Descend way down into the shaft inside the main facility.

Posted April 2nd 2006, expanded December 5th 2024

• Introduction
• Setting up
• Foot-based descent
• Hog-based descent and getting Marines down
• The arrival checkpoint, and avoiding it
• Further remarks
• History and links

In the main facility, if you turn right just after the security door guarded by a gold Elite, there's an enormous shaft which MC peers down into from the cutscene platform. You can actually go all the way down in that shaft!

Way over on the far side, there are seven pairs of prongs sticking out for a long way down, and at the back of each pair is a shelf slightly lower down. I'll use the term 'prong level' for a pair of prongs plus the associated shelf. A Warthog-assisted jump from the platform can get you onto a prong level, and from there you can progressively drop to lower prong levels and beyond (there's a whole lower complex involving further drops). An interesting adventure with some spectacular views, and other fun besides! There's also the option of staying in the hog as an alternative method of descent, and of involving a side alcove in your descent process.

PAL vs NTSC/PC

I hasten to mention that some of this is dependent on the system you're using. On PAL Xbox you have the full range of possibilities, but on NTSC/PC I believe the drops between prong levels aren't survivable on foot (unless perhaps if you have some overshield left?), and there's also at least one later drop that I suspect wouldn't be survivable on foot. Consequently, on NTSC/PC you'll be needing to base your descent around falling in the hog. But never mind; at least you can still reach the bottom!

Difficulty levels

Any difficulty level can be used, but I'd recommend the higher ones because of the faster recharging in regard to shield damage. That way you'll do a bit less waiting around for your shield to recharge before being able to make your next drop.

After unlocking the security door by visiting the substation, bring a Warthog to the area of the door. Make sure you have an overshield (ideally undamaged) and perfect health. Also be fully stocked with grenades to have fun with, and I also suggest a rocket launcher. It's fine to bring passengers along too, and I'd strongly recommend it as they can add a lot of fun (and screaming), often managing to join you on a prong level. Probably best if they have good health though, so try to see to that.

Get the hog through

You need to get the hog through the rather tight doorway. The most direct way is to simply drive through at maximum speed. If the hog is lined up perfectly, it can cruise though with no problem, something I only realised was possible when revisiting this topic in 2024. But it can take multiple tries.

When driving the hog down, there was a checkpoint along the way, so you could just keep reverting to that until you succeed. However, you can do better. First get the hog backed up and lined up, ready for tries. Dismount and go through the doorway. When you trigger the 'Shafted' section just past the doorway, a checkpoint will be due. It's fully delayable though, so delay it with jumping until back aboard the hog. That gives you an ideal checkpoint from which to make tries at squeezing through.

If you're having trouble, be guided by the blue arrow on the HUD. Line that up with the centre-line of the narrow floor-way you're trying to cruise onto. That seemed to help me quite a lot when I tried it.

Note: the hog needs to go entirely past the doorway. If it only gets part way through then stops, you won't be able to drive it further (or at least, that's always been my experience).

Get into position and save a checkpoint

Having got the hog past the doorway and then to the end of the passage, turn right to get it into the next section of passage (the hog will then be facing towards the cutscene platform), then back it up as far as you can. This will be your starting position.

Dismount, and trigger the cutscene. A checkpoint is due afterwards but it's briefly delayable. So to set things up nicely, delay it with a few jumps until back aboard the hog. Be prompt about getting back to the hog though, as the checkpoint can't be delayed for long before being cancelled. Save the checkpoint to be sure you'll be able to get back to it later. Bear in mind, the game might give you a checkpoint after you arrive on the prong stack shortly.

Note: it's very dark in the shaft, so it's good to have your flashlight fully charged or almost fully charged, at the time you get your checkpoint.

Alternative ways of getting the hog through

If you want them, there are other ways of getting the hog though the doorway (the ways I originally had, before 2024). Start by driving through the doorway at an angle to at least get the front wheels through, then straighten up. The front wheels are now wedged in (see pic).

