Meta-Games: Tips, Discussion and Help Thread

[Big Papa 07]

WAIT!!!

That dudes wife likes to play video games??? Lucky bastard... I can't get a moment alone to play when my girlfriend is home.

Anyways, so play through on a hard difficulty, use skulls, and do style kills and the such for the required points right? Is there any other special things anyone might suggest for each seperate level, or is i just use this through the whole game, and you should be fine? Thanks.

[RavenBlackthorn]

Hahaha! Yeah, my wife likes to play video games. She's not the achievement whore that I am, but she loves "pwnin' bitches online" (her words, not mine). She's been playing Halo 2 and Gears for awhile now, and most recently Halo 3. We're going for Legendary tonight. We'll see how that works out.

What I'm -hoping- to be able to do is knock out Legendary and the Meta-games in this play through. Still crossing my fingers that the "Team Scoring" if over the points requirements unlocks the achievement, but if what The Pants Party is saying is true, (despite Team Score being on, you personally still have to score over 15,000 to get the achievement), I'll have to kick in more Skulls.

With Legendary (4x), and the "easier" skulls like Catch (1.5x) Fog (1.5x), Thunderstorm (1.5x), and Mythic (2x) I'm thinking we might be ok either way. Screw Blind, Iron, Famine, and Tilt. I tried using those... Not good. Not good at all. And although funny, Grunt Birthday Party (along with the other Silvers I guess) doesn't add to the multiplier.

[OBM]

Ok, so Team scoring doesn't infact work for the achievement, so may I ask, WTF was the point in putting it in? seems stupid to put team scoring in when team scoring doesn't count for the achievement and it doesn't actually add to anything.
the reason I'm pissed is because I played 3 levels on legendary so far which took a good few hours with each 1 being over the required amount and still no achievement, I don't feel like doing them all again.

[The Pants Party]

Team scoring mode works just fine, but your individual score needs to still be 15k or more for the achievement.

[Tained sainity]

So good about the scoring system and me and my mates will be doing it soon after we have done it on Legendary and have all the skulls thanks for the pic as well made more sense

[Nylan]

can you play a meta game single player?

[patches4711]

Originally Posted by Nylan

can you play a meta game single player?

Not sure but it will be more difficult in my opionion. If you die you will have to restart from checkpoint and you will lose your points. me and a buddy did first level on legendary and He did all the killing and I basically stayed back as the spawn teamate and was calling out enemies he scored 19k and then I started killing and I got 11K

[The Pants Party]

Originally Posted by Nylan

can you play a meta game single player?

Yes, it is for any campaign you start, regardless of # of players.

[RavenBlackthorn]

Originally Posted by The Pants Party

Team scoring mode works just fine, but your individual score needs to still be 15k or more for the achievement.

Yeah, TPP is dead on here. IF you still meet the individual score requirements while playing with Team Scoring turned on you will unlock the achievement. I played 3 Meta-games on Legendary last night and was able to break the point requirement three times and got the achievements with Team Scoring on, the other 3 people in my party did not get the achievement.

Unless I'm missing something I really don't see why this Team Scoring feature was included. There doesn't seem to be much benefit to playing with this setting versus the Free For All Scoring. In fact it is kind of a mystery as to whether or not you met the points requirements (individually) until you complete the level. From now on I think I'll set it up for Free For All so that everyone will know where they stand points wise and can "share the kills" a little more evenly. There were a couple matches where more than one person could have gotten the achievement had we "shared" the kills. Without knowing this, I ran hot and heavy till the end everytime and more than cleared the requirements several times. With Free For All you can share the wealth a little more. Shrug.

[DropDeadArtemus]

ok i get that in co-op you have to individually get 15,000 points for the achievement. not difficult to understand, but what if you get 15,000 and your friend only gets 12,000 YOU will still get the achievement but your friend will not. Correct?

