A nice controlled method of seeing the valley Banshees spawn…

(6:27) Level 2 ('Halo') on Easy. Recently I did six movies about the valley Banshees wandering and playing past the cliff, but now here's a tutorial on seeing them spawn, right after a handy checkpoint so you can do it repeatedly. You can potentially watch their interesting behaviour, which I'll get to in the next movie. Or if you're closer and get spotted, you can have fun when they attack! I've used Easy here, to show the easiest set-up work.

Released August 6th 2018, gameplay recorded August 3rd-4th 2018.

00:02 (Valley work) At the start you can pick up a sniper rifle at the lifeboat, but there's also one in the rockslide later. It's worth killing any Jackal guards at the first cliffside entrance, to reduce the workload the game will have later when the Banshees spawn. It can help in regard to avoiding dropped frames. On Legendary there actually aren't any guards.

00:50 (Rockslide work) In the rockslide area, do enough to trigger the first of the four dropships (the other three will follow one by one). Just kill most or all of the covies and enter the trigger zone. You can also top up your ammo at the lifeboat.

01:32 (Cliffside work) In the cliffside area, get a Marine into the hog and have the other survivors die. On Easy you'll probably need to kill some yourself, which is best done mostly during combat when allies are relatively forgiving. It might be best to initially leave two alive (like I do here), as a safeguard against trouble up top. In particular, guys don't always home in on the hog; but if you've got two, hopefully at least one one of them will. One amusing thing you may've spotted in my play: one of the Marines throws a frag against the wall right in front of him. Doh! I needn't even have shot that guy; he was about to blow himself up!

Kill plenty of covies along the way, and certainly all those in the vicinity of the exit you're going to bring your guy or guys out of. But leave at least seven alive so the game doesn't initiate a countdown timer to considering the area handled, which would trigger the Banshees. Here I charged in without worry (and a Grunt got amusingly whacked by an Elite), but higher difficulties would merit more caution of course.

03:20 (Hilltop work) Get onto the hilltop and set things up at your preferred viewing spot. Here I get distant so the Banshees initially won't spot me; hence I'll be able to watch what they do, which is the main point of interest. Specifically I use a slight peak which is nice. You should have plenty of time, and may well see dropship 2 leaving (note: the arrival checkpoint for that dropship was seen at about 3:08). After dropship 3, the dropship 4 checkpoint will complete your set-up. At that time, ideally you should be looking towards the Banshee spawning location (zoomed if you like), ready to kill the Marine.

04:36 (Some spawnings) When you kill him, the game considers the cliffside area handled (on account of all survivors being dead) and consequently spawns the Banshees (because a first survivor area has been handled). As you can see, the pilots actually spawn outside. The second and third plays give fully zoomed views of the left and right spawning. It's common for the Banshees to immediately initiate circling as seen here, but I'll cover behaviour properly in the next movie (or maybe two, I'm not sure yet).

ALERT: Your set-up may turn out to have an anomaly, whereby killing the Marine doesn't spawn the Banshees. I don't understand the cause of that, but at least it seems unlikely, based on my experience.

05:38 (Setting up closer) You can set up for a considerably closer view if you don't mind getting promptly attacked. It's a nice way of getting some Banshee tagging practice though, as shown in three brief examples. It's good to be fully stocked with plasmas of course.

Closing remarks I've known about seeing the Banshees spawn for years, but this checkpointed set-up is something I've only just developed, now that I've finally got around to covering the subject. A key ingredient was to use the rockslide dropships as a way of getting a checkpoint in a desired location. That mechanism might equally find use in other exploits, so I may well be using it again sometime.

If you're wondering why I waited for the fourth dropship checkpoint instead of using the third, that's just so there won't be any more checkpoints due after the Banshees spawn. As such, you can watch them as long as you like, yet remain able to revert to spawn them again.

My footage of the initial valley and rockslide work came from a different set-up than the rest of the set-up footage. That was just because it featured nicer action - such as splattering the Elite in the rockslide area.

I mentioned a few options in setting things up, but there are others too. I'll cover things more fully in an article coming soon - possibly when I release the next movie.

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