Halo: Reach skulls are gameplay-modifying difficulty-multipliers in the appearance of human skulls in Halo: Reach. Most of the skulls featured in Halo 3 are included in Halo: Reach. Just like Halo 3: ODST, skulls are no longer easter eggs in-game, and can also be accessed in the campaign menu without claiming them in campaign levels. Skulls, including the newly-introduced customizable Firefight skulls, are also present in Firefight, randomly activated on every beginning of a set. A campaign game on Legendary with all skulls activated is named "Mythic".
Primary Skulls
Iron
Template:Article Quote The Iron skull causes the mission to restart if the player dies during the campaign for whatever reason. On campaign Cooperative Play, if even one player dies everyone is forced to revert back to the last reached checkpoint.[1] In Firefight, the skull disables respawning after the player died.
Black Eye
Template:Article Quote The Black Eye skull causes the automatic regeneration of the player's energy shields to be disabled. The only way to recharge the energy shields is to melee or perform assassination on an enemy.[1]
Tough Luck
Template:Article Quote Tough Luck skull causes enemies to evade vehicles, dodge grenades and heavy weapon projectiles. Unggoy would be less likely to flee and could easily turn suicidal.[1] Banshees are more likely to perform evasive maneuver when locked on by heavy weapons.
Catch
Template:Article Quote The Catch skull causes the frequency in which AI-controlled characters throw grenades to be doubled, while also always dropping two grenades upon death.[1]
Cloud
Template:Article Quote The Cloud skull is a new skull featured in Halo: Reach, replacing the Fog skull in Halo 3. Just like the Fog skull, the Cloud skull causes the player's motion tracker to be disabled.
Famine
Template:Article Quote The Famine skull causes all dropped weapons' ammunition or charge to be reduced by 50%. Weapons stored in crates and Spartan Lasers are unaffected.[1]
Thunderstorm
Template:Article Quote The Thunderstorm skull causes enemies' ranks to increase. Unggoy and Sangheili are, most if not all, promoted to Ultras, Kig-yar spawn as Majors and Snipers, Skirmishers spawning as Commandos and Champions, Yanme'e much more likely to be Majors or Ultras and Jiralhanae Captain Majors to spawn.
Tilt
Template:Article Quote The Tilt skull exaggerates the strengths and weaknesses of weapons. For example, the magnum is only 1/4 as effective against energy shielding, while the plasma pistol is only 2/3 as effective against health.
Mythic
Template:Article Quote The Mythic skull causes enemies to have twice as much health than they normally would.[1]
Secondary Skulls
Blind
Template:Article Quote The Blind skull causes the player's first person HUD, including the scoring box, weapon and arms, to disappear.[1] The effect can be slightly compensated by pressing the "Back" button on the Xbox 360 controller, which gives a brief summary over the screen of the weapon and armor ability the player currently wields.
Cowbell
Template:Article Quote Purely for comical purposes, the Cowbell skull increases physics effects three-fold. Explosions and melee attacks launch players and NPCs further than normal, but damage is not affected.[1]
Grunt Birthday
Template:Article Quote The Grunt Birthday Party skull causes headshots on Grunts to explode in a shower of confetti as well as producing a sound clip of children cheering. However, the confetti explosion does no damage, unlike in Halo 3 and Halo 3: ODST.[1] The description is most likely a reference to the original Grunt Birthday Party skull in Halo 2, which will produce plasma grenade explosion on the Unggoy upon being shot in the head by the player.
IWHBYD
Template:Article Quote This IWHBYD (I Would Have Been Your Daddy) skull causes rare and secret dialog to appear throughout the campaign and turns off normal dialog.[1]
Firefight Custom Skulls
In Firefight, there are three customizable skulls the player can have: Red, Blue, and Yellow. Each of these skulls has exactly the amount of customization ability as gametype modifications have.
Trivia
- Whenever the Cloud skull is activated during a Firefight match, it is erroneously refered as it's Halo 3's counterpart, Fog skull, in on-screen message.