On Bungie’s Twitch channel today, more information was revealed for ‘The House of Wolves’, the second Expansion for Destiny. The House of Wolves will release May 19th and add a range of story missions, a new social space and end game activities, such as the Trials of Osiris, a high stakes PvP arena and Prison of Elders, a PvE 3 player cooperative experience.
Prison of Elders is an arena based cooperative mode that requires a Fireteam of 3 guardians to fight waves of enemies, and progress through tasks. As a first to Destiny, the difficulty and levels will be randomised and rotate weekly, to keep the experience fresh and add a level of replayability. The Prison is located in Queens Bay, The Reef, similar to many of the additions in the expansion. This arena is controlled by Variks, one of the few Fallen who has stayed loyal to the Queen. Variks, warden of the Prison gives commands to the player through the Mouth of Variks, a modified servitor. In the Prison you will be fighting “all enemies of the reef”. You can expect to fight all factions in the Prison of Elders.
In each run of the Prison of Elders, there will be 5 rounds, each housing 3 waves. A checkpoint is set every round; however one run must be completed in a single sitting. For the fifth round, guardians will have to fight a randomly selected boss.
A much requested feature, which is absent from Raids, is the ability to matchmake your Fireteam. This has been added to the Prison of Elders, and is available in the main arena. This arena has no restriction to the number of plays per week, and rewards can be accessed freely, like the Crucible. This is a Level 28 activity.
Challenge modes are an extra addition to the Prison of Elders, which have an increased difficultly, and no matchmaking. These range from Level 28-35 and utilise modifiers to change the flow of gameplay. New modifiers are included in the challenges, which can favour certain weapon types and classes, or styles of play. There are three challenges per week, which reset at the Weekly Reset Time, 9:00AM UTC, Tuesday. Two of these challenges will be at a random difficulty level each week. The randomised challenges will feature exclusive bosses and weapons, which rotate weekly with the difficulty Level. Challenges can only be run once per week.
The third challenge will be a constant level of 35 each week. The Level 35 Arena Challenge will be more controlled, with set enemies and Skolas as a set boss.
The stream was hosted by Deej , Matt Sammons and Twitch streamer, Professor Broman. During the stream, the team ran a Hive/Cabal based run, at Level 34 difficulty. This is the Level cap for Destiny once the expansion drops, and from the frequency of deaths in the reveal, we can expect PoE to be a steep learning curve.
During each round, players will be given bonus gifts which can aid the Fireteam through a round. In addition to the regular drops; unique weapons and ammo crates can spawn. New weapons and gear were also showcased, such as the new Secondary Semi-Auto Pistol, Vestian Dynasty, an arc damage legendary drop, and the Scorch Canon found in the Prison.
Are you looking to pick up The House of Wolves expansion? Let us know in the comments!
Matt was a regular ICXM contributor in 2015, publishing 110 articles across game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One’s first full year of post-launch coverage, including the early days of Backwards Compatibility and Windows 10 gaming. They post on X as @RTEnvi.