[patches4711]

Originally Posted by DropDeadArtemus

ok i get that in co-op you have to individually get 15,000 points for the achievement. not difficult to understand, but what if you get 15,000 and your friend only gets 12,000 YOU will still get the achievement but your friend will not. Correct?

Yes you are correct the person that scores 15,000 gets the achievement but not until the end of the level so you have to finish it.

[RavenBlackthorn]

Yup. It doesn't kick in when you exceed the point requirements, it unlocks when it shows the score overview screen. I'm assuming this is to account for people dieing and losing points toward the end of the level and dropping back beneath the points requirements.

As far as what's easier--I actually think it is by far easier to get these achievements in single player rather than co-op. In single player, you and only you are getting the points. In co-op everyone is fighting for them. You actually have to kick-in more skulls while playing co-op than you would have had to kick-in while playing single player to compensate for this. The enemies don't scale with more players, so the same amount of enemies, divided amongst more players, means less overall points for you. Of course, more skulls means more multipliers and this may not matter but... more skulls means a little more difficulty too. More difficulty means more death and negative points so, tough to find that balance.

[Dr Buttcrack]

Ahhhhhhhhhhh!!! I was at 14988 when I killed the last enemy on the first level.....30 minutes down the drain

[ps2asker]

I jsut played through The Ark on score mode witha firend, we ended up getting 40k+ each with Team Scoring on, but we didnt get the achievement. On teh first level we got it no problems on Team Scoring.
Guess we'll play FFA from now on :/

[RavenBlackthorn]

Originally Posted by ps2asker

I jsut played through The Ark on score mode witha firend, we ended up getting 40k+ each with Team Scoring on, but we didnt get the achievement. On teh first level we got it no problems on Team Scoring.
Guess we'll play FFA from now on :/

I hate to say it but you weren't supposed to get an achievement. You need to score 50,000 to break the point limit on that level.

[AJMac]

I did co-op on legendary with 3 friends. This is what I gathered while playing the second mission:

Death: -100
Team Death: -500
Headshot: Varied - I got 100 most of the time, but some friends go up to 200.
Kill: 60-80
Times (minutes)

More than 20: x3
More than 20 less than 30: x2.5
More than 30 and unknown: x2

[ps2asker]

Originally Posted by RavenBlackthorn

I hate to say it but you weren't supposed to get an achievement. You need to score 50,000 to break the point limit on that level.

Guess I should have looked on all achievements hehe
Thanks for letting me know.

[Dan Paranoir]

Has anyone any good tips on what skulls to turn on, on what level? And settings for single player or coop?

[RavenBlackthorn]

I've tried a couple of different combinations and the "best" combination that I have so far is this:

Legendary for a 4x bonus
Catch for a 1.5x bonus
Fog for a 1.5x bonus
Thunderstorm for a 1.5x bonus
Mythic for a 1.5x bonus
Cowbell for larger explosions
and Grunt Birthday Party to make easy work of the Grunts.

In total this increases your point scores to 10x for everthing that you kill.

It sounds crazy but bear with me for a minute. Legendary is tough, ok, we all get that. Realistically, you are plasma comboing most of the big guys anyway. With that in mind--Thunderstorm and Mythic don't really make the game all that much harder. A plasma combo drops a Field Promoted Brute with 200% health just as easily as it drops a lowly grunt on Easy.

Catch send more grenades downstream, but whether they toss 1 or 2 at this difficulty is almost irrelevant. You are going to take damage on this difficulty and you will probably die quite a bit. The grunts will make it rain grenades. Drop them quickly with the GBP skull turned on and know when to get the heck outta Dodge.

Fog disables your radar. I for one use my radar in multiplayer but very rarely in campaign. On Legendary your "run and gun--whoops is that someone behind me" gameplay simply isn't going to work anyway so having a radar isn't going to help you as much as you think. You are going to be painfully aware of all enemies with your radar turned on or not.

Although Cowbell and GBP don't help your multiplier, they seem to tone down the difficulty. So, overall, with the previous list of skulls, the game will be challenging but doable and you along with one or two others in your party should be able to easily hit the Meta-game point requirements if they manage to keep their deaths down.

