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Devastating achievement in Halo MCC

Devastating

Halo 3: Complete all Halo 3 Legendary campaign missions in under 3 hours.

Devastating-1.0
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How to unlock the Devastating achievement

  • ZleekZleek
    09 Dec 2014 06 Jan 2015
    This achievement sounds daunting, but it's not nearly as hard as you may think, if you have some friends to play with. Personally I consider Halo 3 Legendary to be the easiest among the 4 main Halo titles, especially when you consider that it can be done with 4 coop players.

    You have 10 missions to beat in 3 hours, but one of them is a cut scene, which does NOT count against your time. So with 9 actual missions, you're looking to average 19:59 per mission to finish with a total time of 2:59:59 or less.

    You can check your stats by going to Halowaypoint.com, signing in with your Microsoft/XBL account. Click on games, select Master Chief Collection. Now select service record. scroll down and you have drop down menus that allow you to see your highest completed difficulty, score, time, and whether you did it in Solo or Coop for each individual campaign. Add all of these times together and you will know how much time you need to shave.

    For actual gameplay, try just walking through as much of the mission as possible. You can do this by watching speed runs and seeing what paths the players take to avoid conflict. If you have a good team of four, you can also easily wipe out a section of enemies with little effort, or even have 3 people kill enemies with one guy running through while enemies are distracted with all the bullets.

    Also with coop, if one person is alive, your progress is saved and you can continue to respawn. Vehicles will likely be your biggest foe, with ghosts and Wraith turrents draining your shields rapidly. Use the EMP feature on plasma pistols, as well as mounting and beating vehicles to death. Obviously try and use Tanks, gauss hogs, Spartan Lasers, Rockets, etc., efficiently against these enemies.

    Also know where objectives are, what spawns enemies, where ammo and weapon caches are, and just have a good knowledge of the mission. Playing the missions for par time on easier difficulties, or just playing for fun (shocking, I know) is a good way to just learn the game.

    If you have any questions or need a tip on a particular mission or section of the game, feel free to comment or PM and ask. I have beaten the Halo 3 campaign at least 100 times since it's inception on the 360, so I have a general idea on what I'm doing. Let me feel like all that time wasn't wasted for completely no reason!

    I ran with a 4 person party. We did this in one session two days after the game came out, with basically no prep just using our knowledge of the game to play quickly.We were still pretty casual about it. We only restarted one mission because we died after 8 minutes when we received no check point. Which also brings me to this note: If you hit Restart Mission from the pause menu, it resets the time counter, so no harm done if you got off to a bad start.

    Here are my times:
    Sierra 117 - 13:44
    Crow's Nest - 13:54
    Tsavo Highway - 8:15
    The Storm - 13:39
    Floodgate - 7:21
    The Ark - 27:12
    The Covenant - 33:02
    Cortana - 12:36
    Halo - 24:43
    Total: 2:22:26

    As you can see, The Ark, The Covenant, and Halo took about half the time, but you can see how quickly the other missions were done. Just be patient, keep trying and shave time from easier missions! Don't be afraid to take too long on one or two, just play them all, and replay the mission you feel most comfortable. Good luck!

    Guide not helping? View 3 more guides for this achievement.

    Showing most recent comments. View all comments.
    Artieif your legendary completions are all co-op.. you must be host when you load into a h3 mission (after getting all the times) to get the cheevo to pop.
    Posted by Artie on 05 Jun 23 at 15:37
    BuryBimmerWell I was in a session with 3 others. They all got the achievement and I haven't. Have tried all methods available and no pop
    Posted by BuryBimmer on 29 Jul 23 at 16:52
    Sock of CoalI have completed halo 3 1:38:59 and still didn’t get this achievement, it is at 0%. I speedran everything successfully and got the par time except for ark by 8 seconds. This says whole game under 3 not get all par times. Any help to make it pop would be appreciated, message me in game or TA.
    Posted by Sock of Coal on 18 Mar at 18:32
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  • count023count023
    27 Aug 2015 25 Nov 2014 14 Dec 2014
    Named for DarkDEVASTAT10N who appears to hold the WR of 1:30 or so for the achievement:

    Not much I can offer on the speedrun subject except to learn the tricks on easier difficulties and then try to apply them on the harder ones. Do not be afraid to abuse the hell out of the save/quit exploit. (save and quit if and when you die/botch an event, then resume at last checkpoint from the menu)

    As per the other speedrun achievements, the 3 hours is merely a cumulative account for your best scores in the H3 Campaign on legendary difficulty so it doesn't have to be completed in one sitting. HOWEVER, you MUST complete the campaign in either solo OR co op completely for the achievement to unlock. It will not unlock if you have a mix of solo and co op levels completed.

    A thing of note, like the Par Scores for 3 and 4, the save & quit exploit does NOT reset your time at the last checkpoint, only your score and death count.

    As of 7/12/2014, some people are now able to unlock this achievement but a lot of people are still reporting problems.
    Showing most recent comments. View all comments.
    count023Dashboarding does work, but it still adds to the in game timer. So it is generally advised to avoid it where possible as you can re-do the same segment 100 times and have blown 40 minutes of the clock on a single checkpoint.

