How to get that rendezvous Banshee in as little as about 90 minutes…

(7:11) Level 10 ('The Maw') on Easy. Relating to my new article 'Maw Banshee snatch - faster!', this shows how you can snatch a Banshee on The Maw in as little as about 90 minutes - much faster than was previously thought. That's mainly due to doing the weapon accumulation work (for overloading the game) on level 3 instead of the ground floor, and doing so in an efficient way. Most of the work is done in a 'base save', and then I show a few examples of using it to get different outcomes, through different amounts of overloading. For much more detail see the article. I'm using PAL Xbox here as ever, but I expect things work just the same on NTSC. Perhaps PC too.

Released October 7th 2015, gameplay recorded September 21st - October 6th 2015.

00:02 (Creating the base save) I had a bit of fun with this opening. Originally I was going to start by emerging from the access way to blast the first Elite with my shotty, but later I experimented with the idea of having a sequence of shotty blasts leading up to that, to represent whizzing through the level. It was much more entertaining, so I went with it. Moreover, I've used four different enemy types for the four short clips. Did quite a bit of gameplay to get some nice blasts!

00:30 This long clip should give you a good idea of how to work efficiently on level 3, and my captions give some basic advice. There's way more in my article, plus explanation of the spawning dynamic. I accumulate weapons at a good rate here. Once I reach the cross-way I get 7 in just under a minute.

With a lot of these Flood, I add a bit of extra fire to try and make sure they stay down. Sometimes a bit more than needed, but never mind. At about 1:07 I switch sides without waiting to be sure whether Flood have spawned there yet. That was to get the Sentinels destroyed (the Monitor says "Ah, pity"). As it turns out though, Flood had spawned.

One thing not shown is the use of plasma grenades to do weapon clearance. I use them quite a lot but decided not to include that in the tutorial because it's a bit dangerous unless you're confident. At about 1:41 you can see that an AR I tried to throw off the walkway earlier didn't quite make it. I later blasted it off (there's a picture in my article). That barely cost me a second; quicker than weapon swapping would've taken. At about 2:10 you can see quite a few weapons in a corner of level 2. They got blasted there by grenades.

01:43 The mysterious deep music is a bit of a pain, but I found a way to kill it. Just retract an exhaust coupling. Much better for hearing the Flood; and nicer too!

02:03 After handling an AR, my weapon count is 440 so I get three cores blown, avoiding the one which starts a fire in the cross-way. Sentinels turn up at just the wrong time for the first, and I decide to do some quick zapping to stop getting pestered. Notice the slowdown in this clip? The game is only delivering about 10 frames per second now instead of the usual fluid 25, because of the accumulated weapons.

03:08 With the third core blown, I get to a good point of safety. Out of enemy threat, the game then grants me the checkpoint which was triggered by the third core destruction. I saved it, to form my base save.

03:25 (Play 1 - 15 more weapons) On this first play of the base save, I accumulate another 15 weapons before leaving. I think 15 is a fairly good bet for getting a Banshee and a checkpoint on your first try (which in this case, indeed I did). That's why I show it first.

03:48 Yup, definitely lacking a few covies in the lift today! Cyborg versus two Grunts? Not much of a contest.

03:56 My getaway in the Warthog is pretty good. I deliberately aimed the hog to get a bounce off the overturned one. That's how I like to do it. A Grunt obligingly dives into my path and gets splattered. He does that a lot actually.

04:05 My drive was fairly good, and at the rendezvous the timer stops at 3:47, only three seconds off my current best. The left Banshee is missing like I expected, and as the right Banshee gets into tracker range, I see the yellow dot which tells me it's empty. The boarding is routine, and I'm pleased to find that the Banshee is able to fire. I subsequently land and reboard, just to show how it gets the top closed.

05:16 (Play 2 - No further weapons) This time I just blow the core and go. With less overloading, the lift has its usual complement of troops, and naturally I have a spot of fun with my rocket launcher. Then there's a short clip added for further entertainment, where I go past four Grunts. The hog lands with a nice loud crash, at an angle which sets me up nicely for a bit of weaving.

05:50 This time there are two Banshees. The one on the right is empty and I'm pleased to see that the other is manned (red tracker dot), as desired. As soon as I get control of my Banshee I head back indoors, hoping to be sufficiently out of enemy threat to get the checkpoint. Doesn't always work, but this time it does. When I emerge, I come under immediate attack. At this point I could of course do some toying around the with the enemy, but that's for another movie. For this tutorial I just deliver a killing blast without much delay. It's a nice one too; I actually barge the wreckage and then it vanishes because of how overloaded the game is. The game is really keen to remove things.

Incidentally, at 6:10 when you see the timer restart, you can see that it stopped on 3:50. Good time! When I eventually get the checkpoint, I've got 3:40 left for flying around before the ship explodes.

06:40 (Checkpoint by killing fast) This last clip shows another way of getting the checkpoint, in the case of enemy threat. You can just kill the enemy quick - ideally before Cortana finishes. I try to immediately get him with a fuel rod shot, but miss, so I start up with plasma fire instead. But then I get an easy chance for a second fuel rod shot, and I make it count. I also use this clip to say something about exploration and fun. I hope to have some of that for you soon - inside and out!

Closing remarks Hey, this is my first movie for The Maw - compared to 72 for AOTCR, hah! I really should've looked into this Banshee snatching business earlier, but I'd kind of forgotten about it.

In creating the base save used for the plays seen here, I went to the trouble of checking my weapon counting using video footage, to try and be sure it was accurate. I'd earlier done that for some other base save creations too, to help me make a good decision about how many weapons should be accumulated in the base save. 440 seemed a good choice, and worked fine when making the movie. In both of my plays (first 15 more weapons then none) I got the desired outcome first time; no re-driving needed.

In regard to the accumulation work, in the movie I could only really cover the basics, or it would've got too long. I decided to just go with one long clip to outline how to work. Besides which, I like to keep my captions short, so it would've been hard to cover many details or give explanation for my advice. My article is a much better place for that, for anyone sufficiently interested to go and try this stuff for themselves.

You may've noticed that on both plays I ended up with a plasma pistol on 85% charge. Pure coincidence.

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