============================================================================== StarCraft: Enslavers walkthrough by Stephen Politzer-Ahles [email protected] 2010-01-06 ============================================================================== I. Introduction......................[00010] II. How to install...................[00020] III. Enslavers I.....................[00030] 1. Schezar's Scavengers.........[00031] 2A. Playing with Fire...........[00032] 2B. The Rescue..................[00033] 3B. The Final Blow..............[00034] 3A. Assault on Aiur.............[00035] IV. Enslavers II: Dark Vengeance.....[00040] 1. The Rescue...................[00041] 2. Hung Jury....................[00042] 3. Nemesis......................[00043] 4A. Desperate Measures..........[00044] 5A. Showdown....................[00045] 4B. Turnabout...................[00046] 5B. Dark Vengeance..............[00047] ______________________________________________________________________________ This document is released under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike copyleft license (CC-BY-SA 3.0, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by- sa/3.0/). You are free to share it or link to it, and you may copy or modify it as long as you indicate where it came from. If you have any questions you may contact me atthe e-mail address above. ==================================== I. Introduction [00010] ==================================== Welcome to Enslavers. If you are playing this campaign, I will assume that you have already completed the original StarCraft and Brood War and are looking for a new challenge. Enslavers is called a "Veteran Level Campaign", and rightly so: it is signifi- cantly tougher than Brood War and quite possibly is the most difficult single- player experience in the game. Enemies don't give you the reprieves they do in the game's main campaign: once the attacks start, you'll be under attack almost constantly, and not just at the front of your base. The enemies in En- slavers use the same dirty tricks you use--for instance, while in the final mission of Brood War you may have had to fight two or three battlecruisers at a time, here the enemy will send large fleets at you. They defend their bases like you do, with arrays of cannons/turrets/colonies, rather than just one or two here and there. The difficulty of Enslavers is notorious; at one message- board I saw someone asking for help on beating one of the missions, and the first response was along the lines of, "It's impossible; give up and go to Battle.net where you'll actually have fun." So, welcome. This walkthrough will not tell you exactly what to do at every point in each mission; I can only offer general points on what strategies worked for me, and the specifics of which buildings to put up when will differ from one play- er to another. Because of the fast, relentless pace of these missions, you will have to be on your toes the whole time anyway, and being able to react quickly and adapt to what the computer throws at you is more important than having an exact plan of action. I also will not necessarily tell you what units to attack with, since by now you probably already have your preferences; since this walkthrough is just based on my own experience playing the cam- paign, though, I can't guarantee that my strategies and unit choices will work with your playing style, or that you will be able to beat a mission using my strategy if you have built different units. While we're on the topic of units, I should warn you that I hate micromanaging and thus I don't make much use of "caster" units (I don't think I've ever built a Defiler); I recognize their uses, but I just prefer the brute-force method. Therefore, if you use these types of units you may find some tricks that I don't mention in this walk- through (although in at least three missions I do make heavy use of particular caster units, and in those places I've said so). I advise that, if you use this walkthrough, you read through the full summary for a given mission be- fore you start that mission. I'm not a very good FAQ writer and my writing is a bit stream-of-consciousness, so it's possible that I've accidentally with- held some important comments until a bit later in a given mission guide; the long and short of that is that, if you try to read along the walkthrough as you're playing, you might get hit with something important before you get to the part of the walkthrough where I explain how to deal with it. Each Enslavers campaign has two paths you may follow, depending on choices you make early in the campaign. This walkthrough covers the canonical paths first, but also includes guides for the non-canonical missions. Finally, I should note that the first campaign (Enslavers I) was released with the original StarCraft, whereas Enslavers II was released with Brood War. Thus, an argument could be made that you should play Enslavers I from the ori- ginal StarCraft menu--and, therefore, that you should play it without any of the new Brood War units and abilities. This means that some of the strategies detailed in this walkthrough (particularly the Dark-Archon-heavy strategy for the final mission of Enslavers I) might be considered "cheating" by more hard- core gamers. ==================================== II. How to install [00020] ==================================== Enslavers actually encompasses two campaigns. The first, which I call "Ensla- vers I" in this walkthrough, is included in Brood War when you install it. To locate it, simply click the "Play custom" button after loading your profile. From the screen that opens, navigate up one level in the directory (by clic- king the "Up One Level" folder) and open the folder labeled "campaign"; the Enslavers I missions are there. Before opening one, make sure you are opening it with the "Use Map Settings" option, not "Melee" or "Free-for-all". The second campaign, Enslavers II (Dark Vengeance), is a set of custom maps that must be downloaded from the internet; you can find them at http://classic.battle.net/scc/os/enslavers.shtml . After downloading and un- unzipping the maps, move the files to the same directory as where Enslavers I Enslavers I is installed (wherever you have StarCraft installed, those should be in StarCraft\Maps\campaign). Once they are installed, you can access them in the same way you accessed Enslavers I. ==================================== III. Enslavers I [00030] ==================================== Enslavers takes place just after the events of the Terran campaign in the ori- ginal StarCraft. You take the role of an Alpha Squadron commander hunting down a warlord named Alan Schezar. Depending on decisions you make during the cam- paign, you may control Protoss forces as well. ---------------------- Mission 1 [00031] Schezar's Scavengers ---------------------- You begin in the lower-right corner of the map with some units and no buil- dings. Move quickly to the east to take out a small group of Marines and set up your base there. Getting your base started and churning out units as soon as possible is of utmost importance in this mission: nearby Zerg bases will start