The Ark

The portal that the Ark opens leads you to another Halo ring, but this one appears to have some kind of special device attached to it. You'll have to land on the surface and attempt to find whatever it was that Cortana thinks can save the Earth.

The seven terminals that must be found to unlock the Wayfarer achievement begin to be found on this level.

Eliminate Hostile Anti-Air Units

You start this mission with a good combo for the task at hand: a sniper rifle and a battle rifle. Follow the soldiers here to the enemy emplacement nearby. When you're in position, bust out the sniper rifle and go to town on the Brutes below, letting your teammates worry about the Grunts. There's a sniper rifle in a container near you, so you'll have plenty of backup ammo.

Use your sniper rifle all you want; there's plenty of ammo in the first few areas here.

When the enemies here are cleared out, head through the tunnel to the anti-air battery. Lots more Brutes here, so save your sniper rifle ammo for them. You'll need to clear most of the enemies here out before you can cause a Hunter pair to drop. When they're on the ground, hop down and get close to them. If you can cause them to turn their backs to your fellow soldiers, then they'll be able to fire away at the weak spots. Otherwise, Brute grenades work well on these guys, as does plain old shooting them in the back yourself; the sniper rifle will do a lot of damage if you can get a quick hit with it.

The Forerunner Base

After defeating the Hunters and the Brute squad on the ridge above you, head into the Forerunner base. (If you're having problems with the Hunters, just ignore them and move up the ridge behind the anti-air unit.) To your left is a room containing an artifact; some kind of archive terminal. Read the information and proceed to the next page with the A button. If you wait a few moments (or perhaps click the LB button), you will be shunted to some personal communications between the Librarian and his mate. This is the first of the seven terminals in the game.

On the far side of the Forerunner building, you'll come to some more Marines. Switch to your sniper rifle here and take out the Brute chieftan in the sands below, then make your way to the crashed pelican and trade out the sniper rifle for the rocket launcher there.

Light these Prowlers up before they wipe out your squad.

Light APC vehicles called Prowlers will approach you here, each carrying numerous Brutes. Beat them up as best as you can with the rocket launcher, but you might want to try and keep one alive by shooting out the turret gunners as people hop into it. (The first Prowler may actually have all of its inhabitants pop out after it parks, so you may want to leave it alone.) If you do, then the rest of your squadmates will be able to hop into it and use it when you manage to reach the Mongooses. Otherwise, the simplest way to kill them is to wait at the bottom of one of the hills as they crest them on the approach and fire the rockets at their underbellies just before they run you down. That'll eliminate all the soldiers and hopefully keep one of the Prowlers alive.

Into The Vehicles

When you do manage to clear out the Brutes, nab a Mongoose and take off. You're going to be facing some tough vehicle fights here, so hopefully one of the Prowlers from before survived; they do a good job of killing the enemies out of the Ghosts and Choppers here while leaving the vehicles intact, if heavily damaged. If you can switch to a Chopper, you may wish to do so, as they can take a lot of damage, even if they seem like they're on the verge of collapse, and will let you fire at distant enemies with their cannons.

You can fire on distant enemies with the Chopper's guns and kill them easily.

Keep moving along the ridgeline until you pass a crashed Pelican and Phantom, then come to a jump. Proceed down to the left and start destroying the enemy Choppers here; there's a fresh, unmanned Chopper near the entrance to this area that you can use. With them out of the way, take out the turrets on the structure above the ground, then try to get up there to see what the heck is going on. Be careful, as some of the Grunts at the barricade will have fuel rod guns. Kill them and take their weapons, then make sure that all of the enemies at the turrets are dead. That'll cause Johnson to spawn in a Pelican.

Hop into a fresh Chopper (there should be yet another one near the turrets on the bridge upstairs) and follow Johnson down the nearby sandy corridor.

Famine Skull

It's difficult to spot this skull, but it's out on this ledge here.

If you follow Johnson, you'll have to defeat a couple of Ghosts near another section of the bridge that extends over the sand. The bridge here can be reached by climbing up the rocks beneath it and jumping up to the bridge itself. If you reach the bridge, head to the right (towards where you had your last fight against the choppers), and zoom your weapon to look out at the last little spire at the end of the bridge. The Famine Skull is here, on the little ledge at the end of the spire. You can't reach it normally, though; you'll need to grenade jump to it. This is more difficult than the grenade jump on the Storm level, since you have to move forward and hit a pretty narrow target to pull it off successfully. Failure to hit the ledge will cause you to have to jump back up to the bridge, which takes a while. If you can't make it, try it on Normal, where grenades will damage you less.

Onto the AA

Head past the bridge and up the sandy ramp beyond. A couple of Ghosts will come your way; take them out, then exit your vehicle and take out the nearby Jackals manually. A Brute nearby has a fuel rod gun, and stands near another fresh Chopper. Kill him and nab the fresh Chopper and move on.

Fire on your foes here and wipe them out before proceeding.

When you get through the tunnel, stop! Hang back inside the tunnel and fire away at the Wraith beyond. It'll fire back at you, but if you're lucky, the rounds will hit the top of the cave and not damage you. When it's dead, fire on the Brutes that cross the bridge below you, then hop out of the Chopper and scope out the opposition. There's a couple of turrets near where the Wraith was, as well as a couple of sniper towers that can be destroyed with Chopper fire. Proceed forward slowly and kill everything, being mindful of new Ghosts that will be coming your way.

When that's done, head forward a bit and take out the anti-air Wraiths, being mindful of the large number of Brutes nearby. A few of them will be using fuel rod guns, so be careful when moving around in this area, and keep in mind that the anti-air Wraiths will fire on you if you rile them up enough.

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