**Halo: Reach — New Alexandria's data pads, hidden music, and flyable dropships**

**Halo: Reach — New Alexandria's data pads, hidden music, and flyable dropships** **MCC guide. Mission and Easter-egg spoilers.** There is a lot hiding in this mission, and trying to collect it all while racing the clock is a good way to get annoyed with it. The club has two music switches. The dropship trick needs a later mission state. One pad is on a ledge far below a roof. Buck might not even receive an assignment in your particular run. Start with the thing you actually want, rather than treating every flight through the city as a failed attempt at everything else. **Completion, time, and score** - **Dust And Echoes:** finish New Alexandria. MCC's completion award does not impose the original Xbox 360 achievement's Normal-or-higher wording. - **One For the Record Books:** finish below the **20-minute par time**. Use a full mission start, not a late rally point, when establishing the mission record. - **Nine Lives Are a Myth:** beat the mission's par score. For planning, aim **above 22,500 points at the finish**. Published references disagree between 20,000 and 22,500; 22,500 is the conservative target, not a claim that the lower figure has been disproved in the current game. Check the displayed mission target before starting your score attempt. For time, learn each jammer interior and respond to the actual objective order. A practiced hospital route is worth more than repeatedly guessing which building the game will assign next. For score, choose a difficulty and scoring modifiers you can survive consistently. Do not enable a zero-multiplier convenience skull and assume the kill count will rescue the run. A score visible halfway through the mission is not your finished result. Deaths, time, and the remaining objectives still matter. None of the sightseeing routes below is a recommended par-time route. **Data pad 7 — Paper Trail** This is the any-difficulty pad. At the opening Falcon platform, look for the tall sloping skyscraper with three antennas, off to the right when facing away from the first objective direction. The shorter building behind it is the destination, not the tallest antenna tip. Land on that shorter building's rooftop balcony and inspect the doorway area for the pad. Interact with it and check **Paper Trail** rather than just flying over the roof. **Data pad 16 — Curious Composition** Load **Legendary**. From the starting platform, turn around toward the skyscraper immediately behind you, recognizable by its bands of windows. The pad is far down on a small window ledge on the building's left side, not on its roof. Descend carefully and line up the Falcon so your exit puts you onto the ledge. The aircraft can be lost during this maneuver. Stop and read the pad before worrying about replacing your transport; use the mission's evacuation prompt from safe footing if you need it afterward. This is a precision landing, not a jump from the top of the building. If you're too high to distinguish an individual ledge, keep looking before you get out. **Club Errera: three awards, two switches** Simply entering Club Errera during its mission objective can earn **Front Page News**. That cryptic description is not asking you to find a newspaper. For **HBOrg Special**, wait until the club objective is active, but do the first switch before clearing its occupants: 1. Fly to the hospital's main tower. 2. Find the platform on its southern face with two small trees. 3. Land and activate the hidden wall switch there. 4. Return to Club Errera and go inside to find the DJ Brute and the dancing crowd. Don't shoot up the party immediately. Let the scene and achievement register. For **Play Us a Sad Song, Claude**, leave the club and go onto its roof. The second switch is beneath the ventilation ductwork beside the raised metal walkway/ramp. Activate it after the first music event, then return inside for the other music cue. The first event uses **Never Surrender**; the second is **Siege of Madrigal**. These are not two descriptions of the same switch. Leave the jammer and the club's enemies alone until you're finished listening. Outside defenses can remain hostile even while the room is having a party. **We're Gonna Need a Bigger Ship** This is the Pelican-and-Phantom achievement. **Fly, You Fools! belongs to The Package**, so don't spend the night waiting for the wrong notification. Finish all three jammer objectives and their intervening assignments first. Wait until the final ONI-defense phase is available. The hidden vehicle switch is on the tower west of Club Errera, inside a floorless recess on its northern face; look up within the recess for the ceiling switch. A coordinated co-op attempt makes access much easier: one player holds the Falcon steady while the other reaches the switch from the aircraft using a jetpack. This requires careful positioning, not simply landing anywhere on the roof. MCC's Acrophobia is also used in collectible-focused community routes, but keep that separate from a scoring or timed-completion attempt. Once the switch has been pressed, find the conspicuous skyscraper with the enormous open ring/diamond-shaped space through its upper section. Fly through that opening: - A **Falcon** transforms into a **Pelican**. - A **Banshee** transforms into a **Phantom**. You need to fly **both**, not just see a Pelican appear. If the transformation does not trigger on a pass, realign with the opening rather than abandoning the whole mission immediately. Plan the Banshee acquisition and where you'll leave your aircraft before starting the transformations. Don't assume an unattended vehicle will wait forever, and avoid calling for evacuation after operating the switch: community reports identify that as a possible way to disrupt the setup. Exiting the transformed aircraft is not as forgiving as an ordinary Falcon stop, either. Check your own achievement record after completing both flights. Co-op reports are not a guarantee that every passenger receives credit merely for watching somebody else perform the trick. **Buck and the rooftop guns** **New Ways to Save a Quid** — also localized as **New Ways to Save a Buck** — comes from receiving Buck's randomized escort assignment. The award is associated with his radio request, not a secret building that must be visited every time. If you receive that assignment, protect his Falcon and finish the escort normally. If you don't, that does not mean you ignored a fixed marker. The mission selects from several emergency assignments. Another full attempt may be needed; there is no guaranteed objective order promised here. For **I Didn't Train To Be A Pilot**, play on **Normal or higher** and personally destroy three of the rooftop anti-aircraft Shade turrets. The final defense includes enough targets. Approach with space to retreat and clear the gun positions rather than hovering motionless in front of their fire. Finally, **No Picnic** has a misleading description mentioning New Alexandria, but its teddy-bear-backpack scene is in **Exodus**. **Easy to Overlook** concerns radios on multiplayer/Firefight maps. Neither is another rooftop collectible to hunt here.