Gameplay

Halo 5: Guardians skulls

From Halopedia, the Halo wiki

This article is about the gameplay modifiers in Halo 5: Guardians. For other uses, see Skull.
The Halo 4 skulls.
All the skulls featured in Halo 5: Guardians.

Skulls are game modifiers featured in Halo 5: Guardians with the appearance of a human skull. The skulls are the same from Halo: Reach and Halo 4. Just like in previous installments like Halo 3 and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary, skulls are collectibles that the player will be awarded with achievements for finding the first of them and all of them, and can also be accessed in the campaign menu after claiming them in the levels in which they're found.[1]

A third, time-limited difficulty of Warzone Firefight, Mythic Warzone Firefight, is the same as Legendary Warzone Firefight except that it adds difficulty skulls, with more being added in every successive round. The scoring factor is 150% that of Heroic Warzone Firefight's.

Campaign skulls[edit]

Score Attack reference[edit]

Unlike previous games, the skull score multipliers in Halo 5: Guardians are added onto each other. The maximum score multiplier from skulls alone is 19.5×; on Legendary difficulty, this multiplier is raised by 300% to 78×, meaning that killing a Warden Eternal with a power weapon will result in the player scoring 1,606,800 points (78×(20,000+600)).

Only skulls with a score multiplier higher than ×1 are listed in the table below.

Skull Name Multiplier Short Description
Iron 3× Death on Co-op = Revert to last checkpoint. Death on Solo = Restart mission.
Black Eye 1.5× No auto-shield regeneration and Overshields. Only melee attacks cause shields to recharge.
Tough Luck 1.5× Grenades, Needler fire, projectiles (ie. Rocket Launcher, Fuel Rod Cannon), and vehicular charges are evaded more skillfully by the AI. Enemies go Berserk more often, and Grunts will run away for a shorter period of time, turn around, and attack again the players.
Catch 1.5× NPCs throw many more grenades at an alarming rate. NPCs always drop two grenades upon death.
Fog 1.5× Motion Tracker is fully disabled.
Blind 2.5× The entire heads-up display, first person arms, and first person weapon(s) are completely hidden.
Famine 2× Dropped weapons have much less ammunition/charge.
Thunderstorm 1.5× Many enemies are promoted to higher ranks. (More experience)
Tilt 2× Enemy and player defensive resistances/weaknesses are amplified.
Mythic 2.5× All NPC health allocation is doubled.

IWHBYD (I Would Have Been Your Daddy)[edit]

The IWHBYD skull in the mission Osiris.
The ledge with the IWHBYD skull ready to be picked by the player.
“ Rare combat dialogue becomes more common. ”

Level: Osiris

Icon: A skull marked with a double helix.

Effect: Rare dialogue is more common, and vice versa.

Directions:

  1. Go to the very first Forerunner door on the level before using the Artemis Tracking System for the first time.
  2. Look to the left towards a ledge and clamber onto it.
  3. Look towards the air battle, and there will be a triangular ledge on which the skull lies.

Black Eye[edit]

The Black Eye skull, resting on a pipe.
“ Shields don't recharge unless you melee enemies. ”

Level: Blue Team

Icon: A skull marked with a smaller skull with a bruise under one eye.

Effect: Your energy shields will not recharge until you perform a melee hit on an enemy. The following actions will also restore your energy shields:

Just like in Halo 4, the low shield warning beep and shield down sound effects are removed except in Mythic Warzone Firefight. In addition, unlike in Halo 2, Overshields are completely nullified, and any revived characters, along with their revivers, will have only health and no shields if their shields have been wiped out. Health will not be immediately restored after reviving a teammate either, making reviving more dangerous in combat situations. AI-controlled teammates can still recharge their shields, however. In addition, the following missions feature scripted events that recharge players' shields regardless:

  • Unconfirmed - at the beginning of the boss fight against the Warden Eternal. The scripted shield recharge can be canceled if the player damages themselves with an explosive weapon or grenades.
  • Evacuation - the ending of the level where the player must run to the Pelican while the Guardian starts generating pulse blasts.
  • Battle of Sunaion - towards the end of the level, where a Guardian rises and causes a Phantom to almost crash on the Spartans of Fireteam Osiris. This can be missed if the player's shields are completely down.
  • Genesis - during the run down the Guardian, when it conjures pulse blasts. These scripted events can be missed, however.
  • Guardians - there are multiple scripted shield recharge sequences: one of which occurs near the beginning when a Guardian throws a pulse blast and vanishes into a slipspace portal; and several more at the end of the level where Osiris must reach and destroy the relay to free Blue Team from Cortana's Cryptum while being attacked by a Guardian.

Point Multiplier: 1.5×

Directions:

  1. In the reactor room, go to the far left of the reactor, where there are a few ammo boxes and a pipe, clamber onto the pipe.
  2. Walk all the way to the end of the pipe, which will lead you to a small, dark room. Be careful of Covenant forces from below and to the right, though, especially on Heroic or Legendary.
  3. On the floor there should be a breakable piece of ground. Ground Pound onto it, and that should make you fall to another room.
  4. Once inside, go towards the left, there should be a small pipe with the skull resting on it for you to pick up.

Iron[edit]

“ Solo: Restart mission on death.
Co-op: Spawn at last checkpoint on death. 		”

Level: Glassed

Icon: A skull marked with a hammer.

Effect: If you die while playing solo, you will respawn at the very beginning of the level. If any player dies while playing Co-op, all players will respawn to the last checkpoint. This is similar to what would happen when playing Co-op on Legendary in Halo 2, but it is slightly harsher on the players. In addition, the abilities to save from last checkpoint and manually revert to last checkpoint are disabled.

Point Multiplier: 3×

Directions:

  1. Play through the mission on Legendary difficulty until you reach the part where Sloan suggests Fireteam Osiris to obtain a Corp Scorpion on the way to Meridian Station.
  2. After you gain access to the Corp Scorpion and go through some arched rocks, you may see a cargo ship flying and being pursued by a Phaeton.
  3. Shoot at the Phaeton until you destroy it.
    • An alternate strategy is to obtain an Spartan Laser and have another Spartan drive the Scorpion. As the Spartan Laser has hitscan properties, unlike the Scorpion's weapons, using it to destroy the Phaeton is much easier.
  4. When you destroy the Phaeton, you will hear the Grunt Birthday Party sound effect which means the skull will appear in one of three locations, shown in the video above. In each playthrough, the skull's location is random:
    • Location 1: alongside the fence in the nearby area, sitting between a pair of yellow barrels.
    • Location 2: underneath a yellow barrel on top of the roof of the building housing the Corp Scorpion.
    • Location 3: under a small archway near the entrance to the area from the McCord River bridge, next to a pair of metal crates.

Blind[edit]

The cave where the Blind skull is hidden.
“ The HUD and the first person arms and weapon are hidden. ”

Level: Unconfirmed

Icon: An eye with the pupil crossed out.

Effect: Your entire Heads-Up Display is disabled. You can't see your weapon, first person arms, shield and health meters, motion tracker, or ammo/grenades. However, you can still see the sprint aiming reticle, your character's first-person legs, radio/COM tags from other characters, and the boost gauge when riding a Covenant vehicle. Your character's arms will still be briefly visible in certain sequences, such as interacting with a piece of Mission Intel while playing as a member of Fireteam Osiris. This is because these sequences use the character's third person model rather than the first person arms.

Point Multiplier: 2.5×

Directions:

  1. After entering the underground facility, you'll find a f