Destiny: House of Wolves - Prison of Elders: Fallen arena tips and strategies

Stick together, move under cover and never trap yourself for the best chance of surviving the largest area in the Prison of Elders.

How to beat Destiny: House of Wolves' Prison of Elders Fallen arena

There’s a widely known cheese spot for the Fallen Arena, ideal for keeping safe while enemies pour onto the show-floor. The location's detailed below, but beware: objective-based waves can quickly separate and immediately weaken the most experienced fireteams, as long distances need to be run under a barrage of Wire Rifle fire.

The best cheese spot in the Prison of Elders Fallen arena

The safe spot everyone's talking about is found at the far right-hand corner as you exit the air-lock. There’s a small ledge behind a patch of rocks just large enough to squeeze three guardians, and from here the entire playing field is visible. The rocks eat up most of the damage from enemy fire, excluding Servitor bomb splash damage, meaning straightforward enemy blasting should be a breeze. Unfortunately, this is the kind of fun that can’t last forever.

As a general observation, the Fallen arena is very open compared to the rest, which may seem like an opportunity to take the high ground and rain down fire. But the joke is that Fallen weapons are the best suited to picking off exposed guardians at range. The entire map is sprinkled with hidey-holes, and any one of these has value if the team sticks together, which is the best overall tactic here.

Best routes around the Fallen arena

At the centre of the arena, easily seen from the cheese spot, is a disjointed tunnel that resembles an aircraft fuselage. If you’re within reach of this any time while moving between objectives or heading out to revive downed teammates, it usually offers enough cover to replenish your shields before hurling grenades or fire rockets to clear a path ahead. It is, however, a very bad place to stay for long as it's easily flanked by Captains, Vandals and lower class Dregs who’ll likely swipe you down in one.

There’s also a heavily protected passageway at the very back of the map when viewed from where you emerge at the start of the round. If you’ve somehow become separated while taking down a VIP target, for example, this is a terrific vantage point that provides clear views left and right with swift exits to dash beneath the raised platform located centre-back of the arena.

Beating the objectives - strategies and tactics

Here’s where Variks starts to have his fun. Defusing three Splinter Mines in a Critical Objective wave involves hot-footing all the way across the arena, since points A, B and C are so spread out. They’re placed above the walkway on the right-hand side, way back in the left corner, and on the centre platform.

The strict time limit combined with enemy cross-fire forces guardians to run this as a single unit. One guardian simply isn’t enough to speed the timer down to zero, and the mines are in an elevated position, yet again playing into the hands of the Fallen. Three guys on the same spot diffuses the mine in triple time (obviously), getting you out of trouble fast.

For the objective that asks Splinter Mines to be shot down instead of diffused, the best place to gather is near the air-lock door: enemies cannot appear from behind and the wide-open view is perfect for sniper shots or Scout Rifle rounds. Likewise, here is as good as any for taking aim at VIP target objectives – rockets sailing in ASAP, including at the pool of Servitors gathering centre stage to buff Fallen shields. Always remember to spear those blasted eyeballs first!

Tips for best load-outs to beat the Fallen

With Elder Captains sporting Arc shields, clearly the way forward against the Fallen is with Arc damage primaries. If you have them, equip Fang of Ir Yut, Oversoul Edict or Fatebringer. The latter is awesome throughout most areas in Prison of Elders, but especially here as the Fallen tend to move in packs around Servitors, meaning the Firefly perk explosions are very effective.

Your shiny new Vestian Dynasty side-arm is a valuable ally throughout PoE too, but is custom made to hurt the Fallen. If you like to get up close and personal though – great fun on Level 28 – point Found Verdict or The 4th Horseman at your target and they’ll explode in showers of glimmer and ammo. Just don’t be the guy asking to be revived when Variks rolls his Splinter Mines objective. That isn’t big or clever.

For heavies, we’d imagine many of you now own Thunderlord after Xur recently made this exotic widely available. This machine gun is hilarious, though you do have to stand your ground and make yourself vulnerable. The same goes for Song of Ir Yut, acquired from Crota’s loot table, though it’s not as fun. Tracking RPG missiles are always preferred however, and, yes, this means Gjallarhorn rules supreme. That said, the Queen’s own Dreamwaker is a great reward to take into this battle, as is Hunger of Crota.

Class tips for the Fallen arena

For practical reasons, the Titan with Ward of Dawn enabled is always going to help protect the team. But since the Fallen arena puts pressure on speed to traverse, and is so spectacularly arranged to provide temporary areas of cover, quick thinking Hunters will make this map their own, blink-hopping on and off platforms before the Fallen even know they are there. Also, speed gets invisible Hunters to Splinter Mines counting down, allowing the slower guys a few more seconds to catch up. As usual, a Warlock’s floating approach to jumping isn’t great for area traversal at speed or hopping swiftly to safety, but a Sunsinger’s Solar Grenades weaken clusters of enemies that pass through. Their self-reviving Fireborn modifier may come in very handy for early forays into this arena as Guardians take chances and ("Oops, sorry guys) fail a few times. Balanced teams do work well here.