10 NOVEMBER 2010

Check in here for strategies on completing the Daily and Weekly challenges in Halo: Reach. If it’s your first time, click through the About HRD link above; and add comments below if you’ve got a good idea of your own for tackling the Challenges today.

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NEW FEATURE: SCREENSHOT OF THE DAY!

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Here at HRD, we’ve been shocked and amazed at the reaction we’ve gotten for the site. We dared to hope that it would be helpful to some, and maybe just a little bit popular, but the response has been simply overwhelming — far more than what we ever had anticipated. Thanks to everyone for all the great words you’ve posted about us around the Internet.

As a way to show our gratitude, and expand the site just a bit, we’re starting a couple of new features that you’ll see the curtain go up on during the next few weeks. The first is one that, after late-night brainstorming sessions and extensive market research, we’re calling Screenshot Of The Day.

This is purely a way to spotlight the members of the HRD community — if you’ve got an ass-kicking, holy-crap-that’s-my-new-profile-shot of you in action, then send it in. (No Forge art or cool shots you simply came across on the Internet — this is about YOU.) Our expert panel here at HRDHQ aboard the Pillar of Awesome will pick a new one each day to showcase at the top of our morning update, with credit to the Spartan or Elite who rocked the camera so righteously.

There’s no prize money, but you’ll get prestigious bragging rights, and if you’d like I’ll also help select the wallpaper pattern for your living room, intuitively drawing upon the fabled wallpaper-hanging skills of my distant ancestors. (And, um, did I mention you get bragging rights?)

Just upload the screenshot to your File Share and send us the link (haloreachdaily@live.com) or simply recommend the file to us over XBox Live (Gamertag: Ender Xer0, with a zero), and we’ll take care of the rest.

OK, since today’s the first day, we’ll start out with a screenshot from my own File Share. Click for full size, and enjoy!

SCREENSHOT OF THE DAY: Ender Xer0

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DAILY CHALLENGES

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Some of the quickest, easiest Challenges we’ve seen together in one day. You should be able to wrap them all in less than an hour. Yow!

BLASTIN’ AND RELAXIN’

Any Game Mode

Kills

Type: Kills
Setting: Any
Difficulty: Easy
Reward: 2000

Kill 180 enemies in any game mode in Reach.

Take on this one last — there’s a good chance you’ll blow right past 180 while wrapping up the rest of Dailies, so there’s no point repeating your efforts.

If you still have a handful of stragglers, you can just load up ONI Sword Base for some Target Locating or a Custom Game to Grunt your way through them. Check out the Owning On ONI or Grunt Game Settings standing links at the top of the page for instructions.

WHERE THERE’S SMOKE . . .

Firefight

Kills

Type: Kills
Setting: Firefight
Difficulty: Easy
Reward: 500

Kill 50 enemies in Firefight Matchmaking.

One-half of a Gruntpocalypse in Score Attack; and– well, actually, no, that’s it. Really. (Come to think of it, even less than half.) Pick a small map like Courtyard or Corvette and start making confetti. Focus on headshots and multikills, since the medals score you bonus cRedits. Job done!

IRON WITH FRIENDS

Campaign

Skull On

Type: Completion
Setting: Campaign
Difficulty: Easy
Reward: 750

Complete a Campaign mission Co-op on Heroic or harder with the Iron Skull on.

The Iron Skull can be a huge hassle when playing solo: die once, start over again. In Co-op, however, it merely reverts you to your last Checkpoint, which — while inconvenient — is really no more than a nuisance, especially on the right level.

So, with that in mind, go in as a four-player team: the chance that you’ll all die simultaneously is virtually zero, and the weaker players can hang back to provide support fire while the stronger players take point. The trailing players will even Checkpoint forward if they lag too far behind, allowing them to skip past certain parts of the map entirely. Just don’t do anything supremely retarded, like all piling into vehicles and then driving together off a cliff, and you’ll do fine.

• For Campaign completion Challenges, HRD often recommends the speed-run on Nightfall — but because the Challenge requires Co-op, the Midnight Run can Checkpoint straggling players forward at peculiar and inopportune moments; so instead, we’re going to suggest Winter Contingency: As the Campaign’s first playable level, it’s by design the easiest, and the open-ended geography both lets weaker players hang back and take cover as well as allowing all players to bypass most encounters entirely.
• In fact, after the first faceoff with the Covenant, players can Sprint past the next skirmish, off the small cliff that leads to the Warthogs, then drive directly to the firefight at the last compound before the Falcons arrive; other than the occasional bloodthirsty Moa, you’ll hardly encounter any gunplay at all.
• The Falcons take you directly to another firefight, where you’ll have ample cover and ammo inside the bunker of the final building of the level; from there, you need only dispatch a few butch Elites and their entourage to reach the final cutscene. You’ll actually be able to wrap the entire Challenge in 10 or 15 minutes.

LINKED UP WITH BUNGIE.NET

Multiplayer

Type: Meta
Setting: Multiplayer
Difficulty: Retarded
Reward: 3000

Link your Gamertag with Bungie.Net and play a game in Halo: Reach Matchmaking.

Yeah, you’ll never see this one again. (Wait…didn’t I say that last time?) Ah well. The cake is not a lie.

(UPDATE NOTE: Some people report they’re having difficulty getting this to register. What’s actually happening is that the game awards you the bonus the moment that you enter a Matchmaking game, so it gives you the cRedits immediately rather than at the end of the match in your post-game report. People sometimes don’t pay attention to their cRedits before they go in, so they don’t realize they’ve already received the bonus when the end cRedits roll.

Also, if you’re a new Bungie.net user and having trouble getting this Challenge to actually click, you may have to do something that only a registered account could do, such as change your nameplate; that’ll trigger the Challenge completion, and the bonus along with it.)

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WEEKLY CHALLENGE

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CRACKSHOT

Campaign

Headshot

Special Weapon

Type: Special Weapon / Killstyle
Setting: Campaign
Difficulty: Grind
Reward: 3000

Kill 70 enemies with Sniper Rifle Headshots in Nightfall on Heroic.

Another so-easy-you-could-do-it-on-Kinect Challenge. Nightfall‘s a particularly easy level for this: it’s dark, you start with a Sniper, and you’re on a hill overlooking unsuspecting Covies — the only way Bungie could make it easier is if the Elites actively lunged into your bullets with their foreheads.

Just flip on Night Vision, take aim, and fire away. You can even skip the opening assassination of the Elite taking a leak on the Grunts below, and just headshot him from behind. (OK, so, maybe he’s not actually taking a leak; but then, what the hell is he doing there?)

When you’re done with the first Elite and two Grunts, advance to the cliff overlooking the makeshift Covenant base. Start picking off Covies until you run out of ammo or run out of enemies; then you can simply restart the level and repeat, until the Challenge Complete banner flashes onscreen.

Easy, yeah? Well, at least it’s a chance to use Sniper rounds on some Grunts without feeling retarded about it.

Tip Of The Day

TAKE NOTE, however: Though you can die as many times as you like, restart the mission or simply revert to Checkpoint, you CAN’T Save and Quit and then return at a later time; your Challenge counter will reset, and you’ll have to start over again. That means you’ll have to set aside a couple of extra minutes to register all 70 in one go.