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Halo
XBOX

Shockwave ([email protected])
Copyright 2003 by shockwave
All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by
their respective trademark and copyright holders.

None of this information can be reposted anywhere outside of gamefaqs
without my express permission.
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===   TABLE OF CONTENTS
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I. INTRODUCTION
1. Update Information
2. Legendary Difficulty
3. Co-Op Play

II. GENERAL STRATEGY
1. Terrain Features
    A. Retreat and hide
    B. Learn scenes
    C. Use dropoffs
    D. Checkpoint wisely
    E. Notice respawning enemies
    F. Bypass open area
    G. Examples
2. Combat Strategy
    A. Conserve health
    B. Abuse sleeping enemies
    C. Let enemies fight
    D. Items may disappear
3. NPCs
    A. Protecting marines
    B. Sniper marine uses
    C. Herding marines
    D. Marines and vehicles
    E. Sentinels

III. WEAPONS
1. Held weapons
    A. Assault rifle
    B. Needler
    C. Pistol
    D. Plasma pistol
    E. Plasma Rifle
    F. Rocket launcher
    G. Shotgun
    H. Sniper rifle
2. Grenades
3. Mountable weapons
    A. Vehicles types
    B. Vehicle use
    C. Indoor vehicle use
    D. Driving tips
    E. Stationary guns
4. Melee attacks
5. Consumables
    A. Health pack
    B. Cloaking
    C. Overshield

IV. ENEMIES
1. Overview
    A. Covenant
    B. Flood
2. Covenant Enemies
    A. Grunts
    B. Jackals
    C. Elites
    D. Hunters
3. Flood
    A. Parasites
    B. Carriers
    C. Drones
4. Sentinels

V. CONCLUSIONS

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=== I. INTRODUCTION
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******************
1. Update Information
******************
V1.0: First version
V2.0: Miscellaneous revisions

***************
2. Legendary Difficulty
***************

So you're going to try to tackle Legendary in Halo.  This is one of
the hardest difficulty levels of any game that I've ever experienced.
In most games, harder difficulty just means more patience and dying;
in Halo, there are simply scenes that you will spend hours trying to
get through with no progress until you get extremely lucky or figure
out some quirk.  I have a lot of experience with FPSs and Halo, both
single and multiplayer, and it's only a couple of years after I got
the game that I've good enough to really try to solve Legendary all
the way through on single player.

Legendary is not for people who want a guarantee that they'll solve
the game, most likely you'll get frustrated somewhere near the
beginning and stop playing.  But if you're truly masochistic, here's a
general guide that will help you through to the best of my ability.
This guide is not comprehensive, but it's intended to cover points
that I have not seen in other guides.  If you have questions, be sure
to first check the other many faqs available on gamefaqs before
contacting me.  It is also possible that there are other ways to solve
Legendary that conflict with my comments.  I haven't even solved
Legendary all the way through at the time of this writing, but this is
just my honest attempt of compiling everything I've learned so far.

Before you get started, I would sugget inverting flight controls,
turning off auto-levelling, and increasing your rotation rate by a
bit.  You want to be able to spin as fast as possible, unfortunately
Halo is not like a PC game where you have a mouse interface for this
sort of thing, so try to get used to using your analog to control your
spin rate.  I find that the default setting is way too slow, and this
is not just a preference thing because there are times when you really
do need to turn fast and thus will die if you're using a lower
sensitivity.

As a matter of terminology, I refer to "scenes" as areas between two
checkpoints.  In other words, it's what you need to fight through to
get to the next save.

***************************
3. Co-op Play
***************************

Co-op play is fairly trivial to solve at any level given the unlimited
respawn.  One easy way to get through difficult levels is to simply
alternate having one player stand very far back while the other
charges in and does damage.  Since monsters don't generally respawn
indefinitely, and since you start off with weaponry and ammo whenever
you die, you'll eventually make it through.  The harder co-op missions
are ones where you start off in one room and have nowhere to hide
(e.g. boarding the covenant ship in Level 3) or when you have to keep
some puny target such as Captain Keyes alive.  In the former, note
that often you can find a place to hide anyway, e.g. in the said level
where you board the covenant ship, you can have one player hide behind
the normally locked doors if you run through them while the covenent
are opening them.  More on this later.  In the latter, an important
note is that your NPCs (Non Player Characters, e.g. marines) will
always follow the second (i.e. bottom screen) player.  So you have
that person hang back while player 1 clears out the hostiles.

That's all I'll say about co-op play.  The unlimited respawn makes it
artifically easy to solve; if you're having trouble getting through
Legendary in co-op, then I suggest reading through some other basic
guides.  Just bear in mind that you cannot save halfway through a
level in co-op, so you'll have to solve the whole thing in one
sitting.  The rest of this guide will cover exclusively single player
since that is where the real challenge is.


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=== II. GENERAL STRATEGY
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1.  Terrain Features
******************************

I am not going to go through how to solve every level in Legendary.
This would take far too much time and I doubt most people would even
be patient enough to read through it.  There are other guides that
have more detailed walkthroughs, this guide is intended to supplement
them while avoiding duplicating information.  However, I'll start out
by pointing out some general ways to approach levels, then give
examples of a couple of excetionally difficult ones.

A. Retreat and hide
------------------------------
The absolute most important idea in Legendary is that you must find a
position where you can take on enemies one or a few at a time.  Open
areas are bad, closed areas are good.  There are plenty of fairly open
levels where you'll get absolutely slaughtered if you run in with guns
blazing.  Even the lowly grunt with a plasma pistol can take down your
health very quickly when given an opportunity to fire for more than a
second or two.  The first thing I do whenever I enter a level is run
backward and see who follows, this is a standard "retreat strategy".
For example, hiding behind doors is an excellent tactic.  In many
levels, opponents will not follow you, so you use the door as somewhat
of a shield -- open the door, fire a couple of charged plasma pistol
shots, then retreat and allow the door to close so that you can
regenerate shield.  You can do this similarly with obstacles, corners,
etc.  There's nothing magical about this.  So if you're dying
repeatedly in any particular scene, then consider a more patient
approach.  As a policy, you should never be running around in the open
when there are enemies around.  Always start far back, inch forward
until you see your first enemy, pick the appropriate weapon to
dispatch it, then proceed after it's dead.

The hardest scenes about finding hiding spaces are in the beginning of
levels, because you're often thrown into some open combat area.  Even
so, most of these levels beginnings actually have hiding post.  More
on that later in this section.

B. Learn scenes
------------------------------
There are generally quirks and tricks you can use for each scene.
Again, I'm not going to go through this because it's far too
laborious, and in general I am not going to answer questions for
people who are having trouble on a particular scene so don't ask.  For
some of the tougher scenes, I can play through up to 50 times to get
through.  During that time, I'll naturally learn the scene inside out
by the time I'm through.  So I'm assuming you will be able to too; my
main comment is that you need to approach Legendary with patience and
be willing to fight through the same checkpoint dozens of times until
you figure it out.  If you're thinking about giving up or asking for
help after dying several times, you're not going to make it through
and probably should try a lower difficulty level.

If I'm having trouble in a scene, I'll usually spend a couple of lives
running around the area mapping out where weapons, powerups, and
terrain are.  Dying, dying, and dying again doing the same thing each
time without any change usually means I'm not doing it right.  Spend
some time searching out the optimal way to approach each scene, then
work on your execution.

C. Use dropoffs
------------------------------
Some areas have cliffs or open portals.  These are your friends as
long as you don't fall down them, particularly against hunters.  The
easiest way to kill a hunter is through use of a pistol.  The second
easiest is to get it to charge at you when you're standing at the edge
of a cliff.  Most areas where you meet hunters will have one or the
other.  You can also sometimes flush normal enemies off of dropoffs
through grenade use.  Elites and grunts in particular will launch
themselves pretty far when you throw a grenade at them, so you can get
them to jump off of cliffs.  There are other areas where enemies such
as elites will be at a different level than you, such as on a raised
platform, and where it's nearly impossible to kill them because
they'll constantly hide and regenerate shields whenever hit.  One of
the best ways to handle this short of sniping them is to throw a
grenade at them and make them jump off the platform down to your
level.

D. Checkpoint wisely
------------------------------
Checkpoints almost always are triggered after you finish clearing out
a given group of enemies.  Because Halo loads each scene up as you
pass from one to other, there will never be a very long continuous
stream of enemies without some break.  So after you kill a group of
enemies and there are none other in sight, you should expect to
checkpoint soon.  This is all obvious information, but what is not
obvious is that sometimes you can go through a scene without
checkpointing.  This means that if you die in the next, you're setback
to starting over both scenes.  Getting through a scene without
checkpointing doesn't mean the scene doesn't have one, it means you
haven't reached a spot where you trigger it.  If after you kill your
enemies, you don't checkpoint soon, wander around the area until you
get the checkpoint message.  It's always there somewhere.

After clearing out enemies, be sure to backtrack and replenish your
weapons and ammo and do whatever other maintenance before going
forward and hitting the checkpoint.  Chances are that in most scenes
you will die at least once before successfully getting through it.  If
you did your maintenance before checkpointing for the previous scene,
then this saves you the trouble of having to do it all over again each
time you die and restart.  For example, if your plasma rifle is low on
ammo, first backtrack and find a replacement before going forward,
otherwise everytime you die during the next scene you'll have to go
back and do this.  In levels where you need to use a Banshee, generally
you'll checkpoint right as you get into the Banshee.

Some levels such as Level 4 are non-linear, in that you can go through
scenes multiple times and each time will checkpoint.  You can abuse
checkpoints in these types of missions becuase you essentially can get
a manual save whenever you cross the boundary between two checkpoints.
In other words, in these levels you'll always checkpoint when you run
over certain spots.  Find where those are and return to them whenever
you need to save.  It's too bad that Halo doesn't allow you to save at
will but that's part of the reason Legendary provides such a good
challenge.

