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Par Scores - Strategies & Tips


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An explanation of how the time bonus multiplier works:

Competitive Scoring - It factors in time multiplier at the point of each kill, so you actually see your TRUE score as you progress through the mission.

Regular Scoring Mode-

 

If you come in UNDER par time completing the level your time bonus multiplier will be 3.00x. So if you score a little over 8,300 points DURING the mission & finish under par time you will reach 25k.

 

If you finish 50% above par time (finish a level with a 20 minute par time in 30 minutes), your time multiplier will be 2.00x. So you would need to score 12,500 points during the mission if finishing 50% over par time.

 

If you finish in DOUBLE par time (finish a level with a 20 minute par time in 40 or more minutes), your time multiplier will be 1.00x. So if you take really long to finish a level you would need to score the full 25k during the level.

 

It is not simply 1x, 2x or 3x though. If you finish between par time and 50% above, for instance, you will have more than a 2x multiplier but less than a 3x one at the end. I often finish a few minutes over par time and wind up around 2.5-2.7x multiplier for my time bonus. The time multiplier can range all the way from 1.00x to 3.00x. See below.

 

***Here is the kicker. Once you reach DOUBLE the par time DURING a level, you will NO LONGER EARN ANY POINTS per kill. This is why some people are seeing 0 points pop up. They are taking too long.***

 

This final point is why I firmly believe Legendary is NOT the way to go for Halo CE, 2, or 3. I got par scores on Halo 4 just fine doing Legendary with Fog and Famine on. But in Halo 2& 3, and especially Halo CE, it just wasnt working.

 

 

An explanation of how the in-level scoring works:

Your scores per kill in-mission are a result of the base enemy's point value on Normal difficulty multiplied by your SCORE multiplier which is a combination of difficulty and point skulls like Iron. So if on Normal a grunt is worth 10, then on Heroic he's worth 20 (10 x 2.0) and on Legendary he's worth 40 (10 x 4.0).

 

Normal is a base multiplier of 1.0. Heroic is 2.0 and Legendary is 4.0. These values then get multiplied by each of your point skull multipliers. So if you use Iron and Famine, for instance, that same grunt on Heroic would be worth 10 times 2.0 for Heroic difficulty, times 1.3 for Iron, times 1.2 for Famine, for a total of 10 times 3.12, or 31 points.

 

Once again the time multiplier will be applied at the point of the kill if in Competitive Scoring mode, while in regular Score mode it will be applied at the end of the mission.

 

My setups:

 

Halo CE - Heroic with Black Eye, Fog, Famine, Recession, and Pinata. Pinata makes enemies drop grenades when you punch them, meaning near infinite grenades because with Black Eye you run around punching everything. On Heroic your survivability is VASTLY better vs Legendary, allowing you to speed through levels for a good time multiplier. Do not use Mythic skull with this setup as it makes enemies take too many melee hits to kill, slowing down levels a lot. If you're coming up short, you can add in Foreign if you don't think you need the nades. If you're really struggling for points you can add Iron but be careful of grenades on the ground chain reacting. If you run Foreign, turn off Pinata.

 

Halo 3 - Heroic with Famine, Fog, Thunderstorm, Tilt, and Tough Luck - Focus on headshots on Grunts and noob combo headshots on Brutes, and grenades as often as possible.

 

Halo 4 - I just ran Legendary with Fog and Famine, but I didn't try any Heroic setups.

 

 

My skull setup for Halo 2 varied by level:

 

 

Cairo Station - Heroic - Famine, Fog, Jacked, Thunderstorm, Streaking (or Iron), & Boom (helps kill all the enemies off the boarding crafts in hangars). Grunt funeral helps too if you have it for those hangar fights. Just throw one grenade right where all the enemies land at the boarding crafts as they're coming out.

Outskirts - Heroic - Catch, Famine, Fog, Iron, and Thunderstorm. Fight through the entire courtyard fight at the level start and you'll have over 10k (or over 30k if using competitive scoring) when it's over. Then just speedrun the rest of the level (use a Warthog to drive right through the tunnels without taking much damage if you're struggling).

 

Metropolis - Heroic - Catch, Famine, Fog, and Iron - Drive the tank up the bridge killing all the ghosts and such. Make sure to destroy the turrets on the phantoms that come alongside you near the end for big points. Once you clear the bridge and tunnel, head out into the sniper area and speedrun the rest of the level as much as possible, killing only what you need to in order to prevent dying and to be able to finish the level.

