I'm of course talking about the final level of Halo: Reach's campaign.

For those that don't know, Lone Wolf consists of the player character fighting off hordes of Covenant soldiers by themselves, with the only objective being to "Survive". This task is of course impossible, and they will inevitably die at some point.

The developers designed the level specifically such that the player would eventually die after killing at least a few Covenant by giving them disadvantageous terrain, have the enemy approach from all sides, giving them very little resources, and ramping up the difficulty by sending in higher and higher ranking Elites, and before long the majority of players meet their end as was intended.

I'm here to dispel the notion that this level is "impossible" to survive indefinitely using one method (there are many).

I will be using this video I recorded playing the level as evidence. For the purposes of ease of demonstration, I was playing on Easy difficulty with the Mythic Skull turned on (doubles enemy health), but it's certainly viable on Normal as well.

Allow me to explain my strategy:

"Skull" as used in a Halo context typically refers to the gameplay modifiers that players can use to change up the mechanics of the game ever so slightly, usually putting them at the disadvantage in most cases. In tangent with higher difficulty modes, combining several can make the game nearly unplayable (hence the infamous LASO challenge).

However, in the case of Lone Wolf, several Skulls will actually make surviving easier. In ascending order of most useful:

• Tough Luck - Increases enemy evasion rate. This is important because it reduces incoming fire.

• Catch - Doubles the chance enemies will throw grenades and will always drop them for the player. Grenade throws are slow, easy to dodge in open environments like on Lone Wolf's map, meaning you are unlikely to ever get hit. Instead, enemies will be forced to stand still and play out an animation in order to throw their grenades, reducing oncoming damage and leaving them exposed. Increased grenade drops also means you can force enemies to use their evasion animation, which again prevents them from firing and is useful for controlling their movements.

• Tilt - Modifies damage values, essentially making all weapons less effective. That is for both oncoming and outgoing damage against the player and enemies. It basically turns everyone into tanks.

• Black Eye - Shields will only recharge with successful melee attacks. This is mostly a bad thing in linear environments with cover-based firefights, however in Lone Wolf you'll constantly be taking damage no matter what you do. Instead of having to wait several seconds for the shields to cycle, you just need to punch something to start the recharge.

Other Skulls can be used, such as Cloud, Famine, or Mythic, however for our purposes these won't really affect gameplay that much. Thunderstorm and Blind are the only disadvantageous ones here by any substantial amount, as the former will increase the number of Ultras (I'll explain why this is especially bad) while the latter means you can't see your shield strength.

Basically the strategy is to punch the fuck out of everything in order to stay alive whenever you take damage. You become a tank with vampirism.

Some things to take note of:

• Elites have a faster base movement speed than the player character. This is mitigated somewhat by sprinting, however Elites can also strafe and still be moving only slightly slower than a sprinting Spartan. As such it can be easy to miss melees or be outran by Elites with poor use of sprint.

• About 3 minutes into the video, you will notice my first encounter with an Elite Ultra (white armor). These are by far the toughest enemies in the level. After the 4 minute mark is when they start spawning exclusively, and they actually manage to nearly kill me around 5:00. This is because they have the advantage of both automatic fire from Plasma Rifles/Repeaters, as well as the staggering effect of the Concussion Rifle. This kept me away from them and prevented me from healing with a melee attack, forcing me to heal with one of the 3 medkits available.

• At 6:20, I encounter my first Elite General (gold armor) who despite being a higher rank than Ultra, are actually infinitely easier to fight. None of them have automatic weapons for instance, instead their only ranged weapon is a Concussion Rifle. Notice that at certain points, they will refuse to fire upon me. This is because of the Concussion Rifle's splash damage. The Elites are programmed to avoid friendly fire whenever possible, so whenever I'm within a certain distance from an Elite they stop shooting, giving me me time to recuperate between punches.

• With the introduction of Elite Generals comes the availability of Energy Swords. Energy Swords provide a distinct advantage: their increased lunge range. Instead of the half meter or so lunge that comes with regular melees, the sword allows you to leap forward at the target from several meters, further mitigating the speed disadvantage.

• In the closing seconds of the video, a BOB appears (yellow armor blue helmet). This indicates that from that point on, Elite Generals make up the predominant enemies on the map and will spawn exclusively. So the same shit over and over again.

Beyond that, it's another 20 minutes of me fisting Elites before I got bored and turned the game off.

This is just one method that you can use to outsmart the game in order to survive however long you want. You can also be a pussy and hide for instance, but that's no fun.

Either way, Spartans never die.

TL;DR - Nerd explains how to abuse the mechanics of a game that released 7 years ago because someone downvoted him for saying a horde mode level isn't that hard 😢