Grab a mechanical ride way earlier than you were meant to, and reap the benefits.

Posted October 21st 2011

• Introduction
• Boarding and getting through the barrier
• Destruction and two-legged reincarnation
• Another two-legged anomaly
• Attacking the covies
• Exploration

Remarkably, it's possible to board the Scarab within a few seconds of its first appearance. It's something I only saw recently in the 2008 video Easier way onto the Ark scarab by DanInPhilly, and I couldn't resist slipping Halo 3 into my 360 to give it a try. The trick is quite simple and opens the door to various novelties, including destroying the Scarab early then seeing a spooky two-legged reincarnation enter the battlefield later! In this article I'll start with a section on the actual boarding, including a checkpoint refinement of my own to make things a bit easier, then cover the fun you can subsequently enjoy.

History

To briefly sketch the history, things seem to've started with a 2007 forum post and video by Noble Stabbings in which he performed a Ghost launch onto the Scarab, destroyed it, and got a two-legged reincarnation later. About a year later DanInPhilly advertised his own video showing a much easier boarding method, apparently found partly by accident while attempting the Ghost launch.

After activating a light-bridge to let vehicles advance, you pass through a small room then enter another which leads back outside. By now you'll have heard a few thudding Scarab footsteps, but they're kind of false because it hasn't actually spawned yet. In the middle of the room are a few things sticking up, and the Scarab is only triggered when you get a short way past them. A checkpoint is triggered too. Hold back from that trigger line until the rightmost of the five doors has risen or is rising, then run through and turn right.

Near the rocks at the end is a tree with three primary slender branches. Jump onto the middle one - not easy as it's such a thin target - and take a running jump off the tip as the Scarab is passing overhead. If you get it right you can land on the back right corner of the top deck. The timing needs to be good, and to give yourself the best chance of making it you'll want to jump from the very tip. It's tricky but you can always revert for a quick retry if you fail.

Note: When running to the tree, you might be unlucky and get knocked off course by a Scarab leg. In that case you'll be hard pressed to get onto the tree in time to board.

Checkpoint refinement

Multiple tries are likely to be needed, and you can make things easier by delaying the checkpoint. Hold back from the trigger line until the rightmost door is open, then advance as before but do some jumping as you go, to keep the checkpoint delayed until close to the tree. This way you'll be ready to do the first tricky bit: jumping onto the branch. I'd aim to get the checkpoint when on the small rock just before the tree, doing three or four jumps along the way.

If you're thinking of delaying the checkpoint until on the branch, I'd advise against bothering to try, as the game is very likely to've cancelled the checkpoint by then. You can't delay checkpoints long in this game, and then they get cancelled. I think I did manage it once, but when I tested again later, I had no luck with more than a dozen tries.

Through the barrier

The Scarab soon marches through an invisible barrier which will sweep you off if you're not manning a plasma cannon, so get to one promptly. The one along the right is nearest, but you can also reach the one along the left if you're quick. You can expect a checkpoint while manning your cannon, and you might like to save it as the starting point for all the fun you can have.

Once through the barrier, the Scarab starts sinking through the ground and you have two choices. If you release the cannon early, the Scarab continues down and out of sight - and it's safest to get clear once you let go, else you can get killed as it goes down (check it out - it can be quite nasty!). If you keep hold of it though, the Scarab gets part way through then gently springs back up, ending up stationary on the ground. Either way you end up out of normal bounds, which presents a lot of new possibilities.

During its short walk out of bounds, the Scarab seems to be indestructible. The worst you can do is detach a plasma cannon, but a new one will appear in its place - which is handy if you want to collect a few. Once it's come to a stop above ground though, it can be destroyed (and cannons no longer respawn). You might like to detach and use your plasma cannon for that.

Leg spasms

After the explosion, sometimes the rear legs seem to develop a life of their own, making spasmodic movements and maybe going flying, which can be quite entertaining. The very first time I blew the Scarab, the rear right leg started jigging about like a hyperactive giant foot and seemed to come after me with murderous intent, making a vengeful beeline to the nearest cyborg. I guess that was just an illusion and I was simply in an unlucky place, but anyway, I was mangled before I could get clear. A few other times I saw the rear right leg go 'walking' up the rocky hill and then take a trip along the side of the building. Full-blown leg spasms aren't necessarily immediate. A leg could be doing just a bit of mild jiggling for quite a while, and then something finally gets freed up a bit and things go wild.

