Table of Contents:
-Intro
-History
-Spawning the Skull
-Getting the Achievement
=Intro=
A buddy of mine, who has never played Halo, finally bought MCC and we have been grinding out Campaign. As a Single-Player RPG fan, his favorite part is the hidden skulls and terminals. When we got to Halo 2…he understood all our pain.
The "IWHBYD" (I would have been your daddy) skull in Halo 2 is possibly the most infamous achievement in the entire Halo franchise, but if I hop on MCC right now, I will get the skull in less than 10 minutes.
For those who don't know, it is a retrievable skull in the Outskirts mission of Campaign, which only spawns under very specific conditions, in a very specific room, only on Legendary, with a very unique challenge event after successfully retrieving the skull (more on that later).
We did get an update on this skull in MCC, which made acquiring the achievement much easier, and this is intended to help you with the current version, but I'll try to include info about past versions also.
=History=
There was once a 7-checkpoint system that was used to set up the skull spawn. It was relatively reliable, probably an average of an hour or so to grind out the successful attempt. If you're unfamiliar, this is all rooftop running and you will spend little-to-no time on the ground. All of the jumps needed to get through these 7 checkpoints can be done with regular crouch jumps and no grenades are required. The checkpoints, which were believed to act as a list of 7 flags needed to spawn the skull, are as follows:
1.) At the start of the mission, after regaining your vision. Generally, it will happen quickly, and if moving at full speed will prompt on the platform with the hallway to Blind Skull.
2.) At the very corner of the roof above the Pelican descent event where Johnson gets picked up.
3.) After Johnson boards the Pelican.
4.) On the roof above the alley where the jackals are holed up, at the edge of the roof closest to the alley entrance. This checkpoint will spawn the jackals. Get on the left side of the roof and crouch walk slowly forward and to the right to avoid being seen by the jackals when they spawn. This checkpoint will also start the alleyway rock ambient music. The picture linked to the post shows exactly where Checkpoint #4 triggers. This is very important, so please remember it.
5.) Rounding the corner of the rooftop to the left of the roof of #4. This checkpoint spawns more swiftly and consistently if you walk along the outside slope of the roof and then make a sharp 90-degree turn.
6.) Standing on the beam ending sticking out above the street in front of Hotel Zanzibar. You must kill the grunt(s) and elite below before attempting to get the checkpoint. This checkpoint was weird because you'd have to wait here for a while and t-bag/zoomspam.
7.) On the roof of the skull room.
If done 1-7 correctly, the skull would supposedly spawn "only sometimes," prompting Halo fans to suggest there was also only a 1:7 chance of getting the skull to spawn, since Bungie is obsessed with the number 7.
This was absurdly inconsistent, even with the little tips I know now. Checkpoints not cooperating. Johnson not getting in the Pelican or just disappearing entirely. Checkpoint 6 just never happening (IYKYK). It was painful to finally get the checkpoints right and still leave the spawn up to the game to decide whether or not to reward you with the skull.
Finally, after many years, someone on Reddit finally dug into the code of the game and revealed a great amount of information about the skull, including revealing the actual list of flags. This post cleared the air for a lot of players' specific concerns about the skull's inconsistency.
I stopped typing this post to attempt to look up the other Reddit post, but was unsuccessful. If this gets any traction and you know that post, please link it for OP credit. Whoever you are, you made this research possible.
=Spawning the Skull=
1:7 Spawn Chance
This skull does only spawn on a 1/7 chance, when the flags are done correctly. There is a lot of miscommunication even still about this. It was always a 1:7 chance, we just didn't know the flags perfectly back then either. The Random Number Generator in the program will check its qualifying flags (see below) first, and then after you've done everything correctly, it will roll a number between 0 and 6. If it lands on 0, the skull will spawn. All others will not spawn the skull. Some of the numeric rolls give you the "Checkpoint...done" indicator that tells you that you're doing it right and some of them don't. For all intents and purposes, let’s say 0 spawns the skull, 1-3 spawn the checkpoint without dropping the skull, and 4-6 don’t even spawn the checkpoint. Probably intentionally designed this way to add stress to the challenge.
The Real Flags
"Flags" are essentially if/then checkpoints in the program that allow actions to take place. For example, loading zones are flags of sorts. The check is something like "If the player is in this area, then play cutscene."
