Destiny Summoning Pits Nightfall Guide

Destiny Summoning Pits Nightfall Guide by Nolskog

Hello there guardians, just completed the nightfall strike and it’s fairly easy once you can correctly exploit the different spawns and positions to get through it. Until Phogoth it’s a fairly easy run, slowly but surely pick off wizards and knights with the respective elemental damage and you’ll get through eventually. I’ll go in-depth in a moment.

Modifiers:

It’s self explanatory for the most part, harder and more aggresive enemies, no ammo drops for equipped weapon, no flinching, die and return to orbit, but most importantly, VOID weapons will do extra damage. That’s the swirly purple elemental damage on Snipers/Fusion/Shotguns/Rocket Launchers/Machine Guns and some primaries as well. Have one of these, especially necessary for Phogoth. My team didn’t even notice this modifier to be honest, which made it take quite a bit longer, so make sure to use these weapons!

What to bring:

You’re going to need VOID weapons like I said before, but also arc and solar damage for knights and wizards. Arc is for knights, solar is for wizards. All the other enemies are level 28 acolytes, thralls, and cursed thralls and they’re fairly easy to dispatch using normal guns.

You will need to buy extra ammo cartridges, especially for phogoth using this method. If you have any weapon that generates it’s own ammo, like the icebreaker sniper rifle, definitely bring that along.

First Room:

You can skip the outside acolytes and the three knights that spawn going down the staircase as they aren’t part of the mission and are low level, easily passable. At the first room there’s going to be an aggresive knight that rushes the door, always have one person out of danger just in case, this goes for the whole mission. Pick off that knight with arc damage and then slowly pick off the acolytes on the sides. There’s also one wizard in this room which you have to take out with solar damage, and one or two more nights. Pick off the bigger monsters(knights, wizards) and the rest are easy to clean.

Second Room:

After you’re done with the first room, go down the stairs and activate the ghost on the door. There will be three waves of enemies. You will kill all of these monsters from outside the room, from the big arch you first came in through. None of the monsters in the first two waves are aggresive enough to push past the door, so you’re safe. Always have one player playing safety near the back, one sniping from door, and a titan a bit pushed up on the little wall barriers headglitching.

First wave:

Starts off with pretty aggresive thralls, just take them down with headshots. There will also be a mix of acolytes and cursed thralls, all easy to dispatch. The harder enemies are knights, you have to use arc weapons and take out the shields and then immediately mow them down or they will regen. There are a few of them first wave, like 3-4. Be patient and take them down one by one, and be careful with the knights pushing all the way towards the door the ghost is at as they can missile the sniper at the arch door you came in through pretty easily.

Second wave:

Same as first, although there will be quite a few ultra acolytes(yellow bar) which are a bit harder to kill. More knights as well, some ultra ones too/stronger. Same procedure as first wave, there will also be a wizard near the end. Solar damage to take away his shield and then mow him down quick.

Third wave:

This wave is more complicated as there are a ton of enemies, and it differentiates from the first two because 4-5 wizards will spawn, one of them being the boss wizard, and they can and will push through the arch door and halfway up the stairs, so you have to back up to the rocks once you see them coming. Solar damage and slowly take them out. If most of your team have solar rocket launchers or hunters with grenades you can easily take all of them out at once with the blast radius, but it’ll take a few rockets(4-6). If they retreat before they’re dead, have one player lure them back to the stairs and start mowing them down again, preferably a titan with his shield ready to use just in case.

Passageway:

One wizard to take care of, easily sniped. A few acolytes but very manageable, advance until you have a cave opening to the left on the upper level, once there, go in and hide behind the left rocks. A ship will then arrive on the right, there will be a wizard you have to snipe and a few easy acolytes. The ship fires some missles, they’re slow travelling, make sure you don’t get hit.

Double Knights:

Two Ultra Knights, snipe them from afar with arc damage and deal as much damage as possible once their shield is off so they don’t regain it(grenades, rocket launchers, snipes, super charges, etc). Easy to deal with but you have to be careful. Also be cautious about the wizard you killed right before spawning again on the right, happened to my team once.

Final Part: Phogoth

I can’t imagine this boss can be beaten normally on 28, or at least it’ll be very hard. So we’re going to have to manage with a bit of an exploit. You never have to go into the actual boss room itself, but stay in the pre-chamber at all times. To start, open the door and start shooting at Phogoth to clear his chains. Make sure to kill Thralls as they rush you and dodge the acolyte missles. One player can stay back just in case. Phogoth should be clear of chains after a bit, continue shooting until a knight rushes you, then move out into the room prior to the pre-chamber. The knight will stop at the middle of the room by the rock, if you stay in the corners of the room outside the pre-chamber, it will eventually back out and you’ll effectively “reset” the adds. If not, just kill any knights that are pushed up past the Phogoth door.

After this beginning is complete, there will be two phases. A “set-up” damage dealing phase, and a lure phase. Once Phogoth is clear, unless he has a clear target at someone on your team, he will stay glitched against the perimeter nearest to the door, but not shooting. One of your teammates, titan if possible, must shoot him a bit and get him to start firing his laser. Then quickly run back into the room before the pre-chamber where the shrieker spawns.

The “set-up” damage dealing phase consists of two key positions, one player angled to he can burst fire Phogoth with a void pulse rifle/sniper or if no one your team has these, a strong ar/scout rifle. This player must be crouched right behind the rock wall on the left that juts out, this way Phogoth shoots the player but doesn0t actually hit him. The crouched players body must have his back right against the wall, this way the shrieker rarely spawns even if he’s in the room, unless the lurer takes to long when luring Phogoth back if he ever strays away. The second damage dealer is your strongest void sniper, in the room before the pre-chamber, right behind the first crouched player. Third player isn’t really important, he has no lines of sight. He should lure and rocket launch Phogoth when doing so to deal some extra damage, have him use ammo cartridges.

If the shrieker ever spawns, back out of the room and “reset” the adds once again, the wizard that rushes the door will back away once it resets. Shrieker = Wizard. No Shrieker =No wizard.

Just chip off Phogoth’s life and he’ll eventually die. Good job, you’ve done it.

Loot:

XP Bonus for the whole week(get this done asap), and a possibility of exotic weapons/armor or ascendant materials. I was personally given a legendary arc sniper rifle, and my teammates a legendary fusion rifle and an exotic fusion rifle.

End

Hope I’ve helped, we tried doing the boss fight in the actual Phogoth room and we wasted quite a bit of time, writing this out hoping to help some of you. Also remember to do the weekly strike on level 28 after/before doing this one, as it’ll reward you with nine strange coins just in time for Xur’s arrival tomorrow! If my written explanation wasn’t clear enough for the end “set-up”, here’s a video I just searched for demonstrating the first crouched position and luring which is most important. Not my video, but props to this guy for doing it solo. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NvAAqOziR74

Good luck, guardians.