E. Notice respawning enemies
------------------------------
There are some areas, particularly with flood, where enemies will
continue to respawn indefinitely, usually everytime you pass through
or near an area.  In other words, you can never clear them out
completely.  These spots are rare but it can save you a lot of
frustration if you recognize them.  For example, in Level 5 when
you're escaping into the forest with your marines, there are a few
spots that constantly regenerate flood (they'll typically fall out of
trees).  In Level 10, engineering room, flood will constantly respawn
at the ramps to the third level.  You can wait around 30 minutes and
they'll just keep coming until you move out of the area.  The best
way to handle these is to engage and kill the current enemies there
as quickly as possible, then run through the area so that none
respawn.  Just be careful of flood carriers when running through,
particularly in Level 10.


F. Bypass open areas
------------------------------
Sometimes you'll come across an open area where there's nowhere
obvious to retreat to.  Remember that the best way to handle enemies
in Legendary is to take them on in enclosed areas, often this means
that the first thing you do when entering a new scene is to retreat
into the previous and see what follows you.  If that's infeasible --
e.g. the retreat is blocked by a door suddenly becomes impassable --
then sometimes you can also run through the area and into the next to
find cover.  One example is in Level 6 right after you climb the tree
to get to the open area near the indoor installation, this is very
close to the beginning of the level.  You'll recognize this because
the first thing you'll see is friendly assault rifle fire and grenades
being thrown, and the covenant in retreat (there's not actually any
real marines doing this, it's all just scripted).  If you stay in this
open area and fight the covenant, you'll generally take a lot of
damage even if you use the shade gun there.  If you retreat, you'll go
back down a hill onto the tree and nobody will follow.  However, you
can run through the covenant forces and into the station, then make
your stand there.  There are well over a dozen grunts and jackals, and
taking them on from inside the entrance is astronomically easier than
fighting them in the woods.

G. Examples
------------------------------
Here's a couple of detailed walkthroughs for the more difficult
scenes.  I'm sure there are others that I have not run into yet, I'll
add onto this when I find more noteworthy ones.

a. Level 3 : After boarding the covenant ship.
This scene puts you into an exposed area surrounded by several doors.
Covenant come out in waves through any of these.  This includes groups
of jackals, grunts, and gold sword elites.  Unfortunately, no enemies
carry plasma rifles so you'll never be able to get a fresh one.  There
is one health pack here and a cloak.

First, before you get into this level, make sure you're at full
health.  If you're not, replay the previous level until you are.
There is a health pack near the lift of the previous level so there is
really no excuse for not having full health.  You should also have a
plasma rifle with as much charge as possible, a needler with full
ammo, and a full stock of plasma and frag grenades.  If you cannot
find those in the previous scene, then go back further.  There is a
cache of frag grenades near the beginning of the level, and you can
certainly find all covenant items.  I suppose you can also kill the
marine reinforcements to see if they have any grenades.  Drop your
sniper rifle, it's not worth carrying in general through the next
level.  You could keep it, because there are a couple of spots later
on where it could be useful, but it takes up an inventory slot and if
you drop it during combat, most likely it'll disappear pretty soon.

The first enemy will always be an invisible sword elite.  Kill it
immediately with your plasma rifle; if you don't kill it fast, then
restart.  Now look at your radar for the masses of red blips.
Whenever you see one, go towards that door and chuck a plasma grenade
in there as soon as the door opens.  Jackals and grunts are both only
mediocre at dodging plasma grenades so you can often do a lot of
damage or at least force them to jump away, which means they won't be
firing.  The types of enemies that appear, and the doors they appear
out of, are totally random.  Just hope that you don't run into too
many sword elites, because these are by far the hardest to kill.
Remember that all elites will stop and "power up" as soon as they're
hit for the first time or shortly after seeing you.  Try to stick the
elite with a plasma grenade while it's stationary.  Otherwise, use
your needler, it is by far the fastest way to kill the gold elite.
I've tried using my sniper rifle but this is just too iffy; it takes
around 3 hits and if you miss, you die.  That said, if you're actually
really good with the sniper and can take out gold elites consistently,
then definitely bring along your sniper rifle.

Keep your marines alive as long as possible, because they often throw
frag grenades and this will help out tremendously.  Also, the longer
your marines are alive, the more they're diverting fire away from you.
After they're dead, things become very difficult because all covenant
will focus on you.  At this point, it's a good idea to run into one of
the inaccessible doors and take things slowly.  Two of the doors meet
in a common passage, the others go to a dead end.  Wait until a group
of covenant comes out of one of the two doors, and kill them and run
through that.  Covenant except for gold elite will not go through the
door to pursue you, although once in a while they'll come out of one
of the other doors leading into the passage.  Usually there's a lot of
dead bodies and weapons near the door.  I'll open the door, grab a
plasma pistol, and run back quickly.  Then, it's just a matter of
patience -- charge your plasma pistol, open the door and unload it,
retreat.  You don't really have to aim because there's invariably
going to be a target nearby that it'll hit.  When your pistol is
depleted, chuck it and get another.  Save your needler for when you
see groups of enemies or when a gold elite is nearby.  Save your
plasma rifle (if it has any ammo left to begin with), you'll need it
for the hunters or for when enemies come into your passage.  Speaking
of that, this is where I usually die, because those enemies will
appear right in my face.  The best way to handle this is to chuck a
plasma grenade, and use your rifle.  The needler works too but because
they'll be near you and it does delayed damage, you may sustain hits
before your target explodes.

The music will change eventually, then you'll checkpoint after a
couple of other waves.  Whew.  It took me many many hours to get
through this.  Finally, two hunters will come out when everything else
is dead.  Killing them is not eays because most likely you'll only
have some plasma pistols and needlers available.  If there is an
assault rifle, definitely use that.  Otherwise, just be patient.  You
may want to consider luring one of the hunters into the passage (just
back up towards the door and it'll open when the hunter gets close to
it).  The other hunter won't go through the door unless it's nearby.
The drawback is that the passage is quite narrow so there is less
strafing room.

I would save the cloak until near after your marines are dead and
you're taking on enemies from the passage.  If you can get to it,
it'll be very helpful.  Sneak up behind the gold elites and club them
while they're inactive, etc.  Just be aware that any action other than
melee attack will reveal your position, and keep your distance from
your enemies because they'll sometimes react if you get too close.

b. Level 3 : Large open room interior
This is a huge room with a lot of crates, an upper ledge where enemies
will appear, and a dropoff.  There are two health packs here and some
grenades.  You'll checkpoint only once, after the first few waves.
Using plasma pistol charged shots works fine against most enemies
here, you can just fire it blindly at the upper ledges and they'll
home in on any grunts there even if you can't see them.  In front of
you and on the left near the dropoff, against the wall that forms one
of the upper ledges, there's some large crates that you can stand
behind and be completely hidden from most fire.

There is a set number of waves that will come at you, the place they
appear depends on where you are standing.  The easiest waves to handle
are ones where grunts and jackals appear on the ledge above you and to
your right.  You can hide in the safe area I mentioned above near the
ledge, keep out occasionally, and fire charged shots to take them out.
The most difficult are the waves that come from the door that you
entered the room from.  When that happens, I'll chuck a fragmentation
grenade at the door, unload a few plasma grenades, and run clear to
the other room and hide behind the large crates near where the hunters
will come out of later.  From there, I keep out occasionally and take
out enemies one by one.

The main difficulty about this level is that you have to fight a LOT
of waves of enemies, and there's one red elite on the upper ledge with
a plasma rifle who will pick you off relentlessly.  There is no easy
way short of luck for killing him unless you kept your sniper rifle
from the beginning of the level.  There are a lot of crates up there,
and he'll always come out, shoot at you while strafing, and hide
behind a crate to regenerate as soon as you hit him back.  You can try
to get lucky with a needler or plasma pistol but red elites tend to
dodge these very well.  You can try to get luck with a plasma grenade
but this is really not practical.  The easiest way (and it's not easy)
that I've found is to flush him off the ledge by tossing a plasma
grenade near him.  I'll get right up to the ledge, face almost
vertical, and toss a grenade upward, it'll land somewhere on the
ledge.  Repeat until he decides to jump off to avoid it, sometimes
you'll get extremely lucky and he'll jump clear out of the dropoff.
But in any case, as soon as he's on the same level as you, it's much
easier to kill him with a needler.  Also, there is also an overshield
in this level.  I recommend just getting it when you need to fight
that wave of enemies.

After much work, the music will change and you'll finally come up
against 2 hunters.  As far as I can tell, there is no checkpoint.
Fortunately, the hunters aren't all that hard to kill because you can
use the dropoff.  Just lure them there, let them charge you, and
strafe so that they run off the ledge.

There are two health packs here and some frag grenades, use the health
packs sparingly.  Unless you're absolutely amazing, you'll probably
have sustained some damage from earlier in the level.  But, try to get
through at least up until the first checkpoint without using a health
pack.  Things are more difficult after that, and having just one
health pack afterward means that you'll most likely end up taking
damage.  Don't be afraid to keep restarting the first scene whenever
you take body damage, so that you checkpoint with full health.  It
really sucks if you're at one red and accidentally checkpoint here.

c. Level 5 : Start
This is a tough level because as soon as you're dropped off, you're
confronted by two red elites and a swarm of grunts.  There are two
stationary guns here that are tempting to use, but if you get in them
then you'll most likely get grenaded or just whittled down by direct
fire.  When you're dropped off, look to the extreme right of the
board.  There is a large square column there.  Run immediately towards
it and strafe to avoid fire.  If the elites are quick and start firing
at you, they'll probably take off a lot of health before you get
there, just restart in that instance or chuck a grenade at the door to
make them dodge when they come out.

