Halo 3 Planet

Firefight Strategy Guide for Halo 3: ODST

Firefight introduces a new and different gameplay experience that may throw casual Halo gamers off their game (and even experienced ones)! This simple guide aims to help players adjust to the new form of gameplay with simple tips and tricks for racking up points.

Taking on Grunts

Grunts are probably the easiest opponents to take on—but you can’t underestimate them. Keep your back to a grunt, and it will sneak up behind you with a plasma grenade… get too comfortable when the “Catch” skull is turned on, and you’ll have groups of Grunts sticking you all at once. Some grunts are armed with Fuel Rod Guns which can make them a really annoying threat.

That said, grunts are an easy one shot kill. The two most effective guns for taking on groups or individual grunts are the Pistol and the Carbine. A quick shot to the head does the trick, and conserves precious ammo.

Taking on Jackals

There are 3 different Jackals you’ll encounter:

  • Jackals with Plasma Pistols and Shields
  • Jackals with Carbines and No Shield
  • Jackals with Snipers

The Jackals armed with Covenant Snipers are some of the deadliest opponents you’ll encounter—especially in Legendary. Unless you’re moving like lighting behind cover, it will only take a Jackal on the Legendary setting one or two shots you put you down. They’re deadly accurate, and the ODST’s can’t take much sniper fire. Learn their normal locations, and keep an eye our for them. When you see one, take it down immediately.

The Jackals with Carbines are usually quick kills (one headshot with pistol or carbine ought to do it), and should be dealt with quickly, especially when the Black Eye skull is turned on. Racking up on Carbine ammo can really help in dismantling grunts, jackals, and brutes with no more power armor (especially given it’s low recoil).

The shield bearing jackals are typically the toughest of the bunch. Unless your team is playing a great flanking game, taking them head on usually proves useless with most weapons. A headshot does the trick, but getting them break away from the shield can be troublesome sometimes. The most effective way to take them out is to use a charged round from the Plasma Pistol to render their shield useless, then quickly switch to a pistol or carbine to plant a headshot. This technique actually is worth extra points as well!

Taking on Brutes

The brutes are tough in firefight, and taking the battle to them without a strategy will quickly run your ammo supply dry. The most effective way to take them out without putting a dent in your ammo reserve is to use a charged plasma bolt + pistol (or carbine) combo. The Plasma bolt will disable their armor, and a quick shot to the head will take them down. With a little practice, brutes become two shot kills.

There are groups of brutes that use active camouflage to hide themselves in Firefight. While they’re just as easy to take down as a normal brute, they can be a pain if they sneak up and get an incendiary grenade off on you. Luckily, the VISR will pick up invisible brute outlines. Be sure to switch to VISR from time to time (or keep it enabled permanently on dark levels).

Brute Chieftains are quite a bit more difficult. There are two kinds, and they both usually appear in reinforcement wave 5 of each round:

  • Hammer Wielding Brute Chieftains
  • Fuel Gun Armed Brute Chieftains

Hammer Wielding Brute Chieftains are probably the toughest to kill. For one, a usual combo won’t take them down… it doesn’t even phase them really. Also, they tend to enable an invincibility mode that lasts around 15-30 seconds. When they’re invincible, they can’t take damage so save your ammo. If you plan well, you can usually save some power weapons to take down these opponents. 1-3 rockets will usually take them down, a few fuel rod gun shots will take them down, and a few hammer blows will take them down.

If you’ve already run yourself dry of your power weapons, you’re best off bombarding it with grenades (grenades won’t really stick to them) and using weapons such as the Brute Shot, SMG, Carbine, Plasma Rifle, and Pistol. Get as many team mates as possible onto the same chieftain to make fast work of them. If they start to rush one of you, charge it, and jump over the brute before he swings to avoid being instantly killed.

Fuel Gun Armed Brute Chieftains are also tough, but lack the invincibility enhancement. That said, they’re probably also twice as deadly and have much further range than the hammer chieftain. Charged plasma bolts seem to weaken them significantly. A few head shots will usually take them down afterwards. Since they’re very powerful, it might be smart to try and take them out at range using a sniper, or fuel rod gun.

Taking on Drones (Buggers)

Drones are by far the most annoying enemies in firefight, and to make things worse they typically attack in huge swarms. While they’re usually armed with weaker weapons than other opponents, their large numbers and quick movements make them very formidable opponents.

The SMG is probably your best best at taking them down quickly. A burst from the SMG will typically take down a drone with little or no effort. The carbines are also very effective against drones. Pistols, while effective if you get a headshot, are much harder to connect with a drone (especially when zoomed in with the pistols recoil). Don’t waste too much pistol ammo if you don’t have to.