attacking you almost immediately with Zerglings, and with Hydralisks soon after, and if you aren't dug in within a couple minutes you will be over- run. Once your command center is built, make SCVs as quickly as possible, using one to build one or two Supply Depots while you harvest minerals with the others. Your first priority should be building two Barracks, getting at least one bunker at each entrance to your base (the bridge to the north and the one to the east), and filling those bunkers with Marines. I needed two bunkers to the east to hold off the attacks that were coming. Don't waste your starting re- sources on building a Refinery or other unnecessary structures until you have some defenses secured. If you survive the first five minutes of the mission without Zerg getting into your base, you should be relatively safe by now and you can focus on climbing the tech tree and building up an army like normal. That initial phase was the hardest part of the mission, so now you can pretty much relax and have fun (this mission is a friendly introduc-tion to the campaign; don't get used to it). Northeast of your base is a batch of minerals that is very poorly defend- ed (a few Sunken Colonies and burrowed Hydralisks) and should fall easily to Marines & Medics; if you take it, establish defenses on the bridge east of it, as you will see action from Terran enemies there; don't totally give up the eastern defenses of your main base, though, as they will still take some at- tacks (probably from Mutalisks by now). The top priority, though, is getting another source of vespene gas so you can build higher-level troops, and for this you will need to take the Zerg base directly north of your main base. It's on higher ground, meaning you'll have to get up a narrow ramp to attack it, and the ramp is relatively well-defended with sunken colonies, Hydralisks, and possibly a couple Ultralisks. I took it by positioning Seige Tanks in seige mode at the bottom of the ramp (keeping Marines & Medics around for backup) and scanning the Zerg base with my Comsat Station; after a couple rounds of that, the defenses around the ramp were wiped out and I could roll into the base. Don't try rolling into the base without first dismantling those defenses, because Seige Tanks are bad in chokepoints and would be wiped out if you tried going in without first taking out the defenses from below. Once you have taken this base, you can focus on upgrading your units and buil- ding an army for the final push into the base to the east. With two bases (three if you took the minerals to the east) you should soon be getting resources faster than you can spend them. If you did take the minerals to the east, almost all the enemy attacks will be focused there, so you can gather your army at that base, empty out your old bunkers and relocate the Marines here, etc. I'd suggest defending the bridge with at least two bunkers, all your Seige Tanks, and as many Missile Turrets as you can build with your spare minerals--you'll be getting harrassed pretty frequently by air units. Once your army is ready (I chose Battlecruisers and Seige Tanks, with a couple Science Vessels to keep an eye out for burrowed Zerg), taking out the enemy base is simple--nothing you haven't done a million times in Brood War. The base is a mixture of Terran and Zerg, similar to what you fought in the Brood War mission with the combined UED/Overmind forces. The mission is over once you destroy all the enemy buildings (if you can't get it to end, check the southeast corner of the map, where there are some Spore Colonies jammed in right at the edge). (NOTE: If you are playing this in original StarCraft rather than Brood War, you won't be able to use Marines & Medics as described in the early part of the mission. Marines & Siege Tanks should work fine instead, it will just take a bit longer to get them built.) ---------------------- Mission 2A [00032] Playing with Fire ---------------------- The second mission is considerably tougher than the first, although still do- able (in fact, when I re-played it I found it much easier than I remembered). You start in the lower center of the map, and once again you have been given next-to-nothing to start with, so once again your immediate priority is to build up defenses against the enemy forays that will begin rather soon. This time, though, you also have no gas, so you will need to secure a gas source as well. There is a geyser a ways to the east--close enough to be considered more or less part of your base, but far enough that it will need its own Command Center and its own defenses. The three critical areas of your base to defend (the ones that will suffer the most attacks) are 1) the bridge to the west; 2) the narrow strip of land near the geyser to the east; and 3) the tip of your island to the north. The second two areas are only approachable by air, so they can be defended sufficiently with Missile Turrets alone, although you'll have to keep building more and more as the mission wears on (since the attacks will get bigger and bigger). The bridge, on the other hand, should be defen- ded with the usual combination of bunkers, turrets, and Seige Tanks once you have them. In this early part of the mission it is quite possible that some Zerglings or Hydralisks will get into your base, so don't hesitate to use your Wraith hero (buffed with a Defense Matrix from the Science Vessel) to deal with them until you have good defenses up. As soon as your defenses are up, start building up an offensive force to take out the Zerg base across the bridge from you; you will be needing the extra resources soon enough. I would focus on Seige Tanks at first, since you'll need them to get through the first base, but also start building air units (Battlecruisers or Wraiths) because you will ultimately need them to complete the mission objective. At the same time as you are building up this force, you will need to be constantly improving your defenses, because the enemy in this mission is quite relentless; you'll be building new turrets, bunkers, Seige Tanks, etc., throughout the entirety of the mission. While the three areas mentioned above take the brunt of the enemy attacks, the Terrans in par- ticular will eventually try flying Dropships in through gaps in your turrets and dropping units in the middle of your base. I dealt with this by ringing my entire base--particularly the northeast coastline--in a line of Missile Turrets, two rows thick in some areas, and packed so close together that they're touching one another. Once you're confident in your defenses and you have a good force of Seige Tanks and whatever backup you prefer, cross the bridge and take out the small Zerg base there. The base probably won't fall to Marines & Medics alone, which is why I suggest waiting until you have enough tanks. Quickly establish your own base at that area and defend it the same way as you did the original one: tanks and bunkers to the north, and turrets along the entire coastline. The enemy likes dropping units in below your new base (between your two bases) to attack the softer portions of each base, so I just constructed turrets