Another way to escape normal bounds with a Falcon and a dropship.

Posted November 6th 2011

• Introduction
• Wandering dropship escape method
• Wandering dropship spectacle
• Early territory from high up
• Dual surfacing novelty
• Trooper area minus ground

In my article Stealing Jun's Falcon I described how you can escape normal bounds by settling Jun's Falcon into the fork of a dropship at an evac zone to get carried through an invisible barrier as it departs (not a method due to myself, though I did add some detail). That's normally quite easy when using the second dropship at the lower evac zone as recommended, though there can also be times when it departs in a manner difficult to cope with. Now several days later, I've realized how you can make an escape with the first dropship in a slightly different and quite easy way, and one of the benefits is that it allows you to go back and see the earliest parts of the level from high up, something I hadn't been able to do before. There are other benefits too, so let's get to it!

Heading for the lower evac zone in your stolen Falcon, approach close enough to trigger the first dropship into making its drop, but don't continue on to the troopers. Stay sufficiently distant that they remain officially unlocated (no blue indicators), even though it's blindingly obvious that they're here. After making its drop, the ship simultaneously backs off and rises to a position just below the invisible ceiling. As it does this, settle your Falcon into the fork in such a way that you're facing the same direction. That's pretty easy. Just hover a short way back from it and above, facing in the same direction, and sink into place as it comes up.

Now here's the interesting thing. Because you haven't located the troopers yet, the ship doesn't depart. Instead it begins wandering around lazily at low speed, bombarding them. That takes it out of bounds occasionally, often including an ascent through the ceiling right away, so all you need to do is stay in the fork until out of bounds, then break free of the ship. It's a lot more sedate than when trying to escape using a dropship's full-speed departure from the scene, but your presence still causes the ship to do a certain amount of veering about, like you're an irritant. If it breaks off the initial ascent, you could either revert for another try or let things continue a while, hoping for a different escape opportunity to come soon.

Often you'll realize when you've gone out of bounds from a red flash effect from passing through the barrier, but even if the passage isn't violent enough to make itself known, you could judge things merely by your position. As for breaking free, that's usually just a matter of lifting up out of the fork, maybe using a bit of rotation to help.

Instead of settling into the fork facing the same way as the ship, you could face against it. But that seems to make the ship to do more veering about, and because of that you're less likely to be quickly taken up through the ceiling. Also, if you do get out of bounds at some point, it's harder to break free of the ship. Another disadvantage is that you don't have such a good view of things, which can make it harder to judge whether you're out of bounds or not.

If anything goes wrong and you find yourself out of the fork and still in normal bounds, you can revert for another go (there was a handy checkpoint as you approached the evac zone) or you can try to intercept the fork again. The ship flies barely faster than your Falcon, so interception is fairly easy as long as you're only aiming to end up facing against it - and it's also kind of fun. You'd have to have a little patience and wait for the ship to get low enough though. Reverting would probably be more efficient.

Note: The ship doesn't fire at the Falcon, so there's no advantage to blowing its cannon off.

Evaluation and benefits

Testing things on Normal I was able to escape using the ship's initial ascent about 55% of the time, retaining full health on about half those occasions. That success rate for a quick escape is lower than the usual high success rate you can achieve when using the second dropship (previously the standout choice), but that ship sometimes has troublesome departure dynamics which tend to repeat when you revert for retries. I was never able to pin down a way of eliminating that potential trouble, so in that sense ship 2 has a degree of unreliability. In contrast, making an escape with ship 1 as described here seems pretty much a sure thing within a handful of quick tries, so it's a great option.

It also has some potential benefits. One is that after escaping, you won't be in danger of losing the ability to dismount from the Falcon. That ability is lost when you get 'OBJECTIVE COMPLETE' for the defence of the evac zone, but with this escape method you haven't even started that defence yet, because you stayed clear of the troopers. The continued ability to dismount is obviously good to have if you're going off exploring, or fooling around at the relay outpost or whatever.