The elites will pursue you to the front side of the pillar but will
never go fully around, so you can hide behind it indefinitely.  The
grunts will man the guns and stand around doing nothing.  Pick them
off with your pistol until they're all dead.  Now you just have to
deal with the elites.  This is the hard part.  Assault rifle and
pistol are poor weapons to use against them.  There are two methods
for taking them out.  First, you can try to run past them and get back
to the entrance, there you can pick up a plasma pistol and some
grenades, or use the shade guns.  This is difficult because the elites
will pick you off as you run past them, you can try grenading them
repeatedly to make them dodge but that's not easy either.  The second
thing you can do is wait until they're stationary and facing in one
direction.  Typically after not seeing you for a while, they'll hunch
over close to the pillar in some random direction and become inactive.
If you approach when they're facing away from you, you can melee them
and kill them instantly.  Do this once and then pick up a plasma rifle
to finish off the other, or be patient and do it twice.  In one
instance, I was able to take out both elites with melee in one pass
because they were both facing away from me.  You should be able to get
through this without losing any health, so be patient -- run behind
the pillar, wait until the elites stop shooting, inch forward from the
other side of the pillar and see if they're facing away from you,
repeat until you get a good shot at their backs.

******************************
2. Combat Strategy
******************************

Here's some general approaches to combat.  There will be far more
detailed information in the enemies and weapons section, so this
includes all non-specific facets of combat.

A. Conserve health
------------------------------
In general, you should replay scenes until you can get through them
without losing any health.  The only scenes where you should lose
health at all are ones at the beginning where there is no easy place
to hide.  Otherwise, assuming that you have enough patience, you
should always adopt a strategy that allows you to kill enemies while
exposing yourself to the least amount of direct fire.  Granted, you
can't be perfect all the time, and there will be scenes where it is
possible but difficult to get by without taking a scratch.  Learn to
be able to discern which is of that type so that you don't needlessly
lose health getting through the easier scenes.  In particular, note
that checkpoints come with no warning.  If you've dispatched a bunch
of enemies and have taken more damage than you think is reasonable,
immediately pause and restart the level so that it doesn't save before
you're able to.  Even bearing this in mind, you'll certainly get into
situations where you accidentally checkpoint with far too little
health.  This is why it's important to try to keep health up as much
as possible, to account for situations such as these as well as scenes
where you will invariably get through with some damage.  The worst
feeling is to be halfway through a level, accidentally checkpoint when
you have 1 bar of health remaining, and not be able to get through the
rest, and having to start over from the very beginning.

Note that your health bar is discretized whereas your shield bar is
not.  What I mean by this is that it's possible to take health damage
even if you don't see it.  You can take a few plasma shots before your
health goes down by a notch.  However, this doesn't mean that your
health is staying the same.  Just remember that whenever you take a
hit when your shields are down, you will sustain health damage, even
if it doesn't show up.

B. Abuse sleeping enemies
------------------------------
Grunts often show up in scenes sleeping and should be taken out
quietly with a melee attack.  Melee attacks will kill anything that is
sleeping, or all covenant, except hunters, that have their backed
turned.  These are all obvious comments -- of course you should take
out sleeping grunts.  However, there are some scenes where you can get
through the entirety just by melee attack, but where it may not be
obvious how to in the beginning.  Usually sleeping grunts are close to
elites or jackals, which will call out and cause them to wake up if
you alert those.  However, in some of these scenes, you can avoid the
elites or jackals and take out all the grunts if you're patient, this
may involve getting familiar with their patrol routes.  Elites in
particular are often prone to being knocked out from behind too
because they'll often stand upright and motionless.

As an example, for Level 4 there is a scene where you meet a bunch of
sleeping grunts after going indoors, shortly after a huge fight
involving covenant and your supporting marines.  This is the scene
right after you're unable to take your tank further.  In that scene,
there are a LOT of sleeping grunts, and a few elites.  The elites can
all be taken out by melee attack -- some of them are staionary while
others go through predictable patrols where you can get behind them.
If you charge into that with guns blazing, you can also win the scene
but it's much more difficult.  Even if you can't take out everything
without waking up a single grunt, you should be able to figure out how
to kill at least 3/4 of the enemies and at least one elite.

There are other scenes where grunts start asleep but will wake up
after a short amount of time because there are unavoidable elites
nearby, such as on the Level 4 bridge scenes.  In these, you just have
to take out as many as possible as fast as possible, there's no magic
to it.

C. Let enemies fight
------------------------------
There are scenes where you'll have both covenant and flood, or both
enemy sentinels and flood.  Sit back, relax, and enjoy the fireworks,
preferably with a zoom weapon so you can see the action better.
Generally the flood will win all fights.  You may want to look at the
outcome of the fight and then see if you should help out in case
there's too many enemies left.  For example, if the flood slaughter
the covenant, maybe you can chuck some grenades at the covenant to
whittle them down a bit while they're fighting.

D. Items may disappear
------------------------------
One very annoying aspect of Halo is that dropped items do not stay
around indefinitely.  Rather, there seems to be a maximum number of
supported dropped items per scene, so that older weapons start
disappearing.  This is particularly annoying when enemies you are
killing are in some inaccessible area where you can't retrieve their
weapons (e.g. a parallel bridge), meanwhile the ones you can get a
hold of are disappearing as you kill those enemies.

Fortunately, there is only a max number of items per scene.  This
means that once you are done with a scene, you can safely assume that
dropped items there will remain persistent.  This is particularly
relevant when you have some rarer item that you need to drop for some
time, such as a rocket launcher or sniper.  In levels where I have
access to these, I'll typically carry them around but rarely use them.
This means they take up inventory space.  When getting into large
fights, though, I'll often need access to a secondary weapon, so I'll
drop my sniper rifle and pick up something to use temporarily.
Unfortunately, sometimes when I come back, my rifle is gone.  The
safer way to do this is to go back to a previous scene (you can tell
because the game will give the "loading...done" message as you pass
into a previous checkpoint area) and drop your weapon there.

Items that start in the scene, i.e. are not dropped by killed enemies,
will not disappear.  So if you run across a rocket launcher, ask first
if you really need to pick it up right now.  It's often better to
leave it sitting there, and backtrack later to get it so that it does
not tie up an inventory slot and so that you don't have to worry about
it vanishing if you drop it later on.

******************************
3. NPCs
******************************

I'm using NPC as "Non Player Character" here, this includes marines
and sentinels.  Here's some basic strategies for how to protect and
utilize your NPCs.

A. Protecting marines
------------------------------
In Legendary, marines die very quickly, and there are some levels
where you absolutely cannot save them no matter what you do.  As a
general policy, should you try?  This is a matter of some debate.  As
a general policy, I think you should look for ways to keep your
marines alive; after all, it's no different from how you will
generally die easily in Legendary and thus look for ways to keep
yourself alive.

Marines provide a lot of useful support.  They will not kill many
enemies with their machine guns, but their frag grenades are very
useful and they generally throw them effectively.  Marines' verbal
remarks will also alert you when there are enemies around, and also
when you've killed enemies.  The latter point may not seem that
important, but there are plenty of times when you'll be firing or
sniping at something in the distance and will not be sure whether it
is dead.  And there will be other times when enemies don't necessarily
appear on your radar but your marine friends will detect them first.
Marines are also very useful in vehicles such as the Warthog since you
can't fire while driving.  Marines with shotguns will take down flood
pretty fast in the later levels.  Finally, I find the game much more
rewarding just from an aesthetic level if I can keep my marines alive,
because the addition of marines into the game and their funny
interactions is part of what makes the game enjoyable.  My favorite
marine saying: "Hey, that was Bob!", after one of the marines kills a
flood drone.

Just because your marines are frail does not mean that you cannot
protect them.  For Level 3, I was able to keep most of my marines
alive until the scenes right before I boarded the covenant ship.  For
Level 6, I kept most of my marines alive through the entire level.  In
fact, in almost all levels, I'm able to keep at least some of my
marines alive until the end.  Think of it as an added challenge; after
all, you've got to be a challenge-seeker in the first place to be
playing Legendary.  I'm not going to force you to believe that
spending time saving your marines is always the right idea; you have
to weigh the tradeoff between what they give you versus how much
trouble it is to save them.  My main challenge is that you don't just
assume off the bat that they cannot be protected at reasonable cost.
Generally there are achievable ways if you're patient enough to look
for them.

As a caveat, there are some situations where it's absolutely
impossible to save your marines, and attempting to keep them alive
only ensures that you'll sustain heavy damage yourself.  There's only
a couple of scenes I've found so far where this happens, so don't give
up too easily because in most scenes you can save your marines and
it's worth doing so.

B. Sniper marine uses
------------------------------
Sniper marines are absolutely vital and you should always replay
scenes where sniper marines die.  They fire frequently and never miss.
You can also use their tracers to target far away enemies that you
cannot see.  This is particularly useful if you're in a vehicle such
as a tank and your sniper passengers are firing at distant targets
such as hunters that take multiple hits to kill or are impervious to
sniper shots.  Just fire in the same direction as the tracer, and stop
after the marines say the equivalent of "Nice shot".

Sniper marines are very useful in Warthogs since the Warthog can
provide them with quite a bit of protection.  They will always get
into the shotgun seat if it's available.

C. Herding marines
------------------------------
Unfortunately there is no squad based control for Halo, one would
ideally like to be able to give commands to marines such as to fall
back and stay out of trouble.  Marines will generally run towards
enemies and engage them, and will do silly things like open doors and
expose themselves to fire if you're too close to a door.  You can
force marines to retreat by just running away yourself -- eventually
the marines will stop fighting and will follow you.  Unfortunately,
they're often dead by the time you get far enough away from combat;
however, one tactic is to immediately backtrack when you see new
enemies and get them and your marines to follow you where you can
later handle them in favorable terrain.  This is often better than
staying in an open room and watching everything including yourself
die.

