• Difficulty levels
• Simple routine
• Some variations or options
• Refined routine
• Enemy numbers

A brief word about difficulty levels. On Heroic, my usual difficulty level for the battle, you can potentially face 34 covies. On Legendary you get 5 extra Elites, whilst on Normal or Easy you get 5 extra non-Elites. Whatever difficulty level you choose though, the intensity means that things will feel a lot tougher than what you'd normally expect at that level, so watch out! Legendary tends to be too severe, especially for the Marines, though it can be viable with certain tactics such as allowing yourself good chain-gun support or the use of a sniper rifle. So even if you normally play the game on Legendary, I'd recommend using Heroic or lower, at least to begin with.

The battle takes place in the rockslide area, where a group of Marine survivors is hiding in a maze of huge rocks. There are some covies there initially, and reinforcements arrive later in a succession of four covie dropships. But the great thing about this situation is that you don't need to whittle down the enemy count to trigger each successive ship. Once the first ship is triggered, you can just wait and let the enemy numbers build! That's the dynamic behind setting up the megabattle, and it's very fortunate that Bungie scripted things like that, unlike the dynamic in the first Marine encounter of the level. Basically, each successive ship is on a time limit until it's forced to spawn. Presumably that was done as a way of pressuring the player to take some aggressive action.

In this section I'll describe a simple routine for setting things up (definitely the way to start if you're new to this), as shown in my tutorial BCM648 which is done on Heroic. You'll probably lose a few Marines and covies due to some initial clashing, but hopefully it won't be many. In fact, on Heroic there's actually a decent chance that you'll end up with the maximum 34 covies, though some may've lost health.

Before entering

Before even entering the rockslide area, it's good to save a checkpoint so you'll be able to retry the set-up work if desired. That's just because things might not turn out as well as you'd like. The natural checkpoint to save is the one at the lifeboat, after having driven up the valley.

Leaving passengers behind (I'll assume you've got some, though you of course don't need to), head for the rockslide area with a sniper rifle. There was one at the lifeboat. Use the entrance which is out in the valley, i.e. the right entrance, not the left entrance near a big waterfall.

In the rockslide area

When you enter, there may or may not be some fighting underway. But from the point of view of maximizing covie and Marine numbers in your eventual set-up, it's certainly best if things are initially quiet, because the less fighting that occurs, the better.

Quickly snipe the sniper up on the Marine plateau. Well, you don't have to, but otherwise he's liable to kill a good few covies even before the set-up is finished, and may also do a lot of killing later in the battles, all of which means less fun for you - plus it's annoying when he steals your kills or shoots you in the back! These are the main reasons why I recommend eliminating him, but also you'll potentially be able to grab his dropped rifle on the plateau later, and if you're lucky he'll also leave you a spare frag or two!

Reboard the hog and enter the dropship trigger zone. This is a large area within the rockslide and part of it is illustrated in the accompanying picture, as best I could determine. Entering it will get the flood of dropships going in due course, after a delay. Then immediately head back out into the valley.

Waiting

Get prepared for battle with passengers back aboard, and wait for the four dropships. A nice waiting spot is up on the big mound not far from the entrance, partly because you'll be able to see all the ships from there.

The way you've done things, the first ship will turn up almost two minutes after you triggered them. Then the rest take about five minutes in all (each spawning giving a checkpoint), with shorter and shorter waits in between them. Ship 4 will be the most prominent, coming in from near the direction of the moon about 50 seconds after ship 3.

Finishing off

To finish off, simply head for the rockslide area, getting an entry checkpoint on the way, to act as your battle start checkpoint. You can use either entrance, but I recommend the valley entrance as the default. It gives more driving variety for one thing, and more immediate opportunities for making covies dive out of the way.

As for the exact timing, it depends on what you want. One option is to head in as soon as ship 4 turns up, in which case your battles will feature the ship descending at the start. Or maybe you'd prefer to wait a while so its occupants will be on the ground by the time you arrive. You could even wait until the ship has flown off and despawned, which would reduce the stress on the game a little.

Sometimes you may fail to get an entry checkpoint, due to ongoing fighting causing checkpoint delay. In that case just revert to the dropship 4 checkpoint for another try.

NB: before saving, you'll probably want to do some playing to check how well things have turned out. In particular, maybe you lost more covies or Marines than you're willing to accept. If things aren't as good as you want, you can just retry the set-up work.

Here are a few variations or options you might like to consider, in regard to the simple routine I described. Because obviously you don't have to do things completely how I said, and how I demonstrated in my tutorial.

Avoiding framerate slowdown

If distant Banshees are flying around during your megabattle, they'll tend to cause some framerate slowdown (if you're on an Xbox that is), degrading your battle experience. Apparently they're adding heavily to the game's workload. To prevent this possibility it's a good idea to first deal with one of the other survivor areas so the Banshees get triggered, and then destroy them. If the rockslide is the first area you tackle, the Banshees won't exist to begin with but they could get triggered part way through your battle, namely when there are no rockslide Marines left, and you might then start getting framerate slowdown.

I didn't feature this option in my tutorial, but that was just to keep it as simple as possible. Personally I'd always get rid of the Banshees in advance; and typically I'd do it by clearing the hillside survivor area (where there's a sniper rifle, and where you can potentially also pick up an armoured Stacker for the chain-gun).