all the way down the coastline until they met the bridge and my main base, forcing the enemy to have to attack the northern part of my base (this also left me a large open space in the southwestern corner to build my Supply Depots and things). Once built, this base will be hit hard, so gather all your forces there and go overboard on defenses. Watch out in particular for the little pe- ninsula northeast of the base, which your enemy will use as a staging point for his troops before going in; if you can hold onto that area and prevent dropships from delivering their passengers, your base won't be hit so hard. And don't be too rooted in place; the Terrans will put Seige Tanks just far enough away from your base to be annoying, so it helps to have some air units to foray out and destroy them while your main defenses take care of the rest of the attackers. Still, don't be surprised to take lots of damage; the first time I played this I lost the new base entirely for a significant portion of the mission. All this while, you should also be keeping your next base in mind. All these defenses burn through minerals handily and both your bases are likely to run dry before you make the final push. Rather than wasting minerals on a new Command Center, I chose to just lift off my original one (since there were no longer any minerals there) and fly it over. Once you have a sufficient force (10-12 each of Battlecruisers, Seige Tanks, Marines, and Medics was enough for me), go north from your newer base. Bring your Science Vessel hero or have Comsat Stations ready; you'll be needing them soon enough. In the northwest corner of the map you'll encounter some Zerg defenses which should fall easily, and then a small Zerg base just east of there. Take it out and, if you need the minerals or need to replenish your at- tack force, establish a base there. (If your other colony fell while you were doing this attack, then you can set up a new one here.) There are probably not a ton of minerals here by now, but it should be enough to see you through the final push. If your attack force has thinned out a lot you may need to build some defenses and hunker down here while licking your wounds (if you wait long, this base will start getting hit just as hard as your last one was); otherwise you can prepare for the final push right now. In any case, keep your Science Vessel around this base, as you will get harrassed by cloaked Wraiths quite a bit. There is a plateau just below this base that serves as a good staging point to gather your ground units before the final attack, if you want; if you have 8 or so Battlecruisers, however, you might not even need it. Directly south of this plateau is an orange Zerg base protecting the cerebrate; directly east of your newest base is the large red Terran base where the Protoss prisoners are being held. To follow the canonical storyline you should free the Protoss (al- though if you've made it this far in the mission, killing the Cerebrate is quite easy as well, since it's so close--defense in this base is very light, and you can easily destroy the Cerebrate from above with a few Yamato Cannons, or park Seige Tanks on the island below). If you don't think you have enough Battlecruisers, build some Dropships for your ground troops; otherwise, just send your Battlecruisers east to the red Terran base. Proceed slowly, taking out turrets with the Yamato Cannon ability and ignoring the other buildings you fly over; you don't need to destroy the whole base. The protoss are inside a C-shaped structure surrounded by turrets and Seige Tanks; when you get near- by, Goliaths and Marines will swarm you, as well as some Ghosts who will lock down a couple of your units. With about 9 Battlecruisers, though, you should be able to handle them; if your Battlecruisers don't make it, just bring your ground units in by Dropship to finish the job (but watch out for the large number of Seige Tanks guarding the Protoss). Once you touch the Protoss with any of your units, the mission ends. If you rescued the Protoss, proceed to the instructions for Mission 2B: The Rescue. If you destroyed the Cerebrate (the non-canonical storyline), skip to the instructions for Mission 3A: Assault on Aiur. (NOTE: If you are rescuing the Protoss, there is a very cheap and easy way to win the mission. It's not technically cheating, although you are cheating yourself out of a good challenge ;). To win the mission in less than a minute, simply put two Defensive Matrices on your Wraith hero (Tom Kazansky) and fly him straight to the Protoss camp in the northeast corner of the map; with beefed up defenses, he should just make it. If you can't quite make it, try first flying him and your Science Vessel hero along the southern edge of the map and then up the eastern edge, thus skirting the brown base before you make your run.) ---------------------- Mission 2B [00033] The Rescue ---------------------- This is an interesting mission. You're given a force of Protoss units and must use them to raze a Terran base, build your own base on its ruins, and repeat twice more. It's also notorious for its difficulty (there are plenty of forums full of people asking how to beat it), but it turns out that if you approach it the right way it's one of the easiest in the whole campaign. The key is to know which base to attack first. Red and purple are both impene- trable with the units you start with; don't even try approaching them, you'll just get wiped out. Brown, however, in the south, is not well-defended. So when the mission starts, hotkey your various forces and then send them up the ramp to the left and around the high ground, moving west and south. Have your Observer go ahead so you don't accidentally walk too close to brown's Seige Tanks. When you see them, prepare your units for an attack. If you take advan- tage of your heroes' abilities, you should be able to take down the base. Put your single Archon at the head of your troops, to draw the enemy fire, and hit it with a Defensive Matrix from your Science Vessel right before sending your units in. Target the two Seige Tanks and Bunkers and take them down as quickly as you can; keep an eye on your Archon, because you will probably need to give it another Defensive Matrix early in the battle, after it gets hit by some tank fire. Once that front line is taken out, you can move into the base and take out the few Marines, Firebats, and Goliaths scattered around, and slowly raze their buildings. The priorities are the unit-producing buildings nearby (two Bar- racks) and then the Command Center. Once those are out of the way, you can take your time clearing out the Supply Depots and other junk; soon, though, you should send your remaining units down the ramp to the south to destroy the Statis Cell and release Danimoth, an Arbiter hero. Danimoth will be extremely useful early in the game; it will take you a long time to build up defenses, but Danimoth can keep your units cloaked to give you an edge when red and pur- ple start to attack. Once you have Danimoth, you can send your units up the ramp to the leftand destroy the remaining Factories and units, keeping them