Guide to LASO in Halo Infinite – What is LASO, and how to beat it

There are very few achievements within the gaming industry that tend to hold more gravitas than completing a LASO playthrough within a Halo title. LASO stands for Legendary, All Skulls On. Within the franchise, this means that the game is played entirely at the hardest difficulty setting, with all optional gameplay modifiers (known as skulls) enabled.

Within the Master Chief Collection, skulls are available from the beginning to enable, allowing players to jump immediately into a LASO playthrough. In Halo Infinite, however, players will first need to collect skulls hidden across the campaign.

LASO tends to be one of the most grueling achievements available in the Halo franchise. On Steam, the Master Chief collection holds a full LASO achievement for all titles with a 0.3% completion rate, with well over a million players in the competition. Specific skulls tend to make this difficult:

• Blind removes the HUD.
• Thunderstorm adds an additional rank to most enemies.
• Black Eye only allows shield recharging after a successful melee attack.
• Famine effectively cuts available ammo in half.

The good news is that Halo Infinite is by far the easiest title to LASO. The inclusion of a new skull, Bandana, which offers infinite ammo and removes equipment cooldowns entirely, almost trivializes the LASO in its entirety, but Infinite is considered the easiest for other reasons as well.

The open world allows players to back off from a botched engagement, and FOBs scattered across the game allow players to customize their loadout. The Master Chief also has rechargeable utilities that can be invested in further to increase their potency. Finally, the Marines that players will meet are resourceful and dangerous, and can reliably eliminate threats at a wide range of engagement distances.

For players to start the LASO, begin a new campaign on the Legendary difficulty, and enable all twelve skulls. The biggest concern for players will be checkpoints — Iron Skull (mission restart on death) is not included in Infinite. Players will only receive a checkpoint when their shields are full, and the timing of a checkpoint is an unknown factor as the HUD is disabled through Blind. The AI scan ability, however, will remain available to help players through their missions.