There are also instances where you can keep marines stuck in an area
for their protection.  For example, in Level 4, the first marine scene
involves a large open area where you have access to a warthog and your
nearby marines are getting slaughtered.  You can save a couple of
marines into your warthog then run the warthog back through the door
that lead to the scene.  Get out of the warthog and take the rest of
the scene on foot.  The marines will try to follow you once you get
out, but you can stop them if you backed the warthog into the passage.
That way the gunner and the shotgun both cannot get past the warthog
to follow you.

D. Marines and vehicles
------------------------------
One of the best reasons to save your marines is because they're
valuable accompany you in vehicles.  By no accident, often when you
have access to a Warthog or Scorpion tank, you'll also have marines
nearby.  Marines on vehicles will last longer because the vehicle
provides natural protection.  For example, if you want to protect your
shotgun marine in your Warthog, turn it so that it faces away from
your enemies.  This of course will also prevent your marine from
firing at those targets on its other side, but this is often
strategically o.k.  For example, if you're facing a bunch of enemies
in front of you, only the right side can hit your shotgun marine and
vice versa be hit by that marine.  The tank provides similar
protection although it's much less effective.

It's worth experimenting around to see how to best utilize your
marines while protecting them.  In particular, for Warthog scenes, I
often find that the best thing to do is to get out of my vehicle and
leave my marines in a good defensible firing position.  I then can
fire my own weapon while they provide cover support, this is generally
better than running rampant into the middle of a swarm of enemies and
getting myself and them killed.  For smaller groups of enemies or
where I have maneuvering space, though, I'll often charge in anyway.
As long as I'm in motion, I can dodge most shots or force clusters of
enemies to keep running away from my Warthog as I try to run them
over.  Experiment with a bit to see how to approach enemies so that
you maximally protect your marines.  I usually charge directly at
enemies and then veer clockwise to my right so that my driver's side
is exposed to their fire as I try to run them over.

Be sure to keep tabs on your marine health before you checkpoint.  If
they've taken too much damage, it might be better to restart the scene
unless you can backtrack to another point where you have a stock of
fresh marines.  Killing badly injured marines is also a sound tactic
if you can't stop them from being the ones to gett into your vehicle.
Just don't kill too many or eventually they'll turn on you.  Killing
sniper marines to get sniper rifles and ammo is also sometimes a very
good idea, although it's certainly a tradeoff since those marines are
the most helpful for support.

E. Sentinels
------------------------------
Sentinels are your friends through Level 6, then become your enemies
later.  Sentinels individually do not do much damage but concentrated
fire will take out individual targets fairly quickly.  Their real
value to me is that when they fire at something, I know it's there,
and this is very helpful in Level 6 because the level is so dark.

Sentinels don't do as much damage as it may seem.  The issue is that
although sentinels fire a continuous beam, this doesn't mean they do
continuous damage.  Their beams sweep a small area and thus slice
through a target.  For smaller targets, this means that for half or
more of the time, the beam isn't actually hitting the target.

During times when I do want to keep sentinels alive, I can usually
help them by tossing grenades and attacking aggressively such that the
flood are attracted to me versus the sentinels.  Flood will kill
sentinels very quickly -- their shots are accurate, they'll leap and
melee attack, and sometimes (not coincidentally) they'll have rocket
launchers in scenes where sentinels are helping out.  That said, I can
generally keep my sentinels alive in Level 6.


==================================================
=== III. WEAPONS
==================================================
==================================================

******************************
1.. Held Weapons
******************************

The beauty of Halo is that all weapons are useful.  If you play in
lower difficulty levels, you'll quickly prioritize weapons -- for
example, plasma rifles and shotguns are great against everything and
plasma pistols are rarely worth the time.  Legendary is a completely
different beast so you'll find yourself using so-called weak weapons
frequently.  This is because in Legendary, you can only rarely attack
enemies head on without losing considerable health, even if those
enemies are lowly grunts.  Legendary is all about picking off targets
from relative safety.

A. Assault rifle
------------------------------
I would get rid of the assault rifle in favor of just about anything
against either covenant or flood.  Assault rifles pale in comparison
to plasma rifles for damage output, and plasma rifles in particular do
a lot more damage against elite shields than assault rifles.  The
assault rifle reloading time is absolutely atrocious.  Their accuracy
is poor when firing sustained, but firing in controlled bursts
typically doesn't do enough damage agianst anything to be feasible.
You can empty a whole clip into a red elite and do barely any damage.

One of the main drawbacks of assault rifles in Legendary is that it
takes a lot of ammo to kill anything, so you'll be reloading
frequently.  For plasma rifle, even on periodic fire it does more
damage, and you'll never have to reload.  On lower difficulty levels,
one clip will take out most enemies so you can reload between fights.
In Legendary, you'll spend almost a whole clip dropping one flood,
then have to reload while the others are swarming at you.

Assault rifles are semi-useful against flood since flood do not have
shields and are generally large targets.  However, plasma rifles still
kill flood faster.  Even a pistol does better.  I would only use
assault rifles against flood until I find a plasma rifle or shotgun.

The assault rifle's display also acts as a compass, although this is
generally not useful.  Levels are fairly simple in that you don't tend
to get lost, so this feature is more a cosmetic versus useful one.

The one target that assault rifles really shine against are banshees,
because assault rifles are the only fast-firing hit-scan weapon.
Banshees are ordinarily difficult to hit with projectile weapons
except on an attack run because they weave and fly fairly far away
when preparing for an approach.

B. Needler
------------------------------
Needlers are your best weapon against elite.  Gold elites are nearly
impossible to kill with anything except a needler or heavy ordinance
(e.g. rocket launcher).  The drawbacks of needlers is that they don't
carry much ammo, and against covenant they are all but useless against
jackals.  Think of a needler somewhat like a guided plasma grenade
launcher.  Depending on how many needles you pump into a single
target, it will either explode once, twice, or three times.  Needles
travel slowly but opponents will not attempt to dodge them, and
needles fire at high frequency such that once the first needle reaches
its target, the subsequent ones will most likely too.  This makes the
needler a great fire-and-forget weapon.  Duck your body into a room,
aim at the nearest elite or grunt, discharge your full clip, and duck
back out.  The needler explosions are quite impressive and since they
have a delay time before they explode, similar to a plasma grenade,
this gives the target some time to run frantically towards his buddies
and take them out by the explosion too.  For jackals, I'll sometimes
take out their shields with a plasma shot then pump them full of
needles while they're retreating towars other jackals so that they
take out everything around them.

Because the needler doesn't hold much ammo, I use it sparingly,
primarily against elites.  If I see that my enemies have needlers,
I'll use mine more liberally because I can recharge in ammo.
Otherwise, the needler makes a great secondary weapon.  Accumulate
ammo, use it once in a while to clear out groups of enemies.  Or, if
I'm passing by a needler, I might temporarily drop my secondary
weapon, empty the needler at whatever is nearby, then swap it back for
my secondary weapon.

Just remember that needlers are almost entirely ineffective against
jackals since the needles will bounce off its shields, and needlers
are not as well guided as charged plasma shots so you will have to aim
the minimally.

One annoyance is that red elites are unusually good at strafing
randomly while fighting you.  In open combat, they will typically fire
for a short time then sidestep or find cover.  This means that
needlers and other slow projectile weapons are sometimes difficult to
use against them.

Needlers are dangerous to use against flood drones for the same reason
that plasma grenades are -- drones can leap to cover a lot of distance
in a short amount of time, and having a drone covered with needles
near you is bad news.  However, needlers are fine against flood drones
provided they are sufficiently far away.  Since flood clump, needler
explosions can end up doing massive damage.  Needlers are also very
useful for the many scenes where floood will be sniping at you from
stationary elevated positions, since you can just fire the shots in
their general direction.  If you're not using a pistol as your
secondary weapon against flood, I would suggest using a needler.
Whenever you come across a group of flood that are in the distance,
unload a clip as you backpedal, then switch over to your shotgun
while they close the distance.

C. Pistol
------------------------------
The pistol is useful in a wide variety of situations, don't
automatically discount it just because it's a default weapon for
mission starts and looks puny.  It is first of all a hunter killer.  A
single pistol or sniper shot to the exposed back of a hunter will kill
it in one shot.  Generally whenever you find a pistol lying randomly
around, that's a good indication that there's a hunter nearby.
Sometimes hunters will not even detect you before you see them.  Use
the zoom feature, wait until they have their backs turned, and kill
them with a single shot.

Pistols work fine against jackals.  Jackals have two exposed sections
in their shields that you can shoot through.  Since pistols fire
accurately and are hit-scan, it is not difficult to shoot through this
gap, and jackals hit by pistols will flinch.  I find it easier than,
say, using a plasma rifle, because pistol bullet shots are "smaller".
That said, I wouldn't make a habit of using pistols against jackals.

Pistols work surprisingly well for direct damage.  Remember that
unlike plasma pistols, they are automatic so you can hold down the
trigger.  They are very accurate and with the zoom feature you can
pick off enemies before they even close into firing range.  I use the
pistol almost exclusively as my long range weapon against the flood.
In open areas where I meet flood, e.g. all throughout Level 6, I'll
put on my zoom and retreat away from them, picking them off as I go.
Often they just run towards me without firing.  I can get through some
of the early scenes in Level 6 without a single shot being fired at me
using this technique.  The pistol is even better than the assault
rifle for direct damage against flood.  Two shots will kill a flood
carrier, whereas it takes nearly half a clip sometimes with an assault
rifle.  Flood drone marines can be dropped with as few as two shots
too.  Since the pistol is accurate, it's also easy to zoom in and aim
at the flood carriers that are in the midst of the flood drones coming
towards me.  Two shots and they explode, taking out everything around
them.

