ONI: Sword Base
"Climbing the stairway to heaven."Beginner Goals:
Easy: ~5:30; Legendary: ~7:00
Intermediate Goals:
Easy: ~5:00; Legendary: ~6:10
World Class Goals:
Easy: ~4:30; Legendary: ~5:20
IL Records:
Easy: ~4:12; Legendary: ~4:40
Segmented Times:
Easy: ~3:55; Legendary: ~4:10
ONI: Sword Base is the second playable level in Halo: Reach. See Halopedia for general information. There are different strats between Easy, Legendary, and Co-op, and they will be covered in this page.
HaloRuns record page: https://haloruns.com/leaderboards/reach/solo/oni/Easy (click the timestamps for video links)
Contents
Video Examples
Examples of every trick mentioned here can be found on either the Individual Level or the Full Game Records page. There are also multiple video tutorials for some specific tricks indicated on this page. Be sure to check #reach-links in the Haloruns discord.
Mission Start
Your first task is to kill all of the enemies in the courtyard and grab the Target Locator.
Easy Start
The fastest way is to run past all of the enemies and fire a well-placed Target Locator shot in their midst. Make sure to kill the four grunts that are under the bridge directly in front of you at spawn and the four Skirmishes that are closer to the Target Locator. Grab a plasma pistol for later in the level. Grab the target locator and aim at the left barricade at the top of the hill. If all enemies die, the door will open and you can proceed with the level.
Legendary Start
There are two start variations depending on full game or individual level runs.
Full Game Method
- Beginner/Intermediate/Full Game Strategy
Start by going to the left, once in the ramp, throw a grenade to the grunts under the bridge and another one to the jackals in front of you. Grab a Plasma Pistol and sprint towards the Sniper (at the end of the walkway in front of you), start killing everything while taking cover from the phantom that drops elites. Use your plasma pistol to quickly eliminate them. Once all enemies are dead, take the Target Locator and the door will open.
Target Locator Rush
- World Class/IL Record Strategy
You can try a variation of the easy strat by running to the right and swap your Assault Rifle for a Shotgun with one Marine. Sprint up the ramp and kill the elite either by backsmacking or a shotgun + melee, then walk over the right side and throw a grenade to distract and if possible kill some grunts. While the grenade is traveling, sprint towards the Target Locator and throw another grenade to protect your back, try to headshot all of the Skirmishes on your way to the Target Locator. Finish off the clear with the target locator, like the Easy Method.
Co-op Start
Similar to the easy start, you will want to kill everything as fast as possible; however, it is faster to not use the target locator. Here is the breakdown of what each player should do:
Player 1 (Host)
Player 2
Player 3
Player 4
Beach
Once the door is open, you need to go around the beach and hit 3 buttons in two possible orders, from left to right or from right to left. For the speedrun, we will take the right side of the beach first and this makes a ghost and some grunts spawn, if you are in co-op and they don't spawn is because there is someone on the left side triggering the spawn before you can trigger it in your side.
Easy
You should have a plasma pistol at this point. EMP the warthog that is supposed to blow up by leading your shot well ahead of the driving path. You need to hit the EMP into the warthog before it gets closer to the wraiths, remove the marine from the driver seat and drive the warthog to the right side where the ghost is located. In case that the warthog explodes you need to retry the EMP because the hog is now inside the explosive area/timer.
You will go over a hil and see a ghost. Hijack the ghost and start driving to the first button at the AA gun. This first button is located in the corner of the rooftop. Instead of going upstairs, jump from outside the building and hit the button, you will know that the button is activated because the turret will start to move and shoot enemies. A quick tip is to hold the activate button before jumping to make sure that you press it as soon as possible.
- Individual Level Strategy for MCC -
For the second and third button you should just drive the ghost and activate them, the greanade jump for the third one you just jump near the corner of the wooden rail and then go back to the bases door.
Legendary
For this part once the door opens head up to the rockets (as a backup strat for full game runs) do not take the warthog EMP because you are most likely to die there, walk towards the ghost and hijack it.
For the first button throw a target locator strike to the building to make sure you survive the first button, you can skip this shoot, but surviving this without it is very hard and RNG based, once the target locator finishes do the same thing you would do in easy difficulty.
For the second and third button just follow the same thing as you would do on easy difficulty, instead of the grenade jump you can jump from one rail of push a box as shown in this video make sure to grab the rockets in that building too.
