Fracture: Entrenched returns from September 27 to October 4!
This marks Week 5 of 6 for the Entrenched event, the penultimate opportunity for you to acquire up to 30 tiers of unique cosmetics and rewards for your EAGLESTRIKE armor core.
The final week of the Entrenched event will take place from 10/25 to 10/31.
Head over to the Land Grab event playlist and complete event-specific Challenges to earn reward tiers in your Event Pass. Complete all of your Challenges to unlock this week’s Ultimate Reward, the Unremembered Defiance armor coating.
The Shop this week contains additional EAGLESTRIKE cosmetics, including the Halite Storm coating bundle (containing the Halite Storm coating for your EAGLESTRIKE armor, MA40 Assault Rifle, and MK50 CQS48 Bulldog).
STORY SHARD: THE LAST SKY MARSHAL, PART 4
For the five recurrences of the Fracture: Entrenched event, we will be releasing a five-part tie-in story that is directed by the community—by you!
With the return of Fracture: Entrenched comes the next part of the event’s Story Shard – a choose your own adventure-style story directed by you, the community.
The assault on Luna to prevent the mutated abominations of the Covenant from completing the SCS Perpetua star-zeppelin saw further complications for the valiant Sky Marshals as Commander Kolby’s team perished holding a position for an off-mission detour that lost them valuable time.
As the secondary reactor complex was destroyed, resulting in further Sky Marshal casualties, the Covenant mutants played their final card. Deploying the crawling mists, a nanocloud capable of wreaking untold damage upon their foes, Commander Kolby was faced with a decision over which piece of equipment he would scavenge from his fallen team: Nocturne Goggles to aid with visibility or the Gummytube Filter, which could potentially stave off some of the mists’ effects.
You voted for where you want the next part of the story to go, and the results are in...
You can cast your vote for the direction the next part of the story should go on Twitter, Waypoint, YouTube, Discord, Instagram, Reddit, and the Official Halo Club on Xbox and PC (note: voting is open for one week).
FRACTURE: ENTRENCHED TANKER JACKET
Halo Gear Rewards from the Xbox Gear Shop are exclusive physical products players can earn access to after completing specific in-game challenges. The first of these is the Fracture: Entrenched Tanker Jacket.
If you have completed the Event Pass but haven’t received your code, please reach out to @HaloGear on Twitter.
See you on the battlefield!
Ultimate Reward & Featured Shop Bundle
Comes free with your Happy Moa burger meal. (Not that the near-extinct creatures have much to be happy about!)
Complete all of your Weekly Challenges and the Ultimate Challenge to earn this week’s Ultimate Reward – the Have S'Moa Weapon Charm.
A new Ultimate Reward will become available every week, so be sure to keep an eye on your Challenges and take advantage of these free rewards.
Spoils of war fit for a champion!
The Champion Armor Bundle includes the Halcyon Days armor coating for all armor cores, along with the Oddball Champion stance, UA/RENFRU shoulders, and Fastball emblem.
Pick up the set and look good on the podium today!
The first time I looked at Forge in Halo Infinite, I was like "Oh hey, cool that's... oh, holy-- you guys did what?!”
With November already on the horizon, in just a few short months the Forge Beta will be in your hands to unleash your creativity with, dare we say, infinite possibilities.
In this four-part video series, we’re going to explore the foundational elements of Forge to get you acquainted with its tools, showcase brand new features and improvements from previous games, and provide some direct developer insight into what’s coming.
Here are the topics we’ll be covering in each video of this series:
Scripting & Bots – what is scripting, how can I use it, and how can I test my map with bots?
Polish – what lighting, art, and audio tools can make my maps look and sound great?
Canvases & File Sharing – where can I build my maps and how can people discover them?
But first, of course, for those of you who may just be joining us on this great journey, or may need a refresher, let us take a moment to look back on what Forge represents as a pillar for Halo...
What is Forge?
Once upon a time, matches on Halo 2’s Colossus would begin with a frenetic rush to collect the various plasma pistols and battle rifles strewn across its lower end, and we would have to impose honor rules.
In those days, the placement of weapons, objectives, spawns, and other details of Halo’s multiplayer spaces were largely fixed – rooted in place, until they were picked up and spent, after which an invisible countdown would bring them back to be fought over once again.
But then, Halo 3 brought with it an exciting new feature. Forge began as an object layout editor, enabling players to rework weapons, vehicles, scenery, and spawns – and you could invite your friends to hop in and test out these changes live, or spend an hour trying to drop tanks on each other.
As with all creative tools, when put in the hands of the community, impossible things happened. You built Scarabs and Pelicans out of crates and scenery items. You used teleporter nodes to keep objects floating in the air. You discovered techniques that allowed blocks to intersect with each other and the environment, creating all-new maps on empty canvases.