After watching plenty of these leg spasms, it looks to me like they're caused by the pointy base of the leg being below ground. It's as if the leg is uncomfortable with that, and jerks around trying to get it out. When it's out, the leg dies.

Two-legged reincarnation

Remarkably, the destroyed Scarab has not seen its final action. When you return to the battlefield later and fight through (you'll need to trigger the Marine advance first), the Scarab is triggered as usual. But this time it enters as a spooky two-legged wreck with its rear half missing!

When it reaches the battlefield, covies spawn but mostly find themselves unsupported and fall to the ground, where they initially stand around dumbly. That's amusing to see, and if you're in a Ghost or some other vehicle, you can enjoy smacking straight into them before they've gathered their wits - hee hee! They'll subsequently attack if you get close. As for the half-Scarab, it remains stationary, apparently indestructible. Even with all covies dead, the Pelican won't arrive and you won't be able to get indoors to continue the mission. Presumably the game is waiting for the Scarab to be destroyed here first, and nothing else can get triggered until that happens - which it can't.

Note: The front half of the Scarab is taken from the wreckage you left, while the the other wreckage remains in place. If you'd left the Scarab intact it would've been transported wholesale.

Here's some alternative Scarab spookiness relating to a suggestion from Sliding Ghost which I saw on DanInPhilly's YouTube video page. I explored things to try and get a fuller picture for myself, and here it is.

Instead of destroying the Scarab early, disable it. Optionally you can also blow the back off and destroy the core shield; just don't initiate the meltdown yet. Now head back to the battlefield and trigger the Marine advance to resume normal play. If the Scarab is triggered before fully recovered from disablement, it becomes motionless after reaching the battlefield. You can 'disable' it afresh if you like, but it won't sink down so that's no help (it also won't 'recover'). You can blow the core by getting a sufficiently good shooting angle or using grenades. It's not hard, but obviously it'll help if you've already blown the back off and destroyed the core shield. Now here's the payoff. When the core blows, the two-legged front half of the Scarab remains, shaking as if the Scarab is still in its death throes. Also the bleeping continues. So, there's a second dose of two-legged weirdness for you.

Incidentally, if you get behind or underneath the Scarab, it wavers about as if trying to turn to get a better view of you, but its feet stay where they are. That is one mighty frustrated mechanical bug!

Timing details and strategy

As mentioned, the Scarab needs to be triggered before fully recovered. Or at any rate, that's what my testing on Easy suggested (and it was an obvious link to guess at). On Easy this gives you about 105 seconds to get it triggered, starting from when you disable it. If you're too late, the Scarab behaves normally.

Triggering it soon enough is no trouble at all on Easy. For starters you can disable the Scarab from distance with a plasma cannon, so you'll already be a good way back towards the battlefield. Next I suggest grabbing a Ghost from one of the Grunts down below. Get near enough to the Marines to trigger their advance, then you have various options. If you want to be as fast as possible, stay in the Ghost and whizz down to the end of the battlefield. When you get past a certain point, the Scarab should appear (even if the Wraiths haven't been dealt with). Alternatively you could transfer to a Scorpion and blast your way forward in standard fashion. On Easy you can still trigger the Scarab in time that way, though you wouldn't want to dawdle.

On higher difficulty levels the Scarab recovers faster, giving you less time to get it triggered. I expect things will still be manageable on Normal, but I'm less sure about Heroic and Legendary. It may become advisable to make the battlefield less hazardous by eliminating some enemy threats before disabling the Scarab.

From past the barrier you can go to various novel places from which to enjoy firing on the enemy troops. I'm thinking especially of long-distance fun with a sniper rifle and rocket launcher, but a fuel rod gun could also be good, and don't forget grenades if you're close enough. Whatever you've got, make sure you brought as much ammo as possible because there are plenty of targets. Principally Wraiths and Choppers, but there's also a smattering of ground troops and a destructible Phantom with grunty gunners. Explore for good firing positions.

