The Oracle (Level): Difference between revisions

Well, that looked strangely familiar. Indeed, you're simply retracing the same path that you walked in the previous level back to the hangar with the docked heretic ship. Opposition here is pretty thin, and you can cruise right through the majority of the route with little trouble. The only seriously tricky spot is  in the final room before you reach the heretic leader, as you have quite a bit of open ground to cover and several enemies in your way. Depending upon their initial position, it's not always easy to make it through the door before your cloak runs out. You should receive a checkpoint close by, though, so just reload and try again if you run into serious trouble. It may be tempting to expend a few fuel rod rounds here to clear the path, but its best to save them all for the finale, just in case. However, you may want to be careful of where your shots go, because if they hit the gas canister, the canister(s) will explode.  

As the cutscene with the heretic leader ends, you'll receive a checkpoint, its very strongly recommend that you save and quit here. As with some of the earlier battles, you'll receive additional checkpoints throughout the upcoming fight, and some of them may turn out to be inconvenient (though, with the fuel rod gun, this is less of a problem than it normally might be). After all the work it took to get to this point, you don't want to wind up stuck at the end.  

-Regenerating supply of disposable henchmen. Still largely unwilling to fight his own battles, the heretic leader will surround himself with holographic duplicates in an admittedly effective attempt to confuse us. Curiously, these holograms seem to do just as much damage as the real thing, which leads one to wonder why the Covenant don't just employ legions of holographic shock troops as a standard tactic.  

-Arbitrary invincibility. You're only allowed to kill him when Bungie wants you to kill him. Forget about taking him out back in the elevator room after sticking him with a plasma grenade and blasting him with an entire magazine of fuel rods; you can't even kill him in this battle until the end, no matter what you do. I've watched him get stuck in a corner in the first round of this battle and proceeded to pound him with 30 fuel rods and the energy sword, to no effect.  

The battle is divided into four rounds, the first of which begins as soon as the cutscene ends. During the first three rounds, the heretic leader shows up with two holographic duplicates. Your mission is to blast him with one fuel rod in each round, which is all it takes to send him running for cover. The holograms are indistinguishable from the real thing until after you've hit them. At that point, you'll either hear your target vanish in a poof (if it was a hologram) or yell in pain (if it was the leader). The final round can be a bit tricker, as he can potentially deploy more than two holograms, and you'll have to hit him twice in succession to finish him off. Other than that, though, it's the same story as before. Note that his holograms will vanish as soon as he runs off.  

Now this battle could actually be quite tricky if we hadn't come loaded for bear, as the heretic leader and his holograms are somewhat difficult to target and can do a tremendous amount of damage. Fortunately, the patience you showed in carrying that damn fuel rod gun around for the last 1.5 levels is about to pay off big time. The heretic leader begins each round (after the first) by appearing randomly from one of the four vents near the ceiling. Unwisely, he stands there in plain view taunting the Arbiter before flying out to attack. Although he's invulnerable between rounds while he is talking, he is fair game when he stops talking.

So, as the next video shows, your job in the time allotted to you between each round is simply to locate the correct vent, aim in, and then spam the hell out of it with the fuel rod gun as soon as his little speech is over. Given the travel time of your shots, you'll want to begin firing a bit early so the rounds start to impact just as he finishes talking.  

And that's the end of HALO's first Boss Fight.

There is an alternate way, and this one saves you lugging the fuel rod cannon around for the whole level. When the cutscene finishes and the battle begins, stick one of the holograms with a plasma grenade. Run to the alcove on your left, and pick up the plasma rifle (you don't have to, but it's what i did). When the boss and the remaining drone start firing at you, cloak and run around to your left. The two bosses will (hopefully) still be firing into your previous hiding place. Stick them both with plasma grenades. End of fight, Arbiter lives to fight another day.

Dual-wield needlers. After the cutscene, run/jump/cloak past the first two ones. Then unload all the ammo you can into him. It usually kills him in less than a minute.

The easiest way to kill the heretic leader (in lower levels) is to just run past the first two holograms and use your energy sword to kill him. You can also turn on your camo and backstab him.