that rewards you an exotic weapon.
Every 12 hours there or so should net you a ton of blue engrams and a few purple engrams, and probably a few coins and mote of lights after conversion.
One thing I'd say is that I am sort of regretting main'ing my titan now, it feels like the weakest in both PVE and PVP. The good news is that its super easy to switch mains, I will probably switch to warlock once I hit r3 crucible this week. All my weapons can swap over, I already got all purples and an exotic on my warlock (from my titan), and I can toss over all my coins, motes, and consumables. The only thing you really lose is the faction rep you have gained.
I haven't done this weeks nightfall yet since I am grinding towards a solar rocket (machine guns suck so bad...) but here's a reddit post I saw on how to maybe avoid the minotaur at the end, dunno if it works (its a bit vague on whether you have to kill the minotaur or not):
reddit_sl said:
This specific raid is incredibly easy to solo if you've got a sniper with the solar energy, just stock up on some special ammo and give it a whirl. The first area you can sit in the room where it first tells you you cant respawn and just snipe everyone from there until you have killed the 3 eyes. After that look for the captain and kill him then rush up the stairwell and to the right to bypass adds. From there on out just keep your distance and snipe everything until you hit the boss.
Once at the boss there is a pillar that you can jump to on the right side of the room that has a flat base where you can be shot and then a base behind it that you can drop to to avoid any damage while crouching. Play hide and go seek with the boss and adds until you have him killed. I solo'd both and then took my friends through again because it's that quick!
