**Halo Wars 2: what you need for the campaign, expansions and achievement runs**

**Halo Wars 2: what you need for the campaign, expansions and achievement runs** There are two things I would sort out before starting Halo Wars 2: which campaigns you actually own, and what kind of run you want to do. Otherwise it is very easy to finish the main story, open an expansion guide, and discover that the edition you bought never included it. This is the second strategy game, not an expansion for the first Halo Wars and not part of The Master Chief Collection. The familiar Halo units are still there, but you are commanding armies, building bases and paying attention to what your troops are fighting. A squad that is excellent against infantry can be a terrible answer to a vehicle push. **The campaign packages** - **The base game** contains the twelve-mission main campaign. That story follows the Spirit of Fire crew on the Ark and introduces their fight against the Banished. - **Operation: SPEARBREAKER** adds two campaign missions. These are the additional campaign missions associated with the Season Pass. - **Awakening the Nightmare** adds a separate five-mission campaign, two multiplayer leaders and Terminus Firefight. You play as the Banished in the expansion's campaign. - **Complete Edition** combines the base game, Season Pass and Awakening the Nightmare. That is nineteen campaign missions across the three campaigns, not nineteen missions in the original story menu. The important catch: **Awakening the Nightmare is not included in the Season Pass.** Owning that pass does not settle whether you own the Flood expansion. Check the actual expansion entitlement, not just whether the library calls something a premium edition. [Xbox's Complete Edition listing](https://t.co/JENB3s77HM), [Awakening the Nightmare listing](https://t.co/lxujbV8gfE) **Separate the campaign from the other modes** Blitz uses a card-based army system. It is not the place to follow a conventional build order that assumes a full base and production buildings. Terminus Firefight is a defense mode built around protecting the Terminus; it is not another name for the main campaign, and it is not interchangeable with Blitz Firefight. That matters for achievements. An objective referring to a particular campaign, leader, mode or expansion needs that exact activity. Winning a normal skirmish does not substitute for completing an expansion mission. I would keep four lists rather than one enormous unchecked list: - Main campaign completion, mission objectives, medals and collectibles. - SPEARBREAKER requirements. - Awakening the Nightmare requirements and Terminus Firefight. - Multiplayer, Blitz and other mode-specific tasks. The full Xbox achievement list includes expansion achievements. A base-game purchase alone is not the same thing as having access to every item in that list. [Achievement inventory](https://t.co/ipzKRw7Kwy) **How I would approach the first campaign run** Start with the tutorials if the controls are unfamiliar. Being able to select one unit type without accidentally dragging your entire army into danger is more useful than memorizing a build order you cannot manage yet. For the first run, concentrate on finishing the mission, reading its objectives and recognizing the units. Take the Phoenix Logs you can reach and complete reasonable side objectives, but do not ruin a difficult defense because you are trying to do every challenge at once. Then use mission selection for focused cleanup. One replay can be about collectibles and exploring side routes. Another can be about a medal or a time requirement. A higher-difficulty run can use what you learned about attack directions and the point where the mission stops giving you time to prepare. Keep a short record after each results screen: difficulty, medal, missing objectives and missing logs. That is enough to prevent repeating a mission for the wrong reason. The in-game objective panel should remain your reference when an old guide disagrees with the counter in your version. **Skulls are not handled like the first Halo Wars** Do not automatically go looking for a little skull lying somewhere after completing a challenge. Halo Wars 2 awards skulls through particular mission conditions. Follow the requirement for the mission you are playing and check the unlock notification and menu afterward. The first game's method of making a physical skull appear is not a universal rule for the sequel. Likewise, a Phoenix Log is a lore collectible, not an interchangeable skull reward. Track them separately. **Playing with someone else** The official listing supports online cooperative campaign play and advertises Xbox Play Anywhere and cross-platform capabilities. That does not mean every historical matchmaking playlist has always used identical crossplay rules. Before planning a long cooperative achievement run, confirm that both players have the required campaign installed, can join the same session and can see the intended difficulty and modifiers. I would do that with an ordinary mission first, not find out halfway through a carefully planned challenge that somebody is missing the expansion. This guide does not claim to have tested live matchmaking or every current platform pairing.