Hope everyone had a spoiled Christmas and got lots of fun toys. I sure did. =D Zombies this week as it seems like everyone is in town. Due to popular demand, I'll try to host one zombie clan night a month, targeting the last Tuesday of each month. Remember that we use an XBL Chat Party with zombies so that we can talk to each other. If you've forgotten, review some of the old clan posts:
This week, Bungie is offering 10,000 cR for finishing 9 Campaign levels on Heroic. If you haven't finished the Campaign yet, 9 levels is exactly how many it takes to play the whole game through, so this week would be a good time to do so. If you've been paying attention to the blog, you'll already know the easiest way to get this done. I finished in about 30 minutes.
Still with a few absences and BeerMonkeee wants his confetti, so Halo again this week.
Occasionally, I will ask the clan to work together and leverage our advantage in numbers to do stuff. This is typically centered around achievements, but may also be for in-game challenges or other entertaining tasks. I try to make it as fair as possible so that people don't get bored and so that everybody who wants to get the achievement or challenge has the opportunity to do so. I ask you to please be patient, participate, and be a team player, or excuse yourself from the party until we are done. Most of us learned in Kindergarten that sometimes we have to play a game that somebody else chooses, even if it's not our first choice. Please remember that lesson.
With the introduction of Halo Reach, the term "party" has gotten a little confusing on Xbox Live. I know it can be a little tricky to figure out sometimes, but please bear with us as we work around the technology because it IS useful. There are two kinds of parties:
Halo Charts has a new Game Aggregator tool that produces some pretty interesting data. Thought I would share some highlights from clan night last night. Below is some key stats from our Slayer games (objective games excluded). Numbers will obviously be tilted slightly for people who were helping the clan while on the other team...
Several of our zombie regulars are out this week, so I've decided to postpone our zombie action and stick with Halo this week. Note that I'm also pushing it back to 8:30pm, which seems closer to when we actually get enough people to play. Expect to see lots of 4v4 Team Slayer, 4v4 Team Objective, and 8v8 Big Team Battle in this weeks' playlists.
For those interested, 2 of 2 people voted for Left for Dead 2. So I'll plan to schedule that for next week. If you <3 zombies and will be out, please let me know a better time to schedule zombies.
Today features another "Iron With Friends" challenging you to finish a campaign mission on co-op with the Iron skull turned on. I just discovered that you can actually do this yourself in split-screen with a guest on the second controller. If you sprint through Winter Contingency, the guest will just teleport forward as you make progress so you never have to touch the second controller. The only place you have to move player 2 is after the Falcon drops you off by the blast doors, where you'll have to move player 2 out of fire. I moved both players to the stairs, and then moved one at a time into the blast door area. For those who can't figure this out, I'll likely be on at 11pm tonight to work on the multiplayer challenges.
Last night was the first night that I started picking playlists based on the poll results. It was somewhat of a unique clan night because we had four people on split screen at my house. The split screen prevents us from playing Big Team Battle (limited to 2 local players) and also locks in teams - Reach matchmaking does not appear to break up split screens anymore, so all 4 local players were always on the same team. This won't really ever be an issue in the future, so we'll get to play BTB and teams will shuffle more when we're in 4v4 playlists. We did however play much less straight Slayer and Invasion than we do on a normal clan night:
The poll has closed and the winning results are (in order):
I just updated the entry on the UNSC Grenade Launcher - aka Propipe. An interesting thread bubbled up to the top of the interwebz today that revealed the display on the Propipe actually tells you how many entities are within the kill radius of the grenade that you recently launched. This is extremely useful for timing when to release the trigger and kill bad guys.
Reach Daily Challenges (another daily challenge blog) posted the origins to some of the daily challenge names. I think some of these are just his best guess, but an interesting read nevertheless.
The Noble Map Pack dropped yesterday with three brand new maps. I honestly didn't get a chance to play Tempest, but it should be another BIG ASS map designed for Big Team Battle. From what I hear, it's a lot more vehicle-friendly, so that should hopefully be fun. See below for an overview of the map.