Another potential benefit is that if there are any Elites back past rally point alpha (ones you bypassed earlier), you can go and wipe them out to get a checkpoint while remaining out of bounds. That can be useful as a starting point for exploration or whatever. See the later section Early territory from high up for instructions on how to get that area reloaded. Note: there's also the standard option of getting an out-of-bounds checkpoint from getting the relay outpost loaded, but that has side-effects you may not want.

Additionally there are some things you can enjoy afterwards which you can't with any later ship, and I'll cover those in the remaining sections.

Higher evac zone

The same escape method can be used with the first ship at the higher evac zone but it's far harder. When the ship has made its drop, it rotates as it rises, and then backs off to a position just above the invisible ceiling. You need to get into the fork before it reaches the ceiling, but that's hard. It took me a fair bit of effort and gradual refinement before I managed to do it (ending up facing the ship). If you don't get into the fork in time, it looks like there's no chance of intercepting the fork later, because the ship orbits above the ceiling.

Regardless of whether you've escaped or not, the wandering dropship at the lower evac zone can be quite good fun to watch, so you might like to drop yourself somewhere (or just stay in the Falcon) and enjoy the spectacle. Break out your rations, have a sandwich! The ship's path tends to look quite random, though sometimes it may settle into a simple and less interesting orbit.

Solid rock no problem

As you'll observe, the ship can happily cruise straight through the scenery. I've even seen it go directly into the cliffside below the path that leads around the right. It was flying underground for quite a distance after that, because it only emerged on the other side of the area. Sometimes the ship seems affected by the scenery. I saw it fly partly into the massive hill behind the evac position and then rise almost vertically up the face for quite a long way before getting back to normal.

Dropship gone AWOL

I've also had times when the ship has headed into the scenery low down, never to be seen again. One time this happened after I'd escaped, which enabled me to use an escaped free-cam in Theater mode to see what actually happened to the ship. Last I'd seen from above ground, it headed through the cliff near the waterfall opposite the evac zone. Taking the free-cam behind the scenery, I saw that the ship then dropped for about 8 seconds (drifting sideways a bit), vanished for about 3 seconds, reappeared further down and dropped for about 12 seconds, then vanished. Weird.

Invulnerable troopers

The ship continues its bombardment of the troopers indefinitely but it's no actual threat to them because they're invulnerable for now. They only normalize when you've been sufficiently near after officially locating them. Presumably it's Bungie's way of making sure you don't arrive on the scene only to find three dead troopers. If you want to check, just try slaughtering them from distance with the Falcon's cannon. Not a scratch!

This way bozo!

About 80 seconds after making its drop, the ship gets marked by a big red indicator. I presume that's to help alert you to where you're supposed to go, in case you've lost your way to the evac zone or something. Actually that indicator is potentially useful when exploring far out, giving you a landmark and distance readout when you look back - as long as the ship hasn't gone AWOL.

After performing this escape method it's possible to fly back to get the earliest parts of the level loaded for inspection and exploration while remaining outside normal bounds, something I hadn't been able to do before (I'd only been able to do it in normal bounds). Let me elaborate. And in case you're wondering, this works even if you only started the level at rally point alpha.

Reloading the scenery from out of bounds

Staying above normal bounds, head back up the valley which led down from rally point alpha. The farm area beyond is missing - apparently protected by invisible surfaces including a high plane - but getting it loaded is an easy matter of being low enough near the end of the valley path. Below about 280 feet to be more precise - which you can do while remaining well out of bounds.

In regard to the farm area now loaded, keep above 160 feet or thereabouts if you want to stay safely above normal bounds. If there are any bypassed Elites in the field, wiping them out with cannon fire will give you a checkpoint; potentially useful as a starting point for exploration and fooling around.

