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Torchbearer achievement in Halo MCC

Torchbearer

Halo 3: Beat the par score on Halo.

Torchbearer0
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How to unlock the Torchbearer achievement

  • Wicked JeiWicked Jei
    22 Nov 2014 22 Nov 2014 23 Nov 2014
    For the final level of Halo 3, you will need a score of 25,000. You can obtain this playing on Heroic difficulty with a little help from easy skulls and par time. The par time for this level is 20 minutes. I ended being almost 4 minutes late and still ended up with 38600, so don't feel too pressured. There's a lot of room for error.

    SKULLS:

    Catch - Enemies throw more grenades and drop more. Flood don't toss grenades, so this is a freebie.

    Fog - No motion tracker. You could probably skip out on using this skull if the flood are surprising you too much on the pyramid. They do spawn behind you a lot, but it's mostly scripted.

    Iron - Dying restarts the level. Save and quit if you die and you can resume with points intact. Try really hard not to die anyway, because it wastes time.

    Tough Luck - Enemies dodge more often. The flood will hop out of the way of rockets, but that's about all I noticed.

    BRIEF WALKTHROUGH + TIPS:

    You'll start with plenty of BRs behind you and rockets. When the flood start spawning, take out individuals with the BR, and groups with the rockets. When you start to get low on ammo, pick up the fuel rod to the right and swap out the BR for dual wield SMGs or plasma rifles. Those weapons are surpisingly effective versus the flood.

    Fight your way to the top, swap out weapons when you need to. There will be plenty lying around. Watch your back, there will be several times the flood drop down or jump up behind you

    You should reach the par score while you're fighting flood up top. Now it's just a matter of keeping it!

    Do not use the sentinel turret that's on the ground up top. It will turn hostile after the fight with 343 and kill you almost instantly (learned that the hard way, haha).
    If you're dual wielding, you can melee to drop a weapon right before the boss door so you have something else to use on your way out.

    You're going to want to be quick about killing everything until you get to the warthog. Sentinels can drop your shields very fast, so they're priority.

    During the warthog run, you'll likely start going past the 20 minute mark. You should have some score built up to counter the multiplier drop. The arbiter in your gunner seat will also be shooting at enemies and getting you points.

    It helps A LOT to be familiar with the warthog part. Knowing which panels are going to blow up will prevent a lot of frustrating deaths.


    FINAL NOTE:
    THIS ACHIEVEMENT IS BUGGY. As with other par score achievements (at least for Halo 3), I have had the issue of meeting the requirements and not getting the achievement. Usually, watching the full ending cutscene solved the issue, but this was not the case for this level. You may want to wait for a patch, or you can test your luck.

    Edit: Resumed at last saved game, played through the last couple of minutes again - no achievement.
    I played through the level again fully and a bit sloppier, took off iron skull, had to save and quit once, skipped the middle-of-the-level cutscenes, watched the end cutscene, and the achievement popped.

    Guide not helping? View 1 more guide for this achievement.

    Showing most recent comments. View all comments.
    bryan dot exeNormal. 8 skulls for 2.74x. 18:59 for 3.00x time mult. 32,653 pts
    Posted by bryan dot exe on 12 Dec 15 at 13:30
    MasterCranderHeroic, 5 deaths, 22min, no iron skull; 26K total. The only revision I would say to the solution is that you can pop both of the auto sentry turrets right when you get there for some extra help in the last wave. I put them essentially where you find them on the ground. That way they get used up the most. They will die by the time you go in the door.
    Posted by MasterCrander on 02 Jan 17 at 18:01
    wosmackIron worked quitting and starting over whenever I died. Probably died 100 times and still got the achievement
    Posted by wosmack on 24 Jul 21 at 01:56
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  • Elite1111111111Elite1111111111
    31 Dec 2014 31 Dec 2014
    I earned this on Legendary with a score of 46600, finishing in 21:36.
    Given this, I feel this would either best be done on Legendary with a lot of leeway.
    If you don't really feel confident about Legendary, I would recommend doing it on Heroic with a few skulls on. I would recommend using Fog and Catch if you do this.

    When the level starts, turn around and grab a BR and Shotgun. When you first encounter enemies, the first one has a Gravity Hammer. Personally I switched the Shotgun for the Gravity Hammer, but if you're on Heroic you could probably keep the Shotgun.
    Mainly you just want to take the tower as slow as possible, and let Arbiter tank if you're hurt. I only died once on the way up the tower with Arbiter tanking everything, and I think twice at the top.

    Focus on using your BR for non-Elite flood, and the Gravity Hammer (or Shotgun + Melee) for the Elites. You can do a test burst on the Elites though, as sometimes they don't have shields.

    When you get to the first 'arch' in the path up the tower (where the spider flood thing runs out of) enemies will drop down behind you. I'd recommend turning around and running back, as they all land in the same spot. I was able to kill all of them with a frag grenade.
    If you run out of either of your weapons, I'd recommend switching to dual plasma rifles. They are pretty amazing against the flood.

    When you go up the first ramp (on Johnson's side), enemies will jump over your ledge to the ledge below you. I'd recommend stopping to take them out.

    The top isn't too difficult apart from making sure you don't get overwhelmed. The enemies will usually only come from one side at a time, so you can camp the ledges for them.
    They start on the right (Johnson's side, looking away from door), so I would stand on the ledge and kill them either before they jump (if you have a long range weapon) or as they land.
    After a while they switch to the other side, but I found them to be a bit more numerous and with more close range weapons, so I stayed back and let Arbiter handle most of these while I hid behind him.
    It will finish up with a few coming on the right, one having a fuel rod.

    After the Spark fight, let Arbiter take on the few flood ahead, as your Assault Rifle sucks against shielded flood Elites. Grab dual Plasma Rifles off their bodies.

    For the Warthog part, if you're playing on Heroic, don't fret if you don't have a high enough score. On Legendary, I earned over 10000 points during the Warthog part.
    Don't go out of your way to splatter guys, but feel free to take them out as you go. Most of my kills were from Arbiter shooting down the Sentinels.

    When I did the level on Heroic, I had 18000 points when I reached the Warthog, so with the 2 skulls on you should have at least 20k, so the Warthog part should give you enough points for the par score (24k).
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