To get the rest of the hog though, the quick way would be to blast it with a few rockets. Quite easy, but it's only suitable if the hog has no passengers of course. Alternatively, dismount and fetch another hog, and use the rear of that hog to ram into the first, forcing it through further until its back wheels are against the doorway (a single ram can do it). Then turn your hog around and ram forwards to force the first hog right into the tunnel (you couldn't use front ramming earlier, as it would've tended to lift the hog).

Squeeze back into the first hog. You can use a bit of crouching to get back in, but if you have trouble, try whacking the hog to move it along a bit first.

Having completed the set-up work, you can finally start enjoying the fun. In this section I'll cover the details of what I'll call foot-based descent, in which you do most of the dropping on foot (something only available to PAL Xbox players like myself). There's also hog-based descent which I'll cover in a separate section.

Reaching the prong stack

The first task is to reach the prong stack. You have a few options but I'll focus on the 'bail jump' first. Hit the accelerator and curve around to the right a bit as you head onto the platform. Bail as you're nearing the edge, or shortly after. Once free, you have a small degree of drift control which can help you target a landing surface. You don't need to crouch land, but it might reduce the chance of your bouncing back off. Your overshield allows you to survive with perfect health. You'll probably be on the third prong level down, but landing in a healthy state even lower is possible too.

The bail jump can be really quite easy once you've got the knack. Landing on the back of the third prong down on the left is the easiest target to go for. On a good day I can manage that several times in a row. But there are many other places you can land on too, as showcased in BCM532. Have fun seeing what you can manage.

Alternatively you can do a straightforward hog jump, i.e. staying aboard the hog. Typically you'll want to give the hog some stabilizing spin when doing this. A right spin is the most natural as you're heading right a bit from your run-up, but actually a left spin is viable too (both are featured in BCM531). The natural landing spot to go for is the fourth shelf down. That's not too hard once you've had a bit of practice, but it's definitely harder than landing a bail jump on the aforementioned third prong.

Of course, if you're off-target the hog potentially gets bounced around by the prongs and shelves in pinball fashion, and you might end up lower down than planned - and possibly after having been ejected. Naturally, in any uncontrolled falling like this, you could bail at any time if you think it opportune. And certainly it's worth trying if you think you're otherwise facing imminent death (which is frequently going to be the case).

Note: doing a hog jump is also a way of potentially ending up on the stack with overshield still undamaged, which can be useful if doing subsequent dropping on foot.

Possible 'arrival checkpoint'

You may well get a checkpoint after arriving on a prong level, though I'm not sure why it's triggered. In a test in which I repeatedly landed on the third prong down on the left, I got a checkpoint 40% of the time. So it seems mysteriously random. For discussion of this checkpoint and how to avoid getting it if you want (which can be desirable for certain activities), see my later dedicated section.

Subsequent dropping and the lower complex

Once you're on a prong level, you can successively drop to lower ones. Crouch land to cushion your falls and hopefully retain full health. There's considerable freedom in doing these drops, in regard to the route you take, but a spectacular way is to drop 'crossways' from the tip of one prong to the tip of the one opposite below (see pic). Daredevil business! By the way, the shortest drop distance between levels is if you go from a shelf to a prong (bearing in mind that on each prong level, the shelf is slightly lower than the prongs). That's the way to do it if you want to maximize safety or minimize overshield damage.

Bear in mind also that if you have some overshield left, you can potentially drop three levels in one go, which is good fun. In fact, that can be done even with quite a small amount of overshield, although in that case you may incur some health loss.

Below the seventh prong level you've got what I call the lower complex. The highest part of that is a raised platform with a big house-shaped hole in the middle (through which the hog very often falls, landing in a deep trough). You can run off the end of a prong to land on a nice friendly slope just past the hole.

Go down the slope, and on the left or the right you can make three further drops in step-like fashion, each drop taking you to a new floor. The first drop is a fairly small one and not a worry, but the remaining two are dangerously big (the final one slightly less so). Fortunately though, in each case you can kill some speed by sliding down what is a near-vertical slope; and be sure to crouch land at the end. You'll then be at the 'bottom' (or one half of it anyway). The lowest you can go.

