**Halo 3 in MCC: a campaign achievement plan that doesn't turn every mission into five separate problems**

**Halo 3 in MCC: a campaign achievement plan that doesn't turn every mission into five separate problems** *Campaign and collectible spoilers. This is a campaign roadmap, not a claim to cover every multiplayer or cross-game achievement in MCC.* Halo 3 gives you plenty of reasons to replay its campaign. The trick is deciding what a particular run is for. Trying to learn Legendary, collect every skull, read terminals, and beat the clock simultaneously is a good way to make all four take longer. **Start with a complete campaign record** The difficulty achievements are: - **Training Wheels:** every level on Easy. - **Prophet's Bane:** every level on Normal. - **With Your Shield or On It:** every level on Heroic. - **Finished the Fight:** every level on Legendary. Higher difficulty completion covers the lower difficulties too. You don't need four complete campaigns solely to earn those four achievements. Solo and co-op are supported; choose the approach you actually want to play. Play the campaign through and check the recorded difficulty for each level afterward. If an aggregate is missing, find the missing record rather than immediately repeating the whole game. Keep Arrival and Epilogue in mind when checking the campaign menu instead of assuming cinematic entries can never matter to a completion record. For a first collecting pass, Normal is enough for the physical skulls. Legendary can wait until you know the routes and where the game expects you to stop fighting and move on. **The thirteen campaign skulls** For **Witch Doctor**, collect the thirteen campaign skulls. Start each collecting mission from Mission Start on Normal or harder. - **Sierra 117:** Blind and Iron. - **Crow's Nest:** Black Eye and Grunt Birthday Party. - **Tsavo Highway:** Tough Luck. - **The Storm:** Catch. - **Floodgate:** Fog. - **The Ark:** Famine and Cowbell. - **The Covenant:** Thunderstorm and IWHBYD. - **Cortana:** Tilt. - **Halo:** Mythic. The individual achievements use the **Skulltaker Halo 3:** name followed by the skull. Picking up the object is the task; activating that modifier in the menu isn't a replacement. Keep three special cases on your checklist. Catch needs its lakebed encounter handled carefully before destroying the relevant Wraith. Fog is carried by a moving Flood enemy, so you can lose the pickup opportunity. IWHBYD needs the ring sequence near the end of The Covenant. Those aren't ordinary objects you can casually grab after clearing everything. The six multiplayer-map skulls and **Brainpan** are a separate checklist. Acrophobia is not a fourteenth hidden campaign skull for Witch Doctor. **Eight terminals, not seven** MCC's **No Stone Unturned** includes seven regular terminals plus the special Cortana interaction: - The Ark: **Rising Waters**, **Inundation**, **Before the Fire**. - The Covenant: **Tipping Point**, **Unto Dust**, **Babbling Dead**. - Cortana: **The Coin's Fault**. - Halo: **Sword and Shield**. Read both parts of each regular terminal rather than closing the first screen immediately. The Cortana terminal behaves differently, playing a message instead of the standard text interface. For **Whispers Across the Galaxy**, revisit the final regular terminal on Legendary and read the Mendicant Bias message. That extra Legendary interaction is not necessary for No Stone Unturned. This is one of the places where an original Xbox 360 guide can send you wrong. Marathon Man's seven-terminal requirement isn't MCC's eight-terminal requirement. **Time and score targets** These are MCC's numbers. Aim below the time and above the score rather than relying on an exact boundary. - Sierra 117 — 15:00; 13,000 - Crow's Nest — 20:00; 19,000 - Tsavo Highway — 20:00; 21,000 - The Storm — 15:00; 15,000 - Floodgate — 15:00; 25,000 - The Ark — 20:00; 25,000 - The Covenant — 20:00; 25,000 - Cortana — 15:00; 17,000 - Halo — 20:00; 24,000 **Speed Demon** covers all nine par times. **Better With Age** covers all nine par scores. Each mission also has its individual time and score achievement. Easy is useful for the time runs. For scoring, use a difficulty and positive modifiers you can survive consistently. Don't assume the exact same skull combination is sensible against both Covenant and Flood. Enable the relevant display, finish the mission, and verify the result before moving to the next one. **Playlists are their own progress records** **Boot Camp Hero** requires one Halo 3 campaign playlist. **Aficiando** requires three. Pick three distinct Halo 3 playlists and finish each through its own playlist interface; replaying missions individually doesn't mean you've completed that playlist. You can combine a full-campaign playlist with a planned difficulty pass. Just make sure you're actually launching the playlist, not an ordinary mission selection that happens to have the same difficulty. The LASO-specific **A Preference for Pain** requires the actual Halo 3 LASO Campaign playlist. Keep that separate from casually turning on skulls in a normal mission setup. **Leave room for the odd jobs** The individual mission guides cover the sightseeing and special challenges: the jungle cavemen, the missing-person poster, the hidden music, the talking Grunt, and the mission-specific combat requirements. Two challenges deserve dedicated plans. **Who Needs Them?** means doing The Ark on Legendary without entering a vehicle. **Annual** needs four-player Legendary co-op on Halo with Iron active and everyone finishing in Ghosts. Neither belongs as an unannounced extra condition halfway through a friend's ordinary campaign run. Finally, **Devastating** is the cumulative Legendary campaign time below three hours. It is not the same achievement as Speed Demon, and LASO is not required for it. Get a complete Legendary record, improve the slow missions, and keep the punishing skull playlist as a different project.