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.
LOL SPARTZ SCREENSHOT OF THE DAY
Hey, toaster, you probably shouldn’t have destroyed the 12 Colonies of Humanity, even if it meant we got to watch Tricia Helfer in a red dress for the next five seasons. Ah well — you can’t trust those frakkin’ Cylons. LOL Spartz Screenshots Of The Day today courtesy of clan-brother ender4449, who as an Ender can’t be trusted either. Thanks again, Niner! Everyone, click to enlarge!
We’re running an entire Comedy Week of laughs, lulz and ROFLs here on the Pillar Of Awesome. Got a funny screenshot of Epic Fail or overall Halo hilarity? Send it in! We’ll run ’em for the rest of the month or until we run out. Just shoot it over to haloreachdaily@live.com, or make a file recommendation to us on XBox (Gamertag: Ender Xer0, with a zero), and we’ll take care of the rest. Remember: we’re not looking for plain Forge art or random pix from the Internet; it should be a screenshot of YOU!
WEEKLY CHALLENGE
THE PILLAR OF AUTUMN: LASO
Type: Completion
Setting: Campaign
Difficulty: Hard
Time: 100 to 150 minutes
Value: ★★★★
Reward: 17777
Complete The Pillar Of Autumn on Legendary with All Skulls On (LASO).
You Knew It Was Coming: The final campaign mission on the most freakishly hard difficulty setting. We’re ready; how ’bout you??
[ ACCESS COMPLETE INTEL: CLICK HERE ]
DAILY CHALLENGES
Summary
TYPES: Assists, Kills, Score, Special Weapon
SETTINGS: Campaign, Firefight, Multiplayer
AVERAGE DIFFICULTY: Easy
TOTAL TIME: 85-115 minutes
OVERALL VALUE: ★★★★
TOTAL CREDITS: 6000
ONE SPARTAN ARMY
Type: Kills
Setting: Firefight
Difficulty: Easy
Time: 10 minutes
Value: ★★★★★
Reward: 1000
Kill 100 enemies in Firefight Matchmaking.
You’ll notch this in a single Round of Score Attack — we prefer Gruntpocalypse, but 2X Score Attack will work just as well. You’ll pocket your Challenge cRedits just after the boom-chucka-boom music of the final Wave fires up; you won’t be able to work on your Support Structure Challenge (see below) at the same time, since Assists require a partner, but that one’s a huge hassle and you’ll clear this so quickly it’ll be worth it to do it separately.
SUPPORT STRUCTURE
Type: Assists
Setting: Firefight
Difficulty: Grind
Time: 60-90 minutes
Value: ★★☆
Reward: 2250
Earn 30 assists in Firefight Matchmaking.
This is actually MUCH harder than it sounds. The underlying problem: most Firefight enemies — Grunts and Jackals — go down so easy that it’s difficult to coordinate an Assist without killing them outright. Even shattering a Jackal’s energy buckler with a plasma burst won’t register, since it’s not calculated as actual “damage” to the enemy.
Complicating matters: the sheer number of enemies, compared to your number of allies. An Assist requires at least 40% damage to the target’s combined Shields and Health, then for a teammate to finish the kill within five seconds of your last strike. With Covies swarming the entire map, it’s less likely an ally will be firing on the same target, at the same time, as you.
When tougher enemies do arrive fashionably late, they’re often too few or too resilient to rack up too many Assists. A Hunter, for example, often involves several teammates ripping into him at once, making it less likely any single player will strip off more than 40% before the beast goes down.
Brutes represent more solid candidates for Assist-farming: a steady DMR stream will flick off their helmets, setting them up for a teammate’s coup-de-grace. The problem isn’t so much that standard Brutes don’t know how to put their hats back on; it’s that most don’t carry regenerative Shields, so you won’t know how much damage one’s taken already. Plus, higher-ranking Brutes require more setup, making it difficult to gauge when you’ve crossed the 40% mark.POINTS PYRAMID
Type: Score
Setting: Campaign
Difficulty: Easy
Time: 10 minutes
Value: ★★★★★
Reward: 1500
Score 25,000 points on any Campaign mission.
Yikes, 25,000 points….seems like a lot. Guess what? Where we’re going, it won’t make any difference.
Fire up New Alexandria, which starts you in a Falcon and pits you against enemy vehicles, worth far more points than ordinary Covies. Then switch on five Skulls: Tough Luck, Catch, Famine, Thunderstorm and Tilt. None of these affect aerial combat, but still register as major point multipliers. And don’t worry about the ground combat, either: We’re not getting out of the chopper.Play on whatever difficulty you find comfortable, though harder ratings will attract enemy aircraft more rapidly; Heroic is likely a good balance between enemy numbers and how tough they fight, though go ahead and load up Legendary if you’re a solid pilot who’s good on the stick.
Ignore Phantoms and concentrate fire on the Banshees; though the transport ships score massive points, they don’t represent an aerial threat, they’re heavily armored, and the Banshees will quickly swarm you to protect their troops. Just pick off the Banshee flights as they approach — you’ll hit 25K in almost no time at all.
A few pointers for your Points:
- Look out for rooftop Shades as they fire into the sky; if one catches you by surprise, you won’t have much chance to defend or evade.
- Keep an eye on your Falcon as well; you can land and call in a fresh one at any time, so no point storming into a dogfight with your chopper already trailing fire.
- If the Banshees seem to have better things to do, simply coast toward your current Objective and cut loose on rooftop enemies — you’ll score some points, and enemy aircraft will take notice quickly enough.
EXPLOSIVE ORDNANCE DISTRIBUTION
Type: Kills / Special Weapon
Setting: Multiplayer
Difficulty: Easy
Time: 5 minutes
Value: ★★★★★
Reward: 1250
Earn 3 kills with Ordnance Weapons in a Multiplayer Matchmaking game.
So, what the hell is an Ordnance Weapon? Well, you know them better as the Rockets, Laser, FRG, Concussion Rifle, Grenade and Plasma Launchers — pretty much what we lovingly refer to as Power Weapons.
Before the Action Sack playlist update, you’d actually need to go out of your way for an ordnance weapon, fighting off enemies and teammates alike for the chance to score the Rocket Launcher (as if that was different than any other day). Now? You’ve got a salad bar of options: Dino Blasters, Splockets, Rocket CTF, BOOM! Ball, the works. Play any of ’em for five minutes and you’ve got the Challenge.