Other routes

Going along the central slope and then down three steps isn't the only way to reach the bottom on foot though. In particular, with an overshield you can take a very speedy shortcut which I'll describe now. You can see it used in BCM535, along with other routes.

Remember the holed platform? The edges are sloped, and that includes the corners. From the seventh level, or even the sixth level though it's risky, you can drop and bounce off a corner to get directed onto a long slope that leads to the bottom; the 'back channel' as I call it. Your impacts with the corner and back channel shoudn't cause overshield damage; and with enough overshield left, you can then survive your rather heavy arrival at the bottom.

The way I suggest you do things overall, is to first land on the fourth shelf in the hog, so you can start off there with a full overshield. Then reach the seventh level in such a way as to minimize overshield damage. So, for each of the three drops, go from a shelf to a prong (minimum distance, minimum damage). That should leave you with enough overshield to survive the final fall.

To mention a related possibility, suppose you've reached the holed platform and you still have a bit of overshield left. If you go along an edge (which despite being quite steeply sloped, you can actually grip, unlike the slightly steeper corners), you can do a run-off to reach the back channel on that side, to slide down. I tested this and was able to survive that fall with only a tiny bit of overshield left.

One other option I'll mention. Below the holed platform is a deep trough into which the hog often falls. If it has, and you're up above on the platform, you can drop down and cushion yourself on the hog. From the edging around the trough, you can then do a run-off to reach a back channel, to slide down into the bottom area. You don't need any overshielding to survive that (you were already quite low down when you did the run-off), but you'll want full health.

Instead of doing drops on foot to eventually reach the bottom, you can instead do all the falling in the hog, something which also enables you to get the Marines passengers down if you have any. So that's what I'll cover here.

Going via the left alcove

To get the Marines down in the hog (or possibly just yourself in the hog), it seems to me that the best way involves initially jumping the hog to the high alcove on the left (not too hard) and getting an arrival checkpoint there to consolidate your progress (it's down to chance whether you get a checkpoint). It's a plan which came to mind while I was working on reaching various side alcoves (the topic of BCM533), and it gave me my first success as shown in BCM534.

The next step is to get the hog to hit the seventh prong on this side of the stack, to slow it up and deflect it helpfully. One way is to spin the hog off the alcove, which is what I initially went for (see the movie for the specific manner in which I did it). If the hog hits the prong tip and settles on the high surface below, avoiding the hole, that's ideal. The remaining three drops can be fairly safely negotiated. For the first drop, a spinning hog jump will do. You can do the same for the rest (actually you can cover both with a single long jump if you want), or alternatively let the hog slide down the near-vertical surfaces.

Let me also mention that after the prong contact, there's a decent chance of the hog landing on the second of the three floors along one side, in which case you'll only have one drop left. It all depends on the nature of the prong contact, which is a bit random.

An alternative way of departing the alcove, and the easier way I think, is to drive off in plain fashion (no spin) but with a late kick from a plasma grenade detonating near the edge of the alcove, sending the hog into a somersault. It's hard to control the amount of rotation, and quite often the hog will hit the prong when upside down to some degree, causing a spill. Nevertheless, I came to favour this method as it gives better control over the direction the hog ends up going - so it's more likely that you'll hit the prong as you want.

Going via the prongs

The more direct way of getting down would be to head into the prong stack. If you're lucky the hog might pinball down to the lower complex in a way which doesn't end up killing you, and you could progress from there. To judge from my experience in trying though (represented in BCM531), you'd need to be very lucky with the bouncing.

Is there some particular way of doing it though, to significantly raise your chances? One plan I tried was to first get the hog to the fourth shelf (a prime target) and get an arrival checkpoint, then try from there. However, I've still had no success with that. I may put in some more work on this, but for now I recommend going via the alcove.

As I mentioned, you might get a checkpoint after reaching the prong stack. That seemingly random 'arrival checkpoint' has been somewhat of a mystery to me, but now in 2024 I think I've identified it; and certainly I can tell you how to avoid it, if you want.