 

The Arbiter - Heroic - Catch, Famine, Fog, Iron, Jacked, and Thunderstorm - Just run through the level taking the 'normal path', killing pretty much everything. Use cloak liberally to back smack the heretics. Headshot the grunts. Easy peasy. I finished in 14:18 with 9,900ish points for a total of 29,700 with the 3.00x time multiplier, give or take.

 

The Oracle - Heroic - Black Eye, Catch, Famine, Fog, Jacked, Streaking, and Thunderstorm (Iron is too risky with the flood occassionally back smacking you for a one hit kill). Fight through the level normally until you reach the lift that leads up to the wires you have to cut and do the invincibility glitch at that lift (see Nak3d Eli's speedrun tutorial on youtube for the lift glitch).

 

Delta Halo - Heroic with Assassins, Catch, Famine, Fog, and Iron [and Sputnik for a trick jump] (assassins isn't too bad here since a lot of the killing is against vehicles using the tank which you can still see). Take ally's BR at start, shoot turret with rockets and the 3 grunts to the right. Sneak around the right-hand side and up on top of the building for extra rocket ammo. Sneak out the back down the alley skipping the rest of the initial area. Kill the 3 jackal snipers, and use their sniper to take out elites at the bridge building. Use rockets to deal with any nearby ghosts, activate bridge, grab tank and kill wraiths, ghosts, and banshees. Progess normally using tank to kill ghosts like crazy for good points. When you reach the temple and the ghosts stop spawning, use sputnik grenade jumps to jump up where Envy skull is then from there across to the top of the temple, skipping the inner courtyard fight. In sniper alley kill the first jackal in front, the one over the ledge to the right, and hug the right wall to the cave on the far side where 3 jackal snipers spawn. Kill them and just run past the rest of the enemies to the next area. The flyers won't spawn now, so you can head into the building and kill the Elites inside for over 1000 points each and finish the level.

 

Regret - Heroic - Catch, Famine, Fog, Jacked, Streaking, Thunderstorm - Progress through the level normally, killing everything. You'll pass 30-35k points before you reach the cutoff where you stop earning points. It may take you 35 or 40 minutes, but you'll get it done without stressing out trying to speedrun the level and get points too. Beam rifle to hunters' weak spot is a one hit kill. I ended with 40k and I was earning 0 points per kill at the end.

 

Sacred Icon - Heroic - Catch, Famine, Fog, Jacked, Iron, Streaking, Thunderstorm - Just fight your way through the level normally. Make sure to pick up the sword to the right in the room before the last room that you drop down to the outside area from to make the first few flood outside easier. You can also take the sword from the guy helping you in the final area.

 

Quarantine Zone - Legendary - Catch, Fog, Famine, Thunderstorm - Grab the ghost at the start and speed through the level until you get to the room just before the outside area with the Wraith to the right and the tank to the left. In the room before that, use your sword to kill all flood and carbine to kill sentinels at the exit. Cloak outside just before dropping down and sword the nearest flood in a ghost, then use the ghost to speed to the gondola, ignoring everything. I finished with around 29,000 points with this setup on Legendary, and that was with a nearly 3.00x time multiplier. This is a tricky par score level.

 

Gravemind - Normal - Catch, Famine, Fog, Jacked, So...Angry, Streaking, Thunderstorm - Just rush through the level killing everything in sight. I had Iron on too and wound up with 49,000 points so without Iron I woulda had around 33,000, and that's finishing in 36 minutes so not much of a time multiplier. The So...Angry skull just helps the level go faster by causing a lot of the Brutes to die automatically after their partner dies.

 

Uprising - Heroic - Catch, Famine, Fog, Jacked, Streaking, Thunderstorm, Iron - Just kill enough enemies early on in the level to reach 9,000 points then do the speedrun glitch on the cliff wall to end the level fast for a 3.00x time multiplier, easy.

 

High Charity - Heroic - Catch, Famine, Fog, Iron, Jacked, So...Angry..., Sputnik, Streaking, and Thunderstorm - Just head through the first part of the level killing everything and don't dawdle too long. I finished with around 33k without even trying.

 

Great Journey - Heroic - Assassins, Catch, Famine, Fog, So...Angry..., Thunderstorm - Grab the wraith at the beginning and blow up the friendly spectre so he doesn't interfere. Proceed ahead laying waste to all the ghosts for tons of points. After that just progress through the level normally (or glitch the banshee into the final room if you wish). Another very easy one.

