**Halo 5: Evacuation — Thunderstorm, the six recordings, and saving the miners**
*Mission spoilers. Halo 5: Guardians.*
Evacuation has three different kinds of pressure: the skull's opening timer, the miners you need to protect, and Fire Drill's full-mission time limit. I would not make a first attempt at all three together. The intel detours alone are enough reason to do a separate collecting run.
**Thunderstorm starts with five cones**
Play from the start of the mission. You have roughly two minutes to destroy five particular traffic cones during the opening drive. Easy is suitable. Get downhill to the Gungoose quickly; its front weapons let you shoot without repeatedly leaving the driver's seat.
Follow this order:
1. **First gate:** Take the raised left route and shoot the cone just beyond the yellow metal structure.
2. **Before the bridge:** After dropping into the garage area, look beside the yellow stairs on the right, near the tunnel approach.
3. **Damaged bridge:** Look behind the burned-out vehicle beyond the large damaged section.
4. **Yellow cylinder:** Beyond the tunnel and stone arch, turn into the small right-hand gap. The cone is on the platform with the large yellow cylinder.
5. **Crashed Pelican:** Continue through the next arch to the wreck. Check beside the red crates near it.
The sound cue helps confirm a hit. Don't spend the opening fighting ordinary enemies, and don't stop for the first intel recording during a serious skull attempt. Learn the five positions, then make a clean timed run.
If the final cone has disappeared because you took too long, restart the mission rather than completing the whole elevator sequence expecting the skull to turn up anyway.
**Destroying the cones is only the setup.** You still have to play through the level. During the final escape toward the Pelican, collect the skull from the ground along the landing-pad approach before boarding. It isn't awarded automatically when the mission ends.
**Six intel stops**
This is a separate route checklist. The two recordings in the elevator waiting area can be collected in either order; take both before moving on.
- **Before the bridge:** During the opening drive, stop at the raised structure on the right and climb the stairs to the pad. This is near the second cone's area.
- **Waiting area, left side:** After Sloan admits you through the security doors, use the small platform lift on the left. Search its upper landing for the recording.
- **Waiting area, right side:** Check the stacked crates/raised platform on the opposite side of the same room for the other recording.
- **Elevator passenger compartment:** Before starting the main lift, Spartan Charge through the breakable shutter of the passenger compartment. The pad is on a chair inside, alongside the weapon supplies.
- **Early exterior climb:** After leaving the damaged elevator, follow the first stairs around toward the crane area. Look down toward the illuminated Liang Dortmund sign for the pad on the lower ledge. Use the crates to return to the climbing route.
- **Higher broken scaffolding:** Near the tilted stairs and walkways, look down over the railing for the thick beams below. The final pad is on the ledge by a construction helmet.
Be especially careful with the last two. Look at where you're landing before jumping over a railing. Falling to your death while reaching a recording is an excellent reason not to combine this with Fire Drill.
Check that the mission shows all six collected before treating the intel run as finished. A recording being in view is not the same thing as interacting with it.
**Savior: keep at least six miners alive through the first elevator fight**
Use Heroic or Legendary. The achievement requires six miners alive at the elevator; it does **not** mean keeping every civilian alive until the Pelican escape.
Start protecting them in the courtyard outside the facility. Move decisively against the enemies attacking the settlers and use squad focus to remove dangerous targets. Avoid throwing explosives through groups of friendlies.
When the outer doors open, let the surviving miners get inside. Running ahead can leave some on the wrong side of a closing door. Count the survivors rather than assuming everyone followed you.
After Sloan's speech, the elevator cabin opens with enemies already inside. Remove the Watchers and clear the first group while protecting the miners entering the cabin. The achievement checks this initial clearance with at least six alive, not the later three-wave ascent and structural collapse.
Co-op can help because players can cover opposite sides, but co-op is not part of Savior's requirement. If you're solo, give the squad a useful priority target while you clear another threat.
**Fire Drill: under eighteen minutes, no deaths, Heroic or higher**
Use the current achievement wording: finish Evacuation within **18:00 without dying**, on Heroic difficulty or higher. Some older guides omit the death condition. I would aim comfortably below eighteen rather than rely on the exact boundary.
A sensible attempt looks like this:
- Drive through the opening instead of fighting everything on the road.
- Clear the courtyard efficiently and move through as soon as the doors open.
- Enter the lift with the weapons you'll need, then start it promptly.
- Focus fire during the ascent instead of scattering damage across the entire wave.
- Know the exterior climb before the timed attempt. Skip intel detours.
- Reach the Pelican without pausing to explore the landing pad.
Being downed and revived is different from fully dying. Still, don't use that as an excuse to keep charging into Knights and expecting the squad to rescue the run.
There are reports of the achievement unlocking despite a death, along with older checkpoint-reset advice. Neither changes the written requirement, and I wouldn't promise that behavior for your attempt. A clean completion avoids having to guess what the tracker accepted.
Completing the mission also earns **Escape**. Thunderstorm and the recordings are collection goals; Savior and Fire Drill are separate performance goals. You can finish them over different visits without turning each run into an unnecessarily complicated checklist.
**Halo 5: Evacuation — Thunderstorm, the six recordings, and saving the miners**
· Games / Halo 5: Guardians