I've tried playing with some of the other skulls turned on and man, it's tough. Restarting from the beginning of the level, and never having enough ammo can really make it hard to do. The skulls I listed make it more challenging if you don't plasma combo but, realistically, you'll spend a lot of time searching for ammo at this difficulty if you don't. Seriously though, if you are playing solo, you don't even need half of these skulls turned on. Once you start fighting for points in co-op however, every point counts.

[TimmayTheTurtle]

Originally Posted by smallkid

Difficulty multipliers:
Easy: 0.25x
Normal: 1x
Heroic: 2x
Legend: 4x

Multipliers(for the kill)
Grenade stick: 1.25x
Headshot: 1.25x
stealth kill: 1.25x
Road-kill: 1.25x
Multi-kill: 1.25x
Needler superdetonation: 1.25x
EMP: 1.25x

Skull Multipliers:
iron: 3x
black eye: 1.5x
tough luck: 1.5x
catch: 1.5x
fog: 1.5x
famine: 2x
thunderstorm: 1.5x
tilt: 2x
mythic: 2x

Time bonus:
0-15min (3x)
15-20min (2.5x)
20-25min (2x)
25-30min (1.5x)

they are on this site http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/halo3.aspx i typed them up for easy copy and paste action because the site is in silverlight.

thanks cool and all but how much is taken away if you die?

[Gun-Nut]

Originally Posted by RavenBlackthorn

I've tried a couple of different combinations and the "best" combination that I have so far is this:

Legendary for a 4x bonus
Catch for a 1.5x bonus
Fog for a 1.5x bonus
Thunderstorm for a 1.5x bonus
Mythic for a 1.5x bonus
Cowbell for larger explosions
and Grunt Birthday Party to make easy work of the Grunts.

In total this increases your point scores to 10x for everthing that you kill.

It sounds crazy but bear with me for a minute. Legendary is tough, ok, we all get that. Realistically, you are plasma comboing most of the big guys anyway. With that in mind--Thunderstorm and Mythic don't really make the game all that much harder. A plasma combo drops a Field Promoted Brute with 200% health just as easily as it drops a lowly grunt on Easy.

Catch send more grenades downstream, but whether they toss 1 or 2 at this difficulty is almost irrelevant. You are going to take damage on this difficulty and you will probably die quite a bit. The grunts will make it rain grenades. Drop them quickly with the GBP skull turned on and know when to get the heck outta Dodge.

Fog disables your radar. I for one use my radar in multiplayer but very rarely in campaign. On Legendary your "run and gun--whoops is that someone behind me" gameplay simply isn't going to work anyway so having a radar isn't going to help you as much as you think. You are going to be painfully aware of all enemies with your radar turned on or not.

Although Cowbell and GBP don't help your multiplier, they seem to tone down the difficulty. So, overall, with the previous list of skulls, the game will be challenging but doable and you along with one or two others in your party should be able to easily hit the Meta-game point requirements if they manage to keep their deaths down.

I've tried playing with some of the other skulls turned on and man, it's tough. Restarting from the beginning of the level, and never having enough ammo can really make it hard to do. The skulls I listed make it more challenging if you don't plasma combo but, realistically, you'll spend a lot of time searching for ammo at this difficulty if you don't. Seriously though, if you are playing solo, you don't even need half of these skulls turned on. Once you start fighting for points in co-op however, every point counts.

Thanks for that am going to be running though legendary tomorrow with a mate, so will just set this up also where may I locate the Cowbell skull?

Edit:
Just found out where the Cowbell one is found and that does not seem easy to reach at all O_o seems like the hardest atm :P

[Butters]

Well me and a friend palyed through the ark on normal and with 4 skulls on and the grunt party and we both ahd well over 25k why dint we get the cheeve? It was free for all.

OK FOUND OUT THE HARD WAY MUST BE HEROIC OR HIGHER.

