History of Legendary Engram

Overview

A Legendary Engram is an Engram that decrypts into Legendary-tier gear. They drop from powerful enemies, ritual activities and reputation rank-ups, or can be focused at vendors (Master Rahool, Tyra Karn).

Decryption

Early on, they needed manual decryption by a Cryptarch. Sources disagree on when this ended: Destinypedia says automatic from Destiny 2: Shadowkeep; the D2 Wiki says from Destiny 2: Forsaken. Items decrypt a few points below Power Level, and after the soft cap the engrams were removed (Season of the Seraph per Destinypedia).

Related

Vendor engrams for Vanguard, Crucible, Gambit, Trials of Osiris and Iron Banner later supplemented them, alongside Prime Engram, Umbral Engram and Exotic Engram.