Sharpened on Covenant armor, wetted with Banished blood.
Complete all of your Weekly Challenges and the Ultimate Challenge to earn this week’s Ultimate Reward – the Rakshasa Wolf Fang chest attachment!
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.
Not a soldier. A monster. Like you...
Suit up for battlefield stealth and cyberwarfare with the Locus Armor Set, featuring the LOCUS helmet, PROJECT ENOCH helmet attachment, TAC/PLQ-196E THREEPACK shoulder pads, RUCKAMUCK RANGEKING chest attachment, DOISAC KISS wrist attachment, along with the Raven Smoke armor coating, and Legendary Crossing emblem.
Pick up this resilient armor in the Shop now!
August Matchmaking Updates
In our August Drop Pod preview blog, we outlined a few upcoming changes to Halo Infinite matchmaking that would be landing this month. As these updates draw nearer, we wanted to outline them again and provide a little more detail. The focus over the next week will be to improve matchmaking in Ranked and update our playlist offerings.
To get things started, let’s take a closer look at everything happening in matchmaking over the next few days.
RANKED EXPERIENCE
In preparation for Ranked Doubles, we'll be updating how we determine skill (MMR), which will help us make better matches and improve the accuracy of CSR ranks. This will require additional maintenance that involves resetting CSR ranks. We plan on deploying these changes early on Aug 23, with the maintenance window lasting a few hours. During this time, Ranked Arena will not be available, though all other playlists and online services should be available.
In the days leading up to the maintenance window, we will have two other small changes rolling out as well. The first change, which has started today, is a small Ranked experiment with CSR that will be running until we close out this current ranked period. The impact should be minimal, but it will help us gather information for potential future ranked improvements. The second change is that the Fireteam CSR Limit, which has been active in both Solo/Duo playlists, will begin to take effect in Open Crossplay starting Monday, Aug 22. To learn more about the Fireteam CSR Limit, please visit this page on the Halo Support site.
PLAYLIST OFFERINGS
Next Tuesday will also bring about the addition of two new playlists: Ranked Doubles and Team Doubles. In order to help make room for these two new additions, the Last Spartan Standing playlist will be rotating out of the lineup. As with all playlists, we will continue to monitor their individual health in addition to the health of the entire matchmaking experience. If all these playlists perform well, we will continue experimenting with adding or rotating more playlists in the future.
Since that was quite a bit of info all at once, here’s a quick summary of the timeline for the matchmaking updates:
Friday, Aug 19 – Ranked experiment begins (should have minimal player-facing impact)
Monday, Aug 22 @ 11am – Fireteam CSR Limit applies to Open Crossplay
Tuesday, Aug 23 @ 10am PT – CSR rank reset occurs and Ranked maintenance begins, taking Ranked Arena offline for ~3hrs
Tuesday, Aug 23 @ 10am PT – Team Doubles (social) goes live
Tuesday, Aug 23 @ 11am PT – Last Spartan Standing comes down
Tuesday, Aug 23 @ 1pm PT – Ranked Arena, Ranked Doubles, Team Doubles come online
If you have any feedback around these changes when they go live, please be sure to share your thoughts.
We’ll see you all online for some Doubles action soon!
Ultimate Reward & Featured Shop Bundle
Commence OPERATION: Point My Gun At Grif
Complete all of your Weekly Challenges and the Ultimate Challenge to earn this week’s Ultimate Reward – the Mark VII Kaolin Strand armor coating.
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.
Liberty Clad, constantly chad.
This bundle includes the Liberty Clad armor and vehicle coating for your EAGLESTRIKE armor core along with your M12 Warthog, M15 Razorback, and M12R Rockethog.
Head over to the Shop and pick up the set today!
Fracture: Entrenched Event
Featuring the Dieselpunk-inspired EAGLESTRIKE armor core and other themed rewards, the free 30-tier Event Pass is available now alongside a limited time playlist and event-specific challenges.
Fracture: Entrenched Returns!
The Entrenched Fracture is a world scoured by superscience aether-bombs and alchemically-enhanced soldiers. Though its lands are ruined, the Unified Nations Security Confederation fights on in blind obedience to orders from long-dead generals.
Their sworn foes, the zealots of the Covenant, survive only as hordes of rad-poisoned mutants bickering over the remnants of their once-proud civilization.
Survival on the front lines requires EAGLESTRIKE energized plate, a marvel of war-smithing that protects against both radiation and Covenant plasmatron weaponry.
Progressing the Event Pass
The Fracture: Entrenched Event Pass is 100% free and offers players themed, limited time rewards for playing multiplayer matches and completing event challenges while the event is live.
Progress on the Event Pass is made by completing Event Challenges, which you can find on your Challenges page marked with a red banner.
Completing an Event Challenge will unlock an Event Pass tier reward, progressing you through the Event Pass. You can progress up to ten tiers of your Event Pass in a given week.
Get ready to dig in and grab some land!
STORY SHARD: THE LAST SKY MARSHAL, PART 3...Coming Soon!
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!
The Last Sky Marshal is the first Fracture Story Shard. Hosted on Halo Waypoint, Story Shards are a choose your own adventure-style story. Set in the Entrenched universe and told over five parts, Parts 1-4 of The Last Sky Marshal will feature a cliffhanger where a dilemma will be presented, and the community will vote on where the story goes next.
What choice will be made? How will it end? That’s up to you...
Read The Last Sky Marshal here and follow Commander Kolby as he leads an assault on Luna against the Covenant, who have discovered something that could turn the tide of the war against humanity.
You can cast your vote for the direction the next part of the story should go on Twitter, Waypoint, YouTube, Discord, Instagram, and the Official Halo Club on Xbox and PC. Voting is open for one week so choose wisely!