On the cartographer building

For starters there's the cartographer building which has a wealth of surfaces you can get onto. I'm thinking principally of roof surfaces, but there are also lower areas you could fire from.

The first thing I tried was the enormously long 'spine' sloping up, which reminds me of a similar feature near the end of Assault on the Control Room in H1. It looks like just an unsupported thin strip when approached from the direction of the Scarab, but from the other side it looks solid. Jump onto it and head up. Aside from getting a magnificent high view of the battlefield, it's a great place to shoot from.

Running orthogonal to the spine are four wide cross-panels, any of which you can drop onto from the spine (and in places your fall is slowed by something invisible). From those you can drop down to lower surfaces. However, the lower area can also be accessed more directly by dropping down from the rocky area near the start of the spine. Using the lower surfaces you can go all the way along the roof, though in places there are invisible barriers to contend with. Go explore!

Ground attack from behind

From the cartographer building you can drop to the ground somewhere past the covie forces, then launch an attack from behind. And if that doesn't sound appealing to you, I don't know what will. There are various supplies you might like to grab and make use of. Fancy a Sentinel beam? A grav lift? A Chopper? One particular thing you might like to try is to take out the Wraiths by stealth. I used a grav lift to get myself up behind the rearmost Wraith to take it out. If you just kill the occupants you can use a Wraith to continue your attack of course; and it'll be pretty effective in bringing down the Phantom hovering back near the Marines. The Marines will only advance when you get close enough.

Rocky strip across the battlefield

The barrier you came through is one-way, so there's no trouble getting back through if you want. Rather than staying distant, you could advance on a long strip of rock across the battlefield. Near it's tip you can trigger the Marines to advance, and then you could perhaps support them from the rock. Incidentally, you can also get up onto this strip of rock in standard play; it's pretty easy at the tip.

Checkpoints

While killing covies you may get one or more checkpoints. I'm not sure of the exact triggers, but one thing I noticed while experimenting on Easy was as follows. Down to the left of the strip of rock were two Grunts in Ghosts, another two on foot (one manning a plasma cannon), and two Jackals. There seems to be a checkpoint triggered by weakening this group sufficiently, and the weakening can cause the remaining foot soldiers to head for a new position across the battlefield, making nice moving targets for a sniper rifle or rocket launcher (or, wait until they've reached their destination, then let 'em have it). For example, killing all the Grunts was sufficient to cause a checkpoint, and the Jackals headed to the new position.

If you ever get a checkpoint and wish you hadn't, bear in mind that you can probably use suicide reversion to get back to the checkpoint before that.

In the previous section I've already mentioned about getting onto the cartographer building's roof, which is a really great thing to explore. But there are other places to go and things to see.

The waterfall

Off in the distance to the left of the Scarab is a massive waterfall. Getting a closer look was one of the first things I did. In the direction the Scarab is facing, there's a huge wall. Go to where it's lowest - not far from where the rock ends and the sand starts - and you can quite easily jump onto it. Now you're up, you can head along to the end for a close look at the waterfall - which is pretty impressive.

Up the wall's ridge and along a cross-beam

After getting onto the wall, go to where the high sloping ridge meets it. The end is just low enough to get onto with a grenade jump, or by boosting yourself up with some other explosive blast if you've got a Brute shot, fuel rod gun or rocket launcher. You can now head up the ridge.

Not long before it levels out, there's a cross-beam running orthogonally below, sticking out from the wall. You can drop down onto that and head back towards the battlefield. There are a few ridges along the way but they're easy to jump over. Part way along, you have the option of destroying the Scarab if you haven't already. Note: You can also ascend to this cross-beam using the route mentioned at the end of my article Rear escape from the Scarab battlefield.

Further on, there comes a point when the Phantom is directly below. I was hoping I could drop onto it, but unfortunately you die before reaching it. Something you can do though is use the cross-beam as another distant platform from which to attack the covies. I had some good fun with that. In particular it gave me a great aerial view of the two Ghost Grunts, making a very inviting target for a rocket. They were blissfully unaware as it sped towards them.

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