If you now fly ahead to the circular farmhouse, you'll see that the path cuts off just beyond it. Again we have a missing area protected by invisible surfaces including a high plane. Around to the left there's a massive pinnacle (some way off the missing cliffside). Descend over the pinnacle or thereabouts, and when your altitude drops near 165 feet the area will load, yet you're still comfortably out of bounds.

Actually, you don't have to do things as a two-stage affair. You can just do the loading business over the pinnacle and that gets both areas loaded, i.e. everything up to rally point alpha. Moreover, I now realize you can do that even if you didn't escape via wandering dropship. The only potential trouble in not using that escape method lies in the rally point alpha area. If you located the troopers and got sufficiently near that they lost their invulnerability, i.e. became normal, the game doesn't like you being near rally point alpha. If you enter a certain zone in that area, it'll transport you to the ground at a place well down the valley. Incidentally, after locating the troopers it's possible to avoid normalizing them and yet still escape via the first dropship; but it's a little delicate to achieve and I certainly see no point in trying to do things that way.

Waterfall shaft

In regard to some of the exploration you can do in the two areas loaded, I'll mention a couple of interesting features. A short way back from the top of the level's first waterfall, there's a small shaft you can fall down with no escape. That caught me out somewhat. One moment I was leaping around the hillside, the next I'd apparently gone potholing. Like, who turned the lights out? Here's a thought. With a little ingenuity, maybe you could get Carter and Jorge down there. Could be a bit of a squeeze when you join them.

Pinnacle cluster hidey-hole

Another feature is in the second area you loaded. Remember the pinnacle I mentioned? Across the path from that is a cluster of other pinnacles sprouting up. Within those, there's a small grassy area you can drop yourself into (and still get out of). It's narrow and irregularly shaped, and pretty dark too, but you can see it from the air. Worth a visit I think. Actually you can drop yourself into there even when the Falcon is within normal bounds, but I didn't notice it before.

Here's a novelty for you. After doing a wandering dropship escape, fly off and get the relay outpost loaded, as described in the exploration section of my earlier article. You'll observe that some of the missing area before rally point alpha gets some crude surfacing over it. If you now get the proper scenery loaded, the crude surfacing will still be present, intermingling with it. This dual surfacing can be interesting to take a look at and move around in, presenting you with some strange sights, right back to the start of the level - and don't forget to look inside the buildings. You'll soon notice that the crude surfacing is insubstantial; you can move through it.

To get the proper scenery loaded, it's a little different to before because the valley leading down from rally point alpha will be missing, removed when you loaded the relay outpost. At the top of the valley you'll see that the crude surfacing cuts off sharply. Sink down over the side of that cut nearest the relay outpost, and the area should load when your altitude drops to around 280 feet. The valley loads too.

Here's some fun involving a return to the trooper area near the stream. Two varieties for you…

After reloading the farm area

After reloading the farm area from high up, fly back to the trooper area, initially staying high up. There's a chunk of land missing behind invisible surfaces, and you can land on top of an invisible plane above it. The troopers are unseen beneath - along with the covies - and the dropship continues its bombardment, though many of the shots impact against the invisible surfaces. Explore things; there's weirdness to be seen (e.g. go onto the bridge and have a look around).

If you go close to where the unseen troopers are, they finally become located and the dropship departs. The blue indicators don't move though; you'd have to get the area reloaded for that - which can be done back near the waterfall up the valley.

After reloading the relay outpost

You can get some similar weirdness another way. After reloading the relay outpost, much of the valley is removed (this is regardless of what escape method you used). Fly back to the trooper area high up without getting anything reloaded. This time there's an even higher invisible plane you can land on.

The dropship continues wandering, though it vanishes occasionally - something to do with the invisible surfaces I think. A couple of times while watching it, I saw it go AWOL (in the sense mentioned earlier), sinking down towards the grey disc. Had a good view of it, due to the lack of ground.

Talking of the relay outpost, I'll just mention out that you can continue the level there without ever bothering to locate the missing troopers! Any missing any team members will turn up once the cutscene starts.

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