Engineers

Engineers won’t attack you, but they should almost instantly take priority if they appear. An Engineer will give all opponents in it’s surrounding area a powerful shield—an overshield of sorts that can make all the enemies much more difficult to kill.

Luckily, they’re very easy to take down. Charge a plasma pistol, let’er rip, and the Engineer will start its self-destruct sequence… just be sure to get out of the way before it explodes!

Hunters

Hunters are beasts in Halo 3: ODST. Since it’s next to impossible taking them out head on, you’ll have to work as a team to take down a hunter effectively. Let one player lure the hunter in one direction while other players fire at it’s weakspot on the back.

One of the most effective weapons against hunters are sniper rifles. If you can place two or three shots in the weak fleshy area on the Hunters back, you can typically take them down without a problem.

Grenades (Especially plasma grenades) prove to be quite useful as well. Wait for the hunter to be facing away from you, and stick it in the fleshy area to deal it a heavy blow.

If nothing else is working, resorting to rockets or fuel rod ammo does work, though these are weapons usually best saved for the Brute Chieftains.

Whatever you do, don’t waste ammo firing at the hunter from the front—it just isn’t effective. You’ll do nothing but waste bullets trying to take them out this way. Even if you’re firing from a turret, the Hunters armor is way to strong in the front.

Banshees

Banshees appear on the level Windward. Again, taking down vehicles isn’t a requirement, but they are worth extra points and they can do damage if you let them stick around.

There are two missile pods on Windward. Using the missiles, you can usually take down a Banshee in just a few shots. You can use the remaining missiles on strong opponents for quick take-downs.

Wraiths

Wraiths are pretty much your worst nightmare in Firefight (aside from Hunters perhaps). They’re tough to boot, have huge range, and if they land a shot near you ODST’s have this nasty habit of being obliterated. To make things worse, rushing them on foot like you could with the master chief proves useless as the wraith has a gunner that mows down anything nearby without skipping a beat.

Your best bet is the laser (if there is a laser on the mission you’re playing). If you can manage to snag a laser, taking down a wraith is pretty simple—one or two shots does the trick. If you’re playing on a map without a laser (or you can’t get to it/have already exhausted the 5 shots), you can take down a wraith with a few well placed rockets, or use a plasma pistol to freeze it, and hijack it from behind (to avoid turret fire).

Increase your Score with Multipliers

Taking on a horde of Covenant might not be so hard if you’re playing Firefight in the Easy difficulty setting, and your score might reflect this. Your score is multiplied by the difficulty setting you choose to play at:

  • Easy: .25x
  • Normal: 1x
  • Heroic: 2x
  • Legendary: 4x

Playing at easy might make it easier for you to get past certain rounds, but you’ll also end up playing much longer to score the same amount of points that you could achieve in a higher difficulty. Hone your skills, practice your strategy, and when you can bump yourself up to the next difficulty to increase your score dramatically.

Scoring Big Points by Getting Combos

Killing grunt is childs play (about 50 points). Getting a headshot on a grunt is very easy (1.25x the score for killing said grunt). Kill 4 grunts back to back with headshots… Now that’s a quick way to score a solid number of points in just a few seconds.

The point here is that by grouping together your kills, you can multiply your score for kills significantly. Drop enough enemies back to back, and you can easily score over 1,000 points in no time at all.

Taking out groups of grunts is especially easy. At the beginning of a new round, place yourself in a position where you’ll have great site over where the first wave of grunts usually make their entrance. They make for easy targets usually in groups of 4 or 5, and you’ll waste only 5 shots (with a pistol) to take them all down. It’s fast, super effective, and can tally up a nice number of points.

Jackals and Brutes can be a bit tougher given their shields. Using a charged plasma shot from the plasma pistol to take down an enemies shield followed up by a headshot can multiply the score a bit—but it might be more effective to take down an entire groups shields first, and then plant one between the eyes on each one for a killtacular for even more points. Choose wisely, and when you can aim to take out entire groups quickly for extra points.

Save the Best Weapons for Last

Most maps have some power weapons scattered in various locations. These typically include the Rocket Launcher, Spartan Laser, Sniper Rifle, and even the Shotgun.

While these weapons might help you plow through grunts and jackals, it’s important to recognize the such weapon use as inefficient. When you only have 4 rockets, why waste a shot on a single grunt (or group of grunts) when 1-5 pistol rounds would do the same trick?

Don’t pick up these power weapons until the time is right. If you drop a power weapon, it will disappear if you forget to pick it up again in a short amount of time. Learn to save these weapons for the right foes, and also learn the locations of extra ammo around the map to get the most use out of them (for instance, there are several rocket ammo drops in the center of “Last Exit”.