D. Plasma pistol
------------------------------
This is by far the most effective weapon against covenant in the game.
It is difficult if not impossible to solve Legendary without constant
use of these things.  The drawback is that you'll be cycling through
them frequently because the main use is with overcharged shots, which
deplete ammo quickly.  But on the other hand, the most common enemies
carry them and thus you'll find yourself lacking them.  If I could
carry two of the same weapon, I would go around always with two plasma
pistols during covenant stages.  Plasma pistols are the only weapons
that are very effective against every single covenant type.

The main idea behind plasma pistols is to forget about the normal
firing mode.  If you're going to firing normally, then get a plasma
rifle or assault rifle, because otherwise your fingers are going to
get very sore and you'll be very dead.  Instead, abuse the overcharge
feature.  Treat the plasma pistol as if it is a slow firing guided
missile weapon.  A charged blast is both guided and does massive
damage.  It will take out any elite's shields in one hit, it will take
out a jackal shield in one hit.  3 charged shots will kill a red or
blue elite, 2 or 3 will kill a jackal, 1 or 2 will kill a grunt.

The charge shots are fire-and-forget, they'll home in on even enemies
that you don't know are there, such as ones hidden behind raised
ledges.  If you even suspect an enemy is nearby, fire your charged
shot and it'll most likely hit it.  This gives the obvious advantage
that you do not have to expose yourself to direct fire in order to use
the plasma pistol.  If you're near a room full of enemies, just inch
your body in, fire, and then retreat from the resulting hail of
bullets.  Repeat until your enemies are dead.  Practice getting used
to firing charged shots as fast as you can, i.e. knowing how long you
have to hold the trigger before your shot is charged.

Elites have an annoying habit of running and hiding once they're hit
by a charged shot.  This isn't foolproof, though, so I'd just
repeatedly fire at them until you kill them.  Sometimes they stick
around anyway, sometimes they're still reeling from the shot,
sometimes they hide in such a way that they're still exposed.  For
jackals, usually I'll hit them with a charged shot to kill their
shield, then either use a few normal shots to finish them off or
switch to my other weapon.  For faraway jackals, I just hit them with
2 or 3 charged shots.  You have to be quick about this because jackal
shields will regenerate after a while.  Like all covenant, they go
through hit-stun (i.e. reel when they're hit) from charged shots so
this gives you plenty of time to figure out how to finish them off.

Charged shots are also very useful for killing distant enemies that
you cannot reach.  For example, in Level 4, there are several areas
where you're going across a bridge and there are grunts on parallel
but inaccessible bridge that fire at you.  Taking them out is fairly
trivial -- just fire charged shots at the bridge and they'll
automatically home in on the grunts and kill them.  You can also use
the needler for this purpose.

I would not generally use plasma pistols on flood.  Flood don't
sit around and let you charge up your plasma pistol to fire at
them repeatedly.  Instead, after your first shot, they'll be close
or right on you.  Plasma pistols do not do more damage against flood
as they do with covenant.  It still takes 2 overcharged shots to
kill a flood carrier; in comparision, it takes 2 quick pistol
shots.  The only time I would use plasma pistols against flood
is if I'm trying to pick off enemies that are on ledges or in
some other inaccessible area.  However, in this case, needlers
work far better.

E. Plasma Rifle
------------------------------
Plasma rifles are a semi decent weapon against all covenant, although
they are not great against any particular covenant type.  They are far
less useful against flood since flood do not take extra damage from
covenant weapons.  Against covenant, the main drawback is that for
Legendary, you will rarely if ever come up ahead when fighting covenant
enemies directly, so I generally use the plasma rifle only to take out
isolated enemies or small groups such as grunts and jackals.  This is
not to say that plasma rifles are bad weapons; I almost always use one
as my primary for covenant because it holds a lot of ammo and is
decent against all covenant types.

Plasma rifles work o.k. against jackals because shots deplete their
shields.  However, jackal shields regenerate as they're being hit, so
if you let off the trigger then the shield will come back to full
strength quickly.  Usually I'll either have to aim at the cracks or
charge and melee attack a Jackal versus try to wear down its shield,
or strafe around hitting them until I get the Jackal to roll, which
usually exposes its body.

Against elites, anything above a blue elite is bad news to attack with
a plasma rifle because you'll take far more damage than you inflict.
Invisible elites, however, are fine to take on with plasma rifles
since they do not have shields.  Using a plasma rifle against a gold
elite is pretty suicidal.

Note that although plasma rifle projectiles are not hit-scan (i.e. do
not hit their targets instantaneously), they are very fast, especially
compared to plasma pistol shots.  This is moreso a caution when plasma
rifles are used against you -- there are very little chance of dodging
shots unless you are at a considerable distance.

Plasma rifles are decent but not great weapons against flood.  I'd
generally rather use a shotgun.  Plasma rifles work o.k. though
as a secondary weapon for long range, particularly since they are
accurate.  However, in that case I would rather have a pistol or
needler.

F. Rocket launcher
------------------------------
The rocket launcher is perhaps the only weapon that is very useful
against every single type of enemy.  However, it is of course limited
in ammunition so you'll want to use it sparingly.  I primarily keep it
around to take out vehicles such as tanks, and to overturn vehicles
and guns so that covenant cannot use them.  It's ocasionally useful
for clearing out clusters of enemies, but then so are grenades so it
doesn't give a hugely unique advantage.

Like the sniper rifle, the rocket launcher often just takes up space
in my inventory.  But also like the sniper rifle, it makes some scenes
so much easier to get through that it's hard to pass up.

G. Shotgun
------------------------------
The shotgun is your premiere weapon against the flood.  A well placed
close range shotgun blast will kill most flood in one hit.  Shotguns
are fairly effective against covenant too although I would carry a
covenant-specific alternate weapon such as a plasma rifle if I'm in a
level that has both flood and covenant because covenant like to keep
their distance in general.  Shotguns are primarily a close range
weapon although they do mediocre at distance.  Since their blast area
is wide, they also don't require great aim -- just shoot whenever the
targetting circle is red.

Shotguns carry a pretty good ammo clip and you can reload partway
at any time.  If you pull the trigger while reloading, you'll finish
reloading the next round and then fire.  If enemies are coming
at me sporadically, I'll try to reload after every shot.  Otherwise,
I find that a single clip of shotgun shells generally will last me
through a whole scene (or at least a whole group of flood in one
scene).

Shotguns don't hold a tremendous amount of ammo, so don't be reckless
with them.  They hold enough to be a primary weapon, and against flood
you'll find new shotgun ammo fairly regularly.  But there are times
when I'll drop it and pick up an assault rifle or what not to use
temporarily for a scene if I think I'd still be safe, in order to
conserve ammo.

H. Sniper rifle
------------------------------
Sniper rifles are generally given at specific scenes where they are
intended to be used in that scene or near it.  Sniper rifles have many
uses, the primary drawback is that they do zero damage against flood
and they hold very limited ammo.  Like a pistol, a sniper rifle can
take out a hunter in one shot.  A head shot can kill even a red elite
outright.  The primary advantage of the sniper rifle is of course the
ability to snipe.  Most targets can be taken out before they are even
aware that you exist.  The night vision feature is also useful in
darker settings.

Overall when I find a sniper rifle, I'll usually pick it up and use it
as a secondary weapon.  However, since I'll use it only sparingly, it
tends to just take up space.  So I'll find myself often dropping it to
use some other weapon, then picking it up later.  Just make sure that
the rifle doesn't disappear on you after you drop it.

One interesting use for the sniper rifle is to site for other weapons,
particularly for rocket launchers.  Pick a faraway target such as a
stationary tank with your sniper, zoom in on it, then switch over to
your rocket launcher and fire without having moved your site.  Your
rocket will hit exactly where you were zooming in from the sniper
rifle.

Sniper rifles are almost totally useless against flood, they do very
little damage.  Do not waste sniper shots on flood.

******************************
2. Grenades
******************************

Use grenades very regularly.  In legendary, many covenant enemies
carry grenades, so you'll rarely be without them even if you throw
them habitually.  This is a far different philosophy than most first
person shooters, where you'll use grenades very sparingly since they
are hard to come by.  Just be aware that covenant do not drop
fragmentation grenades, so generally when fighting covenant I'll only
use plasma grenades except for situations where I absolutely need to
use one of my frags.  Some covenant drop a ton of grenades, in
particular silver elite (since they're fond of chucking those grenades
at you) will often drop 3 or 4 grenades.  This is great for replenishing
your stock and for causing chain reactions later on.

In general, whenever a pack of opponents appear, I chuck a grenade in
their direction.  This may ideally kill some of them, but will at
least scatter them.  Otherwise, they come in guns blazing and I take a
lot of damage.  Grenades are great for flushing enemies out of various
spots, or getting them to jump off of platforms and cliffs.

Flood carry relatively fewer grenades so you'll have to be more
careful about using them.  However, since flood tend to charge and in
doing so clump, and because they do not attempt to avoid grenades at
all, grenades are devestating against them.  When you enter a scene,
retreat to get the flood to start chasing you and clump up, then toss
a frag towards them.  And since flood carry both types of grenades,
you can be fairly liberal about using both types against them.

Whether you favor plasma vs. fragmentation grenades in general is
moreso a stylistic issue.  Plasma grenades stick to opponents and thus
are both harder to dodge and also increase the chances that you'll
take out multiple opponents if e.g. the one you hit freaks out and
runs towards his buddies.  Fragmentation grenades have a far shorter
fuse and thus are better for getting out of trouble spots and have a
higher probability of doing damage if chucked haphazardly.  Plasma
grenades are generally more useful against vehicles since they'll
stick to things like tanks.

One important use for plasma grenades is in sticking elites.  Shortly
after you engage elites (usually a bit after they first spot you, or
when they're first hit), they'll go stationary for a moment and do
their war cry.  This is a prime opportunity to stick a grenade onto
them.  All elites including gold will die to a point blank plasma
grenade, so usually I get them to war cry, stick a grenade on them,
and backpedal until they explode.

