Whenever the Banhammer swings its mighty will, people are going to get confused. We’ve received a lot of emails and comments on what exactly constitutes cheating and bannable offenses in Halo: Reach. We are here to help you. Here is the OFFICIAL list of what to DO and NOT DO in Halo: Reach to avoid a credit/rank reset, or Gamertag/Console Ban. Love it or hate it, this is Bungie’s playground. If you break your rules, they will smite thee.

DO NOT’S of Halo: Reach

1. Do not manipulate Daily/Weekly Challenges. The glitch here is if you beat a challenge and get the credit for it mid-game, but unplug your Xbox 360 from the internet, Bungie’s servers might not know that you beat the challenge and when it reconnects, you may be able to repeat it. Sometimes there are 2000-4000 cR challenges for just killing enemies in any game mode. Very easy. If you do this challenge many times in a single day, you are going to be reset. How do they know? Easy. They have a record of everything. If you have 43 daily challenges for a single day, you cheated. If your internet drops and you might have to repeat it, you’re probably safe. If your internet drops 23 times in a day, you cheated or have Time Warner. Zing.

2. Modding your Xbox 360. 99% of you have no idea how to do this, so don’t worry. If you have a modded Xbox 360, you can sometimes trick the game by using someone else’s Service Record into thinking you earned all that sweet cR. Again, there is no way you accidentally opened your console, soldered in mod chips or firmware flashers, resealed it, and used a game save by accident.

3. Using a pirated copy of Halo: Reach. This is fairly obvious. Did you legally buy your game from a store? Do you have an actual game disk? If you answered yes, you are fine. Pirated games can and will be hacked to exploit system (modded Xbox 360 needed, so see #2). This is another hardcore cheating method. Don’t download a torrent version of Reach and you’re money.

DO’s of Halo: Reach

1. Play the fucking game as intended.

2. If you play a lot of custom Firefight, the cR you earn are very, very low. Not an issue. So play that IGN Firefight variant all you want — you aren’t going to get in trouble.

3. If you play a lot of Gruntpacolypse, you are fine. They have greatly reduced the credits earned here. When a challenge says ANY GAME MODE, GRUNT-PAC IS OKAY. This is a Bungie playlist. They don’t ban you for playing the games they made. They won’t ban do anything you can make in a custom game (which includes the achievement farming Firefight variants you can make). The same goes for ANY Playlist Bungie has released. They will NEVER ban you for playing their stuff. NEVER.

4. This is the most contested — using checkpoints to boost. While super lame and pathetic, you can replay your favorite checkpoints over and over and over earning cR. Bungie DOES NOT PENALIZE YOU FOR PLAYING THE CAMPAIGN. They don’t care. This is more of cR Farming then cheating. You can play the Alpha Checkpoint in Level 3 and use the target locator over and over. If you want instructions how, Google it. Though pathetic, it is still legal. Bungie has confirmed this. See link in opening paragraph.

That’s it guys. If you don’t go out of your way to cheat, you won’t get banned. Manipulate and/or modify the game/console and they will catch you. Bungie wants us to enjoy the game for the next 3-4 years, so don’t be a douchebag. If you get to be a Reclaimer (20 million cR) before next year, you either cheated your ass off or need to go outside for a few minutes.

See you online.