The Noble Map Pack dropped yesterday with three brand new maps. Breakpoint is a BIG ASS outdoor map played in the snow. There's tons of vehicles around, but the driving lanes are pretty constrained an exposed to fire from all sides. So far, it seems like the Banshee does well. Otherwise, Rockets, Laser, n00b Tube, Pro Pipe and 2 Snipers on the map negate the rest of the vehicles pretty quickly. I guess this will support Invasion in the future, but we didn't see it any voting options yesterday. See below for an overview of the whole map.
The Noble Map Pack dropped yesterday with three brand new maps. Anchor 9 is an interesting multi-level hangar with shield doors leading to outerspace. The space area on Anchor 9 is much more interesting than on Zealot. Besides the obvious fact that you are actually allowed to stay out there, you can mess with people by going in/out of the shield doors, and the jumps in space there actually lead you somewhere. Here is an overview of the whole map. Note the Rockets and Shotgun.
I actually will NOT be on to run the show, you kids will have to figure it out on your own if you want to play. Currently 8v8 Big Team Battle and 4v4 Team Slayer are the top contenders in the poll, as an FYI for whoever ends up being party leader. Also, the Noble Map Pack was released today. Most of the clan was planning to pick it up, so that may be a fun activity.
Check out the playlist poll at the top of the blog. Vote to voice your opinion. If you leave a comment with your preferences as well, I can tailor playlist selection just to those that are on-line at any given time. Otherwise, the voting is anonymous, and I will go with the majority vote even though people voting may not be playing.
I'm starting to hear more and more grumbling about the playlists that I pick for us to go into on clan night. This is your opportunity to provide some feedback into what you'd like to play. We are somewhat restricted in our player roster and party sizes in what playlists are available to us. I'd like to know what YOU would like to play when we have 4 or more people on clan night. We most often have 4-6 players. In general, this is how I pick our playlists:
There will be a poll later this week about what kind of playlists you prefer. I know, however, that many people don't know what some of the games actually are. Here's a breakdown of the Objective gametypes that we play less frequently:
This is in response to a challenge earlier this week to get 10 Elite kills in Firefight Matchmaking. There are no Elites in Gruntpocalypse (obviously). In the other single-player Score Attack playlists (Firefight, Sniper Attack, Mythic Attack), there are at most six elites in the last wave and it can be really hard to get there with enough lives to kill them. The best place to get Elite kills are in standard Firefight matchmaking, in Rocketfight or Sniperfight. I prefer Sniperfight because you can just hang back and pick off the Elites. On many maps, there are sniping locations where the rest of the enemies will largely ignore you and you can just focus on your personal objective. Some examples:
Do you ever look at a challenge that requires 30 kills or 10 assists in one game and think that it's stupidly impossible? Since most of us don't play much Rumble Pit and have low TrueSkill ratings, that's often a decent choice to go and rack up some big kills. However, Rumble Pit maxes out at 25 kills, so how do you get 30? 4v4 games max out at 50 kills, so it's hard to get 30 for yourself when it's split amongst 4 people. Big Team Battle is possible if you can get snipe or tank, but there's always a mad rush for those so it could just be a big waste of your time if you're not the one of eight people to get the right power weapon/vehicle.
My preferred playlist? Multi-Team.
In multi-team, even in Slayer, kill count is to 50, split only among 2 people, so it's much easier to get 30 kills for yourself. If you can get into an objective game like Crazy King or Oddball, you can ignore the objective and just get kills...then there's no limit to how many you can get. And since everybody else is going for the objective, they'll largely ignore you while you shoot fish in a barrel. Also, since there's five other teams, there's plenty of opportunity for people to steal your kills so that you get your assists. One very effective tactic is picking up the sniper rifle with active camo, camping someplace quiet, and getting body shots as the lambs run into the slaughter. Assist Spree!