Keep in mind that grenades trigger other grenades.  This sometimes
works to your detriment but it's also sometimes the only way to
actually hit opponents with your own grenades.  Generally in
Legendary, opponents (with the exception of Jackals and flood) are
smart enough to see a grenade and dodge out of the way.  However, they
do not consider grenades that might be on the ground.  The resulting
chain reactions can often take them out.  Generally, don't worry that
this will "waste" grenades on the ground, because you get plenty at
least from Covenant since almost all of them will drop grenades when
killed.

On the flip side, be careful that you're not caught in chain
reactions if you're standing near grenades.  Remember that flood
carriers in particular trigger grenades when they blow.  If you've
been hanging around one area for a long time and are worried
about chain reactions, just toss your own plasma grenade near your
feet and run backward, this will cause all grenades in the area
you were standing to blow.  You're now safe to return to it.

If you trigger some enemies and then retreat, they'll eventually go
back to being inactive.  Often a good way of sticking a plasma grenade
on that pesky elite is to back off until it becomes inactive, then
inch forward until you can see it.  Often it'll be stationary and
facing the direction where you came from.  Aim carefully and stick a
plasma grenade on it, problem solved.

When fighting covenant, in general do not use plasma grenades unless
you throw them on the ground.  Flood drones can cover long distances
quickly when they close in to melee you, and having a plasma grenade
stuck onto one doing so is not good news.  Sometimes the plasma grenades
I throw at flood will simply not explode, I have no idea why not.

******************************
3. Mountable Weapons
******************************

A. Vehicle types
------------------------------
1. Warthog
The warthog is an indestructible human vehicle that houses a driver,
passenger, and gunner.  The warthog gun has infinite ammunition and
fires fairly rapidly, it is not very accurate when the trigger is
held down but is still effective.  The gunner can only shoot --
and generally can only be shot at -- by enemies on the right side.
The warthog is great for running over enemies, the general strategy
is to charge the enemy then bank so that you hit them with one of your
sides, this is more effective than trying to run them over straight
because the Warthog is longer than it is wide and hence you're
more likely to hit an enemy with your side than front.

2. Scorpion Tank
Scorpion tanks deal heavy damage and offer good protection for the
driver.  They have both a main cannon, and a machine gun similar
to the one in the Warthog.  Four marines can sit on the tank treads,
this offers them some but minimal protection.

Generally I hold down the machine gun trigger at all times and
use the cannon whenever it is available.

Scorpions are indestructible and cannot be overturned.

3. Ghost
The ghost is a covenant attack vehicle.  It fires twin plasma
shots similar to that of a plasma rifle.  The driver is almost
completely covered from head-on attacks but is vulnerable to
attacks from the side.

Ghosts are very maneuverable and can strafe well.  A generally
sound tactic is to drive strafe circles around an enemy -- in
other words, face the enemy and strafe in one direction while
rotating in the other, such that you are making a circle around
it while facing towards it constantly.

Ghosts are great for running over enemies in the same way
that Warthogs are used.

Ghosts have fairly mediocre health and you will generally die
if the ghost explodes while you are in it.

4. Banshee
The banshee is a covenant flying vehicle.  It shoots twin
plasma shots similar to that of a plasma rifle, as well as
a cannon similar to the fuel rod.  Banshees are highly maneuverable
by extremely frail.

Generally I hold down the plasma fire and aim my cannon shots
carefully whenever those are available.  Cannon shots don't quite
have the same blast area as scorpion cannon shots so they are more
difficult to use effectively.

You can hover banshees by facing a target semi-vertically and pulling
away from it such that the banshee is backing up.  If you do this
as the correct rate, the backing up and gravity will cancel each
other out.  A good way to soften up enemies is to hover fairly far
away from them and unload cannon shots.

B. Vehicle use
------------------------------
There's no real magic to using vehicles.  With the Warthog, my
favorite tactic is to park it somewhere barely in range of my
opponents and then get out and engage them myself.  My marines provide
cover and I try to draw fire away from them as much as possible.
Covenant vehicles are more tricky because you, the covenant, and
sometimes marines will all try to use them.

One important point is that covenant will not overturn stationary
weapons or vehicles, so the easiest way to stop them from stealing
your banshee is to overturn it with a grenade or rocket launcher.  In
the scene, "If Only I had a Superpower", the first thing you should do
is rocket one or both banshees before the elites steal them, then you
can clear out the scene at your leisure then turn the banshee back
around to get into it.  In some levels, there are various stationary
guns that enemies enjoy getting into.  You can either repeatedly kill
them whenever they mount one or just chuck a plasma grenade at it to
overturn it.  This is particularly useful at the beginning of Level 3
where you have some time to snipe enemies before your marines run in
and get themselves killed.  If you overturn the stationary guns using
grenades first, then your marines are far more likely to survive
because the covenant won't be able to use them against you.

Marines will board ghosts that have previously been used by elites if
the elite is killed.  This is particularly relevant when you or a
marine has a sniper rifle and is able to quickly kill the driver
without destroying the vehicle.  Marines in ghosts are fairly suicidal
and are prone to accidentally running you over, so be careful.

The key to fighting enemies while in vehicles is either to stay very
far away or stay very close.  When far away, you can typically dodge
projectiles.  When very close, enemies will spend more time running
away and getting run over than shooting at you.  It's particularly
useful to get right into the face of hunters so that they don't fuel
rod you to death.

C. Indoor vehicle use
------------------------------
Vehicles are generally only available outdoors.  This does not mean
that you can't force them indoors.  Or, there are other areas where
barriers are put up with the intention of keeping vehicles out, but
you can pass through them anyway.  There are two spots in Level 4
where this becomes particularly handy.  The first is about halfway
through when you reach some vertical pillars after meeting up with a
bunch of marines and taking out two hunters and a dropship.  You
should be using a tank at that point, and the tank will not fit
through the slot.  Warthogs and ghosts initially don't seem like they
will, but if you're patient and cram them, they'll eventually get
through.  Both warthogs and ghosts are rather squeezable because they
can rotate in any direction.  After this point, you'll come to a huge
open area scene with many enemies, then go indoors.  You can again
cream either your warthog or ghost indoors, and take on the entire
next level with your ghost.  It's not pretty because your ghost will
constantly scrape against walls, but the ghost doesn't take any damage
despite the suggestive sound effects.  You can take a ghost completely
through that next scene and into the turbolift, but it'll fall once
the lift is activated.  There are othe such locations where this
becomes very useful.  As a general rule of thumb, don't automatically
give up and assume you can't bring a vehicle into an area where it's
not intended to go.

D. Driving tips
------------------------------
Vehicles take a bit of getting used to for driving, particularly
ghosts and warthogs.  The key is to note that vehicles will always
go in the direction of the targetting arrow regardless of their
orientation.  In other words, don't get sidetracked by looking
at the orientation of your vehicle, just look at the targetting
arrow instead.

When a Warthog is in the air, I believe there is some limited
control you can do using the front/back of either control stick.
If you're having trouble staying level when jumping, particularly
in Level 10, try experimenting with using your controls while in the
air, and also try laying off the accelerator right as you go into
a jump.

E. Stationary guns
------------------------------
Shade guns are great weapons against both elite and flood.  They fire
fairly fast, are accurate, and provide decent cover from return fire.
The main drawbacks are that charged shots from Jackals will always hit
you and you generally cannot get out in time to evade them, and plasma
grenades will stick to your body when thrown at the gun so that's
instant game over.  Banshees will bomb you, which does massive damage
and usually overturns your gun too.

Against banshees, I usually stay on foot so I can avoid their fire
while they're charging, then get into my gun and start firing as soon
as they veer off.  It's difficult to hit Banshees with non
hit-scan-weapons so I don't want to waste real ammo trying if I don't
have an assault rifle.  When they approach for another attack run, I
get out my gun.

Against other covenant targets, I often find that shade guns are
certain death.  It's usually more sound to use standard tactics of
hiding and baiting enemies than get into a stationary exposed weapon
and blast away unless there are few enemies.  There are almost zero
situations in Legendary where I dare get into a shade gun against
covenant.  On the other hand, shade guns are very useful against flood
and there are several situations where you'll want to resort to them
such as in Level 9 outdoor.  Flood do not throw grenades or use
overcharged plasma shots, so shade guns are fairly safe here.  Shade
guns give you full protection against flood parasites, those can't
reach you while you're in the gun.

Shade guns seems to have some sort of limited auto-aim functinality
built into them.  If an enemy is not directly in your crosshairs, the
guns will still fire directly at it; i.e. the gun does not always fire
straight ahead.  This is of course a very useful feature since it will
generally improve your accuracy.



******************************
4. Melee Attacks
******************************

Not all melee attacks are the same.  They all seemingly do the same
damage, but each weapon has a different area of attack and rate.  For
example, the rocket launcher sweeps through a large area but has a
slow rate of attack.  Assault rifles cover a fairly limited range but
at higher frequency.  I find that the sniper rifle balances both
factors fairly well -- it has around the same rate as a shotgun melee
attack and both has a significant reach as well as hits enemies that
are at the bottom of your field of view.  Next after that is probably
the shotgun.  One of the worst ie the pistol, it has small range and
low frequency.

You'll primarily be using melee attacks to take out covenant enemies
from behind and flood parasites.  Enemies from behind is fairly
self-explanatory, and remember you can hit sleeping grunts anywhere to
one-hit kill them.  You should totally abuse melee attacks when
cloaked.  Just don't get too close to enemies when you're cloaked or
they'll respond to you.  Ditto with grunts -- if you get too close to
them, they'll wake up.

******************************
5. Consumables
******************************

The first thing you should do when you see an item is leave it sitting
there and remember its location.  In most cases, you can get through
the scene without having to use the item.