From that point, Forge ceased to be a simple layout editor. It became a map maker, and a community of creative cartographers arose from its foundations.
Since then, Forge has been continually upgraded in successive Halo titles with new tools and capabilities to give Forgers more agency and options in what they seek to create. More objects, bigger budgets, new terrain pieces, color editing, magnets, baked lighting, scripting... Forge is your playground, and in Halo Infinite we’re giving you more toys to play with than ever before.
In our second video, we’re exploring new and improved features around scripting, node graphs, and Bot support on Forge maps.
Michael Schorr, Forge Lead Designer, and Connor Kennelly, Technical Designer, dive into the fundamentals of scripting: what is it, how can I use it, what sort of things does it enable me to do with my maps, and how has it been made more accessible from how it’s previously appeared in Halo 2: Anniversary and Halo 5? And, most importantly: how do I use scripting to make my assault rifle shoot rockets?
Of course, as you’re building things, you’re going to want to try them out as well. Michael and Connor detail how you can test your scripts in the newly added Test Mode, and how you can also get a good feel for how your map plays with the addition of Bots—as well as the “nav mesh” which directs how Bots can move around your custom maps.
These features are just another aspect of how Forge in Halo Infinite is levelling up to empower you with more options to create maps with more agency than ever before.
Stay tuned for parts 3 and 4 coming soon!
September Playlist Update
We’ve got two changes coming to Halo Infinite’s playlist line up next Tuesday, September 20:
The Yappening BTB shenanigans will continue, and we’ll be rotating out the dedicated Land Grab playlist.
Before we jump into those specifics, we wanted to share some insights around how the current playlists are performing, as well as the team’s philosophy and priorities for ongoing playlist management, as these are questions we hear often.
PLAYLIST FUNDAMENTALS
Ever since Halo 2, matchmaking playlists have been at the heart of Halo’s online multiplayer and that remains true today in both MCC and Halo Infinite. Likewise, for as long as there have been Halo playlists, there have been rotational plans that see various modes coming and going at regular intervals. With Infinite, we haven’t seen a lot of rotations thus far, but as the team continues to amass a backlog of tried-and-true modes—along with brand new offerings—this will occur more regularly.
When it comes to playlist management, the team’s priorities are offering variety and breadth of experiences, focusing on the things that are most popular to players (while improving and evolving those that are less popular), and maintaining the best player experience possible.
In general, when new playlists are added, there’s a likelihood that overall match quality declines as the player population is spread across more options (unless, of course, a suitable influx of incremental new players is seen). As a result, some playlists become “unhealthy,” meaning they will experience longer than desired wait times, degraded online performance due to smaller populations around specific data centers, and/or larger than desired variances in player skill levels. Each of these factors can contribute negatively to the overall experience, with the worst case being some players have such a bad time that they move on entirely.
Most recently, Last Spartan Standing was removed as a dedicated playlist due to it no longer sustaining a suitable level of engagement to hit the match quality and player experience bars the team has set. For context, LSS accounted for less than 1% of all player activity (despite it also being some players’ personal favorite mode).
The team has to weigh all of these considerations any time a new playlist is added and/or the population changes. Meanwhile, rotational playlists will continue to play a part in matchmaking and should become more commonplace as the game continues to evolve.
Overall, playlist management is a dynamic process and our plans will continue to evolve based on data and player feedback.
PLAYLIST RANKINGS
Quite a few folks were surprised to hear that Last Spartan Standing was hovering around the bottom of the list given how much they personally enjoy it. Naturally, this raises the questions of what are the most popular playlists and how do my favorite playlists currently fare?
Here’s a stack ranked list of Halo Infinite’s playlists over the past month to give you an idea of what’s most popular and where players are spending their time:
Quick Play
Ranked Arena
Fiesta
Team Slayer
Big Team Battle
Tactical Slayer
Land Grab
Ranked Doubles
Team Doubles
Team Snipers
Rumble Pit
Bot Bootcamp
Anytime we have an active event, we see significant impact and shifts across matchmaking. Since it debuted, the Yappening playlist has been the overwhelming favorite playlist (nearly 4x as popular as the #2 playlist).
THE YAPPENING KEEPS ON HAPPENING
It’s been great to see so many people enjoying BTB antics as part of the Yappening event (which we’ve also been having a blast playing!). Our pal Flipflop the Grunt has thrown one heckuva party and, with his permission, we’re going to keep the good times rolling with a minor change in branding.
When the Yappening officially ends on Tuesday, September 20, the new “BTB Social” playlist will emerge as the new home for the shenanigans you’ve come to know and love in the event playlist.
The Yappening has been a huge success in terms of popularity and engagement, but we’ve also seen the core BTB playlist activity significantly decline in its shadow. The team will be monitoring closely to see how both playlists hold up together and what the overall player experience is to determine what future steps may be needed.
