Elite fireworks
Posted April 23rd 2005
The basic idea
Would you like to send an Elite shooting miles up into the snowy skies of level 5, leaving behind a spectacular pink trace as body-shaking needler explosions go off one after another, throughout a flight that can last almost half a minute? With a bit of work you can create a game save featuring a pair of such 'Elite fireworks' to have fun with any time you like. Have fun sending them off in different directions, making them ricochet off cliffs, or even chasing up after them in a Banshee. You can send them up simultaneously or one at a time. Much more satisfying than Warthog launching, surely. After all, Warthogs don't scream.
What your save will be like
In your game save, a few seconds flying in a Banshee will take you to your firework site, featuring a pair of Elites that have remained oddly frozen a few feet off the ground after you blasted them out of their Ghosts earlier. Their shields may or may not be flickering. Nearby you've assembled a fearsome pile of needlers and rocket launchers. Use rockets to blast the ground beneath an Elite, then send plenty of needler clips into him, and for good measure tag him with a few plasma grenades. If you now back off a bit in the right direction, he suddenly becomes unfrozen, and everything you did to him starts to take effect.
With a scream guaranteed to warm your cyborg heart, he shoots off at high speed and needler explosions start to go off one after another leaving a lovely pink trace. Sounds great too of course - love that needler bang! After a few seconds the plasma grenades go off together, potentially deflecting his trajectory. When he's really high you can watch through a sniper scope, and you'll probably be glad of the trace to help you follow him. He'll go for miles, often bouncing around cliff faces; I clocked one flight at 25 seconds. All in all, excellent fun as you can imagine. The Bungie gods of fortune have smiled on us once more.
Setting up
Here's a step-by-step plan for producing such a set-up, on Normal or Heroic (there may be some benefit to using Heroic; see later). It exploits a weird glitch I found after doing some Ghost rearranging. Some variations are mentioned later.
(1) Do some rearranging
You need to start with some rearranging, in the sense of Rearranging the furniture. In the Ghostly fun subsection there, I talked about the two Ghosts that normally come in to attack you in the crashed Pelican area. The Elites that later materialize in these are going to be your fireworks. Move these Ghosts into the later area with the huge central tower. There's an ice patch there with a Wraith on it. Destroy the Wraith; it'll disappear later. Put the Ghosts close together a short way off the front of the Wraith.
To make sure the Ghosts won't get driven off before you blast them later, surround them with a ring of six Ghosts, or with a Scorpion and four Ghosts. There are lots of Ghosts in the level that you can use, but don't use the two near the exit of the rising tunnel, because the game will later magic those underneath the arriving dropship. Also, preferably don't use the two behind the central tower that Elites run to pilot later, because you don't want part of your barrier getting driven off before serving its purpose. If this movement prevention sounds like too much work to you, see later for some other places you can put the two Ghosts where you don't need to do it.
You'll also want to arrange a few Banshees. Get the 'twin bridges Banshee' from the far end of the later twin bridges area and use it to blast down the 'tower Banshee' from the huge central tower so it won't attack you later, and so you can use it as a healthy replacement if needed. Also use your Banshee to overturn any Shades or unused Ghosts, to make life slightly easier later. Now fly back to resume normal play (by triggering the checkpoint for the second octagonal room).
(2) Play through and get frozen Elites
After resuming normal play and emerging into the first snow battle, jump straight into your waiting Banshee, get the sniper rifle and rocket launcher, and fly off back to those Ghosts (except, maybe pause in a few places to kill enemies that have plasma weapons, to minimize Banshee damage). Dive in and try to overturn them with a single blast. If you see that the Elites have been ejected and are frozen no more than about five feet off the ground, that's good. If not, keep reverting and trying again until you manage it.
(3) Kill everyone and start a needler collection
Kill everyone in the area, and as you do so, pick up needlers before the game makes them vanish. Briefly picking up a weapon is enough to ensure that it stays in the game, as you probably know. Don't forget any enemies in the tunnel, or in the central tower, or the Banshee pilot on top. Keep any fighting away from the frozen Elites, because if they get damaged they're liable to unfreeze prematurely. Start a collection of full needlers near the Elites, just far enough from them not to get blown away when you rocket the ground later. Maybe add your rocket launcher and sniper rifle to the weapons pile, or just keep them with you for now. Optionally clear your firework site of Ghosts (without damaging the Elites).
