Easy ways to farm over 1,000,000 XP in Halo MCC

[The Crimson Emo]

I don't know if these tips I'm about to share are common knowledge by now or if this is just something only I do alone but I've been playing Halo MCC for several months now, trying to do the weekly challenges and increase my rank each week that it's become so routine and formulaic that I've started to notice that I'm subconsciously trying to knock out each challenge in the most effective way possible every single week, rather than just playing to have fun.

It's weird, it's become something of a weekly chore for me now, like shopping for groceries or doing the laundry. Like I almost don't even question why other than "It's Wednesday. I need to do 10 weekly challenges when I get home from work, shower, cook dinner then I can get on with my day."
Can anyone else relate to that?

It's like Animal Crossing, the more you play it, the more you feel you have to...

Anyway i'm going off topic. The point is, playing Halo MCC every week routinely for months (Possibly years, I can't remember when I bought this game tbh) has given me a really good insight on how to get XP really quickly and easily so I felt like sharing some tips for anyone who's interested and looking for advice.

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First of all, I rarely play Multiplayer and primarily focus on the PvE challenges as you can knock those out much quicker and easier. Multiplayer is fun for many but the challenges are a lot harder to get and you won't be able to knock then out in a hurry. So all these tips are for PvE and should be able to get you 11/13 challenges easily every week.

So first, subscribe to a YouTube channel called 'Owemeone Kenobi'.
He does really good Moa guides and easily shows you how to get the 3 hidden Moa statues each week. He makes what could be the most tedious challenge of the week the easiest one in the list to knock out.

Next, and I discovered this recently, Halo ODST is your best friend for PvE challenges, namely Uplift Reserve (The safari stage with Dutch) as you can beat that stage in under 4 minute easily and is the only stage in the game you can beat that quickly without cheating.

If you learn to get good at the stage, learn where all the Brute Choppers and Wraiths spawn in the stage, you can just grab a Warthog, skip through the first area, grab the parked Ghost and cruise through the entire stage in an easy 4 minutes while doing next to no fighting whatsoever.

This makes a lot of the challenges that simply need you to complete a stage a cakewalk as you can do this on legendary with at least 1 skull on and knock a few challenges out very quickly.

Even the playlist challenge is best done on this stage. Go to Halo ODST's playlists and you'll find it easily. It's the first stage in one of the playlists so it's very easy to access and replay over and over.

Next is the Twenty Grand challenge that occasionally pops up, asking you to score 20K in a single session. This used to be a tedious one for me as I was told that Halo 2's Metropolis was the best stage to do this in and it had to be done on Heroic or Harder, which really used to grill my bacon as I personally cannot stand Halo 2 and find the combat endlessly frustrating.

Thankfully I discovered a much better way of doing it. Kizingo Boulevard on Halo ODST. (The scorpion tank stage)
That stage can be done in a good 10 minutes and you can rack up a good 30K even on normal (No Skulls) without even really trying.
Just don't lose the tank and make a mental note of where all the enemies spawn.

The second half of the stage is good if you need to kill X number of enemies with a Covenant weapon as you get easy access to a Covenant carbine and plenty of Plasma pistols in the final area and a huge wave of enemies to take out with it.
Just kill X number of enemies, restart the checkpoint before you run out of ammo, rinse and repeat.

Tons of Covenant can be killed easily in this stage with little effort so any challenge that needs you to kill X number of Covenant, this is the stage to do it in.

Two more quick tips I want to share. Any challenge that involves you needing to kill heavy enemies is best done on Halo 3's final stage (Halo) as during the first encounter you will see an endless supply of Flood Stalkers crawling up the wall to get to the Ark's control room.
These Stalkers count as heavy enemies even though they don't attack you so you can pick them off with rockets or heavy weapons easily. Restart the checkpoint before you run out of ammo, rinse and repeat.

Final tip. Whenever you get the weekly challenge to kill X enemies with a sniping weapon it is best done on Halo Reach's 3rd stage, Nightfall.
The first 3rd of the stage starts you off with a rifle with 75 rounds of ammo and at least a good 100 enemies that won't fight back.

This makes it much easier to do than Halo CE's Truth and Reconciliation by a long shot as the enemies mostly don't attack you or even know where you are, you don't have to travel across the map to find them and you don't have other marine soldiers getting in the way.

Kill X number of enemies, try to restart at the last checkpoint before running out of ammo, rinse and repeat.

Doing all that every week should get you over a good 1,000,000 XP easily and can be done in a good 1-3 hours I think.

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Anyway hope that helps. You guys might even have better advice than I do. Feel free to share if you have your own tips you want to throw in.

I'm mostly going by how much XP I can get with as little effort as possible and as quickly as possible but you might know some better techniques that I haven't thought of.
Feel free to add more in.

[Jimmy Hunter]

I generally find playing Halo is the best way to get EXP.

[The Crimson Emo]

Originally posted by Zeoplez:

I skimmed over the latter half honestly since it's a long post, could use a tldr.

I'm in the same boat though but I also do the PvP challenges. Even with PvP I usually focus on getting them out of the way asap so I don't have to worry about them and can play what and when I want.

Although I do plan on not bothering with challenges once I reach Tour 11 however.

For PvP I find KotH works great for objective medals.
Also 4v4 is faster than 8v8 for mode specific challenges, I usually work on both the games and mode specific simultaneously, along with others if possible.

Shoutout to Owemeone Kenobi on YouTube for all their moa videos.

I guess TLDR is that Halo ODST's Uplift Reserve and Kizingo Boulevard are the best stages for PvE challenges. I wanted to be more in depth to give everyone a proper step-by-step breakdown.
I tent to avoid PvP as I find them a little more tedious and grindy but some can be knocked out pretty easily if you know what your doing.

Getting 10 PvP challenges done to get the 500,000 XP reward is the real challenge though as most of them can't be done quickly.

[oOignignoktOo]

If you know speedrun strats you can do the weekly pve challenges in about 1-2 hours. The most time consuming weekly pve challenge is complete 2 full set games of firefight.

The fastest levels to beat for each game for challenge grinding

Halo Reach : Nightfall
Halo CE : Pillar of Autumn - Keyes is faster if you can floodbump
Halo 2 : Outskirts ( for weekly playlist progression ) | Uprising ( via. out of bounds skip ) if you're doing the 3 halo 2 missions
Halo 3 : floodgate + blackeye skull
Halo : ODST - Tayari Plaza

Halo 4 is avoided for most challenges unless you need to get 50 promethean weapons kills and for that I just do sniper alley with a light rifle start.

I've been playing since PC launch in 2019 and got 293 million exp and almost all the achievements save skunked and beating halo 4 legendary under 3 hours.

[Badsie]

i relate, ive gotten laughably good at completing most of the challenges under 1 hour

[Jesús Zárate]

W then

[Steve]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.