Halo 2: High Charity achievement guide — MCC

Halo 2: High Charity achievement guide — MCC **Mission and collectible spoilers. These are the achievements for Halo 2 in The Master Chief Collection.** High Charity has one collectible you can climb straight up to and another that goes past you in a gravity lift before you've had much time to react. The second one is the reason to know your controls before starting the mission. You don't need some elaborate trick for the Iron skull. You need the correct difficulty, the correct lift, and the pickup button held before you pass it. **The six mission targets** - **High Charity:** finish the mission; Easy counts in MCC. - **Feeling Charitable:** finish below the **15-minute** par time. - **Scorched Earth:** beat the **9,000-point** par score. - **I Like Crazy:** collect the **Rampant Cortana toy**. - **Reviewer:** activate terminal **12**. - **Skulltaker Halo 2: Iron:** pick up the Iron skull on **Legendary**. That Cortana toy is a different collectible from the one on Gravemind. Finding the earlier one does not complete I Like Crazy. There isn't a separate High Charity achievement for finishing without a sword, clearing every Flood, or winning a particular boss fight. Don't invent extra restrictions from the name Scorched Earth: it's the score target, not an instruction to kill everything with explosives. **Pick a run that matches what you want** If you're learning the mission, take the toy and terminal on an ordinary completion run. Both are available without playing Legendary. Make the Iron skull part of a Legendary collection attempt. Keep the timer run separate if stopping for collectibles is causing problems, and treat the score run as a fighting route rather than a race past every enemy. You can combine goals when the run is going well. You just don't have to. Missing a 15-minute finish while carefully checking a collectible doesn't mean the collection attempt was wasted. **I Like Crazy: climb the stone arch** During **“Please, Make Yourself at Home,”** you'll reach a dark garden room with a prominent stone arch and Gravemind speaking. This is the place to stop. Make the room safe enough to climb, then work up the rocks onto the arch. The toy is on top. A normal climb is enough; you don't need a grenade jump or a special movement skull. Use your flashlight to see where you're going. Switch to **Anniversary graphics** for the toy, then move over it to collect it. Looking up at it from the ground is not the same as making contact. The achievement works on any difficulty. If you're doing a hurried run and pass through this room without climbing, make a note to return on a collection attempt rather than assuming you received credit because you saw the toy. **Reviewer: check left before the late lift** Later, after the large room with Flood, Brutes, and Jackals fighting, leave through the broad doorway with the pink-purple glow. An energy sword is ahead of you. **Look immediately left for terminal 12.** In Anniversary graphics, approach and use the terminal to trigger Reviewer. This is a useful landmark for the next collectible as well: the large upward gravity lift beyond this room is the one containing Iron. Get the terminal interaction done before stepping into that lift. Neither the sword nor the nearby lift itself counts as activating the terminal. Reviewer has no Legendary requirement. You only need that difficulty for the skull achievement that follows. **Iron: hold pickup before the skull passes** The target is the **late large vertical gravity lift**, not one of the smaller lifts or horizontal crossings earlier in the mission. On Legendary: 1. Check which button or key is bound to picking up weapons and objects in your control setup. 2. Enter the lift and look upward. 3. Hold the pickup/action control before you reach the skull and keep it held as you rise through its position. 4. Check that the pickup registered rather than assuming the brief glimpse was enough. Older guides say to hold X because of the controller layout they used. Follow your own binding, particularly on PC or with a different controller preset. If you miss it, check whether your latest checkpoint is still before the lift and retry from there. Don't continue farther hoping that the collectible will somehow count retroactively. The recovery depends on where your actual checkpoint is; it isn't a promise that every missed attempt has an immediate reset available. Also, collecting Iron and **turning on the Iron modifier** are different things in MCC. You do not need to activate Iron in the menu to earn the pickup achievement. Leave it off unless you deliberately want its gameplay restrictions for another challenge. **Feeling Charitable: 15 minutes** Easy with no optional skulls is a straightforward setup for a dedicated time attempt. Enable the timer, start at the beginning, and aim for a finish comfortably under 15 minutes. Learn the route through the lift crossings before worrying about shaving a second off every fight. A wrong turn or fall can cost more time than clearing an enemy blocking the next doorway. A sword is useful against the Flood that close in, with a ranged weapon for threats you shouldn't charge. Keep track of the sword's remaining energy instead of discovering it's empty while surrounded. Don't stop to climb the garden arch or inspect the terminal on a run whose only remaining goal is time. This isn't an achievement that asks for Legendary or a deathless finish. The relevant result is your recorded completion time. You can choose a harder difficulty, but it adds risk without changing the 15-minute target. **Scorched Earth: 9,000 points, not 25,000** This is where the plan changes. You need kills and a healthy finishing score, not just a quick trip to the exit. Normal is a workable starting difficulty for a scoring attempt. Take a useful close-range weapon, keep something for distant enemies, and fight along the route instead of leaving the whole score target for the final room. There are additional Flood near the end that can help close a small gap, but **do not treat them as an unlimited points supply**. The published score guide specifically corrects its original suggestion that those spawns were infinite, and its author couldn't reach the target after skipping everything else. Watch the score as you go. If you're still short near the finish, deal with the enemies available rather than immediately crossing the exit. Once you're comfortably above the target, finish without throwing the margin away through unnecessary deaths. A higher difficulty or suitable score multipliers can help if you're consistently finishing short. Add only what you can handle, and read the modifier warnings. A helper setup used for a collectible is not automatically valid for a score achievement. Finally, check the mission results and the individual collectible entries. High Charity can be finished quickly, but the game still treats completion, time, score, toy, terminal, and skull as separate accomplishments.