A. Health pack
------------------------------
Health packs restore your health.  Use health packs sparingly.  I
pretend they don't exist and try to solve scenes without having to use
them.  Again, with enough patience, I can get through most scenes
without losing any health, so this negates the need for health packs.
However, for those accidental times when I checkpoint at low health, I
go back and get one of the health packs I left behind.  They're
persistant, i.e. they won't disappear if leave them around too long so
they are not dropped items.  It's not uncommon for me to finish a
level where I didn't use a single health pack.  This is overly
conservative but in the end saves me more time than if I use them
aggressively and end up not being able to finish the level because I
lose too much health somewhere down the road.

B. Cloaking
------------------------------
Cloaking turns you invisible for a moderate amount of time.  Usually
cloaking is given for specific situations where it will be useful,
e.g. you're approaching a scene where flood and covenant.  If you fire
when you're cloaked, it will alert enemies around you and they'll
shoot at you as if you're visible.  Generally I stick to melee
attacks.  Sneak up behind covenant enemies and hit them.  Nearby
enemies will respond, e.g. grunts will run in panick, but they won't
be able to target you.  Don't get too close to enemies, however,
because they'll detect you when you're within a certain proximity.

C. Overshield
------------------------------
Overshields give you three times as much shield.  The extra two layers
do not regenerate.  This is useful for getting through sticky
situations where you might not be able to ordinary without sustaining
body damage.  Overshields aren't all that helpful for normal combat
since you really should be able to get through most scenes by just
regenerating your normal shields everytime they're depleted.  I save
overshields for longer scenes where I cannot get through those
reasonably without sustaining damage.


==================================================
=== IV. ENEMIES
==================================================
==================================================

******************************
1. Overview
******************************

General tactics to use towards covenant and flood are generally
similar, but there are some specific differences that are very much
worth noting.  Fighting covenant tends to be more strategic -- some
weapons work against some covenant but others are worthless, and
covenant use organized battle tactics so you often have to trick them
to kill them.  You can't just go in guns blazing because elites and
jackals will hide and regenerate, and who knows if the weapon you're
using is even appropriate for the situation.  Flood are far more brute
force.  They do not hide, they do not dodge your grenades, they do not
regenerate shields, and all weapons work o.k. against them.  With
covenant, you get frustrated because they fight intelligently and
respond to your actions.  For flood, you get frustrated because
they're so relentless and there's so many of them swarming at you,
hence their name.

A. Covenant
------------------------------
When fighting covenant, the main idea is to be very deliberate about
what weapons you use and what plan you have for taking them out.
Don't just fire or chuck grenades haphazardly or you'll probably do
little or no damage since the covenant are smart enough to hide or
run.  Be patient; covenant generally do not charge you, so each enemy
remain in roughly the same area or in a tight patrol when in combat.

B. Flood
------------------------------
I actually find that flood are far easier to combat than covenant.
They don't fire their weapons nearly as fast as flood do, and the same
general tactic can be used against all of them.  To say again, flood
will just attack you mindlessly, they will pick the shortest distance
between you and them and cover that.  Given this, they also tend to
clump pretty severely, this includes carriers.  Clumping is your
friend in many ways.  Shooting at the carriers is like detonating a
grenade if they're clumped with other flood.  Sometimes the covenant
in the back rows will damage the ones in the front when they try to
shoot at you.  Finally, you don't have to be very accurate when
there's a mass of enemies moving straight at you.  I find that using
the retreat tactic works really well against flood.  As soon as flood
appear, retreat back the way you came.  E.G. If you're indoors such
as Level 10, back up until you reach a bend in the cooridor, then
turn and face the bend.  As flood appear around the corner, shoot
them point blank with your shotgun.  Since you're not in their line
of sight until they round the corner, they won't be able to shoot
at you beforehand, and typically they won't jump at you either.

Sometimes flood will appear behind you but you should be able to
retreat past them in most cases.  In particular, if you die once,
remember where they spawned and anticipate retreating as soon as you
think they're about to.  In Level 6, flood will pour out of vents, so
you have some delay between when you first see them on the radar
(i.e. when they are first spawned) versus when they actually reach you
for combat.

I usually use a shotgun and pistol combination against them.  The
shotgun is a great close weapon, and the pistol with its zoom and
accuracy is great for picking off flood while I retreat.  I'll just
put on my zoom, hold down the trigger, and start backing up.  The
pistol does have a long reload time, so usually I'll just switch to
shotgun while reloading.  Often it's an appropriate time to do so
anyway because by the time my pistol runs out, some flood will
probably have reached close range.  Note that since flood carry all
sorts of weapons, you won't have to think about running dry of ammo.
If I don't have one of these two weapons, the next choice is plasma
rifle, then assault rifle although that's a distant runner up.  When
I'm using shotgun+assault rifle, I'll typically use my rifle as my
primary and then switch to shotgun when I'm in trouble, so as to
conserve shotgun ammo.  When I find rocket launcher, I'll just keep
the shotgun, or better yet drop the rocket launcher somewhere in a
previous scene so it doesn't disappear, and remember that it's there
in case I need it later on.

Flood are only really dangerous when they close into melee range or
when you're backed into a corner.  In this case, I suggest reloading
and choosing a different retreat path.  If there's none available,
then practice jumping around and throwing grenades to clear paths
where you can increase distance to them.

******************************
2. Covenant Enemies
******************************

Much of this information is also contained in the weaponry section,
but it's worth repeating and organizing.

A. Grunts
------------------------------
You can kill grunts effectively with just about anything.  Just be
careful when going head to head with more than a couple because grunts
fire plasma pistols about as fast as plasma rifles.  Getting caught in
an open area means that you have to2 do an awful lot of strafing or
find cover soon.  Don't ever turn your back on even a grunt unless
you're running for cover that's very close by.

When taking on groups of grunts that are near other enemies, I'll use
a plasma pistol or needler.  The needler will often take out multiple
grunts if you unload an entire clip because of the triple explosion.
The plasma pistol is a good fire-and-forget way of taking out grunts
one at a time particularly since grunts usually carry pistols
themselves so you can exchange your own with theirs after they're
dead.  Grenades are generally effective against grunts.  If you stick
a grunt, it'll run around haphazardly and often this means it'll get
into close range of its buddies and take them out with itself.  Grunts
are fairly o.k. at dodging grenades but often do not get clear of the
blast radius, particularly if you're using suppressing fire to
distract or damage them right after you chuck a grenade at them.

Be careful of grenades.  Grunts aren't particularly effective with
grenades compared to elites, but are still rather dangerous.
Fortunately, they usually call out before they throw, so that's your
signal to back up.  If you kill a grunt while it's throwing a grenade,
the grenade will land by its body and it will explode.

Grunts in later missions carry fuel rods.  These explode and will
damage you after you kill the grunts.  The best way to avoid fuel rods
and missile launchers is to constantly jump, since this increases the
chance that they'll fire in an upwards trajectory.  Grunts with fuel
rods take quite a bit of prep time before they fire, so you can
generally see them holding still and taking aim at you.  Fuel rod
grunts will never run away in fear.

B. Jackals
------------------------------
Jackals can be incredibly annoying if you don't have the right weapon
to take them out.  They fire incredibly fast and use overcharge shots,
which drains your shields in one hit.

The best weapon for jackals is the plasma pistol -- use one hit to
take out their shield and make them reel, then either hit them a
couple more times with overcharge shots, use normal shots, or switch
to your other weapon.  Or, if you're anywhere close, hit the jackal
with a charged shot and run up to it while it's reeling, then melee
attack it immediately.  One nice feature of melee attacks is that you
don't have to wait until your weapon stops overheating before you're
allowed to use it.  Jackals usually will die to one melee attack,
sometimes it takes two.

Jackals will often run and hide after their shield is depleted, but
they're not particularly agile so you should be able to finish them
off before they find cover and regenerate.  Plasma rifles are
semi-useful against them but their shields regenerate only slightly
slower than the rifle damages them.  Let off on the rifle or
accidentally overheat and you have to start all over again.  Blue
jackals are safe to attack with plasma rifles because their shields
dissipate fairly quickly, but it's often suicide to do so with yellow
jackals.

Jackals often roll during combat, this exposes them.  Before they're
in range to fire, they are also vulnerable, and you can most often
catch them unaware since their awareness range is not very great.
This means that when you see the telltale shield of a jackal, take
your time and make sure you get some good shots off.  Once a jackal is
in range and dug in, it's far harder to kill.  Before then, it's often
standing upright and exposed from some angles.


C. Elites
------------------------------
Elites are as strong or stronger than you and have the same
regenerating shields.  They use a wide variety of tactics, and silver
elites chuck grenades at amazing accuracy.  Since elites have
regenerating shields and often hide when their shields are depleted,
they can be incredibly annoying to take out.  They also demonstrate a
wide variety of tactics and use both needlers and plasma rifles.

The best weapon to take out any elite is the needler.  A clip full of
needles will kill anything including a gold elite, and the resulting
explosion is always great for taking out nearby grunts or what not.
Elites don't run until their shields are depleted, and needlers don't
inflict damage until after a short delay, so an elite will stand there
and let himself get pumped full of needles.  The exception to this is
red elite, who move fairly erratically during combat and tend to
strafe long lateral distances randomly.  Since needles are slow moving
and only have mediocre homing ability, this means that you can empty
an entire clip and not hit a red elite once.  In open areas where red
elites have opportunity to strafe, I generally have to resort to
plasma pistols, although even those aren't terribly reliable.  Even
rocket launchers are not accurate at mid range.  It takes a lot of
patience and luck.  Later once you have shotguns, you can attempt to
charge red elite and blow them away close range.  Unfortunately, the
more annoying levels where you're encoutering red elite in the open
are ones previous to when you have access to shotguns.

Apart from needlers, plasma pistol overcharge shots work rather well.
Elites, like all enemies, will flinch after being hit by a charged
shot, this often gives you enough time to unload another into them.
Just be aware that usually the elite will immediately try to hide
after the first shot.  After taking down the shield, you can continue
hitting the elite with charged shots (it'll take generally another
2), or switch ot another weapon.

