Crow's Nest

Know Your Role…

Secure Perimeter Defenses

Black Eye Skull

Hop up here to find the Black Eye skull.

As soon as this mission begins, you can find the Black Eye skull. Look at the top of the first room here; you'll see a large air conditioning duct above you, with a set of red girders below it. If you walk to where the girders meet the ground, at the top of the stairs, you should be able to jump onto them and jump from there onto the duct. At the far end is the skull.

Head down the steps here and arm yourself at the weapons shelves, then proceed onward until you reach a closed door. You can open these by finding the switch and pressing the RB button.

Neutralize Hostiles In The Hangar

Start making your way to the hangar. After you reach the spot where a Warthog gets destroyed, turn to your left and chuck grenades into the crowd of Grunts there to kill most of them.

You can snipe your enemies from up here, if you find the battle below to be too much for you.

Fight your way from here to the hanger, and load up on ammo for your battle rifle on the way; pairing it with a carbine wouldn't be such a bad idea. When you reach the hangar, you'll have to fight off a few waves of enemies that will be arriving on Phantoms. If you're playing on a low level of difficulty, you can nab one of the turrets and use those to pelt the enemies as they arrive, but on Heroic or above, you'll need to be a bit more cagey, since there'll be a lot of Brutes coming your way. You can find your way up to the top of the room via the staircases; if you stay in the control room up there, you can snipe away at enemies below you. The brutes will be tough to kill, so you may want to wind up sneaking down, tearing a turret off of its moorings, and using that to finish them off. If you want to engage them in close quarters, try running down to the underbelly of the hangar bay and hope that they follow you.

Get Back To The Ops Center

When all the waves are done for, start making your way back to the ops center. In order to get there, start by heading back through the small vehicle path and finding the open doorways that are available to you. If you can find needler ammo here, grab it and save it. You'll need it in a bit.

Eventually you'll run into a swarm of Drones. These guys are annoying to kill since they swing through the air and move erratically, making them difficult to hit. If you have a needler, feel free to use that on them; otherwise, you may want to try using an assault rifle or submachinegun. Try to get to the side of the swarm and flank them to make them easier to attack. If you're having real difficulty, you should be able to just wait for the soldiers here to finish off the enemies.

Gift With Purchase

Rescue Marines In The Barracks

Head to the ops center and take a gander at the present that you'll be leaving the brutes. With that done, follow the door at the top of the room onward to start your quest to reach the barracks. Be sure you have plenty of ammo for your weapons before proceeding through; we used a needler and a battle rifle for the next fight.

This fight will require preparation and a bit of luck to get past.

When you enter the next corridor, you'll find a group of Brutes that are guarding the high ground. There are perhaps a dozen of them all told, including a gravity hammer-wielding chieftan, and you'll need to take them all out in order to proceed. Step up to the shield in front of you and use it as cover when you open your attack. If you have a battle rifle, you can use that to nab headshots on the distant foes (starting with the chieftan), then switch to your needler or something similar when your enemies get closer to you. It'll take a bit of time to wade through them all, so use grenades when they clump together. If you find yourself running low on ammo, duck off to the side of one of the walls here to grab some cover; that should cause some of the Brutes to come after you, letting you kill them at close range and steal their weapons. There are also a couple of weapon racks in the middle-right section of the room, in one of the parking areas.

After killing all of the brutes here, find any ammo or grenades that you can, then move on and drop down to reach a corridor with some Drones inside. You can ignore them, most likely, and simply run onward until you meet the Arbiter.

Grunt Birthday Party Skull

Look for this arrow to point you to the silver skull here.

In the hallway with the Drones, the second silver Skull can be found. Move down the hallway until you reach the point where you drop down to the top of the fan. Instead of dropping, though, edge verrrry slowly off the edge of the walkway. If you look down, you should see a green arrow pointing backwards. If you can drop down onto the ledge there, you can walk backwards to find the skull.