Ultimate Reward & Featured Shop Bundle
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!
D'you think the Covenant mind we're stealing their purple?
Complete all of your Weekly Challenges and the Ultimate Challenge to earn this week’s Ultimate Reward – the Knife Dancer visor.
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.
August Drop Pod
The August Drop Pod is here!
This update features numerous updates and fixes such as:
Visors can be used across all armor cores
Active Challenges being reflected on the pause menu
Fourth Challenge slot always being available on a Premium Battle Pass
Arriving next Tuesday, August 9, our next Drop Pod will focus on improving the player experience on multiple fronts. This update is set to expand each player’s customization options, include QoL improvements, and will lay the groundwork for even more community-requested features.
Let’s take a look at what’s inside!
LIVE
VISORS WILL WORK ON ALL CORES
At present, there are a multitude of visors in the game split across the 5 armor cores. If you’ve wanted to use the shiny gold Noble visor (which has hitherto been locked to the Mark V [B] armor core) to complete your look on any of your other cores, you’ll be able to make that happen when the August Drop Pod lands.
What this means is that all visors that are currently in the game, and all future visors to come, will work across all helmets from all armor cores.
EAGLESTRIKE’S Night Wisp visor on a Mark V [B] helmet
RAKSHASA’s Athena’s Mirror visor on a YOROI helmet
MARK VII HELMET ATTACHMENTS
Continuing with the theme of improving customization options, this Drop Pod will also allow for certain Mark VII helmet attachments to be worn across multiple Mark VII helmets.
This is a response to player feedback we’ve seen requesting an expansion of the compatibility of Mark VII helmet attachments. Naturally, this move came with some complexities because most helmet attachments for the Mark VII core are designed to fit a specific helmet, but some happen to also fit well on other Mark VII helmets.
The Live Team took some time with our Artists to find out which helmet attachments look best and fit without clipping awkwardly or having large holes. Since certain combinations could have clipping or large gaps, not every Mark VII helmet will be able to use every helmet attachment – but the total number of options has been greatly increased.
If you’ve already unlocked these helmets and helmet attachments, they will automatically be usable. If you unlock them in the future, all the possible combinations will be unlocked for you. There will not be a need to unlock them on a per-use basis.
A full list of the helmet and helmet attachment combinations will be included in the Drop Pod patch notes when it goes live.
Soldier helmet attachment on a Rampart helmet Mark V [B]’s Stalwart visor on a Mark VII helmet
Warmaster helmet attachment on Firefall helmet RAKSHASA’s Sapphire Front visor on a Mark VII helmet
MULTIPLAYER
ADDITIONAL RANKED PLAYLISTS
On the multiplayer experience front, this update will make it easier for us to implement more Ranked playlists moving forward. Kicking things off will be Ranked Doubles, which is set to land two weeks after the Drop Pod’s release – along with a CSR reset. Additionally, a social Team Doubles playlist will be accompanying Ranked Doubles on its launch day, meaning Halo Infinite will be getting twice the 2v2 fun.
We’ll monitor the health of Ranked Doubles and all our playlists after its addition to the matchmaking lineup. If all playlists continue to perform as expected, we’ll keep these additions and continue experimenting with adding more Ranked playlists in the future.
REGION SELECT GROUNDWORK
In the opening of this blog, we mentioned that we were laying some groundwork for the future as well. While there is no player-facing change here just yet, this Drop Pod does contain a lot of the groundwork required to turn Region Select on in the future. This would allow players to select between all searching across all regions (faster search times) or their local region (better pings).
This feature is still some time away, but players may spot some of the backend work that has been done to start putting things in place. We’ll have more to share about Region Select as we get closer to its launch.
PRESENTATION
CHALLENGES ON THE PAUSE MENU
With this Drop Pod release, your active Challenges will be viewable while in a match on the pause menu. We know it’s helpful to be able to quickly glance at your active Challenges (as well as their descriptions) at any given time during a match, so we’re very happy to get this implemented.
Note: This placeholder text is not indicative of future Challenges
Please note: this screen will not show the exact numbers (remaining or total) for your Challenges just yet. Since Challenges currently update at the end of a match, we chose not to display the numbers intentionally to avoid any confusion around not seeing them update in real-time. We are working to make it so Challenges do tick during a match, but we wanted to get this helpful first step out to all of you since it was ready.
As always, we’ll have the full patch notes available on the Halo Support site when the update is released.
Thank you for your continued feedback on the forums, Twitter, Reddit, and more as we keep pushing to make Halo Infinite the best experience it can be. We look forward to seeing you online when the Drop Pod lands next Tuesday, August 9!
Ultimate Reward & Featured Shop Bundle
Orange is the new black!
Complete all of your Weekly Challenges and the Ultimate Challenge to earn this week’s Ultimate Reward – the Tawney Prairie Rakshasa armor coating.
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.
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!
Ultimate Reward & Featured Shop Bundle
It looks like you're viewing me as the Halo Infinite Ultimate Reward this week!
Would you like help?
[A] Acquire Tactical Clippy by completing your Weekly Challenges and the Ultimate Challenge :) [B] Equip Tactical Clippy on your weapons :) [C] Help Tactical Clippy claim the Mantle of Responsibility >:)
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.
Suit up, this ain't just another bug hunt...
Grab the CAMBION helmet pack to unlock the fearsome CAMBION helmet, along with the UA/Februus, FCI-X/CIBO, and FCI-X/BANE helmet attachments, as well as the Lucky Number Seven emblem and nameplate.
Head to the Shop and gear up to hunt the deadliest of Spartan prey.