 

Edited by lifeexpectancy
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This post is gold! Thank you very much mate :)

 

My friends and I had been mostly concentrating on par times and we just moved on to par scores last night. We had a little discussion about the score system and this info clears up all the left over questions we had.

 

Edit: nice tips about running heroic with more skulls for better times/multiplier.

Edited by TayTheDay
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This post is gold! Thank you very much mate :)

 

My friends and I had been mostly concentrating on par times and we just moved on to par scores last night. We had a little discussion about the score system and this info clears up all the left over questions we had.

 

Edit: nice tips about running heroic with more skulls for better times/multiplier.

 

Thanks man! Another great thing about this setup is that Tilt makes enemy weaknesses bigger too. It buffs their resistances, but if you kill them with whatever theyre WEAK to they die EASIER. This means The Flood die in ONE melee hit for the most part, although the stronger ones take two hits. I cannot tell you how easy this made the Cortana level in Halo 3, lol. No sword required!

 

@Sun100 - Yeah but we plebs arent all as good as you lol. Especially for speed running Legendary ;-p I still want to play with you more once the lag issues are sorted (hopefully).

Edited by lifeexpectancy
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Thanks man! Another great thing about this setup is that Tilt makes enemy weaknesses bigger too. It buffs their resistances, but if you kill them with whatever theyre WEAK to they die EASIER. This means The Flood die in ONE melee hit for the most part, although the stronger ones take two hits. I cannot tell you how easy this made the Cortana level in Halo 3, lol. No sword required!

 

@Sun100 - Yeah but we plebs arent all as good as you lol. Especially for speed running Legendary ;-p I still want to play with you more once the lag issues are sorted (hopefully).

 

Haha, fair enough man!

Just wanted to point out that time was the major factor in my runs!

 

The save/quit glitch for CE is helpful, very cheap though. I admit I did use it on AoTCR. That mission full path was hilarious, I forgot how long it bloody was!!

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My tip for CE (dont believe Pinata exists in H3) Try Heroic with Black Eye, Tilt, Fog, Famine, Thunderstorm AND PINATA. Pinata is a 1.00x skull so it doesnt improve points per kill but what it does do is make enemies drop grenades when you punch them. This basically gives you infinite grenades because with Black Eye you just run around punching everything. And on Heroic your survivability is VASTLY better vs Legendary, allowing you to speed through levels faster for a good time multiplier at the end.

I dont think thunderstorm and tilt are in Halo CE either.

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Isn't the pinata skull a preorder bonus? If so, and I don't have it, do you have an alternate method on heroic for par score? Or is there any way to get this skull?

 

You can unlock the bonus skulls by setting your Xbox One to offline mode, set it to Christmas of this year, and loading up a custom game in the MCC. Check to make sure the skulls are unlocked. Then you can return to online mode and use those skulls whenever.

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You can unlock the bonus skulls by setting your Xbox One to offline mode, set it to Christmas of this year, and loading up a custom game in the MCC. Check to make sure the skulls are unlocked. Then you can return to online mode and use those skulls whenever.

 

Is it confirmes that this still works? Because I had them all unlocked and the patch took them away.

 

Regardless I still advise the pinata thing. Just wait till the skulls unlock in Dec if the trick doesnt work now.

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Alright i seriously don't get it.

 

Yesterday i did Silent Cartographer coop Legendary without skulls .My buddy got his chievo for the par score.

 

These were the final results for him : Score 27423 - Kills 33 - Time 09:24 - score multiplayer 12.00

 

As i didn't get the achievement (i got 0 points with him don't know why) i tried the same on Legendary SOLO except i added 6 skulls.

 

And these were my stats : Score 22233 - Kills 55 - Time 05.33 - score multiplayer 20.59

 

I did a better time without dying (save quit exploit), did more kills and had a higher score multiplier and i got a less high score then him.

 

I need some explanation cause there's no way i'm trying this if it fails again.

Edited by la fouine 54
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Would boom and grunt funeral be a viable option? Killing one grunt would more then likely clear out an entire room (except for flood levels).

 

In my experience its a bad combo. For one, too many instances of chain reactions killing you if you have black eye on amd are punching for shields. Secondly, when I tested it I only got points for the initial grunt kill and nothing for the rest of the enemies killed in the grunt explosions.

 

Boom amd grunt funeral can help with some speedrunning but not so much for par scores.