cloaked so the leftover Seige Tanks and Goliaths there can't harrass you. As soon as you can, take the two Probes you were given with Danimoth and set up a base on the ruins of the Command Center you destroyed. Right off the bat you will need a ton of Pylons to make up for the large number of units you started with, and you might want to construct a second Nexus closer to your vespene gas, which is quite far away. Once you're up and running, the mission becomes significantly easier; you can just build up your base and army like normal. The majority of attacks you'll face will come from the north (red), and some from the east (purple); most can be fended off pretty easily with a combination of cloaked units and a large array of Photon Cannons. You will also want to build at least a few cannons behind your minerals, as red sometimes tries to send air units back there. If you need space to build more buildings, the lower ground where you destroyed the Statis Cell earlier is spacious and safe. This base does not have a lot of resources, and there are no other resource patches on the map except in the bases you need to destroy. So, you will need to get started relatively quickly on building an army to take out either red or purple and steal their resources. I find it easier to take out purple first, as the red base is on higher ground behind some ramps that bit Archons and Reavers can't navigate well. Purple is easiest to approach from the south (go east from your base, destroy a Barracks and Missile Turret, go down a ramp, and proceed north along the eastern edge of the map); approaching from the north is dangerous because they have multiple bunkers and Seige Tanks, but if you come in from the relatively undefended south you'll force their Seige Tanks to move and you can take them out more easily. Do not empty out your main base entirely while attacking purple, because red will occasionally send a Battlecruiser at your base. Once you destroy the purple base and release Mojo (a Scout) from the Statis Cell, you can build a new Nexus and start har- vesting some much-needed resources (if you like, you could mind-control an SCV during the attack and set up a Terran base here...it's not really necessary, though, since you would have to climb the whole Terran tech tree, and in any case you don't need much more power to take out the red base). You probably don't even need a whole lot of defenses here; red more or less left this base alone, and the few units that did stray in were taken care of by my attack force that was sitting around here. After replacing your fallen units and doing whatever else you like here, you can proceed west from your new base, across a gravelly bridge to the north- west, and take out the red base using whatever tactics you prefer. By this point red should be pretty quiet; once I got through the bunkers across the bridge, red had precious few units in the base to welcome me. The base falls pretty easily, and you can destroy the Statis Cell in the northwest corner of the map. You don't need to destroy everything; once the Statis Cell is razed, the mission will end. ---------------------- Mission 3B [00034] The Final Blow ---------------------- This is a hell of a mission; if you didn't think the Enslavers campaign was insane, this is the mission that will change your mind. First of all, the ene- my attacks begin sooner and are bigger and more frequent; you'll be spending as much time rebuilding your base as anything else. And if that's not enough, you'll once again have to face Torrasques (the souped-up Ultralisks who terro- rized you in the final Terran mission of Brood War). But the Torrasques in this mission will make the Brood War ones look like frail grandma Torrasques. There, you had several minutes in between attacks, and it took the Torrasque a long time to travel from his base to yours; here, it is regenerated almost im- mediately after you kill it, and its base is relatively close, meaning that you will pretty much have a Torrasque at your front door all the time. On the positive side, since you play this mission with an allied Terran/Protoss force, you have one advantage you didn't have when you faced them in Brood War: you have Dark Archons and their mind control ability. With that in mind, your most urgent task in this mission (after beefing up your perimeter of Photon Cannons and deploying a couple Seige Tanks, of course) is to research mind control and get a few Dark Archons building. Un- like the previous missions, this time you actually have the fortune of star- ting with a rather well-developed base, so you should be able to have Dark Ar- chons before long. Don't just build one; the Torrasques come much faster than your Dark Archons regenerate their energy, so you will need at least three to keep up. Researching their energy upgrade will also help. I'd suggest posi- tioning an Observer northeast of your camp, along the path that the Torrasques take, so you can spot them early and have a Dark Archon ready in time; hope- fully you can mind control it before your Seige Tanks hurt it so much (since who wants to get a free Torrasque if it only has a few hit points?). Procee- ding in this way--building up your defenses and creating an attack force while mind controlling the Torrasques that attack you--should allow you to stay re- latively safe, and build up a free army of souped-up Zerg. The base you start in has a bountiful resources, so the need to expand is not as urgent as it was in other missions. In this early part of the game, the most important thing is being alert and multi-tasking well, as you will need to build lots of things and defend lots of entrances at once. The Zerg will be sending forays constan- tly into the northern entrances to your base, and the Terrans will attack along the bottom of the map, sometimes with Seige Tanks; both enemies will oc- casionally fly over the cliffs behind your base, in the northwest, so you'll want defenses there as well. Don't hesitate to use your heroes in defense, es- pecially if your defenses aren't built up well yet; they're all expendable (you don't lose the mission if they die), and their beefed-up stats can signi- ficantly tip the scale of early battles, whereas in the later part of the game it's not such a big deal anymore--thus, you might as well put them to good use while you still can. One final point: make sure you have Observers a ways in front of every entrance to your base. The Terrans will start trying to nuke you not very long into the mission, and if you skimped out and only have one Observer then you don't have much chance of finding the Ghost before the nuke falls. So, it's crucial to have Observers and Seige Tanks at every entrance, especially southern one (which is closest to Schezar's camp). Eventually you will want to destroy the yellow Cerebrate and stop the Tor- rasques from bugging you (although you can wait until you've accumulated a do- zen or so of them for yourself). You can construct whatever units you like; I chose to use Archons (since the base has two vespene geysers and I was burning through minerals rebuilding my defenses, I had a surplus of vespene