Notes for par scores on all levels:
Par scores are heavily influenced by par time.
Note: Competitive Score shows the time multiplier bonus; Regular Score does not. The time multiplier bonus still exists in Regular Score, it only shows up at the end of the mission. With Regular Score, you may not see the time bonus, especially on longer missions (credit: EaseAndInspire)
During "par time" all scoring is tripled.
After "par time", you have 10 minutes where your multiplier goes from 3.00x down to 1.00x. For example, if you kill an elite for a pop up of "+200", the score will show 600 during par time, but then will trickle back down to 200 when the multiplier goes down to 1.00x (and will be 400 if the multiplier is at 2.00x).
After the "ten minute down to 1.00x" period, one of two things happen:
1. You get a 2nd grace period, of about 10 more minutes. Multiplier is already at 1.00x so nothing else happens with it.
2. All positive scoring is done. All kills show up as red "0", but you will still lose points for dying, team kills, or checkpoint resets.
After that (Par time + 10-minutes + possible grace period), all positive scoring is done no matter what. Negative scoring is still active.
If you've already achieved the par score, you'll still have to beat the level while making sure you don't have enough negative scoring (deaths) to go below it.
For this specific mission:
Option 1:
Level: The Package
Par Time: 20:00 minutes
Par Score: 65,000
Difficulty: Heroic
Skulls: Catch, Famine, Fog, Thunderstorm, Tilt, and Cowbell (non-scoring but accelerates explosions), and Iron skull
Option 2:
Level: The Package
Par Time: 20:00 minutes
Par Score: 65,000
Difficulty: Legendary
Skulls: Catch, Famine, Fog, Thunderstorm, Tilt, and Cowbell (non-scoring but accelerates explosions)
This mission is the most difficult for par score. One thing different than most levels is that the post par time grace periods are only 5 minutes each, meaning that you have to get ALL of your scoring done in 30 total minutes (20 min par time + 5 min multiplier countdown + 5 min bonus time)
The only way I found to beat this mission is to use the dashboard quit method:
1. When you die, pause the game immediately.
2. Press the Xbox button, highlight the MCC, and quit the game entirely
3. Start the game back up and click Resume - entire process takes about 90 seconds and you can repeat as often as you like
4. You will start at your last checkpoint with the checkpoint's time. If you simply saved the mission, the time would continue each time you saved
Arguably, if you use this method, you could also put on Iron skull on Legendary since you'll be quitting out before dying.
The other advantage is since you never die you get a bit of a bonus for each kill level. For example, killing the 1st enemy of the level would be +100, killing the same enemy as your 51st kill will be +120.
This mission has 6 parts:
1. Starting area - there are 2 turrets, 2 ghosts and a bunch of grunts with plasma cannons. Kill the turrets first, then kill the ghosts, and then the grunts. Keep restarting until you finish off this sections in under 4 minutes. I restarted at least a dozen times. Pick up a plasma pistol before heading to the tank.
2. Tank time - use the tank to kill everything and dashboard quit if the tank gets destroyed (and you somehow survive it). The VERY LAST enemy is amini-wraith (Revenant). Instead of destroying it, use the plasma pistol to hijack it instead. Kill the elite and head to the next section while in the vehicle.
3. Lab entrance - Usually this is very difficult, but using your newly acquired Revenant, you can kill the enemies rather easily quickly . I ran over the two turrets and killed a few elites before heading to the stairs.
4. The stairs and 5 elites - move up the stairs efficiently by picking off the enemies with your DMR and grenades. You'll receive plenty of DMR ammo shortly. After the stairs, the next section consists of 4 hidden elites and one gold elite. Once again, try to be efficient. You have plenty of ammo by the door so keep shooting. Find/keep a plasma pistol with at least 30 ammo before leaving this section (by activating the door).
5. Defend the lab part 1 - Run up to the base entrance (about 4 sprint activations do get there). Right next to the armor abilities will be jetpack; pick one up. This is hard to see as it is not a bright symbol like the other armor abilities. Jetpack up on top of the nearby structure, and the jet pack up again. At this point a banshee will be shooting you. Your goal is to hijack the banshee by using the plasma pistol. I actually just jetpacked right up to it without the plasma pistol. Once you have the banshee, kill what you can until the Wriaths spawn. They are across the bridges. They don't move from their area and we will be hijacking them next. I will was really bad at killing enemies with banshee, so it was mostly wasted time for me.
6. Defend the lab part 2 - Using the banshee, or parking it and then picking off with a DMR, kill the Wraith gunner. The wraith won't move. Once the gunner is dead, you would normally hop in the gunner seat to get the driver out. However, for this mission, he will NEVER get out. Instead, hop onto the tank as if you'll destroy it. Bash the wraith twice (don't plant a grenade). This opens up the driver compartment. Now that you can see that elite sitting in the Wraith, jump on top of the wraith and bash him until he dies. Then you can finally have the wraith.
You'll have the wraith to finish the level. I was at 26 minutes, so that left me 4 minutes to kill enemies to break 65,000 points. At this point, each elite was 400 points, each grunt was 200 points and each vehicle was 800 points, so it wasn't that hard to get 5,000+ points in a short amount of time.
Since I was dashboard quitting the whole time, my mission time was 32 minutes, but in real time is was well over 2 hours.
Let me know if there's anything else to add because this was BY FAR the hardest level for par score.
Good luck!