The Challenge of the Elders is an upgraded version of the Prison of Elders that pits guardians in teams of three against swarms of enemies and unique boss fights. The Challenge of the Elders has upped the difficulty level to 320 light level, and brought with it a whole new crop of bosses and encounters. For all this hard work, guardians will be rewarded with light level 320 – 335 gear and weapons, the best the game currently has to offer.

Before you find a team of guardians and dive in, here’s the need to know information you should have on the Challenge of the Elders.

How it works

While the Challenge of Elders may be a successor to Prison of Elders, there’s a lot of differences between the two. For starters, the Challenge of Elders requires that guardians survive 3 rounds (instead of 4 for PoE), but instead of objectives each round is a boss fight making this much more difficult.

There are all new bosses being added each week specifically to CoE, that can all tweaked with modifiers that change the encounter in major ways. That means you can’t use the same strategy week to week, you’ll have to adapt to the changing circumstances if you want to make it through.

There there’s the scoring system. Not only do teams have to survive the 3 rounds, they have to get a good score if they want to be rewarded with the best loot the CoE offers. Before starting the CoE you’ll have to pick up an Elder Sigil from Variks. This sigil is a scorecard much like the Trials of Osiris, only it tracks points instead of wins.

You’ll have to fill up both the High Score (usually out of 30,000) and the Cumulative Score (usually out of 90,000) to get the light level 335 gear and weapon for that week. The high score represents your best score in a single run (3 rounds), while the cumulative is your score over multiple runs on that card (even if you play with a different fireteam).

Fortunately, everything you do in the Challenge of Elders awards points. Killing enemies, getting assists, creating orbs, everything goes towards your point totals so long as it is productive. Each successive round will also offer more points or every action, as well as a point bonus for completing the round.

Each week there will be a specific action that awards bonus points when you complete it. For example, landing precision headshots or killing enemies with grenades. It’s important to focus on these bonus actions when you can, because they reward substantially more points that a standard kill or assist.

Unfortunately, there are things that take points away from your total. If you take to long to kill a boss, you will receive a notification in the corner of your screen and your points will start dropping slowly. A total team wipe will also chop your point total by a decent amount, so avoid wiping if at all possible.

The Fight

Each round in Challenge of Elders is pretty much the same thing. You will be faced with killing a boss while contending with several waves of adds that will spawn at regular intervals.

Once you know what the boss’s mechanics are, the strategy is simple. Clear each wave of adds when they spawn as quickly as possible and then focus your attention back on the boss’s weak spot using your heaviest weapons (snipers, rockets, etc). The key is speed. If you can’t down the boss before the 5 minutes is up, you’re going to start losing points.

If during your run you’ve managed to complete the amount needed for a High Score, and or the amount needed for Cumulative Score you can turn your card in to Variks and collect your gear/ weapon that could be up to light level 335.