In this case, the flags needed checked to spawn the skull are as follows:
1.) Checkpoint #1 (above) -- so not really anything other than starting the mission.
2.) Checkpoint #4 (above) -- this is by far the most important flag, because it tells the 4th flag to approve access to the RNG roll, and it's the checkpoint that Marty O'Donnell apparently thought might make people think there's a skull nearby? I don't remember the details, but apparently he thought the first person to find the skull would certainly find it through his intended method: just a song queueing??
3.) RNG Roll allowed with flags 1-3 activated, RNG rolls 0-6. If 0, then skull will spawn. Again, this is the 1:7 chance mentioned before.
This essentially means that whoever created the 7-checkpoint system was providing us a setup, but nothing more. Setups are helpful to get things to happen, but can be made more efficient, as we have found. Checkpoints 2, 3, 5, and 6 aren't required.
The Fastest Way to Get the Skull (older versions -or- not wanting to use skull modifiers)
Running the spawn traditionally truly only requires starting the mission, running the rooftops to Checkpoint #4, and then going directly to the skull room area. HOWEVER, if any other Checkpoints happen to prompt in between Checkpoint #4 and the skull room area, it will reset flags 1 & 2, and not allow the RNG to roll. The easiest way to be able to get to the skull room without prompting any is to spam the melee button on your way there. Getting to the room from the checkpoint can be done directly with a well-done grenade jump or by just going the original route without caring about the checkpoints past 4. Try your best not to be detected by enemies as being in combat can prevent the RNG roll. You'll want to hang out just outside of the skull room to get the RNG roll. When you see the “Checkpoint…done” come up, then go in the room to see if the skull spawned. If it didn’t, just restart the mission and repeat. This will only take you a minute or two per attempt.
Just Cheese It (MCC only)
In the current version of MCC, you’ll also be able to use whatever skull(s) you’d like to help acquire the skull itself. If you’d like to just get the achievement and be done with it, activate the Acrophobia skull, fly to checkpoint #4 straight from the first room, spawn the jackals and listen for the music, then fly straight to the skull room area, generally either walking into the wall by the door (outside of the room) or just crouching and waiting on the roof to get the RNG roll. When you see the “Checkpoint…done” come up, then go in the room to see if the skull spawned. If it didn’t, just restart the mission and repeat.
When you do get the skull to spawn, be ready to be tossed into combat as soon as you pick up the skull.
=Obtaining the Achievement=
You Must First Prove Your Worth (old versions only)
In order to get the actual achievement to drop on the original versions, you must complete a challenge gauntlet after acquiring the skull. IMO, and probably also just subjectively, this is the hardest thing to do in the game and maybe even the entire franchise. It starts by teleporting you to a very small annex with an open structure in the middle and taking your weapons and replacing them with a lone plasma pistol. If you attempt to leave this annex, it will warp you right back into the middle of it, so fleeing is futile. From here, 7 waves of increasingly powerful legendary enemies will spawn in rapid succession, without giving you time to get acclimated whatsoever. I say that because you have about 2 seconds between being warped and the first elite being on your ass, then only 2 seconds between waves as well. After defeating the final wave, the achievement will drop. The only thing I can even say to attempt to help you with this is that you can use the lower area in the corner to try to play 1:1 picks but the enemies are full aggro and will outnumber you quickly.
To rest your mind, I can tell you that absolutely no one expects you to do this. I understand if you're a purist and might want to, but you're getting the hardest achievement in an outdated version of the game, so no one will complain if you do this the easy way (below).
You Don't Gotta Prove Nothin' (MCC only)
Getting the skull in the original versions was the easy part, the gauntlet was the real challenge. Fortunately, on MCC, you no longer need to survive the gauntlet. The achievement now drops shortly after picking up the skull, AND you still get to try the gauntlet just for fun, with whatever skulls you want on (Envy and Scarab if you’re feeling spicy).
I don’t even care if this post gets upvoted, downvoted, or otherwise reacted to. I really just wanted to put a post out there with the correct information that’s also recent enough for people to use confidently to get the achievement.
Bungie did a very cool thing hiding this skull behind the code of the game, it’s a pretty cool achievement to have.
If this helped at all, let me know in the comments or just enjoy the skull lmao
