This is a periodic update of the Podcast Evolved Spartan Company’s progress towards achieving the Halo 5: Guardians Achilles helmet. The armor is earned once the company gets to level 3 of 5 on every kill commendation, and the helmet is earned once those are all maxed out 5 out of 5. The last update determined our current pace means we won’t get the helmet until 2035, but lets see if the recent renewed interest in the community has helped out at all. I am writing this before looking at the numbers, so I honestly don’t know where we stand, though to be honest, I am not super optimistic.
Just out of reach.
YOU KNOW IT IS BAD WHEN THEY START WITH THE GOOD NEWS
Alright, so first the good news. Since the last update in January, we earned another kill commendation. Almost Doesn’t Count, or kill a spartan while low on health, is now done. That makes a total of 11 commendations completed on the 31 total needed to earn the Achilles helmet. I know we weren’t actively trying, but good job anyway!
YOU CAN BE JOHN, LET ME BE FRANK
So onto the bad news. Before this, I was mostly ballparking the numbers to get a decent estimate on how many we completed since last time and used that to extrapolate to the time when we would earn the most limiting commendations. This time I thought it prudent to put all that data into a spreadsheet to track our numbers better and get an estimated completion date for each remaining commendation. This will make my life easier for next update, but more importantly has pointed out exactly which commendations are giving us the most trouble. As it turns out, the ones I listed the last time are still the limiting ones, though the current numbers are a lot worse than last time. Whether that is because I suck at math or we have just slowed down considerably, I don’t know, but I’ll just lay it out for you.
Based on our current pace, we will complete our last commendation, Sorry Mate, or kill marines, in March 2063. That is, um, not great. We need 38,900 total marine kills to earn it, and in the last seven months we have earned another 359. Seeing as we only had 9,700 to begin with, there is still a long way to go. If we want ANY chance of getting the Achilles helmet, we have to pick up the pace a lot. To put it into context for our Discord members, Ryan will be nearing retirement age and probably have grandchildren by the time we earn that commendation.
The other lagger is The Pain Train, or Kill a spartan with a shoulder bash, with an estimated completion date of December 2042. Also not good, but 22 years earlier than Sorry Mate. We did 159 since January and need another 6,841 to earn the commendation. If we want to make an attempt at earning the Achilles helmet, we need to focus on these two commendations hard. And that means playing Warzone and using shoulder bash like a noob.
COMING TO TERMS
Our other option is to just focus on the easier commendations and knock out a few before Infinite launches. At our current pace, even the next expected commendation to be completed, Sting Like a Bee, or kill a spartan with a melee, won’t be complete until January 2021, several months after infinite launches. I think that one, along with protecting a teammate and earning the first kill of a match can be completed pretty quick if we all put our minds to it. 4 years into Halo 5, however, I don’t know that there is still a lot of desire to get the Achilles helmet, but if you want to try, these are your best bets.
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