Halo CE in MCC: 343 Guilty Spark walkthrough
**Major story spoilers: this guide describes the Flood reveal and the mission's ending.** For Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary inside The Master Chief Collection, not Campaign Evolved.
The fighting isn't the only thing that can slow you down here. The facility keeps putting you into rooms that look like the room you just left, except now you need the upper doorway instead of the lower one. It's easy to think you've gone in a circle when the actual route has changed floors.
The landmarks to remember are the crashed Pelican, the fallen tree, the first descending lift, the frightened Marine, Jenkins's recording, the failed escape lift, another descent, and finally the lift back to the swamp. This is a conventional completion route, not a timed escape attempt.
**1. Cross the swamp and enter the facility**
Move toward the crashed Pelican ahead of the landing area and check the supplies around it. Then continue through the swamp toward the wrecked Covenant dropship. Deal with the Grunts and Jackals along the route rather than chasing movement off into the trees.
The large fallen tree provides the crossing toward the facility. Go across it, continue over the ridge and clear the Covenant around the entrance. The Recession skull is an outdoor detour before you descend; use the collectibles guide if you're collecting it now.
Inside the entrance, activate the elevator and ride down. **This first lift is not the collectible-terminal lift.** Don't jump into its shaft looking for a terminal that appears much later.
For this early fighting, the pistol gives you useful reach, and a plasma weapon can help with Jackal shields. Keep track of your ammunition rather than assuming every weapon on a corpse has a worthwhile supply left.
**2. Work through the lower and upper doorways**
Clear the Covenant in the first interior rooms. The route moves through large two-level chambers connected by narrow, turning corridors. Green-lit doors are useful clues, but pay attention to which floor they're on.
In the room where the onward door sits on a short raised ledge, jump onto that ledge to continue. Don't spend time trying to force one of the sealed doors at floor level.
You reach the damaged room with a terrified Marine firing his pistol. You do not have to kill him to progress. Keep out of his line of fire, find the wreckage at the back of the room, and use it to climb onto the upper walkway.
Leave through the upper doorway. The connecting corridor brings you onto the upper level of the earlier chamber. Activate its light bridge, cross, then follow the descending ramps toward the door that triggers the next scene.
Check nearby ammunition and health before approaching. You're about to spend some time in a room you cannot immediately leave.
**3. Watch Jenkins's recording, then survive the ambush**
The helmet recording shows what happened to Keyes's squad. When control returns, the door behind you is shut and Flood begin breaking through other doors in the room.
Use the assault rifle against groups of infection forms, and keep moving into space you've already checked. Don't empty an entire magazine into a handful of stragglers if a fresh group is about to arrive from another direction.
Watch the doors rather than staring at the floor the whole time. The entrance you originally used eventually breaks open too, bringing larger combat forms with it. That becomes your way out once you can get through the fight.
The combat forms can close distance quickly. Back away while firing, but look where you're going; backing into a corner is an easy way to lose the room. A plasma grenade stuck to something running straight at you can also become your problem very quickly.
Reload during a gap in the attacks. Check the ammunition in the room before leaving, then head back through the original entrance and up the ramps.
**4. Find another way out when the original lift fails**
The escape is not simply the entry route in reverse. Flood and surviving Covenant occupy the rooms, and the original elevator fails when you try to call it.
After that failure, return to the preceding area and take the alternate open route. Supplies near dead Marines and the next elevator help distinguish it from the door leading back to the broken lift.
The working elevator you find next goes **down**. That is normal progression. You have not necessarily chosen the wrong lift because it takes you deeper into the facility.
Before and around this section, some exits require climbing Covenant crates to reach an upper doorway. If you're in a room that seems to have no useful exit, check the raised ledges and stacked objects before backtracking through several cleared corridors.
**5. Get through the armed Flood and look for a shotgun**
The lower section introduces armed combat forms. Don't treat every Flood enemy as something that can only hurt you once it reaches melee range. Use cover against those firing at you, while keeping space from the ones rushing in.
You encounter surviving Marines fighting in this area. Help with the fight and look for a shotgun among available dropped weapons as you continue. You don't need to kill a Marine or wait deliberately for one to die to get through the mission. Weapons dropped by Flood provide opportunities too.
The shotgun is useful at close range, but keep it loaded. Reload during brief safe moments instead of discovering it is empty after a combat form has reached you. Keep another weapon for targets farther away and smaller groups that don't need a shotgun shell.
If you haven't found one yet, keep using the assault rifle and pistol to make space and check the drops as you progress. This route does not depend on an identical weapon drop in every run or difficulty.
**6. Follow the height changes through the escape rooms**
This is the part where the rooms are particularly easy to confuse. Use the physical landmarks:
- From the surviving-Marines area, take the damaged, green-lit doorway.
- In the wrecked room beyond, climb the debris to the upper level and use its open door.
- At the chamber with the flickering light bridge, remain on your current level and take the onward green-lit door. You don't need to time a run across the malfunctioning bridge.
- In the next larger room, the route drops to the lower floor and continues through a broken doorway.
- Farther on, find the piled wreckage and supplies that let you climb back up to another upper exit.
Those height changes matter more than trying to label every room “the square room.” Several of them are square. Not every pile of debris is decoration, and not every upper walkway is reached by a neat staircase.
The next working light-bridge control takes you across toward the final elevator. Clear enough of the approach that you aren't stepping directly into a group on the far side, activate the bridge and cross.
If you have been looping, go back only to the last landmark you recognize and check the level of the doorway you used. Repeating the whole circuit without checking that detail usually produces the same result.
**7. Take the final lift—and stop for the terminal if needed**
The elevator beyond the working bridge goes up to the surface. **This is the lift associated with Terminal 6.** Its collectible is on a side ledge during the ascent, so read the separate location guide before activating it if you're collecting everything.
For an ordinary clear, ride up, meet the Marines and restock before heading into the swamp. Foehammer reestablishes contact and directs you toward a large tower where she hopes to extract you.
Don't head back down looking for Keyes. Your immediate route is now outside.
**8. Reach the tower and survive the last fight**
Move through the swamp with the Marines, dealing with the Flood that threaten the route. The narrow passage between the terrain is your way onward; once the area opens out again, look for the tower and its large supports through the fog.
Follow those supports toward the structure rather than wandering around the outer trees trying to eliminate everything you can hear. You're trying to reach the tower encounter, not clear an unlimited circle of swamp.
Sentinels appear near the tower and attack the Flood. Stay in the area, keep fighting nearby threats and use the structure to reduce the number of directions you can be attacked from. Don't fire at the Sentinels simply because they're something new moving above you.
The mission ends with 343 Guilty Spark's arrival and the teleport sequence. You do not need to climb onto the tower roof or find a Pelican to board at the end.
**Difficulty advice without changing the route**
On Normal, concentrate on learning the upper and lower exits. Winning a fight doesn't help you find the door if you're searching the wrong floor.
On Heroic, use the doorway behind you as a retreat when armed Flood have several firing angles. Clear a route forward before crossing the room for ammunition.
On Legendary, avoid reloading in the open and don't let a close-range weapon tempt you into fighting an entire group at once. Deal with the enemy blocking your escape, recover your shield where you can, then continue. Keep moving toward the objective without turning every side room into a mandatory battle.
The biggest help on a repeat run is recognizing the broken lift and the flickering bridge. Neither is an obstacle you're supposed to brute-force. Both tell you to look for the alternate route.
Halo CE in MCC: 343 Guilty Spark walkthrough
· Games / Halo: Combat Evolved