gas) and Seige Tanks (they do the same job as Reavers, but cheaper). A dozen of each, plus your Dark Archons, should be sufficient to take out the Cerebrate. Send them out the northwest of your camp and up the path; you will have to take out a cluster of Sunken Colonies and a bunch of units before turning west across a bridge to head for the Cerebrate. For now, just focus on getting the Cerebrate and don't worry about finishing off the other bases closer to you; you don't want to have to deal with Torrasques at your front door while your main force is off attacking other bases. Once you cross the bridge, head west across an empty area and you will eventually hit the camp where the Cerebrate is; it will be a long and messy fight before you reach the Cerebrate itself. And be- cause the Torrasque respawns so quickly, you will probably have to fight it several times within this base--each time you deal with it it'll respawn again before you've made much progress. Hence the need to bring your Dark Archons along. Once this base is razed you should set up a new base on its ruins; keep your army and your Dark Archons there for defense, as Schezar will start to hit you pretty hard now that his Cerebrate is dead. I would suggest building a Protoss base here rather than Terran, since a single probe can construct everything rather quickly. (Or, if you're feeling adventurous, you could have mind cont- rolled a Zerg drone during your attack and then build a Zerg base here...you'd have to climb a whole new tech tree, which is a pain, but then you can brag about having used all three races.) Just southeast of this position is an undefended mineral patch; there is no gas there, but an extra mineral source is nice, especially if you're like me and want to build a circle of Photon Cannons three layers thick around all your bases. This mineral patch is so close to your new base that units like Archons can run between the two quickly and thus defend both of them relatively well...that doesn't mean you should skimp on defenses at either base, it just means you can spread your forces thin for a few minutes while you're hurrying to set up. And again, the comment about keeping Observers and Seige Tanks ready applies here as well...the Ter- rans will often come across the bridge and try to nuke you. Your mineral base nearby will often get attacked by air, so keep plenty of air units and cannons around it. With the Cerebrate gone, the tempo of the mission changes; now it's simply a matter of staying alive through bigger and bigger attacks, while building up a few armies to take out Schezar's camp. The Zerg are not a big threat any- more--they will still attack you with little forays, but nothing that's likely to wipe out any of your bases. Between your three bases you probably have all the resources you need, but you are welcome to destroy the Zerg if you wish; they have a small base just outside your original base (you destroyed part of it when you crossed the bridge to get the Cerebrate), another base just beyond there in the northwest corner, and a final base in the lower center of the map, directly west of your original base's southernmost exit. That final base, even if you don't need the resources, can be a nice staging point for your later attacks since it's right at Schezar's front door, and if you still have a dozen or so Torrasques you can take destroy this little base almost single- handedly with them (along with some backup to deal with air units). As for building up an army, I chose to make Carriers and built a few Stargates to do so; you could use anything, though. Schezar's attacks, which get bigger and bigger as the mission wears on, will include two or three Battlecruisers each time; just like the Torrasques, you can mind control these and build up a free army. You can cross into Schezar's base on the eastern side of the map whenever you feel ready. When I played, I had five groups of 10-12 units each: a group of Archons, one of Seige Tanks, one of Torrasques, one of Carriers, and one of Battlecruisers. I brought the Torrasques and Carriers in from the south, the Battlecruisers in from the east, and the Archons and Seige Tanks in from the north. This ended up being overkill: after using up all his resources and units attacking me, there was not actually much resistance within Sche- zar's base, and in fact I found his base less challenging than Mengsk's bases on Korhal in Brood War (specifically, Schezar does not have so many Ghosts around to lockdown your mechanical units). There are spider mines (so bring Observers), and a few units here and there, but nothing serious, so you pro- bably don't need five whole groups. In any case, after the serious beating he and his Zerg were giving me for most of the mission, I had no qualms about mercilessly destroying his base at the end ;) Once you destroy all the Terran buildings (this will take a while, it's quite a large base), you will have won the mission, and the Enslavers campaign. Schezar himself didn't turn up... that's what Enslavers II is for ;) (NOTE: As I mentioned in the Introduction to this walkthrough, the strategy I've just described is not possible if you play the mission as it was origi- nally intended, without Brood War units and thus without Dark Archons. But in my defense, half the fun of this mission is the option of building ba- ses with every race, and having an army of Torrasques. And even with Dark Ar- chons, this mission is still pretty damn hard, so I don't feel too bad about playing it differently than the developers intended. If you are concerned, though, the best strategy is probably to build more Siege Tanks in place of your Dark Archons in the early portion of the mission. While Mind Control is a nice way to deal with Torrasques, it certainly isn't the only way--indeed, even with Mind Control, sometimes the Seige Tanks I had were enough to kill a Torrasque before I could steal it, so that gives me confidence that they can be handled without Dark Archons (you just won't be able to build your own army of them). In the latter half of the mission, when the big problem is Battle- cruisers, building lots of strong anti-air units (Goliaths, Scouts, or even the Archons that you probably will have built a ton of anyway) and Missile Turrets will probably do the trick. Carriers are not great against Battlecrui- sers, so don't rely on them alone.) ---------------------- Mission 3A [00035] Assault on Aiur ---------------------- (NOTE: This mission covers the non-canonical storyline. You can access it by destroying the Cerebrate in mission 2A, instead of rescuing the Protoss--ac- tually, technically you can access it whenever you want through the Play Cus- tom menu.) This mission occurs on the same map as the canonical final mission (3A, The Final Blow). The difference is that you control a Terran-only force, instead of an allied Terran-Protoss force, and you fight Protoss and Terrans instead of Zerg and Terrans. Finally, because there are no Torrasques to deal with, it feels a good deal easier. Your two objectives are 1) to destroy the Protoss Temple, and 2) to destroy all of Schezar's buildings (the red base that takes