Halo Reach: Tips for Multiplayer

A guide to not suck for pros and noobs alike.

Halo Reach Tips for Multiplayer

1. There’s now fall damage again.
2. There’s health and health packs again. It regenerates a little bit now though to certain bars given how much damage you take.
3. Armour abilities replace equipment.
4. There are now loadouts, which allow you to pick your armour ability and weapon. These aren’t custom loadouts like CoD (unless you made the map), they’re picked by the game mode (or map I think), so everyone’s sort of still on the same playing field. There’s no gun customisation either.
5. The jetpack armour ability has a short timer on how long you can use it to fly.
6. The sprint armour ability is the same except with extra speed with your gun lowered.
7. Armour lock allows you to be invulnerable for a short time and slows down players who melee you, takes their shield down if they’re close and blows up vehicles if they hit you at speed. It’s over-powered and annoying as ♥ and yes that’s a fact fight me irl on Sanctuary.
8. Evade allows you to roll/dodge in any direction instantly.
9. The DMR essentially replaces the battle rifle except it’s a one shot weapon not three burst.
10. The pistol is great again, not Halo CE OP levels of greatness but now a viable weapon and it has a zoom and fires faster.
11. There’s now redicule bloom. This means if you fire too quickly then the gun becomes much less accurate. Most noticeable with DMR’s and pistols. This has been severely diminished or removed entirely (not sure) in most game modes now as far as I know coz people suck.
12. You can now assassinate enemies if you’re behind them. It’s a back whack kill except it takes longer and leaves you vulnerable for a short time, but man does it look cool and feel rewarding as hell to do. You can still do normal instakill back whacks by pressing the melee button instead of holding it down to assassinate.
13. You can assassinate at any time, including in mid air or by landing on them. Experiment for different badass animations.
14. No more dual wield.
15. Elites now have more shield but less health than spartans. Their loadouts are different too for the Invasion and firefight game modes.
16. You can’t play as an elite in matchmaking multiplayer besides Invasion and firefight, but you can in customs.
17. Elites don’t have fully customisable armour like Halo 3 or the spartans. Just presets you can unlock.
18. You can use the banshee bomb again.
19. Despite taking place almost immediately prior to Halo CE, plasma pistols still drain power when holding the overcharge down.
20. The needler is an absolute beast of a weapon.
21. The plasma repeater is like the plasma rifle except… different? Somehow? Idk. They’re both in the game.
22. You can’t assassinate hunters.

Strats For Every Game

1. When a person has no shields, they are vulnerable to headshots which will kill them in one hit by any precision weapon, AKA, weapons that AREN’T fully automatic. So things like pistols, battle rifles, DMR’s, snipers and anything similar. Assault rifles, plasma rifles etc. will not kill in one headshot and do no noticeably more damage. Whether they have shields or not though, precision weapons DO do more damage with headshots, just not enough to kill in one hit like as if they have no shields. So maintaining perfect aim on a target’s head is ideal for winning firefights when you have a precision weapon.
2. Plasma pistol’s overburst fire will take down enemies shields in one hit.
3. Back whacks are one hit kills.
4. One grenade will take out a target’s shields leaving them vulnerable to a headshot or to another grenade which will kill instantly if detonated close to them when they have no shields.
5. Plasma grenades stick to targets, killing instantly even at full shields (though not necessarily if they picked up an overshield powerup). They don’t bounce off walls very well though and tend to just drop to the floor at impact point.
6. Frag grenades will not stick to targets nor are they ever one hit kills at full shields but they are much better at bouncing around corners and they detonate noticeably faster.
7. One shot to the head or body if unshielded by a sniper rifle is a one hit kill. Two to the body if shielded.
8. One hit by the rocket launcher directly at your feet or on you is a one hit kill even shielded.
9. Halo’s all about headshots and non-headshots. When I say ‘body’, I’m just saying ‘not in the head’, because whether you get shot in the pinky toe, the pinky finger, your ♥ or in the chest doesn’t matter, it all does the same amount of damage.
10. Plasma weapons do more damage to shields than other weapons. They’re not all that strong against blood and bone AKA no shields though. The impact of this on gameplay differs on the game.
11. Bullet based weapons are the exact opposite, and also depend on game whether it’s all that noticeable or not.
12. You can only hold two weapons.
13. You unscope if you get shot.
14. There’s no aim down sights on none scoped weapons.
15. Plasma weapons overheat if fired too much too quickly.
16. Plasma weapons run on batteries, not ammo. This means they don’t require reloading and if you walk over another plasma weapon of the same type as the one you’re currently holding and it allows you to pick it up then it means it has more battery percentage. If it doesn’t, then it means it has less battery percentage so the game doesn’t allow you to pick up any with less battery.
17. The ‘noob combo’ is a good way of taking out enemies thanks to the plasma pistol overcharge’s tracking ability. It exists in all of the games but you’ll most likely encounter it in Halo 2 because of its incredibly strong accuracy in tracking that was nerfed later on. This when you use a plasma overcharge to take down someone’s shields and then instantly swap to a battle rifle or use a pistol, or a sniper rifle to shoot them once in the head killing them instantly. It’s a valid tactic. Don’t whinge.
18. Overshields double a persons shields.
19. Active camouflage makes you translucent for 30 seconds and disables auto aim on you for enemies until you fire which makes you slightly visible and re-enables it.
20. Some weapons like the needler and the plasma pistol overcharge track targets.
21. In all games except Halo Reach, your shots will go where your crosshair is. Halo Reach has bloom, which means if you fire too quickly your shots become less accurate. The others do not.
22. There is no bullet drop off in any Halo game. Explosives may differ.
23. All first-person animations can be interrupted in all Halo games with melee attacks, grenade throwing etc. How easily you can do so and how helpful that is depends on the game.
24. Deep water will kill you. So don’t jump in it.
25. The turret on the back of the warthog cannot be fired by the driver. Also, it never overheats with continued fire and has unlimited ammo.
26. Picking up an overshield while invisible will make you visible as the overshield armour effect still kicks in.