Halo's gameplay has always kept physical interaction at the center of its identity, and a raid for it ought to do the same. Encounters should revolve around spacial or practical problems rather than abstract buffs and other "magical" elements. If status effects must be used, it should be done sparingly and with clear visual indication to other players. This also ensures that the challenges the fireteam faces remain intuitive by operating on rules that are consistent with the rest of the game and have clear cause and effect.

Encounters in Shard of Ascension typically revolve around physical problems: juggling a ball, crossing a chasm, or delivering an item and bypassing energy walls. The boss fight with Iratus is a partial exception, but the non-physical aspects of the encounter are introduced in more physical contexts earlier in the raid and have contextually sensible framing.

The best Halo missions run the gamut of sandbox elements – weapons, enemies, vehicles, equipment, and more. That should apply to raids as well. Encounters should have very distinct rhythms of play from one another, and encounter-specific mechanics should integrate with the existing sandbox in unique and exciting ways that take advantage of the player count. Wielding the sandbox could be a potential strength of Halo raids compared to Destiny ones. Halo level designers have tight control over what players have access to and when, so orienting sections around specific sandbox elements is much more tenable than it might be in Destiny, where players can bring virtually anything with them into any encounter at any time. However, this also means that the responsibility of keeping replays interesting lies almost entirely with the encounter design, so making the most of the sandbox's potential is absolutely necessary.

In Shard of Ascension, encounters typically include several mechanically distinct roles such that the player's gameplay style changes moment-to-moment, encounter-to-encounter, and run-to-run. For example, second encounter requires all players to cycle between on-foot and vehicle action in the same attempt, third encounter is entirely different between inside and outside roles, and fourth encounter requires the team to juggle several interconnected tasks at once with random infection throwing a wrench into strict job assignments.

The weapon sandbox is a particularly interesting aspect, as it's fundamentally different from virtually every other game that includes raids. Shard of Ascension uses weapon availability as as a form of time pressure. The fireteam gets their pick of the reliable UNSC workhorse guns and some power weapons at the beginning of each encounter. Because enemies rarely use these, additional ammo for them is scarce. Most combat spaces include ammo boxes that can refill players' reserves for their starting weapons, but these are only restocked when progress is made in the encounter, so a slow team will gradually be pushed to use the more specialized weapons that enemies drop instead. While not fatal, that encourages them to get a move on and gives you a reason to use more of Halo Infinite's arsenal over the course of an encounter. Power weapons instead present a resource management challenge: whatever ammo the gun starts with is all you'll get for it, so you need to use it meaningfully, but until you do it takes up one of your precious weapon slots. (The Iratus encounter is the only exception to this -- giving players easier access to the most powerful weapons help build its sense of climax.)