Sandtrap

"A UNSC battle cruiser looms menacingly over Sandtrap's sprawling sand dunes. Shrine is the largest map ever to appear in a Halo game, so Bungie put a key emphasis on vehicle-on-vehicle combat. Shrine has few ties to older Halo 2 maps, but its massive size recalls Relic."

— www.1up.com on Shrine

Sandtrap is a multiplayer map featured in Halo 3.

Introduction

Sandtrap is a vast desert with rolling sand dunes, the largest multiplayer map in the Halo franchise. It features odd Forerunner buildings and is encircled with Automatic Turrets to prevent players from venturing beyond its boundaries. The September 07 EGM stated that this was the site of a Brute excavation and the UNSC came along and removed them. It has a heavy emphasis on vehicular combat. For Example, the bases are the recently confirmed UNSC Elephant. In the skies "ominously hovers" the behemoth of a UNSC Battle Cruiser - an artificial sky. Also, from speculation, you can see what looks to be two towers just like the one on Relic.

History

It was first announced in the June 2007 issue of Gamepro. It may also be the "large map" Bungie sparsely talked about in one of their updates. This was not one of the three maps featured in the public Halo 3 Beta. This map was originally named Shrine, but was confirmed to have been renamed to Sandtrap in the July 13, 2007 Bungie Weekly Update.

Spawns

Weapons

• MA5C Assault Rifle
• Brute Shot
• Rocket Launcher
• Spartan Laser
• Missile Pod
• AIE-486H Heavy Machinegun (Assumed)
• Gravity Hammer

Vehicles

• Brute Chopper
• Warthog
• Ghost
• UNSC Battle Cruiser (non-drivable, background scenery)
• Phantom (Not drivable, seen crashed in video at bungie.net)
• Banshee (seen in the new video about the Brute Chopper at bungie.net)
• Albatross (Not drivable, seen crashed in video at bungie.net)
• Elephant
• Brute Prowler
• Mongoose
• Scorpion
• Wraith
• Possibly the Hornet
• Possibly the Scarab

Strategies & Miscellaneous

• Bungie accelerated the respawn timer for vehicles to 15 seconds. Take advantage of that.
• Avoid fighting on foot through this large level.
• If stuck try heading for one of the Forerunner structures.
• Make sure you have plenty of grenades and explosive weapons.
• GamePro has stated that Shrine "...has few ties to older Halo 2 maps, but it's massive size recalls Relic".
• At E3, a map was shown on video. It was said by viewers to be called "Sand Trap" — in contrast to having been called "Shrine" before that point — and was labelled "... the largest map ever to be in Halo." The new name of Sand Trap was confirmed in the July 12 Bungie podcast.

Images

• Shrine.jpg
• 
• UNSC Battle Cruiser 1.jpg
• Elephantwr8.jpg
• M808 Scorpion on Sandtrap.PNG

References

• Gamepro Magazine, June 2007 edition