Plasma rifles work o.k. against elites but are not recommended in open
combat.  Elites fire at at least the same rate as you, do not miss,
and anything above a blue elite has pretty impressive shields such
that yours will drain a lot sooner than his.  Plasma rifles fired at
you do pretty impressive damage and do not miss.

Shotguns work great against elite up close, but getting close is
somewhat of an issue.  A close range shotgun blast will take out
the elite's shields (you'll hear a sound like glass shattering)
and sometimes stun the elite, subsequent shots will definitely
stun the elite such that you typically won't experience any
retaliation.  It generally takes 2 or 3 shotgun blasts to kill
a full health, full shield non-gold elite.

Don't even think about taking on an elite with an assault rifle unless
you intend to empty a clip and then finish him off with your secondary
weapon.  Assault rifles work decently if the elite is drained of shields,
such as if you've used a plasma pistol overcharge, but then they're
not much more effective than any other weapon still.

Some silver elites are invisible.  Plasma rifles are great against
these because they have no shielding and thus no way of regenerating.
Plasma pistols and needlers will not home in.  Sometimes the best way
to take out a silver elite is to figure out where it's standing before
it becomes active (do a couple of suicide runs into the room where you
know the elites are hanging out).  Look for the cloak distortion and
plant a grenade or even club them if they're facing the wrong way when
inactive.  Marines are totally blind towards invisible elites, marines
won't fire at them even though the elite is waving around a big
visible sword.  However, once you shoot invisible elites a bit,
they'll lose their cloaking, then your marines will unload on them.

When dealing with silver or black elites, which chuck grenades
at very good accuracy and distance, be constantly moving, or jump.
In particular, when the elite cocks his arm to throw the grenade,
jump towards it and pull out your shotgun.  If you started around
mid range, you can often get right up to the elite's face by the
time he's done with his grenade.

Elites will generally give a war cry shortly after first spotting you
or immediately upon being hit for the first time, they become
stationary long enough that you can stick a plasma grenade on them.
If you don't have a needler, this is sometimes the only realistic way
of taking out gold elites that appear in close proximity.

Elites, like other enemies, will become inactive after some time of
not seeing you.  For example, if you hide on one side of a pillar, the
elite may crouch and face that direction waiting for you to come out.
If you sneak around the other side, you can sometimes club the elite
from behind.  There are some areas such as Level 4 beginning where
this is the only sound way of handling them.

Stronger elites either fire more rapidly or are more accurate.  Gold
elites will take down your shields in no time and plasma rifle shots
are not dodgeable, so you'll have to be careful about approaching
them.  A good tactic is to peek around a corner, fire off some
needles, then retreat back as soon as the elite starts firing at you.
Generally you can get enough needles on it to inflict some body
damage, so repeating this will eventually kill the elite.

If you're brave, you can go melee against elites.  If you're at
the extreme melee range of the elite and are backing up when it starts
its melee attack, you can backpedal out of range such that it'll
miss you completely.  You can afterwards melee attack it yourself or
just keep firing.  This takes a bit of practice but is highly effective
if you don't have a reliable weapon to use.  Shotguns in particular
work very well in conjunction with this since they do massive damage
up close -- run up to an elite such as one that hasn't quite spotted
you, back up while it melee's you, and pump shotguns into it.

D. Hunters
------------------------------
Hunters are either incredibly easy or an incredible pain to kill.
Most areas with hunters will also have pistols lying around.  Do a
couple of suicide runs to look for them first.  Pistols take out
hunters in one shot from behind.  You can sometimes even catch hunters
unaware, in which case it's trivially easy to zoom in and shoot the
exposed orange spot.

Hunters do take damage when hit anywhere except their shield, although
they take very little and particularly in Legendary it is infeasible
to expect them to die from direct fire.  Even for back shots, it
e.g. takes many plasma pistols' worth of overcharged shots to kill
them.

Hunters almost always come in pairs, so don't get too fccused on one.
It's most dangerous when one is charging you and the other is firing
fuel rod shots.  Since hunters are slow except when charging, you can
often bait one hunter away from another.  In some cases, you can even
lure one hunter through a door and completely separate it from the
other since hunters generally won't go through doors.

If you're brave, you can kill a hunter via melee attack, just hit its
exposed back after it charges, the same way you'd shoot at it with a
weapon.  However, this is often a slow laborious process.  While
dodging out of the way of attacks is not exceptionally hard, it isn't
always failsafe because you can sometimes accidentally hit a wall or
misjudge your strafe.  Given how much damage a hunter charge does, I
wouldn't generally fool around with killing it the slow way using
melee.  But it's an option to consider in times when you don't have a
really good weapon to use.

For more bravey, you can also kill hunters heads on using your pistol.
Right before the hunter does a melee attack, it'll raise its shield
and torso.  This exposes an orange area at its front.  Shoot that and
it'll die in one hit just like from behind.  However, if you miss,
you're almost certainly going to take its attack at full force.

Plasma grenades, even stuck to the back of a hunter, will not do
considerable damage.  Nor does friendly fire from another Hunter.
Rocket launchers will take them out typically in two hits.

Hunters sometimes get into a situation where they'll just stare at you
without moving or firing.  This seems to happen completely randomly
but I suspect it involves situations where the hunter wants to charge
but cannot.  Just don't move if possible, and use whatever disposable
weapon you can to kill it.  Although hunters are armored, they take
real damage if you shoot them anywhere except their big shield.

******************************
3. Flood
******************************

A. Parasites
------------------------------
Flood parasites are generally harmless.  They'll detonate against your
shield and do a minimal amount of damage.  When hit, they'll explode
in a small radius that can take out other flood.  Any single hit from
any weapon will kill one.  Generally if floodites are alone, I'll let
them hit me and use my melee attack to take out some.  Weapons have
different melee effectiveness, e.g. the rocket launcher seems to have
the most range and is maybe the best weapon for meleeing groups of
floodites.  For melee, face slightly downward, run forward until they
jump up at you, then melee and run back right as you swing, repeat.
You'll have plenty of opportunity to practice this since Level 5 and
Level 6 both send swarms of parasites at you.  The reason I wait until
they jump at me is because it is comparatively difficult to hit them
when they are on the ground near my feet.  When they jump, they
typically go close to shoulder level, so a melee attack slightly
downward will hit them.

Do not let parasites get anywhere near you when your shields are
depleted.  In this case they'll do a lot of damage and will not die
upon hitting you.  And do not let them swarm you when there are other
enemies nearby, since each floodite hit is like taking a small weapons
hit, and you really don't want them anywhere near your body in case
the other enemies take down your shields.  Sometimes they'll miss you
when they jump at you, as long as you're moving.

Groups of flood on your radar are generally represented as a very
large red dot.

B. Carriers
------------------------------
Flood carriers are walking bombs.  They will try to get close to you,
then will fall down, puff up, and explode, releasing several
parasites.  Or, if killed beforehand, they will explode immediately.
They do not have much health and a few hits from most weapons will
make them explode instantly.

Carrier explosions will damage other flood.  They will hurt or kill
other drones, and cause other carriers to go flying then explode.
Carriers killed by other carriers will puff up and explode once they
land.  Since carriers damage all other flood, and flood tend to clump,
shooting at carriers that are in the middle of groups of flood
generally gives very positive results.

The main danger with carriers is that they are totally silent, and
there are many situations where some will secretly appear behind you.
Keep a tight eye on your radar and always keep moving when battling
flood.

If you don't want to waste ammo on carriers, just move up to them and
then back up when they fall down.  You can even safely get away with
melee attacking them and then backing up, although this is kinda
useless.

C. Flood drones
------------------------------
Infected marines and elites comprise the bulk of the flood you'll be
encountering.  They carry any weapon including rocket launchers, have
both leaping melee attacks and normal melee attacks that often include
two hits, and sometimes get up after being falling down.  Fortunately
they do not throw grenades, although they often carry either type.
Shotguns are great weapons to use against them short range, pistols
long range.  Needlers and plasma grenades should be used with care
because they can get in your face very quickly and take you down with
them.

If you're worried about flood getting up after being killed, pump a
shot into their head.  When flood do get up, they'll never have
a weapon (i.e. they'll always drop their weapon when first downed).

Flood elites are bigger and significantly stronger than marines, other
than that they are identical.  Both types can carry any weapon except
sniper rifles and fuel rods.

You can blow arms off of both types of drones.  This limits their
ability to attack, and a drone without arms is completely harmless.
It'll come up to you and just stand there doing nothing.

******************************
4. Sentinels
******************************

Sentinels come in shielded and unshielded varieties.  Unshielded
sentinels can be taken out with a single charged plasma pistol shot
and this is usually the fastest and most direct way to kill them.
Sentinels in general seem to be more susceptable to plasma weapons, so
favor the plasma rifle or plasma pistol when facing them.  Shotguns
and assault rifles are also semi-useful, but shotguns take many more
hits than would be expected to kill them unless you are fairly close.

The main strategy against sentinels is to find somewhere to hide, and
peek out and shoot them.  Getting caught in the open against sentinels
is not a good idea, just as it is not with any other Legendary enemy,
because they will deplete your shields fairly quickly.


==================================================
=== V. CONCLUSIONS
==================================================
==================================================

At the time of the writing of this guide, Halo 2 is already on the
horizon, and I imagine this guide will soon become obsolete.  However,
hopefully it is helpful if you're interested in playing the classic at
its highest difficulty level.  You can contact me at
[email protected] for corrections or questions.  However, I
will not give out information for solving specific scenes, so please
refer to the many other walkthroughs at gamefaqs.com for that type of
information.  Also, I generally do not have a good email response
time.  All said, don't expect too much if you attempt to contact me.

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