Hello, and welcome to Seasoned Veterans' Guide to the Vidmaster Challenge: Endure Achievement for Halo 3: ODST. This thread is presented to you by Seasoned Veterans, and was written by I adJACENt I, and Pope Rex, with additional help from UEG PaniK and LB Terminator. I'd like to begin with a little bit of a background on how we got this achievement, and then end with a guide for you to go out there and get it. [b]NOTE:[/b] If you would like to do this on Alpha Site, please visit mastercmj2003's guide for [url=http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=37241034]that map[/url]. Last night, around 930 PM EST, myself (i adJACENt i) and 3 others (Pope Rex, UEG PaniK, and LB Terminator) started up a round of Firefight on Lost Platoon, on Heroic. 2 hours and 12 minutes later, we had finished the 2nd Wave of the 1st Round of the 5th Set, with [url=http://www.bungie.net/stats/odstg.aspx?player=I%20adJACENt%20I&gameid=5744386]1,434,587 points[/url], and an achievement. Pope Rex has also broken [url=http://www.bungie.net/stats/odstg.aspx?player=Pope%20Rex&gameid=7240450]1.5 million[/url] just this morning. [b][i]We could not have done this without teamwork, and a well-defined role for each of us[/i][/b]. I will explain those roles, and much of our strategy, in the following paragraphs. [quote][/quote] The following text can be found on the Halo Wiki pages dedicated to [url=http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Firefight]Firefight[/url] and the Vidmaster Endure Achievement. [u][b][url=http://halo.wikia.com/wiki/Vidmaster_Challenge:_Endure]Vidmaster Achievement: Endure[/url][/b][/u] is an achievement in Halo 3: ODST and one of the Vidmaster Challenges. It is unlocked when you play on Firefight, on any mission, and pass the 4th set (the 12th round and 60th wave) on 4 player Heroic co-op Live. It is worth 25 Gamerpoints. In Firefight, you fight against increasingly difficult waves of Covenant attackers. There are five Waves of reinforcements in a Round and three Rounds in a Set. The Set, Round, and Wave the player is in can be seen at the top left of the screen, with the number of players lives being 7 to share between your squad when Firefight is started. The Set is represented by a number from one to infinity, the Round a circle, going from left to right with the Wave the player is in shown under the Round. At the end of a round there will be a brief pause where the player will be allowed to recollect ammo, and get additional lives. The scores will be kept in the top right of the screen, with the Team score being on the top and the player's individual score below that. Regardless of the difficulty, the Tough Luck skull will be enabled from the start. With each new set, more skulls become enabled, more than one at a time. If one can stay alive, they will be awarded with higher scores and medals. Though each enemy class is worth a base number of points, earning medals can modify the player's tally as they go. Staying on lengthy streak without dying, and points will be augmented by a hefty multiplier. Additionally, once a team has survived a Set, they will go on to the Bonus Round. Because it is only a Bonus Round, any deaths will not be subtracted from the overall point pool. However, since the Iron Skull is activated at the start, one death will cause the Bonus Round to end. The Bonus Round provides players a chance to earn extra lives before the next Set. Exact number of lives per score is unknown to us at this time. I will update this post when we learn more. [quote][/quote] Now, we begin our specific guide to getting this achievement... For this specific achievement, our squad played on Lost Platoon (from the Uplift Reserve mission in Campaign mode). We turned on IWHBYD (for extra dialog) and Grunt Birthday Party (for the lulz, and it helps to verify that you actually killed a Grunt). Looking at the map, the South East side, where the big rocks with all the trees are, will be called the front. The East corner of the map is called the Front Left, the East corner of the map is the Front Right, the North corner of the map is the Back Left, and the West corner of the map is the Back Right. The Phantoms that drop off reinforcements will go to only those four spots. As