Pretty regularly, there are daily challenges for getting jetpack kills. These can be frustrating to get because it may seem inconsistent about whether or not you get credit for your jetpack kill. The key here is that the enemy has to die while your jetpack is active. That means your are holding down the jetpack button while he dies. If you have been flying around and feathering your jetpack (like you're supposed to) and get the headshot between bursts, it will not count because the game doesn't recognize that your jetpack is on while you get the kill. You can get kills however you want - body shots, head shots, grenades, melees all count - as long as you are holding the jetpack button when they die. You will see the Firebird medal pop up when your kill registers correctly.
Now that you know, knowing is half the battle.
Happy Thanksgiving! Today is the first day that people are eligible to pop the 16,000 cR weekly challenge!
I previously posted about how to exploit the save game glitch to get Flawless campaign finishes over and over again. There are two other main methods to boost as a single player, one in Campaign and one in Firefight.
Sometimes there are challenges like Points Pyramid (score xx,000 points) that require you to turn on a bunch of skulls and try to rack up a high score in Campaign. The skulls do things like limit ammo, increase AI dodging of grenades, turn off the HUD, turn off radar, upgrade enemies, etc. The more skulls generally, the harder it is. But it's something you have to do in order to get a high enough score. The key here is that the flying levels are largely unaffected by skulls because you have infinite ammo and Banshees/Phantoms/Seraphs are mostly unaffected by skull upgrades.
There are lots of campaign challenges that simply require you to finish a level with some specific conditions. Challenges like Foggy Notion (Heroic, Cloud, Famine), Like a Glove (Heroic, Catch), Flawless Cowboy (Heroic, No Deaths) sound a lot harder than they actually are. Most of the time, you don't really have to "play" the level at all and can be done in about 5 minutes.
Nightfall has a path and a glitch that allows you to sprint through and finish the entire level in 5 minutes. You can have as many skulls as you like since you won't really run into any resistance. See here for a real example from my game history. Winter Contingency also has a path that allows you to sprint through and finish the entire level in under 15 minutes. No glitch required here, but takes a little longer because of the unskippable cutscenes. See game history example here. For most of the challenges, I prefer the Nightfall run because it's faster. Sometimes the Winter Contingency run is more appropriate though, especially if you have to not die for the challenge. On occasion, the Forklift Glitch takes more than one try and you can get killed trying.
I'm hauling my Xbox all the way up to Auburn for this, so you fools better be on.
As more and more people catch Challenge Fever, it seems that some guidance might be in order. Despite my previous recommendation of the Halo Reach Daily blog, it appears that many folks are still approaching challenges the "hard way." Many of the challenges have much easier approaches, so I'll post some of the more common strategies here of the next few days.
First up: Grunts. For "Firefight Matchmaking" challenges like A Satisfied Thirst (kill xxx Grunts), Killagruntjaro! (Grunt multi-kills), Covenant-cide (kill xx enemies), etc, the fastest way to knock these out is in Gruntpocalypse. There are 120 Grunts per game, each game should take about 10 minutes to finish.
In the playlists, this is under Cooperative -> Score Attack. Yes, even though this doesn't have "Firefight" in the title and it's only single player, it DOES count as "Firefight Matchmaking." Once you're in the voting menu, you get to choose whatever map that you want. Since it's single player, your vote will always win. Moreover, this is the one playlist where you can keep choosing "None of the Above" until you get the map you want or you have vetoed all the maps and have reached the end. Your voting options are always "Score Attack", "Gruntpocalypse", or "Mythic Attack"/"Sniper Attack". Choose Gruntpocalypse. Gruntpocalypse is all grunts, all the time. All the loadouts have DMR and Magnum as your weapons, and the ammo lockers are infinite, so you can go back and refill as many times as you like. My preference is to choose Armor Lock because I find that blind sticks are my greatest threat, but others like Bubble Shield to allow you to reload under fire.
My two favorite maps are Courtyard and Beachhead for Gruntpocalypse, some other folks like Corvette and Waterfront.
