**Halo Wars: The Flood — keep the colonies asleep long enough to finish it**

**Halo Wars: The Flood — keep the colonies asleep long enough to finish it** *Campaign spoilers. Halo Wars: Definitive Edition, mission 9.* The colonies don't stay dead just because you've moved on. That's the central problem in this mission. You can spend a long time circling the map, winning each fight, and still arrive at the boss with the earlier colonies active again. Build the army, but also plan what stays behind. **Link up with Red Team** Develop the starting base while sending Forge toward the marked Spartan position. Don't leave the rescue waiting while you finish every upgrade. Once you've linked up, keep the heroes supported and begin clearing the route toward the colonies. Hornets are useful because they can move between the separated fights quickly. Get the income, technology and Air Pad working, then upgrade and reinforce the aircraft as resources allow. Keep base defenses in place rather than stripping everything away for the first attack. Aircraft still have enemies to worry about. Prioritize Flood Launchers and hostile flying Swarms rather than hovering in their fire while shooting a less urgent target. Pull badly damaged Hornets out for repair instead of replacing the whole formation after every colony. **Clear the colonies in a controlled circuit** Take the nearer colonies first, clearing the surrounding threats before concentrating damage on each colony itself. Work along the paths toward the farther northern positions instead of sending unsupported ground units across the whole map. When a colony becomes dormant, it is temporarily disabled, not permanently removed. Leave enough force to put it back down when it regenerates, or prepare to hit several colonies close together. Don't leave one token aircraft and assume it can deal with a revived colony plus every surviving defender. As your production catches up, reinforce those holding groups and continue with the mobile force. If you have to choose between another ambitious attack and saving the units holding your earlier position, stabilize the earlier position. Otherwise you're paying for the same ground twice. **Sweet Naptime requires all five colonies dormant at the same time.** Destroying each one at some separate point in the mission is not sufficient. Use the objective markers to check their current state before committing to the boss. A practical approach is to weaken and contain the earlier colonies, clear the remaining routes, then coordinate the final attacks so the dormant periods overlap. In co-op, splitting responsibility for colonies can help, but both players still need to agree when to deliver the finishing damage. **The boss and the things to collect first** Destroy **20 Flood Stalks** for **Rebel Leader**. These are the stalk structures, not any arbitrary Flood kill. Once the counter is complete, collect the skull on the cliff near the crashed Pelican beside the starting-base area. Use a Hornet to avoid terrain-access problems. The black box is in the rocky clearing at the far western edge, near the western colony area. Collect it while that side is secure rather than making the entire army return for one pickup. Once the colonies are suppressed and your force is ready, attack the main Flood organism. Remove the threats that can damage your aircraft while they concentrate on it, and keep an eye on the colony markers. If a colony wakes and the fight becomes much harder, deal with that rather than mindlessly feeding replacements into the boss. Don't make the final attack until the skull and box are collected if this is your collection run. Killing the boss ends the opportunity to wander around afterward. **Harder difficulties and scoring** On Heroic and Legendary, unsupported air groups are more vulnerable to the ranged defenses. Keep the attack concentrated and avoid scattering into small forces before you can afford to hold several positions properly. Your plan should include reinforcements reaching those holding groups, not only the boss army. The gold target is **35,000 points**. **Staving Off the Infection** is the Definitive Edition completion achievement. Sweet Naptime, the skull objective and the black box should each be checked separately. The biggest improvement to a messy run is usually preventing the colonies from repeatedly undoing your work. A little attention to the units left behind can save more time than rushing the next fight with an army that isn't ready.