Stepping up to Legendary now - and watch out for a Grunt-assisted hill dismount!

(6:58) Level 4 ('The Silent Cartographer') on Legendary. Having focused on Heroic so far, I decided to try rejoined landing battles on Legendary. Creating set-ups was more difficult and I've covered that in my now updated article, but I produced two for this movie and got a load of great action from them. Six battles here; and as a bonus, a lot of splattered Jackals!

Released January 29th 2025, gameplay recorded January 26th 2025.

00:02 (Rocket launcher) We start with my rocket launcher & needler set-up, used four times in the movie. My opening rocket was meant to get the Elite, but a Grunt got it instead. Oh well. Tagged the Elite instead. Nice finish on this play, when I kill both Elites with a rocket, right after my frag goes off. Four Marine survivors I think.

00:58 (Plasma combo) Here's the first of two plays using my plasma combo set-up. There's a pleasing long-range frag throw around 1:34. Landed just right and disrupted the final group of covies nicely, leading to a double stun 'n tag finish on the Elites. Looks like three Marine survivors this time.

02:00 (Needler) Nice bit of Jackal splattering at the start here, with a double tail-swipe. In the battle there's an amusing bit where the second Elite gets killed by a tagged Grunt. Meanwhile my idiot Marines charge on towards the final covies and start to get slaughtered Yes I'm looking at you, Stacker! Fortunately I'm not far behind. A long-range grenade plus a stream of needles both help to put the covies on the defensive, and the final Elite gets a tag. Four Marines made it through.

03:02 (AR & pistol) When I make the weapon switch here, the AR is from the supplies but the pistol is the one I swapped earlier for the rocket launcher (there's no pistol in the supplies, but there's some pistol ammo). The nearby Jackals get alerted by a Grunt, but that causes them to cluster, enabling me to do a wipeout of all four. In the battle itself, I get straight down to business drilling the first Elites with the AR. That's why I made it my primary.

When it comes to the final two Elites, there were chances for some killing headshots there, but I didn't come through. I give the last Jackal a nice send-off though. Only one Marine survivor.

04:22 (Plasma combo) Nice start to this battle when I do a stun 'n tag on the first Elite, hopping over him to whack a Grunt. At the end when I frag the last Jackal, I didn't quite realise that one of the Elites was still alive, so I'm surprised to suddenly hear growling. He gets a few shots in but soon goes down.

05:22 (Rocket launcher & needler) Bit of a different start to this play, with a high plasma to blast one of two Jackals near the path up to the hill. Up top, the hog gets tagged and the blast gives a nice kick to the spin dismount I was attempting. My overshield is wiped though, and by the time I get past the Jackals, I've lost half my health.

Arriving at he battle, I let the hog slide into the first Elite, who was focused on the Marines and who left himself vulnerable due to a side-step. With the final group of covies, I initiate a good attack but quickly take heavy fire, leaving me in a bad way, so I circle around to attack from the rear. Works nicely, and five Marines survive. Lost Stacker. He's pretty good at getting himself killed in these battles.

Closing remarks That was good fun. I must do some more on Legendary.

In regard to the first set-up, in which I had a rocket launcher and needler, that took about 4:47 of in-game time (not real time) to set up from the time of disembarking, and it give me about 98 seconds until automatic Pelican triggering. So that was fine. I'd put considerable effort into forming a good base save in which I'd done a speedy job of killing all the entrance guards and the covies up the path.

That same base save was also used in creating my other set-up. That one was completed slightly faster, giving me about 109 seconds until automatic Pelican triggering. I got the plasma rifle from one of the cloaked Elites in the substation. A pistol headshot put him down, and I was barely slowed up.

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