    That's what "A thing of note, like the Par Scores for 3 and 4, the save & quit exploit does NOT reset your time at the last checkpoint, only your score and death count." this part of the guide referenced as the "save & quit exploit".
    Posted by count023 on 07 Jul 18 at 12:52
    UnfurledEmu75Exiting to dashboard will keep the time and the score you had on the last checkpoint, even if you die multiple times after. (I mean, when you die or load it appears "checkpoint... done" but that doesnt seems to count as a checkpoint) It just works like halo 2, but you cant hit the save-quit button.
    I got the achievement today using this method. It works on all levels, however on "the covenant" you cant quit on the final room even if you got many checkpoints throught.
    Posted by UnfurledEmu75 on 09 Jul 18 at 12:51
    Apache117XThis is still bugged, me and my buddies did it with 20 minuets to spare, no achieves for anyone.
    Posted by Apache117X on 12 Apr 20 at 11:22
  • YaziteYazite
    07 Jan 2015 01 Mar 2017 22 Jul 2020
    The main thing to remember here is that Halo 3 is very forgiving, compared to CE and 2. Enemies will not be as aggressive as they were in Halo 2. That doesn't mean you should take it easy.

    This won't be a step by step guide. More so, I will explain a lot of handy tricks that will decrease your time, and also advise you on which levels to optimize, and which ones you can be lenient on. Doing it co-op will be easier, but it is not imperative.

    My times for Halo 3 Legendary:

    Sierra 117 - 18:08 (CO-OP)
    Crows Nest – 16:18 (CO-OP)
    Tsavo Highway – 12:51 (CO-OP)
    The Storm – 13:40 (CO-OP)
    Floodgate – 4:22 (SOLO)
    The Ark – 20:57 (CO-OP)
    The Covenant – 28:24 (CO-OP)
    Cortana – 8:13 (SOLO)
    Halo – 12:42 (SOLO)
    Total: 2 hours 13 minutes 35 seconds

    As you can see, I have over 45 minutes to spare. That's huge, considering every minute saved is super important.

    Levels you should optimize:


    Floodgate
    Recommended time: 5 minutes or less


    This is without a doubt the easiest level in Halo 3. You should aim to beat this in 5 minutes or under. There are no tricks that you need to learn, but knowledge of the level is required.


    Cortana
    Recommended time: 15 minutes or less


    Okay, I know what you're thinking. One of the most notorious levels in all of Halo. It is actually exceptionally linear and relatively simple to speedrun.


    Halo
    Recommended time: 16 minutes or less

    There's an awesome trick you can do at the beginning of the level which allows you the skip the entire ascent up the spire. I highly recommend you learn and practice this, as it will take 5 or so minutes off your time. My solo speed run is below. Timestamp for the skip is 55 seconds in. If you're doing it co-op, the person playing as Chief will need to do the skip, as frag grenades are essential. You need the grav hammer from the first enemy you encounter.


    Crow's Nest
    Recommended time: 22 minutes or less


    This level has one difficult section, which is the hangar defense. Therefore playing co-op for this level is highly recommended. During the hangar section, make sure to pick up a deployable cover, as you can use this for a neat trick later on. This level has a number of neat tricks which are relatively easy to pull off. For example:


    ^ You need the grav hammer for this skip. It looks hard but it is very easy to pull off after a little practice. The host must perform this due to latency.

    Drone section made easy (deployable cover needed, can find during hangar defense).


    Tsavo Highway
    Recommended time: 16 minutes or less

    Co-op is highly recommended to speed through this level.

    Other Missions:

    These missions should be attempted after the above ones.

    Sierra 117
    Recommended time: 25 minutes or less


    In my opinion this is actually quite a difficult level to speedrun. Very close quarters with little cover makes it less desirable for speedrunners. 3+ players is highly recommended here.

    The Storm
    Recommended time: 20 minutes or less


    This one isn't too bad, just longer and tedious. There's an awesome trick you can do for making the scarab fight super quick. Basically you use a grav lift to jump on the scarab early. The video below will show you exactly where it is and how to do it.


    The Ark

    Recommended time: 25 minutes or less


    With 2+ players, this mission is a breeze. It's just long and arduous. Tank beats everything.

    The Covenant
    Recommended time: 35 minutes or less


    Very long, but easier with 3+ players. There's a number of neat little tricks you can do on this level. One being at the start of the level.


    During the scarab battle, take out the banshees first, then focus on the scarabs. Once a scarab is temporarily disabled, you can either jump onto it and take it out manually, or shoot off the back with the hornet and take out the core that way. The hornets are very vulnerable so you need to strafe to avoid the scarabs laser.

    I hope this helps. Feel free to comment if you have any questions.
    Showing only comment.
    Fristi61The list of recommended times was really helpful for me to know how much time to spend optimizing a level before being satisfied with it.

    Looking back, I agree with most of the times.

    If my personal experience is anything to go by (it probably isn't), doing the Ark in 25 minutes is the most ambitious of the bunch, whereas the times for the first 4 missions are a bit more lax.
    I'd take 2-3 minutes off of each of the first 4 missions and add them to the Ark.

    But, that might also be an effect of me doing them solo, perhaps Ark is a mission where co-op has a larger than usual effect in speeding up the mission.
    Posted by Fristi61 on 25 Mar 18 at 20:26
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