[Gun-Nut]

Originally Posted by Butters

Well me and a friend palyed through the ark on normal and with 4 skulls on and the grunt party and we both ahd well over 25k why dint we get the cheeve? It was free for all.

OK FOUND OUT THE HARD WAY MUST BE HEROIC OR HIGHER.

May I ask what skulls? really don't want to try this on Ledendary.

[Slane]

I just did the first two on normal with 3 and 4 skulls turned on (Catch, Mythic, Grunt Birthday Party, black out or fog (motion sensor)) and was fine, got well over 20K in each level before it finished and I took my sweet 'ol time.

[Dan Paranoir]

Thanks for the tips guys. Hmm ... but i was looking for a setup on heroic. I guess legend is a little bit too hard if you wanna try it on your own

And i dont have all skulls yet ... i think two silver are missing ...

[RavenBlackthorn]

From what I've been reading, it seems like most people trying to get these achievements are confused with the point requirements for each of the levels. All of the achievements are 15,000 points except for the 6th and 7th levels which are 50,000 points. The 6th level being The Ark (alot of people are complaining about not getting the achievement while breaking 20,000 points.) and the 7th level being The Covenant.

So to break it down:

For the Guerilla Achievement on Sierra 117, the first mission you need 15,000 points.
For the Demon Achievement on Crow's Nest, the second level you need 15,000 points.
For the Cavalier Achievement on Tsavo Highway, the third mission you need 15,000 points.
For the Askar Achievement on Storm, the fourth mission you need 15,000 points.
For the Exterminator Achievement on Floodgate, the fifth mission you need 15,000 points.
For the Ranger Achievement (the one everyone complains about) on The Ark, the sixth mission you need 50,000 points.
For the Vanguard Achievement on The Covenant, the seventh mission you need 50,000 points.
For the Orpheus Achievement on Cortana, the eigth mission you need 15,000 points.
For Reclaimer on Halo, the nineth mission you need 15,000 points.

So basically all of the levels are 15,000 with the exception of The Ark and The Covenant. It seems like everyone breaks 15,000 on The Ark and wonders why they didn't get the achievement. Well, to answer your question, you need 50,000 points on this level. It's a huge level, tons of vehicles, if you play it solo you should more than break 50k. I think I played this on Normal and broke 60k with a handful of skulls on.

It has nothing to do with difficulty,it doesn't have to be done on Heroic or higher (it helps but not required) it has to do with the point thresholds. Theoretically you could play on Easy with all the skulls turned on (All the skulls total up to a 16.5x multiplier). Just keep in mind that Easy only gives you 0.25x for each kill as opposed to 1.0 for normal, 2.0 for Heroic, 4.0 for Legendary etc. So, overall with all skulls turned on and playing on Easy you should hit a 16.75x multiplier (if I understand it correctly). Again, it is not contingient on difficulty setting. Granted with all the skulls turned on, you are in for a challenge. But it's on Easy right? :-/ Piece of cake right? }:>

Hope this helps. :>

Raven

[SHiZNiT NL]

I had a score of 14,985 on a mission. At the screen where you come when a mission is over the total score was 19.943. But no Achievement :S.

BTW it was level 2 so I needed 15.000 points.

[DarkDementia]

The best combination ive found for getting points is to use 6+ skulls and doing it on normal. If you pick the right skulls they really dont make life difficult for you, and you begin to get used to the effects that they have anyway.

[mclinton92]

is it easy to get the points for the 1st level? if u complete the mega on legendary will u get the complete game on legendary achievement?

[JesusBread]

Originally Posted by mclinton92

is it easy to get the points for the 1st level? if u complete the mega on legendary will u get the complete game on legendary achievement?

Eh? If you do the game on legendary you will get the legendary achievement plus the heroic and normal one. And the points are easy for all levels. Normal + 4-5 skulls that really don't effect you much will net you 20,000+ every level and 50,000+ with the two levels that have tons of vehicles.