Most folks have said that they will be getting the Noble Map Pack in about 2 weeks. Gamestop is offering a promotion of a flaming helmet for your Xbox Live avatar if you pre-order through them. Note that this is for your avatar only, not your in-game Spartan model within Halo:Reach. Thanks to OD for the tip.
Since Bungie's acquisition by Activision earlier this year, we can assume that they are done with the Halo franchise and that their next game will be multi-platform. They've always made great games, so if you'd like to Beta test the next-gen games, they're offering a beta-test signup.
http://www.bungie.net/news/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=Beta_Signup
Today's challenges are all in Firefight. Most of them will be a lot easier if coordinated with friends. If you'd like some co-op fun, I'll be on-line hosting FF games a little before 10pm and then again at 11:30pm. It will actually help you when I drop at 10:30pm because I can go into your game to fill a spot and keep a random out, so that you get your gametype of choice without an extra body competing for kills/assists.
Have you caught Challenge fever yet? Halo Reach's new daily and weekly challenge system is wildly addictive and is easily the fastest the way to level up to new armory items. There are typically over 6,000 cR points available in daily challenges and several more thousand in the weekly challenge. We recommend Halo Reach Daily, a blog dedicated to outlining the best way to tackle the daily challenges each day. Thanks to OD for the link.
Leave comments here if you have preferred playlists or custom game types.
Today's daily challenges in Halo Reach are amongst the easiest I've ever seen. There are 4 Firefight challenges worth a total of 6,000 cR. All four can be completed in just two Gruntpocalypse games, I finished them in about 20 minutes. Today's challenges are:
Several people have noticed that players sometimes have little icons next to their gamertags in the game lobbies. These are Name Plates that can be activated on bungie.net. Go here to activate yours:
http://www.bungie.net/Account/nameplates.aspx
There 8 different name plate variants with Septagon being the easiest to get and MJOLNIR Mk VI being the hardest and rarest.
Come check out my Captain Grade 3 stripes and confetti marked deaths. Yaaayyyy!!!!
I have previously covered the new armor abilities in Reach in fairly extensive detail. Here are some advanced tips on how to maximize your newfangled abilities:
Zealot is a small, symmetrical map used primarily for Slayer gametypes. Blue and Red teams spawn opposite each other and have sight lines from the spawn points to hit the other team. Grenades create massive chaos on the map, so Armor Lock rules with some people choosing Jet Pack as well. Active Camo and Sprint pair well with Sword on this map, but it's pretty difficult to avoid grenades and stay alive long enough to have a sustained Sword Spree.
Bungie has just announced the first DLC for Halo Reach. It includes 3 brand new maps, including one new Invasion map. It will be dropping on November 30 for 800 Microsoft Points (about $10). It also comes with 250 achievement points. I'll be buying it, but won't require it for the clan just yet until I have a better idea of what playlists require it. As long as we can support clan night group sizes in the non-DLC playlists, we can live withouot it.
My family is in town, so I may be on late, but I expect that everyone can figure out how to party-up without me.
One of the most difficult (or tedious) achievements to get in Halo Reach is "A Monument to All Your Sins," awarded for finishing the entire campaign on Legendary, solo. Congratulations to Octurian Poon and CoolerSopranos2 for accomplishing this impressive feat!
Are you wondering what it takes to get to the next rank? Are you wondering why you seem to be stuck in Warrant Officer forever? Are you wondering why Warrant Officer seems to be the most popular rank? Are you wondering why there is an achievement for reaching Captain and Lt. Colonel?
Here are the currently available ranks and the credits required to reach each one:
Spire is a very large, asymmetrical map used primarily for Invasion. Map details below are customized for classic Invasion, Invasion Slayer has some different nuances but the geometry stays the same. In classic Invasion, Spartans try to capture one of two generators in Phase 1, one of two control rooms on Phase 2, and then the core in Phase 3. Elites win if they stop the Spartans in time at any given Phase.
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