Helping the covies by killing Marines

If you're actually not interested in fighting alongside Marine survivors, you can eliminate most or all of them, which also helps minimize harm to the initial covies (though there's also my refined routine for doing that). After quickly sniping the sniper as usual, start sniping the Marines below the plateau as you catch glimpses of them through a gap in the rocks (see pic). There's no need to kill non-sniper Marines on the plateau though; they seem to be no threat to the enemy as they don't go near the edge, and in any case there are benefits to maintaining a survivor.

Bear in mind that if you kill multiple Marines you may become a traitor, though you can always wait to be forgiven. If you want to minimize that risk, I suggest killing only one or two and just winging others, letting the covies finish the job. If you overcook things and become a traitor, which you can check by seeing if your reticle goes red over a Marine, you could either revert to try again, or just wait to be forgiven.

If you want the covies to take no damage at all, here's how to do it. When you enter, it's essential that they haven't noticed the Marines yet. Kill the sniper, then briefly advance to get the enemy's attention, and draw them your way. Back off just far enough to be safe (see pic).

You can now snipe most or all of the Marines below the plateau at leisure though a gap in the rocks, though you may have to move along the right towards the lifeboat a bit to get a view of one or two others. In using this method you'll surely become a traitor, so you'll have to wait a while to be forgiven. Go have a cup of tea or something.

Helping the Marines by killing covies

If you want to try and minimize losses to the Marines at the base of the Marine plateau, an obvious thing you can do is snipe some covies quick, with the aim of stopping them even getting into the rocks (so, target the ones nearest the rocks first). Sometimes they're initially just standing around (see pic), not having spotted the Marines yet, which is ideal. Sniping the Elite (or Elites) is liable to panic nearby Grunts, which should help.

With luck, maybe the Marines will escape unmolested, giving you a nice big squad to fight alongside, up on the plateau. However, there's also my refined routine for doing that (it's harder though).

Note: when it comes to thinning out the initial covies, bear in mind that the enemy count can affect how soon the first dropship turns up after you enter the trigger zone. It seems to appear after just a few seconds if the count is below 3 or subsequently falls below 3. Otherwise it's liable to take either 1 minute, or nearly 2 if, as usual, you vacate out into the valley.

Fighting to music

If you want to be fighting to rousing music, deal with both of the other survivor areas first. Just as the final dropship is heading in, the game should start its climactic music as this will be the final conflict of the level. It's great music (lasting about 6 minutes), but personally I prefer to do without, mostly to increase the realism but also so I can hear everything better. Besides, I'll often be playing for an hour or more, which is a long time to be hearing the same music over and over!

With the simple routine described earlier, you'll often lose some personnel due to the initial covies finding the Marines below the Marine plateau, and having a scuffle. But with the 'refined routine' I describe here, which I didn't come up with until 2009, you can actually keep the covies away from the Marines (at least initially), to end up with maximum covies and six Marines, hopefully all undamaged! It's what I'd normally use nowadays, at least if I want all those Marines. It's a bit tricky and can take a lot of perseverance though, so be warned.

The method

As before, you should save a checkpoint somewhere before heading into the rockslide area. You may need to return to this checkpoint multiple times to keep retrying the work.

Drive in alone and quickly snipe the Marine sniper as usual. If covies are already heading into the rockslide or there's any shooting going on, that's no good; eject the disc and reload to get back to your your saved checkpoint for another go. If the covies are just standing around however, not having noticed the Marines yet, you're still in with a chance of success. Try to get their attention quick, either by reboarding the hog and advancing, or advancing on foot and maybe firing a few wild shots. If you use the latter variation, back off as the covies come your way, and then reboard the hog.

Now you've got their attention, lure them away from the rockslide as far as you can. They seem relatively willing to be drawn to the lifeboat corner used by ship 4, so drive over that way (see pic), making yourself an inviting target, and back off into the corner as they get closer. If you need to recharge your shield at any point, which is quite likely if you're contending with a red Elite (ouch!), you can temporarily shelter behind your hog. However, preferably keep sticking your head out so they see you, else they can quickly lose interest.

On Heroic, things can be a real pain if you're up against a red Elite shooting plasma at you like there's no tomorrow. A blue would be much easier to live with, and for this reason you may like to keep retrying things until you do get a blue. But at least it won't matter if you take damage, as you can later use a medkit from the lifeboat in the valley (or from another survivor area).

When the covies are drawn as far away from the rockslide as you can manage, quickly whizz past them to enter the dropship trigger zone, then drive back to briefly distract the covies away again. Once that's done, leave quickly. Once you're out, I think the situation inside remains more or less frozen, so hopefully the Marines will remain intact, at least until you're heading back in.

The rest of the set-up work, mostly preparing and waiting, is just as before.

The covies come in five groups: the initial group and the four dropship groups. Each group comprises one or more Elites with either some Grunts or some Jackals (never a mix). On Heroic the numbers are as follows:

On Legendary each of the five groups has an extra Elite, whilst on Normal and Easy each group has an extra minor. It seems odd that Heroic actually has fewer enemies than Normal, and I can't help wondering if that was just an anomaly Bungie failed to notice.

Reds and blues

The split between red and blue Elites is randomized. On Heroic there's no obvious bias either way and you'll typically get 4 of one type and 3 of the other, but I've also had 5 reds and 2 blues for example. Normal shows some bias towards blues, whilst Easy has a strong bias towards blues. If you're brave enough or fool enough to tackle Legendary, you'll notice a strong bias towards those nasty reds. Yikes! As for weaponry, reds always have plasma rifles but blues sometimes have needlers. Needlers are bad news for your Marines because they're not much good at dodging the needles, and consequently tend to go up with a bang pretty quick if you don't help out.

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