**Halo Wars 2 — Lights Out: shut down the portals and finish the fight with Decimus**

**Halo Wars 2 — Lights Out: shut down the portals and finish the fight with Decimus** **Main campaign, mission 6. Mission spoilers.** Lights Out is a long mission with several separate jobs. You are disabling four hacked portals, rescuing prisoners, building forward positions and eventually fighting Decimus again. Keep those jobs organized and the map is much less confusing. The biggest avoidable mistake is treating every unit as one inseparable group. Hornets need to stay away from Reavers. Rescued prisoners need protection if you want their survival bonus. The units defending your base should not accidentally join a march to the far end of the map. **Open the first portals** Advance with Jerome until Douglas rejoins the force. Take the prison detour early and free the first group by destroying its generator. Then attack the hacking device beside the first portal and use the released portal to cross the gap. The optional portal challenge is to destroy each hacking device before its reinforcements arrive. That requires arriving ready to attack the device, not discovering it with one weak unit and then waiting for the army. Once the device is destroyed, clear the remaining defenders before moving on. Keep the Hornets out of Reaver range. Use your ground force to remove those anti-air units, then bring the aircraft forward. [Opening and portal sequence](https://t.co/Fpf6EGYiXe) **Build a position you can leave behind** Use the available base site after the early portal fights. Establish income, production and defenses before extending farther. The mission is long enough that replacing losses from a working base is much better than trying to finish with whatever survived the opening. The blackened bombardment area is not a harmless shortcut. Keep units out of its targeting zones and use the portal route. If you are pursuing the no-bombardment-loss bonus, check where newly produced units are walking as well as where the main army is standing. Push through the next portal and lightbridge section, remove the next hacking device and clear the minibase positions. Replace the enemy installations with your own as you work toward the four-base-expansion objective. Set rally points in cleared territory; sending reinforcements across an exposed stretch without watching them can undo careful fighting elsewhere. **Rescue all ten squads before entering the final arena** The **Pestilence skull** requires rescuing all ten prisoner squads. The separate survival bonus asks you to finish with those prisoners alive. Freeing them and keeping them alive are two different checks. After reaching the later forward base, explore the prison compound off the route behind it. Clear its defenders and destroy the prison generators. Keep a separate selection for the rescued units so an all-army command does not pull them straight into the next dangerous fight. [Mission objectives](https://t.co/zCcIabquBx), [skull requirement](https://t.co/ek4uRDyHP5) The two Phoenix Logs are in the late mission areas: - Search by the prison compound south of the forward-base area. - Destroy the Banished base near the final hacked portal and check the cleared plot for the other pickup. Collect both before taking the portal into the final confrontation. [Log locations](https://t.co/0Ym2jgGCG2) **Finish the fourth device and prepare for Decimus** The last hacking device is behind the Banished base, not directly beside the visible portal entrance. Approach with enough force to reach it, destroy it for the timed device objective if you are attempting that challenge, then clear the base and defenders. Before moving on, heal the army, replace losses and keep production running. Leave the rescued squads somewhere safe if preserving them is the priority. A full combat group and a useful support-power reserve are worth the preparation. **The control node and boss fight** Take the portal into the arena and fight toward the Banished Control Node. Remove the threats obstructing the approach, then concentrate damage on the node. Move away as it falls: Decimus arrives with an impact attack, and you do not want the entire army crowded underneath him. Fight him between his orbital attacks. When the danger markers appear, move out, wait for the strike to finish and return. Remove supporting enemies rather than let them keep damaging your vulnerable units while everything shoots the boss. The fight continues through a withdrawal and return. When Engineers support Decimus, eliminate the repair support before trying to burn through his health again. Keep watching for the next strike instead of assuming the previous one was the last. On higher difficulty, use the cleared route and your production to recover from losses rather than repeatedly feeding a few fresh units into the arena. The army still has to survive long enough to deal damage. A force that obeys the warnings and returns together will do more than a larger force left standing in every blast.