 

Re: The guy above's score issues - Its possible that the save/quit trick can inconsistently glitch the time bonus multiplier at the end. I know some missions I save/quitted didnt apply the time multiplier. Maybe a coincidence but I stopped doing that.

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Alright i seriously don't get it.

 

Yesterday i did Silent Cartographer coop Legendary without skulls .My buddy got his chievo for the par score.

 

These were the final results for him : Score 27423 - Kills 33 - Time 09:24 - score multiplayer 12.00

 

As i didn't get the achievement (i got 0 points with him don't know why) i tried the same on Legendary SOLO except i added 6 skulls.

 

And these were my stats : Score 22233 - Kills 55 - Time 05.33 - score multiplayer 20.59

 

I did a better time without dying (save quit exploit), did more kills and had a higher score multiplier and i got a less high score then him.

 

I need some explanation cause there's no way i'm trying this if it fails again.

 

I'm not sure what the numbers are, but keep in mind that you get bonus points for sprees (I believe it's 10% per spree, maxing out at 50% at invincible), multikills, headshots (10%) and such. It's also heavily dependent on the base score of the enemies you kill; for example, I believe grunts are worth 10 points while hunters are worth 150.

 

So basically you could kill 55 grunts and get as little as 11.3k with that multiplier.

 

EDIT: A quick Google search didn't turn anything up, so I'll see if I can put together a list of enemy base scores and medal multipliers.

Edited by Senyth
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I'm pretty much sure that i killed more then 10 elites and the rest were a mix of grunts and shielded enemies.

 

As for the streak i got a medal for 7 simultaneous kills and other ones along the way.

 

Maybe as lifeexpectancy said i got screwed because of the save/quit exploit.

 

They seriously need to fix that.

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Would boom and grunt funeral be a viable option? Killing one grunt would more then likely clear out an entire room (except for flood levels).

 

Boom can help get multi kills but if I remember correctly, you don't get awarded kills for enemies that die from the grunts explosive demise while grunt funeral is active.

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I tried yesterday and it didn't work so I guess the patch removed the trick.

 

The trick works still but only offline. When you reconnect to live it takes them away again. I had to do the trick offline to get Bandana turned off in Halo CE because it was glitched permanently turned on since it was on the last time I played before the patch.

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For me, I had serious issues with the scoring system on co-op, but solo was fine except for the time multiplier not working, which didn't matter because I managed to save/quit and retain my high score due to the skulls and heroic difficulty, but I sure see why everyone who is getting screwed over is annoyed, how did 343i screw this up too of all things?! Anyways, does anyone have any recommendations for the par scores in Halo 2? The save/quit no longer works for this game does it? I seem to get destroyed on Heroic and I only have the fog and jacked skull on! I am only on Cairo Station but this is giving me so much trouble I cannot imagine the rest of the game.:mad:

 

Update: just completed Cairo Station in 20:41 with 14870 and the time multiplier was at 2.65 or something, yet it didn't multiply my 14870 by that at all? Heroic, 5 skulls (fog, famine, jacked, swarm and mythic) what have I misunderstood?

Edited by Dooby UK
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For me, I had serious issues with the scoring system on co-op, but solo was fine except for the time multiplier not working, which didn't matter because I managed to save/quit and retain my high score due to the skulls and heroic difficulty, but I sure see why everyone who is getting screwed over is annoyed, how did 343i screw this up too of all things?! Anyways, does anyone have any recommendations for the par scores in Halo 2? The save/quit no longer works for this game does it? I seem to get destroyed on Heroic and I only have the fog and jacked skull on! I am only on Cairo Station but this is giving me so much trouble I cannot imagine the rest of the game.:mad:

 

Update: just completed Cairo Station in 20:41 with 14870 and the time multiplier was at 2.65 or something, yet it didn't multiply my 14870 by that at all? Heroic, 5 skulls (fog, famine, jacked, swarm and mythic) what have I misunderstood?

 

 

Everyone misunderstands the scoring at the end. The score you have while playing the mission is the total score which takes into the account the multiplier.

 

So if you finish a mission under par time and with 25k score then that is your final score. It will not get multiplied at the end.

 

When you get kills the game automatically multiplies the score given from the kill by your skull multiplier and time multiplier.

 

If you look at your score at the end it should show your base score. This is just your normal score with no multipliers. The big numbers are your total score.

 

So if you had a base score of 3000 and your multipliers all together was 5x then your total score would be 15000. The 15000 WOULDNT get multiplied by 5.00x.

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