(4) Continue on, killing and collecting
You know the area coming up later, with twin bridges overhead? Continue on towards the door there with two Elites behind it, but don't trigger them yet. As you go, kill enemies and Marines and add to your needler collection. Six full needlers will do. Also add two spare rocket launchers; there's one near the underpass and one back in the previous area. When your firework site is all set up nicely, get in a Banshee and trigger the two Elites. Kill them and start flying back to your site. You'll get a checkpoint within a few seconds. Do a 'SAVE AND QUIT' when it comes. All done! Now you're ready for some well-earned fun.
Having your fun
Now you've got your frozen Elites, here's some talk about the subsequent fun.
Anti-aim effect
When you first approach a frozen Elite, you'll notice a bizarre anti-aim effect that seems to repel your aim away from his body. I'm glad the Elites don't normally employ this defence technology! Fortunately the effect seems to disappear after your first rocket blast. But you'll have to stand quite close when subsequently needling the Elite, because the needles won't home in (he's dead, though you haven't heard him scream yet).
Clip tolerance
If you keep sending needler clips into an Elite, he eventually disappears for some reason, but it varies. In one of my set-ups I can be confident of using up to 14 clips without disappearance, which is excellent because that's enough to keep an Elite exploding over most long flights. But I've had other set-ups in which the 'clip tolerance' has been quite a bit lower. If you find it too low in your set-up, all I can suggest is that you try setting things up again (ideally from some intermediate save you created along the way, so you don't have to do all the set-up work again). But things will probably be ok.
Launching
To launch an Elite after all those rockets and needles, you need to back off a bit in the appropriate direction. For Elites in the middle of the ice patch as described, backing off in the rough direction of the tower balcony seems to do the trick. Don't ask me why this triggers the launch though; we'd probably need a Bungie programmer to tell us that.
Synchronized fireworks
You can potentially launch the Elites together, for synchronized fireworks! However, the total number of needler clips you use probably needs to stay within your set-up's approximate clip tolerance, else one of the Elites may disappear during needling.
For the best effect, try to apply the same effects to each Elite; same rocket boost, same number of needler clips, same number of plasma grenades. This should give the most synchronized look, as if you're seeing double when they're shooting up. It's particularly good when the grenades all go off. At that point your fireworks are likely to shoot off in different directions to some extent.
Aiming your firework
You can aim a firework according to where you place your rocket blasts. If the Elite is particularly close to the ground, you can easily launch him at a relatively shallow angle, which can be fun as he'll tend to ricochet around quite a lot.
Firework speed
More rockets means more speed. Now, I wonder what'll happen if I get really nasty and use a few dozen of 'em, heh heh! It'll take a while, but the way I figure it, the enormous acceleration ought to separate him from his eyeballs as he shoots off, and they'll just drop to the ground and roll around pathetically on the ice, enabling me to taunt him further by yelling "You dropped something!" as he disappears into the distance. Or did I just watch too many Roadrunner cartoons growing up?
Grenade boost
If you've also tagged the Elite with plasma grenades, they'll go off together and give him a sudden boost in some direction; maybe shooting him up higher, or maybe putting a big kink in his trajectory. For the most extreme effects I suggest concentrating the grenades in one spot, rather than scattered around on him.
Splat!
If you use enough rockets to send an Elite flying up, he may leave a big purple splat-mark on the misty white 'roof' of the area. Oooh, nasty.
Scorpion blasts
You can use Scorpion blasts instead of rocket blasts if you've got one handy (you can bring it to the firework site back in step 1). But it's clumsier to aim your fireworks, and you have to watch out that the more powerful blasts don't blow your weapons away! Been there, done that…
Giving chase
If you're in a Banshee as you launch an Elite, you can give chase. It's also possible to already be up high when he launches, giving you an unusual perspective as he zooms up towards and past you, sometimes still screaming!
Clay-pigeon shooting, cyborg style
If you've got a pistol handy, how about a spot of clay-pigeon shooting? Pull! Of course, for this activity you won't want to be sending your target up too high. Much harder, see if you can score a hit with a rocket; you'll probably be best off trying to intercept him near the top of his arc.
