system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[Halo] Do the Covenant come back for for their dead soldiers and their equipment?

Hey y'all.

I know the Covenant revere Forerunner artifacts, the Prophets, and they'll go to at least some effort to retrieve the body of an Arbiter, but what about others?

During a planetary invasion, perhaps prior to a later planned glassing, do the Covenant retrieve any of their dead? Now I'm thinking probably not the rank and file, they'd leave them where they lay, but what about Elites? Are they careful about leaving equipment such as weapons, wrist shields, Elite combat harness lying around?

My thinking is generally they'll salvage equipment if it's vehicles, heavy weapons or anything more powerful or significant than that, and in areas that they're occupying they'll try to reclaim all military hardware including firearms, but in outlying or unimportant areas they're not too fussed about lost plasma rifles, the odd combat harness or Ghost.

Anyway, what do you think? Are there any instances you can think of where they've gone to significant effort to retrieve absolutely all their military hardware, or conversely where they've decided they're not interested?

Your thoughts, anticipated and appreciated.
gpt
While they do regard their military hardware as holy (in one of the novels the Thel Vadamee, who would later become the Arbiter, was revolted upon seeing a plasma rifle that had been modified for human use), it doesn’t seem to be regarded with nearly as much reverence as actual Forerunner artifacts. While they would prefer to recover lost equipment, if for no other reason than the fact that the Huragok/Engineers are practically miracle workers when it comes to getting broken tech to work, they are not considered to be sacred enough that they will avert a planned glassing (remember, exterminating humanity is supposedly the will of the god).