up the eastern half of the map). Like in The Final Blow, you'll probably do the first objective on the way to the second. Once you destroy the Protoss Temple, the Protoss will no longer be able to produce units and thus will be effectively out of the game. So in the beginning of the mission you should focus on building up defenses and preparing something to take out the Temple with. Before you start de- fense, you'll want to be able to harvest quickly (and don't worry, no one will attack you for a couple minutes anyway). You have two vespene geysers and two mineral fields, like in The Final Blow, but only one set has a Command Center near it. So build a second Command Center near the other minerals and gas, so you can harvest quickly, and churn out a ton of SCVs. Once that's up and run- ning, establish the typical sort of base defenses: for the first half or so of the mission, two Bunkers (with 3 Marines and 1 Firebat each), two or three de- ployed Seige Tanks, and a couple Goliaths at each of the three entrances should be sufficient. You can also build Missile Turrets along the northern cliff of your base (although you don't need a lot; I never faced a large at- tack there) and around the three entrances. To get to the Temple, you need to exit your base to the northeast, go north around the cliff, cross a bridge, and then go more or less directly north. But the bridge is defended by several Photon Cannons that make up the edge of a Protoss base (the rest of the base lies directly north of you, across the hi- gher ground). You can clear a path by taking out those Photon Cannons and the Pylon; you don't need to take out the whole base just yet (and probably won't be able to if you try), you just need to clear a path so you can cross the bridge unharrassed. The most important thing is to remove the detectors. This can be done with Seige Tanks and Goliaths or, better yet, Battlecruisers (if you have them).Once the path is clear, you can pull back to your base. Rather than risking a frontal assault on the Temple, it's much easier to nuke it. It has no detectors around it and can be taken down with two nukes. At- tacking head on, on the other hand, is dangerous: it looks like it's only got a single Arbiter watching it, but that Arbiter is hiding a large group of Dra- goons and a couple Carriers. So, long story short, get a Nuclear Silo or two as soon as you can, and a Ghost to launch your nukes. (Although you have two Command Centers already, I would not suggest putting Silos on both; you will probably need a Comsat Station for early Wraith and Ghost attacks. So, even though it's tedious, it's probably better to build a single Silo and build a new nuke after using your first one.) Two nukes will destroy the temple, along with most or all of its defenders. With that done, the Protoss will be crip- pled, and if they make one last desperate attack on your base they will nearly be out of units. Now you can secure some more bases (you're probably low on resources by now) by mopping up the Protoss. The nearest base to you, north across the high ground, can be taken easily with a combination of Battlecruisers and Seige Tanks dropshipped up onto the cliff. The Protoss will probably lose almost all their remaining units trying to defend against this. There is another base in the northwest corner of the map, past the Temple, which is undefended save for a few Photon Cannons; your Battlecruisers or Seige Tanks can take it easily. Finally, they have a large but equally undefended base in the north-central part of the map (where the Cerebrate would be in The Final Blow). You can set up mini-bases here (you don't really need anything but Command Centers and de- fenses) and gradually move your defenses from your original base to these more outlying ones. When you set up a base directly north of your original one, you can move most of your northern defenses to the bridge because that's where at- tacks will come from (the enemy will have to walk past there to get to your main base anyway); when you set up another base in the north-center, over the big Protoss base, you can move those defenses to this newest base, since your other bases will be left alone. You'll need to keep defenses in the southern and middle entrances to your main base, however, as they will get attacked for the entire game. For my defenses once all the bases were set up, I put as many Seige Tanks and Goliaths as I could in the north-central base, along with a few Missile Tur- rets and the Science Vessel hero (Schezar tries to use nukes a couple times); in my original base I kept my usual setup of three or four Seige Tanks and two Bunkers at each of the central and southern entrances. I let my Battlecruisers roam around the map, because they were quite helpful in destroying Seige Tanks before they could reach my bases...since Battlecruisers are so slow, I kept them more or less in the middle of the map so they could get to any base more quickly. If you can eliminate the Brown base in the south-central part of the map (directly east of your original base), your defensive job will get much easier. Once you have sufficient forces, the brown base can go down pretty ea- sily to Battlecruisers, Seige Tanks, and a couple judiciously placed nukes. With bases and defenses set up, the mission becomes simply one of attrition. Schezar's forces will hit you with a couple hard attacks, particularly in your north-central base (Seige Tanks, Battlecruisers that like to use Yamato Cannon on your Battlecruisers, and Ghosts that like to use Lockdown on anything they see), but once you survive a couple of these he'll pretty much start idling. While you're defending, you can also build up your attack force. I was able to beat the mission with three groups: Battlecruisers, Seige Tanks, and Goliaths, with each group as close to 12 as possible. (If you hit the psi limit, you can empty out some of your unused Bunkers in the northern part of your original base and kill those Marines or send them on a kamikaze mission.) With those troops ready, you can go and enter Schezar's base through the opening in its southwest wall--it's a good idea to send your Battlecruisers in first to take out the Seige Tanks stationed all along the walls. Once you're at the front door of Schezar's base, the mission is pretty much over. Your forces will overwhelm him, and most of his troops will die defending that front door--af- ter the initial battle, his base will be nearly empty. When I did this he didn't have any Spider Mines around the perimiter of his base like he did in The Final Blow, although he seemed to have more Ghosts. Anyway, once into his base, you just need to go around and destroy all the buildings, which takes a while. If you're having a hard time finding them all, you may have missed a pair of Command Centers secreted away in the northeast part of the base, or a Barracks surrounded by Missile Turrets south of the base and a bit outside the main wall. Once all the red buildings are destroyed, victory is yours. ======================================== IV. Enslavers II: Dark Vengeance [00040] ======================================== Enslavers II