I never had even Silver Live on 360, so I ranked up A LOT offline just from building Forge maps. I was SR46.
Literally an hour ago I’d finished downloading all the DLC (it’s free so I thought ‘why not???’), and started up Halo 4 for the first time EVER while connected to Xbox Live to check out the DLC armour…
… I’m back at SR1 with everything except the DLC armours/skins locked. Is there anyway I can get it all back that doesn’t require Gold Live (which I don’t have for various reasons)???