A list of general tactics to use for the legendary difficulty, as well as level specific tips that will help minimize or skip the most difficult parts of the game.
General Tactics
- On missions where you have Noble team allies, always let them push up in front of you and grab most of the attention. They can’t die, so don’t feel too bad.
- Abuse the noob combo. Always carry a Plasma Pistol unless I specify otherwise. There’s no reason not to, and you’ll just be making things harder for yourself by not doing it. And always carry a weapon capable of an instant headshot kill in your other slot. That means a DMR, Needle rifle, Magnum, or hell, a Sniper Rifle. Whenever you encounter an Elite, dip behind the nearest cover, charge your Plasma Pistol, pop out and shoot them, then quickly switch to your headshot weapon and tap them once on the head. If you don’t use this combo, you’ll be wasting ammo and time on Elites, both of which are valuable on legendary.
- Use headshot weapons for all the normal infantry. Tap grunts on the head once or twice and they die. Always aim for the exposed hand on the left of a Jackal shield, then tap them on the head while they’re reeling. Optimally, this means that you’ll be using 1-2 rounds on Grunts and 2 rounds on Jackals.
- Find a piece of cover and stay back. More times than not, there’s no reason to push in. You can almost always take out most of the enemies from a safe distance with your precision weapons.
- Brutes are hilariously weak, and you should consider replacing the Plasma Pistol with the Needler and the DMR with the Needle Rifle on areas where they’re the dominant enemy. That means all of Exodus, the hospital in New Alexandria, and the final wave defense segment in Pillar of Autumn. Since they’re mostly unshielded, you can kill one with 6 Needler rounds or three body shots with the Needle Rifle. Note that the DMR tends to take 1-2 headshots to pop their helmet off, and 1 more headshot to kill. The Needle Rifle is just as efficient except you need to aim a whole lot less.
- Grab the drop shield when you can, and use sprint otherwise. Other than some very niche situations, there’s very little reason to use the other abilties.
Mission 4: Tip of the Spear
- The initial firefight can almost be completely avoided. Go left and hug the cliff and stay outside the railing. It should block most of the shots from the infantry. The only enemy you’ll have to actively target is the fuel rod Shade – a couple of grenades from your launcher will do it. Then, run far enough to trigger the Pelican dropping in the rocket hog. If it’s just hovering and trying to kill every enemy, run a little further to trigger it to settle down – just make sure not to drop down into the next area.
- Take the rocket hog and ditch Kat and the trooper it came with. Drop down into the next area and take care of the skirmishers – splatter them with the hog or get off and do it the old fashioned way. Then, position the rocket hog in a place where you can see the giant cannon in front without progressing too far. Get in the gunner’s seat and shoot it from the outside until it blows up. The reason you ditched Kat and the trooper is so they won’t hop in the driver’s seat and screw everything up.
- Take a sharp right and drive until your see a Phantom. Wait a bit for a friendly Pelican to stop by and drop a bridge before you drive through this area and over it.
- Park the rocket hog outside the mining facility and pick off as many as you can with it. If Kat has caught up by now, don’t worry – since you’re not supposed to be driving at this point, her AI won’t move the car.
- Skip the mining facility. Refer to this video.
- Grab a Revenant and use it to bombard the anti air cannon from a safe distance. Then use it to painstakingly clear out the remaining enemies. If you want to be more fun with it, hijack one of the Wraiths instead.
- On the Falcon ride, prioritize the turrets, then the concussion rifle Elites, then the turrets.
- Clear out the initial Grunts and Skirmishers from the initial Spire area. Grab a jetpack. There are a few ways to proceed after that. One is to overcharge plasma shot one of the Banshees out of the sky and take that up to the top. The other is to painstakingly clear out the fuel rods to open a clear path to the lifts inside. It’s almost impossible to make it with them alive.
- Once at the top, stay outside so you have room to move. Pick off any Grunts who peek you, prioritizing the ones with fuel rods. When the sword Elite comes after you, noob combo him or hover safely over the edge with your jetpack and watch him kill himself trying to get to you.