Introduction
I just finished the campaign on LASO and I naturally fell into a playstyle that was really challenging but also extremely rewarding and heaps of fun.
The challenge is to use primarily the Duelist Energy Sword and a maxed-out Boost ability to aggressively man-fight almost everything in the game. The result is an insanely frantic gameplay style where you are constantly boosting in and out of the fight to get kills, reposition and doge enemy fire/nades.
With Halo’s open world design and checkpoint system its easy to fall into the strategy of picking off enemies from a safe distance and banking progress with checkpoints before moving in to clean up the scraps. This challenge counteracts this by forcing you into literal nose-to-nose fight to the death where the only victory you will know is absolute and death almost always returns you to a checkpoint at the start of the fight.
I want to throw down the gauntlet to any out there who want a real challenge from the Infinite campaign. To those gaming veterans who know what its like to truly suffer and struggle through a game that is both brutally hard and equally rewarding.
The challenge is as follows:
LASO NINJA CHALLENGE
Prerequisites (Challenge does not start unless you have all three of the following)
- Play the campaign on LASO (Legendary All Skulls On)
- Get Duelist Energy Sword early and run it the ENTIRE GAME (Duelist Energy Sword can be obtained from a VIP early in the game and gives you bonus move speed and melee recovery speed)
- Max out boots skill (you will need to scavenge 9 cores to fully upgrade this)
- Optional. Max out shield (extra work tracking down additional 9 cores but makes life much easier)
Notes:
- You can play the game anyway you want up until this point.
- Strongly suggest rushing easy core locations early in the campaign. (even avoid taking FOB’s)
Once you have all three of the Prerequisites above you can begin the challenge.
Challenge Rules
- Use only the Duelist Energy Sword and/or Grav-Hammer as your primary weapon to kill anything that isn’t one of the exceptions listed below.
- Exceptions can be killed using any weapon
- Be AGGRESSIVE (disengaging is fine, just don’t kill 1 disengage and repeat)
- Use your full set of abilities such as grapple, threat sensor and shield wall. You are a ninja not a samurai.
- No constant nade spamming : The occasional nade spam is fine., especially if you are trying to take advantage of energy coils and the cowbell/boom skull combo. But don’t sit back and spam nades into a room until everything is dead.
- No skorpion gun
Exceptions (any weapon can be used to kill the following units)
- Unreachable units: Sentinels, sniper jackals in vantage points, dropships, skimmers in some cases (most can be melee’d with grapple shot)
- Vehicles
- Brute Chieftans wielding Grav-Hammers (you ain’t man-fighting that)
- Brutes wielding Gattling Cannons (you ain’t getting close)
- Adjutant Resolution Sentinel Boss
- Hyperius and Tovarus Boss
Key Mechanics
- Black Eye Skull: Melee to Recharge Shields. By playing super aggressive with an energy sword you turn this skull into a positive. Constantly melee killing your enemies means your shield is constantly recharging. However, there are nuances to this mechanic so you are far from invulnerable.
- Max Boost for Invisibility Ability: This is key for the challenge. Although the invisibility ability doesn’t stop enemies tracking you once they’ve locked on, it is enough to throw off the accuracy of their nades as well as delay them from firing just long enough for you to close the distance to engage or escape to cover without getting insta-killed.
- Bandana Skull: Infinite Ammo and No CD on Ability. This mechanic enables you to spam Boost like a madman and use the Duelist Sword forever.
Pro tips:
- Best secondary weapons: Rocket Launcher/Arcane Sentinel Beam/Rushdown Hammer
- You can juggle most high-level brutes (and sometimes hunters) by crouching and looking up at them when you melee.
- Melee headshots matter
- Grav-hammers are good counters to most vehicles and great against hunters
- Due to the catch skull, marines are not your friends and will nade you while you are butchering the banished. If you see marines locked up then leave them that way until the fight is over.
- You can man-fight final form Escharum with the duelist sword by standing toe to toe and crouch dodging his attacks (successfully killed him second time i tried this method, seemed unreliable)
- Unbound Rushdown Grav-Hammer can be found at excavation site
Anyway that’s it.
I don’t know if a single person out there is crazy enough to try this like I did. But if there is, Good Luck!