takes place after the end of the Protoss campaign in Brood War. You take the role of a Protoss executor and once again fight Alan Schezar, as well as a Dark Templar fanatic named Ulrezaj and the Zerg broods that these two characters unleash. During the course of the campaign you might also have the opportunity to play as Terrans, depending on choices you make. ---------------------- Mission 1 [00041] The Rescue ---------------------- Just like in the beginning of the last campaign, you start out with some troops but no base. You'll have to take out a small Zerg base in order to set up your own (don't worry, this is nowhere near as tough this time as it was in the last The Rescue mission). Right at the beginning of the mission you'll be attacked by a small group of Zerglings, which your Archons and Zealots will take out without you even needing to lift a finger. The base you need to destroy is on high ground to the northwest (watch out, there are burrowed Hydralisks just below the ramps; send your Observer first). The base is a large scattering of Sunken Colonies and burrowed units, for the most part. If you like you can proceed carefully, using your Observer and your High Tem- plars' psionic storm ability to take out the enemies and minimize your casual- ties; you have a large enough force, however, that you can pretty much just charge in blindly and take out the whole base without losing more than a coup- le units. Get a base started quickly; you have a lot of starting minerals so you can really go crazy on the pylons. To the west, down a ramp and across two bridges, is a wholly undefended mineral field and geyser, so if you're feeling bold you can start a base there at the same time as you're building here (just make sure to send defense as well...since there won't be air harrassment for a while, your Zealots should be plenty). With two bases harvesting resources, you should be able to build up ample defenses quickly. Your main base will need Photon Cannons along the northern cliff and guarding the ramp there (if you put them right on the edge of a cliff, they can often shoot down on enemy units in the Zerg base at the bottom of the cliff), and some in the southern portion of your base. Your secondary base will probably be attacked much less often, and I was able to get by with only a couple cannons defending the bridge. The two Zerg camps you need to destroy are large and defended by tons of units, so you'll need to build a big army to take them out. To speed up re- source gathering, you should take over a third resource patch that is across the bridge from your secondary base and to the east. It is poorly defended (two each of Sunken and Spore Colonies, and some burrowed Hydralisks and Zerg- lings), so you can take it with just 10 or so Dragoons (or whatever else you've been building). Set up a base there with ample defenses, and then begin buying upgrades and amassing an army (I chose to build Archons, Carriers, Rea- vers, and Dragoons). By this point the Zerg will be starting to attack you with more substantial forces, but as long as you've built a ton of Photon Cannons around your bases (particularly in the northern portion of your main base) you should be able to weather whatever they throw at you. They'll make at least one big attack with Ultralisks and air support, which will be easier to hold off if you can sur- round the Ultralisks with Zealots. The brown camp has Guardians and Devourers, but they never attacked my bases; I assume they only attack you much later in the mission, so if you're quick you may never need to worry about them. You can attack the bases in either order. The brown camp in the east seems to have more heavy units--it's teeming with Ultralisks, Guardians, and Devourers. The orange camp in the West has Lurkers, Scourges, and massive swarms of Hydralisks. It makes no real difference what order you do them in. The first time I played this mission, I was able to take the brown camp early in the mission with just 12 Dragoons and 12 Reavers (I lost most of that army, but not before taking out nearly the entire base); the second time I tried to do the same with Dragoons and Archons and got wiped out. I chose to build my Starports in the northern half of my main base (above the minerals), so the edge of the orange base was already softened up (when my Carriers got churned out they got into skirmishes near the cliffs), making it pretty easy taking. However you do it, once you destroy all the buildings in both bases you will be treated to a scene and then the mission will end. ---------------------- Mission 2 [00042] Hung Jury ---------------------- This mission is a significant jump in difficulty from the last one, and in fact is about as hard as the final mission in Enslavers I. You will begin with a huge base that falls immediately under an attack that you can't hope to re- pel. The only part of your base that will survive the attack is the island in the far southeast corner, so quickly pull all your troops back to that area and build several Photon Cannons to defend the bridge leading into it; if you build some along the northern coast as well, they can shoot units that are coming around to the bridge (thus getting in several extra shots). While the Terran attack force is large, it consists mostly of small units (Marines and Firebats), so it will take a long time to destroy the abandoned buildings, giving you plenty of time to build defenses. Once you've repelled the attackers, you'll need to secure a second base. The Terrans leave you pretty much alone for the early part of the mission, but soon they'll start hitting very hard, and with only one source of resources you won't be able to hold it off. The resources you need are directly north of your base, although you need to squirm through some zig-zaggy valleys to get there. There's only a small white base there, but it seems to put up a surpri- singly tough resistance--white has a larger base just next to it, so reinfor- cements will come. You'll need a decent group of Dragoons and Reavers, plus your Zealots, to take it. Once you do, a brown Seige Tank on the cliff to the north may harrass you, so the earlier you can get some air units to take care of it (or shuttle some Zealots up the cliff), the better. Hunker down in this base and go absolutely wild with defenses; once I built this base the enemy almost completely forgot about my main base, and concentrated most of their attacks here. Expect to be losing and rebuilding Photon Cannons pretty fre- quently for the next little while. Because resources are so scarce, in this mission you just need to accept being insecure--attacking a new base before your original base has sufficient defenses, and before your attack force is large enough to take the new base without significant losses--and rebuilding quickly. In the early part of this mission, Corsairs are quite useful for dea- ling with Seige Tanks. Unlike other missions you've done in this campaign, this time the Terrans have Seige Mode researched from the very beginning of the game, so deployed Seige Tanks will be a major threat for the entire mis- sion. With Corsairs, however, you can