- Ezandora
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- Exalted Member
You know I've never used forum signatures before. I think they're supposed to be used to convey who you are, in a tiny text box. But who can do that?
As promised, I wrote a simple guide to maximizing a metagame run. This is by no means complete; I am no expert, and this is simply from my experiences with this Covenant run.
The Basics
SketchFactor posted an amazingly complete explanation of how the metagame's mechanics work. Go read it!
The essential thing to get out of that guide is this: the most important thing behind any run is the point multiplier. The four ways to increase it are enabling skulls, changing the difficulty level, finishing the level quickly enough to earn a time bonus, and finishing enemies with style moves.
The time bonus is amazing in its utility, simply because the way its applied: instead of adding to the regular multiplier, as skulls do, it multiplies it. This means one skull can, if you complete the level quickly enough, be worth three skulls worth at the end. This is an enormous gain, and is responsible for over half my score. For this reason, it's important to complete the level quickly. This, however, does not mean run through the level as fast as you can - it's better to balance things out. In short, you might be able to achieve a 3x multiplier if you skip half the encounters, but those encounters could give you much more points, overall, if you stuck around and targeted a 2.5x bonus.
For skulls, I would recommend turning on as many as you're comfortable with, minus Iron, which we'll save for later. For me, this was every skull minus Black Eye and Mythic. Black Eye is tricky on levels with lots of vehicle combat - there's simply no easy way to regain your shields. As for the Mythic skull, I've found it to drag encounters on for not nearly as much of a bonus. In the time it takes to destroy one enemy with Mythic on, I can kill three without. You can mitigate this by using instant-kill techniques - a sticky grenade, or a headshot, or running them over, or whatever else you can think of, but that won't always be an available option. I've heard of a run that uses the skull to great success, though - as always, your experience may vary. Also turn on the grunt birthday party skull. I cannot stress how important that skull is to your general well being and overall score.
For the difficulty level, I chose Normal. Normal is a good baseline to start from - you don't get any extra points for using it, but it's not too hard, and it's possible to do things on it that you cannot on other levels. For example, in The Covenant, there's only one laser on Heroic but two on Normal, which opens up all sorts of possibilities. Normal also means the enemies fire less often, which means you can play around with your movement a lot more without fear of dying.
The style kills are covered in SketchFactor's guide. Try to make them happen as often as possible; not only do they give extra points, but they're always efficient ways to dispatch enemies.
All of this can be boiled down to: turn on lots of skulls, run fast, play on Normal, and do it with style.
She needs a trial run
So, with all of that in mind, what do we do next? We plan. The first thing you should do is play through the level in the metagame, with all the skulls and such. However, don't worry about the time bonus in the slightest. Instead, you should take a look around, and think about every encounter, and apply four thought processes to them:
-What can I do to maximize the points gained in this encounter? (target choice)
-What can I do to get through this encounter as quickly as possible? (weapon choice)
-What equipment from a previous encounter would help me out here?
-(if you're going to use the Iron skull) How can I avoid dying in this encounter? (path choice, target choice)
For points, we simply focus on the biggest targets. Destroying one high-value enemy can be worth destroying ten of another; therefore, they should be the main focus. Don't sweat the small stuff; a drone here or there isn't going to affect your overall score. Skip a platoon if they look too scary. A short list of big targets, in order of priority:
-Vehicles. They always give ridiculous amounts of points, but only if you destroy them with a passenger inside. That means if you kill the passenger first, you won't get the points, so watch out. These are easily and quickly dispatched with lasers, tanks, rocket launchers, missile pods, and hornets. It's even possible to run directly into a vehicle with a warthog and make it explode; I've done this with turrets and ghosts, although the second is quite tricky, as they have to be accelerating directly towards you. But always remember: target the body, not the passenger.
-Chieftains. These can be tricky to kill, since they have so much health; for this reason I try to save power weapons for them. Remember that the needler won't work very well against them, and you can't stick them with grenades. Field investigator Goatrope reports that using a charged plasma pistol shot and a few battle rifle headshots to take them out works well, and it also nets two separate style multipliers.
-Hunters, if you can manage it. I haven't been able to work out a way to kill them that's ammunition efficient though.
-Brutes. They're quick to kill if you do it right. My favorite way is to wait for one to throw a grenade at me, then stick one on them. Since they're throwing a grenade, they won't be able to dodge yours, and they'll also drop more grenades to use on their friends. You can clear out entire platoons this way if you're careful.
-Big groups just asking for grenades. Even just a blind throw while you're rushing past can help.
-Large packs of grunts. If you're handy with a battle rifle, you can headshot the entire pack within seconds.
For speed, we try to take out our chosen targets as fast as we can, while moving towards our goal. Try to get out into the fray as much as possible - have confidence! Skip past stuff that doesn't help your score much. Run past entire groups of enemies if you don't have the time, or if you're likely to die - it turns out, this works more often than not.
Equipment choice is a tricky one. The basic idea is that if you save a piece of equipment, you can make a later encounter much easier than it usually is. As an example, I kept a laser gun around until the top of the first tower, simply because it could dispatch the Chieftain in one shot. However, you have to figure out where and when this should be applicable. A good rule of thumb is to save the power weapons (the laser, the rocket launcher, etc.) and items (invincibility, cloaking) for the hard-to-fight areas and enemies.
Finally, you should consider how to avoid dying, especially if you're going to try finalizing the run with Iron. The basic idea is to identify where and how you're dying, and think up how to avoid it. Trying the same area with the same tactics, over and over, can work, but you'll have a better chance if you stop, think a bit, and change your plan. For me, this ended up either targeting the things what kill me first, running past the entire encounter because it is scary and is like death, or using a different path through the area that gives better cover.
Some things to watch out for:
-Grunts with grenades. If you're in an enclosed area, those blue explosions can be very deadly, very quickly. Avoid, or take out the grunts as quickly as possible.
-Hunters. They shoot you and it hurts. They smash you and it hurts more.
-Being surrounded. It's hard to deal with being shot in the back when you're busy shooting to the front. Try a different path.
Once you've considered all of these things, you can do the run again, except this time trying to target the time bonus. Pace yourself by allocating out time for each rough section of the level - for example, say you're going to be at the seven minute mark after you're done with the first tower. Gradually decrease your time targets for each area until you've reached your desired time bonus. This should keep you moving quickly enough while not being too stressed out about moving as fast as possible. It also lets you think, hmm, I'm taking up too much time in this area, maybe I should try it another way.
Random tricks:
-I discovered that the gravity hammer can be a good drone-zapper if you jump inside the swarm and mash the fire button. Its effect around you makes them drop like flies.
-You can wear out the dialogue if you play through the level too much - remember that you can disable dialogue by playing a repeating song playlist in the Xbox Dashboard. You'll miss out on the music, which makes Marty very sad, but it's okay, he can deal with it I think.
Finishing Touches
So you've done a run that you're pretty confident in. You've seen every battle, you've beaten down every enemy with expert precision. What next?
Try doing it again, without dying. The Iron skull, which removes checkpoints from the game, provides a 3x bonus. It is ever so useful for that, but it makes even the slightest slip-up mean total death. For this reason, Iron skull runs can be extremely tedious, so watch out. Fortunately, the feeling of victory you get after winning the level without a single death is quite euphoric, which makes up for the tedium. Also afterwards you can tell your friends about how cool you are for doing that and they will think you are cool which is a pretty good thing to have in life.
That's about it. Just remember: don't get aggravated if it gets too difficult. Go outside and take in the scenery, then try again.