The Challenge

The Goal

Achieve hero rank in Halo Infinite by the end of 2024. 9,319,350 score by playing multiplayer. This blog is to journal my experience this year and if it's even possible. 

Halo Infinite was released in December 2021 but the career ranking system released June 20th 2023. This ranking system would track your progress in game with level thresholds called ranks. No matter how much you played before June 20th, everyone started at the same level, recruit. Pretty frustrating if you have played a good bit before this update. So how well you play in a match, you accumulated a score. The better you play the more score you get to your rank. There are 266 ranks in total with 44 ranks being separated into 6 categories (bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, and onyx). After completing all the ranks, the player achieves the hero rank.

With people averaging 1,000-2,000 score per match, a player will need to play a significant amount to achieve hero rank which is over 9.3 million score. Let's just say you are going to have to play a lot. At the time of writing this, there are only about 117 players who have achieved hero rank. 

So why would someone want to achieve hero rank? What incentive does one get for completing such a great feat? October 17th 2023, it was announced the whoever achieves hero rank would receive the Mark VI armor. In other words, the Master Chief himself. The legendary hero of the halo franchise.

Talk about a real challenge. I put my mind into getting this armor and for the last few months I would play and play barely making a dent averaging 1,000 score. That means I would have to play roughly 9,300 games. I told myself that this would be impossible and was wanting to give up...then firefight came out.

Firefight is a pve mode that has been halo signature since 2009. Decemember 5th would release the firefight king of the hill mode. I played a few rounds and noticed that I was getting 4,000 to 5,000 per game. With each match averaging 15 minutes I could average 16,000 to 20,000 in an hour. After doing the math. Achieving hero ranks was actually possible but I needed to plan. 

The plan

From playing in 2023, I have already knocked out 500,000 score which now leaves me to complete 8,800,000 for this year. If I played all 365 days I would have to get 24,110 score each day. That would be a little over an hour a day. Now I have a family and a full time job. There is no way I am going to play everyday for an hour. Now if I get 30,000 scores (roughly 1.5-2 hours of firefight) I could reach hero rank in 293 days. That's 72 days without playing. Somedays I may actually play more and could knock out more score. 

Now I may be way over my head on this and I'm planning to do monthly updates and when I hit certain thresholds. I think halo infinite is in a good place right now and I'm looking forward to play more. I may make a video series and/or stream documenting this year. No matter what I will be updating this blog. 

Here's to 2024 and hero rank!