each Firefight progresses, various difficulty-multiplying skulls come into play. Tough Luck, Catch, and Black Eye activate at the start of Rounds; Tilt, Famine, and Mythic activate at the start of Sets. The longer a Firefight lasts, the more skulls remain active simultaneously, so by the start of Round One of Set Five, all Round and Set skulls are active. The Iron Skull is only active during Bonus Rounds. Here is the skull breakdown for each Round and Set, Round skulls are italicized, Set skulls are bold.: Set 1 Round 1 - [i]Tough Luck[/i] Set 1 Round 2 - [i]Tough Luck, Catch[/i] Set 1 Round 3 - [i]Tough Luck, Catch, Black Eye[/i] Set 2 Round 1 - [i]Tough Luck[/i], [b]Tilt[/b] Set 2 Round 2 - [i]Tough Luck, Catch[/i], [b]Tilt[/b] Set 2 Round 3 - [i]Tough Luck, Catch, Black Eye[/i], [b]Tilt[/b] Set 3 Round 1 - [i]Tough Luck[/i], [b]Tilt, Famine[/b] Set 3 Round 2 - [i]Tough Luck, Catch[/i], [b]Tilt, Famine[/b] Set 3 Round 3 - [i]Tough Luck, Catch, Black eye[/i], [b]Tilt, Famine[/b] Set 4 Round 1 - [i]Tough Luck[/i], [b]Tilt, Famine, Mythic[/b] Set 4 Round 2 - [i]Tough Luck, Catch[/i], [b]Tilt, Famine, Mythic[/b] Set 4 Round 3 - [i]Tough Luck, Catch, Black eye[/i], [b]Tilt, Famine, Mythic[/b] Set 5 and up - [i]Tough Luck, Catch, Black eye[/i], [b]Tilt, Famine, Mythic[/b] The #1 Rule of Firefight: Don't die. The #2 Rule of Firefight: DON'T DIE! I cannot stress that enough. This is not Halo 3 Campaign where you can just run around and AR/Melee everything in site. Every death hurts your team in multiple ways. Besides having one fewer life for the game, you may also lose valuable resources by dying in an area surrounded by the enemy. Losing a Warthog, Laser, or other weapons may prove to be detrimental to your team in later Waves. Speaking of the Hog and Laser, at the start of the game, and every following Set (3 Rounds), you will get a Warthog that spawns at the bottom of the double sets of stairs, in the middle of the map (Bottom Mid, Warthog Spawn), in a large room to the North West. Against the South East wall in this room are two Health Packs. There are also two Health Packs at the top of the double stairs, to either side of them. In a side room on the East side, there will be a Laser that spawns at the beginning of the game and after each Round (5 Waves). You MUST be able to keep your Hog alive, and you MUST be able to reserve your Laser shots. You are given 5 Laser shots each round, and sometimes there are 5 Wraiths (one per Wave) in a Round. Your Hog driver and Gunner will need to take down Choppers from behind, as facing these things head on is pretty much suicide. Do everything in your power to only kill the Brute in the Chopper, and not to actually blow up the Chopper. If able, take each and every Chopper you can into the back or the Hog Room, behind the stairs. Store them for use in later rounds (at one time I think we had about 13 Choppers stored in that room). Communication is also key. Your Laser guy needs to know where the Wraiths are being dropped. Your Hog needs to know where the Choppers and Brute Chieftains are. You need to know when the Buggers are coming, so you can ensure you have an appropriate weapon (Plasma Rifle or SMG work best). The more info being passed around, the better prepared your squad can be. [quote][/quote] For your party of 4, you need to have the following types of personnel... Hog Driver / Warthog Driver; Hog Gunner / Warthog Driver; Laser / Support; Long Range / Support [b][u]Hog Personnel[/b][/u]: Driver - Pope Rex Gunner - UEG PaniK The Hog driver and gunners will run the hog as much as possible, taking care to not get it destroyed. During Rounds where the Black Eye skull is turned on (where you have to melee to regain Stamina), you do not want to be in the Hog. One or both of you may want to utilize your Choppers, if you feel comfortable enough, but if not, stay up top on the building. Since this is such a large map, you will want the enemy to come to you so that you can get some melees in when your Stamina gets low. When the Catch skull is activated (Covenant throw a ton of grenades), you may want to be wary of getting close to Grunts, as they have a tendency to unload 30 Plasma Stickies at the same time. [Edited on 09.23.2009 2:38 PM PDT]