Needle conservation
When you've emptied a needler but haven't finished needling yet, preferably pick up a new one (by swapping the empty one for another type of weapon, then swapping that for a new needler) rather than walking over another needler with your empty one. If you do the latter, it's wasteful because you don't get the needles in its current clip; they disappear with the needler! The same remark goes for rocket launchers.
Set-up variations and tips
Other firework locations
I've managed to launch frozen Elites in a few places other than the middle of the ice patch, but some places have seemed unusable as firework sites because there was no direction in which a brief bit of backing off would trigger a launch. If you're interested in a particular place, you'll just have to experiment. I recommended the middle of the ice patch because it seems to work reliably, and because you're in a nice big open space where your firework can easily go a long way before hitting cliffs.
Another place that seems reliable is the middle section of the narrow pass that leads through to the spiral path. This was actually where I got my earliest fireworks. One good point about using the pass is that you don't really need to surround the Ghosts to stop them moving before you come along to blast them. In my experience they tended not to drive off from there. I was only forced to develop that anti-movement tactic when I tried to get fireworks elsewhere.
Stop press: I've now found that the later area with twin bridges is great for fireworks. I've had fireworks at both the front and back, a short way out of the long dip running through the middle. Conveniently, it also seems that you won't need to surround the Ghosts to stop them driving off, if you do things the following way. Any time after passing the dropship, fly on through to the area high up to avoid triggering enemies there yet. For some reason the Ghosts don't seem to move, even when they notice you. Overturn them to get your frozen Elites, then fly back to take care of bypassed enemies, and work your way forwards as usual, doing needler collecting and so on. Alternatively, and even easier, overturn the Ghosts when you originally leave them there. When you return later, you should find the pilots already frozen nearby. When I did this, one was standing on the ground while the other was a few feet up in the air.
Difficulty levels
A word on difficulty levels. On Heroic, frozen Elites tend to have flickering shields, which looks nice I think. On Normal you get this much less often, presumably because shields are more easily penetrated. Actually there may be another reason for preferring Heroic. On Normal, it often seemed that the frozen Elites had lower clip tolerance than I was getting on Heroic. However, maybe that was simply down to being unlucky. Meanwhile, on Easy it's impractical to blast the Elites out of their Ghosts as it usually kills them, giving no frozen Elites.
Saving as you go
At various checkpoints during your setting up, it can be worth saving a copy of the game onto a memory card, just in case you want to be able to restart from there for another go at completing the set-up later, in case anything doesn't work out well enough or whatever. Also, near the end of step 1, a save made on your way back to the first bridge (at the checkpoint you get after passing the underground bridge) can serve as a time-saving starting point for experimenting with different firework locations, if you've any interest in that.
Weapon moving
You'll be doing quite a bit of weapon moving to build up your collection. You can find some general efficiency tips here.
Twin bridges Banshee detail
Here's a set-up detail I didn't mention. Remember the twin bridges Banshee? You probably discarded it after it became too damaged. But when you trigger the second wave of enemy in the area with the twin bridges overhead, that includes the pilot of the twin bridges Banshee, who'll materialize in it wherever you left it! So, you may like to shoot him down before getting your final checkpoint.
Alternatively, it can be fun to deliberately leave that task for after the checkpoint. In particular, if you've left it in the spiral path area, you'll have the pleasure of briefly blasting it to smithereens every time you're heading back through to your firework site; an explosive little bonus to pass the time.
Getting higher clip tolerance and no music
Before you properly enter the area with the twin bridges overhead, there's a checkpoint, normally obtained as you near the short zigzag path on foot. You could take that as the final checkpoint for your set-up; i.e. fly off now and launch your fireworks. In fact, that's what I originally used to do. But I later noticed that if I played on though to the later checkpoint as described (the two Elites behind the door), the clip tolerance of the frozen Elites often seemed higher, which is better. A possible explanation could be that clip tolerance is related to the number of active enemies the game is having to deal with. With the earlier checkpoint, there's a plague of Grunts active, but with the later checkpoint there are (hopefully) no enemies active, so maybe the game can cope with more needles.
Another difference is that if you've got the later checkpoint, you'll be playing without background music; and personally I like to hear just the desolate sound of the swirling wind, as I arrange for my fireworks to go rocketing up into the mist.