I believe it's actually the 'approach checkpoint' you'd normally trigger when approaching the top room of covies. From your Warthog's starting position for the jump, those covies are just along the final stretch of passage, and the checkpoint is triggered about halfway along. I found that if I triggered it before making descent attempts, I never got an arrival checkpoint. Hence my belief as stated. As to why it would trigger when you're way over on the prong stack, I'd guess it's to do with your lower altitude. It's still mysterious as to why it's so random though.

Setting up to avoid arrival checkpoints

To avoid getting arrival checkpoints then, just make sure the approach checkpoint has been triggered in your set-up work. You can do it before triggering the cutscene. Alternatively, you can always modify a standard set-up as follows (it can just be temporary if you want). Dismount, go past halfway down the final stretch of passage to trigger the approach checkpoint, and delay it with a few jumps as you quickly return to your seat. You'll then get the checkpoint (if you didn't delay it too long), and it'll now be your new starting checkpoint for descents.

Getting rid of the checkpoint in advance can be very useful for some activities. For example, maybe you want to practice or explore possible jumps from the cutscene platform, or maybe you're interested in repeatedly attempting descents.

Bad arrival checkpoints

There's actually also a drawback to allowing arrival checkpoints. Namely, if you're staying aboard the hog you might get a very bad one in which the hog is in the process of falling (and maybe you've been ejected), after momentarily teetering on a prong. I've had that plenty of times; a 'death loop' checkpoint from which death is certain, or almost certain. Not very friendly!

In fact the game is all too keen to give you such checkpoints. There just needs to be a moment of balance for the hog, and you may very well get one. It indicates a shortcoming in whatever coding is used to safeguard against giving bad checkpoints. In the accompanying picture we've just been ejected afer teetering. The prong isn't very visible, due to the darkness.

Ad-hoc arrival checkpoint prevention

Here's a further tip, although probably not one you'll be using (because arrival checkpoints can be prevented in advance). If you're making a descent with a standard set-up, you can always get a potential arrival checkpoint cancelled by jumping on the spot four times right after you land. That jumping will give a long enough checkpoint delay to get it cancelled.

This is just a section for mentioning some other aspects of the descent business.

Covies over yonder

From the prong stack you get an excellent side-view of the covie infested complex you normally would've been negotiating. You may even see some of the covies who were waiting for you. Naturally, you can have some fun attacking them. In particular you might see an Elite at the bottom level, up the ramp from the overshield. With a careful throw you can tag him. His death will then set some Grunts panicking, so you can kill them too.

To really go to town on this stuff though, see my article Prong attack, which involves preparation work to ensure that lots of covies present themselves as targets.

Alcoves

I've already mentioned one alcove, namely the very useful one on the left as seen from the cutscene platform. However, there are other alcoves you might enjoy reaching, if only to say you've been there. BCM533 highlights four of them. But also, each of the two bottom floors has an alcove nearby, not far up - although it's so dark down there that you might never have noticed! One time, I landed in one of those after getting ejected from the hog. I was then able to drop to the floor without health loss.

The descent possibility at this shaft (in single-player) is something I found though my own exploration in 2006, but it looks like I wasn't the first. In a search, I found a 2003 post by vshields ash, saying that you could "drive all the way down, in single player". His description was hard to follow, but I believe he was dropping down in the hog, rather than making any drops on foot. Indeed, I'm assuming that he couldn't do the latter, because of using NTSC/PC (being in the US).

I don't know whether he was the first to descend in single-player though, nor do I know of any videos that may've been posted. It might be that I was at least the first to reach the bottom on foot, after an initial hog-assisted jump to the prong stack, but I don't know. That forum post is all I could find.

In regard to not being able to make the falls on foot when using NTSC/PC, there's this post from Louis Wu which seems to corroborate that. Speaking from his US-based perspective (NTSC/PC), he said that a modded Xbox was needed.

Incidentally, I believe people were descending rather earlier in co-op. The aforementioned post from Louis Wu puts the first co-op descent as being in December 2001. As ever though, my interest is solely in single-player.

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