Reset day - Nightfall (The Shadow Thief)

It's that wonderful time when Bungie's rotating selection of high-reward activities are rebooted (along with any raid progress made in the previous week), giving everyone a fresh chance at scoring some of the game's sweetest and rarest loot. If you need more sweetest and rarest loot, you can choice destiny power leveling.

Are you new to Destiny? Don't know what any of this means? Good news. There's a Destiny wiki that's packed with information. Click for details on what Strikes are, and how Nightfall differs from Weekly Heroic challenges.

The House of Wolves add-on also adds a new weekly wrinkle, in the form of Prison of Elders. The multi-round gauntlets are built for endgame play, with the specific enemy types and modifiers changing from week to week.

Here's a rundown of what's happening this week:

Nightfall (The Shadow Thief)

Epic - This is a standard Nightfall modifier. It just means there are more enemies to fight, and a greater number of Majors (the yellow health bar dudes) on the field.

Nightfall - Another standard Nightfall modifier. This one boots the entire Fireteam back to orbit if everyone is downed inside one of the revive-only respawn Darkness Zones.

• Void Burn - All Void damage is increased.
• Solar Burn - All Solar damage is increased.
• Grounded - Take more damage when airborne

This week's Nightfall is only accessible if you own House of Wolves. Solar and void weapons are your friends thanks to the burns, but definitely bring along some manner of arc weapon as well, since many of the Fallen enemies encountered during this Strike have arc shields. The best build may be solar/void primary and heavy, with an arc secondary — shotgun or fusion rifle thanks to the abundance of close-quarters engagements. Switch to Ice Breaker, Black Hammer or some other solar secondary before you get to the final boss room (after you defeat the spider tank) and just keep firing on the boss when he spawns for a quick kill.

Weekly Heroic (The Summoning Pits)

• Heroic - Standard Weekly Heroic modifier. More enemies show up than you would see on a standard Strike, and they're more aggressive.
• Small Arms - Primary weapon damage favored

Bring your best ascended primary weapon and go to town. Vision of Confluence is the obvious choice, since wizard solar shields are the only ones you encounter during Weekly Heroic instances of this Strike and the Vault of Glass scout rifle is a solar weapon. Abyss Defiant is a decent choice, too; auto rifles are inferior at this point in Destiny's life, but Abyss is relatively high impact and brings the added ability to confuse wizards, effectively preventing them from firing or moving around too much.

Prison of Elders

If you've got House of Wolves then you can also participate in the weekly Prison of Elders activities. These endgame challenges send players through a multi-round gauntlet in which each round has its own enemy type and Nightfall/Weekly-style modifier(s).

The lineup of enemies, modifiers and, in some cases, bosses for the level 32, 34 and 35 activities changes every week. You can find some general tips for surviving Prison of Elders right here. Read on for a breakdown of enemies and modifiers for each round this week.

Level 32: Machine Wrath

• Round 1 (Cabal): Specialist (special weapon damage increased)
• Round 2 (Fallen): Lightswitch (enemy melee damage increased)
• Round 3 (Fallen): Airborne (players deal more damage when in the air)
• Round 4 (Fallen): Exposure (shields are increased significantly but don't recharge)
• Round 5 (Kaliks Reborn boss): Grounded (players take more damage when airborne)

Kaliks Reborn is a pretty straightforward boss fight, at least with regards to special mechanics that need to be dealt with. Every so often during the fight, a gang of Dregs spawn and rush the fireteam. They all glow with a white sheen, and you need to kill them quickly. Take too long and they despawn, at which point Kaliks "gorges on ether" (text that appears in the lower left corner of the screen), recharging all of its health.

Level 34: Cult of the Worm

• Round 1 (Vex): Airborne (players deal more damage when in the air)
• Round 2 (Hive): Grounded (players take more damage when in the air)
• Round 3 (Vex): Void Burn (Void weapons deal more damage)
• Round 4 (Hive): Angry (enemies can't be staggered)
• Round 5 (Gulrot, the Unclean boss): Exposure (shields are increased significantly but don't recharge)

Gulrot, the Unclean, is a giant Hive Ogre with a gross special mechanic: every so often he belches, coating the entire room in bile. This creates a slowing effect for all players, and it lasts for 10 seconds. Gulrot falls on the easier end of the spectrum when it comes to Prison of Elders bosses. The Hive chamber has a great safe location (raised platforms in the far left corner) to attack from, and the special boss mechanics are more than manageable if you're paying attention.

The only tricky part in this encounter is the Exposure modifier, which greatly boosts each player's shields but makes the recharge rate too slow to count on. As with Gulrot's belching, managing health simply requires caution (though a Titan shield equipped with Blessing of Light is helpful too).

Level 35: Skolas' Revenge (all modifier descriptions listed here)

• Round 1 (Hive): Exposure and Brawler
• Round 2 (Vex): Grounded and Airborne
• Round 3 (Cabal): Catapult and Angry
• Round 4 (Fallen): Specialist and Juggler
• Round 5 (Fallen): Trickle and Small Arms

Round 6 (Skolas boss): Solar Burn

Skolas is a Fallen boss and the constant big bad for all level 35 Prison of Elders runs. He's a tricky one. You can't even damage him until you take out one of his two special Servitor defenders (they keep respawning), and even then you have only a small window (20 seconds) in which to dish out damage. That's the first half of the fight; once Skolas is at half health, the Servitor issue goes away.

They're replaced by Skolas' "Devouring Essence" attack, which puts one randomly chosen player on a 30-second countdown to death.The countdown can be reset by passing Devouring Essence to another player, but there's a 35-second delay before the player that gives it up can grab it again. This means that all three fireteam members need to participate in a deadly game of hot potato.

The solar burn modifier this week provides the easiest route to a quick Skolas kill, provided you're equipped for it. Three Gjallahorns can rip through him quickly; just makes sure everyone's got full ammo and everyone has a heavy ammo synth ready. A Titan should pop a Blessing of Light bubble to the left of the chamber's entrance while another players goes after the left-side servitor. Once Skolas is vulnerable, pepper him with rockets until he melts.