In order to maintain a positive player experience and optimal playlist health, we may need to consolidate and/or rotate things around while we also apply the insights gathered during the Yappening to further improve BTB as a whole further down the road. We’re eager to see how things go and as always, look forward to your feedback.
LAND GRAB
On Tuesday, September 20, the dedicated Land Grab playlist will be rotated out of matchmaking. While we know many players have enjoyed this new mode introduced in Season 2, at this stage it’s been steadily declining and starting to fall short of the quality bar for a positive player experience.
Land Grab will be back as part of the Entrenched event with Week 5 kicking off September 27, and the final week slated to begin on October 25. Looking further ahead, Land Grab will roll into Quick Play as part of the Winter Update coming November 8.
LOOKING AHEAD
As Halo Infinite continues to evolve and we see new modes brought online we expect to see more regular rotations to offer experiences players want while also maintaining that high quality bar we have set for ourselves. We can’t always offer everything that every individual player wants today, but we’ll continue doing our best to focus on the breadth Infinite has to offer, the modes that are most popular to players, and keep addressing areas that negatively impact your online experience.
We’ll see you online, and thank you for your continued support!
Ultimate Reward & Featured Shop Bundle
Flipflop here to let ya know that if you complete all your emotional and in-game challenges this week, you can have a cool new visor that I gots from a totally alive Spartan this one time.
He called it "Parasite Ichor," and then he was not alive any more...
Flipflop here! Y'know, I was doin' a memory-think recently about a buddy I had once named Marlin T. Buckets.
Human prisoner back in the ol' Covenant days. A big bad Elite wanted Marlin to open a door for him, and Marlin was all braves and refused until he was forced to open it and this bright holy light shone through and we were like ooooh...
And then, there was nothin' inside! Just this weird rabbit thing with big floppy ears which hopped out and ran aways after I started doin' scans, and the Elites chased after it and completely forgot about Marlin who also ran aways in the opposite direction. I wonder how he's doin' these days...
Anyway, all I got to scan was the thing's ears. Stick 'em on your cool Demon armor and remember my friend, Marlin T. Buckets! Oooh and I hear you humans like this yellow banananaramama fruit.
Go for joyrides and stash a lot of fruit in your shooty cars decorated like Banana Bombshells!
Halo Infinite| Forge Fundamentals – Building
The first time I looked at Forge in Halo Infinite, I was like "Oh hey, cool that's... oh, holy-- you guys did what?!”
With November already on the horizon, in just a few short months the Forge Beta will be in your hands to unleash your creativity with, dare we say, infinite possibilities.
In this four-part video series, we’re going to explore the foundational elements of Forge to get you acquainted with its tools, showcase brand new features and improvements from previous games, and provide some direct developer insight into what’s coming.
Here are the topics we’ll be covering in each video of this series:
Building – what can I make and how do I make it?
Scripting & Bots – what is scripting, how can I use it, and how can I test my map with bots?
Polish – what lighting, art, and audio tools can make my maps look and sound great?
Canvases & File Sharing – where can I build my maps and how can people discover them?
But first, of course, for those of you who may just be joining us on this great journey, or may need a refresher, let us take a moment to look back on what Forge represents as a pillar for Halo...
What is Forge?
Once upon a time, matches on Halo 2’s Colossus would begin with a frenetic rush to collect the various plasma pistols and battle rifles strewn across its lower end, and we would have to impose honor rules.
In those days, the placement of weapons, objectives, spawns, and other details of Halo’s multiplayer spaces were largely fixed – rooted in place, until they were picked up and spent, after which an invisible countdown would bring them back to be fought over once again.
But then, Halo 3 brought with it an exciting new feature. Forge began as an object layout editor, enabling players to rework weapons, vehicles, scenery, and spawns – and you could invite your friends to hop in and test out these changes live, or spend an hour trying to drop tanks on each other.
As with all creative tools, when put in the hands of the community, impossible things happened. You built Scarabs and Pelicans out of crates and scenery items. You used teleporter nodes to keep objects floating in the air. You discovered techniques that allowed blocks to intersect with each other and the environment, creating all-new maps on empty canvases.
From that point, Forge ceased to be a simple layout editor. It became a map maker, and a community of creative cartographers arose from its foundations.
Since then, Forge has been continually upgraded in successive Halo titles with new tools and capabilities to give Forgers more agency and options in what they seek to create. More objects, bigger budgets, new terrain pieces, color editing, magnets, baked lighting, scripting... Forge is your playground, and in Halo Infinite we’re giving you more toys to play with than ever before.
Forging Ahead
In our first video, we focus on some of the core features that have been added or improved in Halo Infinite’s version of Forge.
Join Michael Schorr (Forge Lead Designer) and Cliff Schuldt (Multiplayer Level Designer) as they walk through object palettes, new features (such as the much-anticipated undo/redo buttons, object scaling, materials), and much more that will empower you to build and create.
