‘Destiny’ Skolas Fixes Hitting - Prison of Elders boss fight against Skolas

It looks like Destiny players won’t have to wait for the weekly reset to see changes to final Prison of Elders boss fight against Skolas. Bungie is delivering the 1.2.0.3 hot fix to the PlayStation and Xbox consoles today, Monday, June 15.

The Skolas fight changes were first covered in this Inquisitr article from last Thursday, where Creative Director Christopher Barrett admitted that the encounter’s difficulty swung wildly once week to the next. This caused Bungie to go back and look at how to fix the final fight, which will be delivered to Destiny today at 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT.

The 1.2.0.3 update goes beyond a fix to the client on PlayStation and Xbox consoles, however. Bungie is going to bring the Destiny servers down at the same time for maintenance. In other words, make sure you’ve completed any activities before by then.

So what changes are coming? As previously detailed, we know the following changes to the fight are coming for sure.

• New Modifier combinations (Arc, Void, and Solar Burn will be removed)
• Boss health is reduced (to compensate for the lack of burn)
• Minions will spawn at predictable health intervals
• Minor adjustment to the unit makeup of the combatant waves

We’ll have to wait and see if Bungie delivers any additional fixes beyond these. Additionally, we may have to wait and see if the deployment of the hot fix makes any changes to the Skolas fight today or will the current Solar burn modifier stick around until the weekly reset happens Tuesday morning at 5 a.m. ET.

Update: Bungie revealed that the hot fix also patches issues with the Elder Cipher bounties.

All issues with the Elder Cipher bounty should be resolved. Please speak with Variks in the Reef to check on status of your Elder Cipher bounty, if you have been unable to interact with the bounty previously. If you have 2 Elder Cipher bounties in your Inventory, please abandon both of them. Variks will offer you a chance to recover 1 bounty if you visit him in the Reef. Please note, you will not receive multiple awards for having 2 Elder Cipher bounties in your inventory.

The hot fix patch notes gives the following additional details on Skolas changes.

• Burn Skulls are now replaced by non-elemental skulls
• Skolas’ health reduced (from 27000 to 15000) to compensate for lack of burn skulls
• Reinforcement spawns are now based on Skolas’ health instead of a timer

Note that the new 15,000 number is Skolas’ base health. His final health is determined by his level, which is 35. So, his current total health pool is 15,000 times whatever multiplier Bungie uses to reach level 35.

The changes to Skolas did change the boss fight as it exists today before the weekly reset. The new modifiers are Small Arms and Lightswitch. Reddit user silverangold has already reach Skolas since the hotfix and estimates that minions spawn approximately ever 10 percent decrease in the Fallen boss’ health. We’ll try to verify this later.

Additionally, a pair of perks that Destiny players discovered could be used for almost continuous supers were also tweaked.

• ‘Ashes to Assets’ and ‘Quintessence Transfer’ can now no longer be stacked (they now have cool-downs that can only be used every 10 seconds)

Many Destiny players are wondering already how these changes will affect the current strategies. The Gjallarhorn rush strategy may be nullified, but to what degree is unknown. In constructing strategy guides for Prison of Elders, the announced changes put any Skolas guides on hold until they hit and everyone can see how the affect the battle.

What do you think of the changes to the Skolas boss fight? Will they make the Prison of Elders encounter more enjoyable? Sound off in the comments below.