Hack 7. Fight the Elite of the Elites

Activate the Thunderstorm skull to transform all Covenant to Special Operations troops.

This skull is located on the Cairo Station level. You will need to play on Legendary until you reach the mission objective "Find the Covenant bomb." When you activate the skull, the notification "Thunderstorm" will appear.

Once you activate this Easter egg, all Covenant troops are Special Operations troops (Spec. Ops.). If you like the game play of the campaign but want it to be harder, then this is a good choice. The skull doesn't change the abilities of you or your enemies; it just pits you against the toughest of the Covenant troops.

After you clear the second room of Covenant boarders, you will reach the "priority shift" portion of the Cairo Station level. In this stage, you will go to an armory where you have to fight a couple of Elites. The next room is "Commons B.01" the name of the room appears in large letters near the ceiling. The skull hides in an upper corner of this room.

Once in the room, clear out all of the enemies on the ground floor and the Grunts that are operating the plasma turret on the mezzanine. After you have secured the room, look outside literally out into space. You should see some diagonal supports holding up the dual tram tracks. You'll also note that the diagonal supports in the center are close together. One of those supports goes down the side of the wall beside one of the glass railings. You can jump on the glass railing post and then jump onto the diagonal railing (see Figure 2-4; the skull is in the right corner). From the support beam, jump to the tram track and follow it all the way down toward the door that you used to enter the room.

Figure 2-4. Jumping up the supports to get to the tram tracks

You should see a landing with a trash can; the skull is in this can (see Figure 2-5). Simply walk up to the can and hold X to pick up the skull. When you activate the skull, you will hear the sound of a thunderstorm. Figure 2-6 shows you what it looks like from where you grab the skull.

Figure 2-5. The Thunderstorm skull is inside this trash can

Figure 2-6. The view from the Thunderstorm skull location