Complete ALL your challenges and I’ll give you this cool weapon charm from the High Charity gift shop. Managed to, uh, acquire a bunch of 'em before the bad space zombies came along.
Elites just loooved sayin' this word in the ol' Covenant days!
Suit up shabbily and they remember the armor; suit up impeccably and they remember the Demon!
Flipflop here! Y'know, we Unggoy have a lot of different armors because half the battle is lookin' cooler than the enemy, and that's why you gotta grab the Opulent Display set.
It's got flowers and butterflies, and oh-so pretty colors! And a neat stance to bring it all togethers!
The Yappening
Get your armor clothes on, Demons – the Yappening is happening!
Running for two human calendar weeks from September 6-20, you can jump into the salty bogs of the Methane Menagerie playlist for some big ol’ 12v12 Big Team Fiesta action with a free Event Pass containing ten new whimsical rewards worthy of a disciple of the great Yapyap.
All ya gotta do is be completin’ those Event Challenges and I’ll give ya these cool knickknacks I picked up on the way here.
METHANE MENAGERIE
You humans are always doin’ big fights ‘n’ stuff, so you gotta be provin’ yourself in the biggest, baddest, most Gruntiest fight of all in the Methane Menagerie playlist!
Lemme get ya a list of the modes... *puts on Unggoy-sized reading glasses*
BTB Fiesta CTF
BTB Fiesta Slayer
BTB Fiesta Stockpile
BTB Fiesta Total Control
BTB Shotty Snipes
BTB Skockets Slayer
BTB Team Snipers
That’s alotta big fightin’ goin’ on there – feels better when you’re shootin’ at each other rather than tryin’ to make us Unggoy get on the “endangered species” list...
Oh, and if you wanna be playin' these modes with your bestest ever pals in Custom Games, you can do that!
GRUNTY GIFTS FOR A BALAHO BONANZA
If there’s one big learn that I’ve been doin’ in my time helpin' the galaxy’s good guys, it’s that humans sure do love gifts! I drew a smiley face on a rock one time and gave it to a human, and he didn’t throw it back at me or nothin’ – not like those ungrateful Kig-Yar...
Anyway, all you gotta do is log in and you can get some free stuff. How about this nifty Yappening emblem and nameplate to show how much of a big friend you are to Unggoy across the galaxy and make your enemies run off crying with scaredness!
Let’s see, uh, (*rummages in gift bag*) if you complete all your challenges this week, I’ll give you this weapon charm from back in my Covenant days. Got it from the High Charity gift shop before the space zombies put it out of business...
And speaking of shops, you gotta check out this set! I dunno what “Opulent Display” means, but it looks cool!
FLIPFLOP'S FACTOIDS
You wanna know more about me? Really? Mostly do dealings with the Sangheili who are all about honors and learning how to wave glowy blue swords around, very honorable to be waving glowy sticks, but they not much for doin’ talks and getting' to know you and stuff...
Anyways, you’re gonna wanna check out our Unggoy historical and cultural enrichment postings on your local chatternets!
For now, that’s all from me—your new Unggoy friend, Flipflop. I gotta head back to that big dangerous war we got goin' on soon, so I got you some pictures to be doin' me a remember!
See you in the methane springs!
Halo Infinite Update
With the end of Season 2 drawing ever closer, we want to provide you with an update on the future of all things Halo Infinite.
Joseph Staten, Sean Baron, and Brian Jarrard sat down for a roundtable discussion about the current state of the game, priorities, and player experience goals. Also covered is the upcoming “Winter Update,” Season 3, and other features (such as the Forge Beta and Campaign Network Co-Op) which you can check out in the video below.
In addition, we have also updated the roadmap for what’s coming in the Winter Update and Season 3, featuring new maps, modes, weapons, armor, and much more.
We continue to be grateful for the community’s passion and patience as we look to what’s coming on the horizon. Nothing excites us more than being able to deliver the experiences of everything that’s coming on the roadmap (and beyond!), and for your creativity to soar when Forge is in your hands, knowing that our best days are yet ahead of us!
Ultimate Reward & Featured Shop Bundle
Give 'em a royal welcome, Spartan.
The Regal Strike Set includes the HIGHCOM Sentinel shoulder pads, Crystal gloves, Steppin' Razor stance, Violet Gunpowder coating, Heroic Intervention visor - all for your Mark VII armor. Also included is the Pioneer Group Zeta emblem for your Spartan, weapons, vehicles, and nameplate.
Head over to the Shop and pick up the set today!
Even Spartans need their morning coffee.
Complete all of your Weekly Challenges and the Ultimate Challenge to earn this week’s Ultimate Reward – the Mark VII Vapor Eagle utility.
A new Ultimate Reward will become available every week, so be sure to keep an eye on your Challenges and take advantage of these free rewards.