zip to whatever base is under attack, drop some Disruption Webs on the deployed tanks, and they will often just sit there while your Dragoons and Reavers pummel them (or, if they do try to leave the web, they will come within range of your Photon Cannons). Corsairs are al- so useful against the Battlecruisers that the Terrans will send often; a lone Corsair is very weak, but a group of 10-12 can take down a Battlecruiser sur- prisingly quickly. Since Corsairs are so cheap (same price as Wraiths) and build so quickly, they're perfect for the hectic early portion of this mis- sion. You never got a chance to use Corsairs against Terrans in the Brood War campaigns, but in this mission they really get their chance to shine. Since you can't hold out against this kind of pummeling forever, you will need to destroy some of the enemy bases. There are two main forces: the white Ter- rans are located along the northern portion of the map (the base you just es- tablished is on what was originally their territory), and the more numerous red Terrans dominate the western half of the map--they have two resource- gathering bases, one in each corner, and another large base in between them in the west-central area. Since the white base is the closest (just a hop, skip skip, and jump northwest of your new base), it makes sense to take them out first. You can proceed through the canyon to the front of their base and then, once you've broken through, double back to the northeast corner to take out more of the base (including some buildings up on the cliff). And watch out for a Battlecruiser hiding above the cliff on the western end of this base; if you accidentally let some of your units stray over there without the main force coming, you will lose them. While you're destroying this base, don't empty your your old bases; red is likely to hit the southern portion of your second base while your forces are busy in the white base, so you should keep some troops at home for defense. Just like with the last base you fought, there will be a very hectic period where your units are spread too thin to defend any of your bases sufficiently, and you're just going to have to accept some ugliness for a few minutes. Once you've thrown down a Nexus and some Photon Cannons, things will quiet down a little, although red will never stop making forays at this base. Also note that white still has buildings further to the east, but don't worry about them just yet; those buildings are dangerously close to the red base, and now that you've destroyed white's Command Center and gatherers they're no longer a threat anyway. Establish a new base here, and build up substantial defenses-- again, the enemy is going to attack this new location a lot. Although white will be a non-issue by now, red will step up their attacks. They'll send large groups of Battlecruisers and Seige Tanks with the usual ground and air support, so you'll need large and mobile forces (not just Pho- ton Cannons) to hold them off. Unfortunately, you don't have access to Dark Archons in this mission (or indeed anywhere in this campaign), so you can't use the cheap tricks you used in the finale of Enslavers I; you're just going to need to weather bigger and bigger attacks the old-fasioned way. Keep your Corsairs at whatever base is getting hit the most, and use them to deal with Seige Tanks. I found Carriers particularly useful later in this mission, both for defense and offense. Minerals are scarce, though, so if you've built a lot of other units then you may only get 4 or 5 Carriers churned out before you run out of minerals at your three existing bases. The last thing to remember in your defense is that red has nuclear silos, so make sure to keep an Obser- ver handy. (Red only ever tried to hit my new, northernmost base, but if you are nervous and have enough psi you could put an Observer at each base.) Assuming you're surviving the pummelling, once you've built up a large enough attack force you can try to approach the red base in the northeast corner (the closest to your newest base). When doing this, it is necessary to send your Carriers ahead of the main force; your ground units have to walk through nar- row canyons, and the cliffs above are littered with Seige Tanks that will har- rass you if you try to walk past. So send your Carriers ahead to take out the tanks (most of the tanks are also defended by a Missile Turret or two, but if you have a large group of Carriers these will not be a problem). Don't leave your ground army too far behind, though, because sometimes you might bump into one of Red's large attack forces on the way to your base, and you don't want your Carriers to face them alone. So keep your ground forces just a little bit behind the Carriers. Also be sure to bring Observers, because there are bound to be Wraiths flying around here, and the moment you engage them they'll cloak. The red base in the northeast will put up a nasty fight. There's no particular trick to taking them out, just old-fashioned fighting. I found Reavers and Ar- chons useful here. Prioritize Seige Tanks and Science Vessels and take them out (or Disruption Web the Seige Tanks); if a Science Vessel gets an EMP out, you could see 12 Archons turn into nothing very quickly. Once you've taken this base out, you may want to send in some Probes and build a Nexus to gather its rather ample resources. I wouldn't waste too much extra money actually building defenses here, because once you've won this battle red will be back on its heels, and the mission is almost over anyway. Your surviving attack force should be enough to defend the base for the short time it takes to recu- perate and replenish your ranks. Once you're ready, proceed south to take out the rest of the large red base (again, remember to clear the path with Carri- ers first, unless you want a nasty surprise). Clearing them out will take some time, but it should be easier than the last two bases you fought; the defen- sive troops will be scattered and disorganized, and it should be obvious that red is on its last legs. Once you've finished off red, if the mission hasn't ended yet, fly around and make sure you haven't missed any brown Missile Tur- rets anywhere on the map; there are also some white Supply Depots and a Star- port on high ground in the north central portion of the map (west of your third base) that you might have missed on the way to red. Once you've destroy- ed all the Terran buildings on the map, victory is yours. ---------------------- Mission 3 [00043] Nemesis ---------------------- This mission will be a doozy. You're given the option of retrieving the Kay- darin Crystal in the northeast corner of the map, or destroying Schezar's com- mand centers in the northwest. To follow the canonical storyline, you have to choose the crystal. You start in the center of the map with few defenses. Your first focus should be on increasing your defenses (early on, you'll probably need at least five Photon Cannons at the north and south entrances, and ground forces) and buil- ding up an army as quickly as possible to secure more resource areas--with on- ly one base, you will not be able to harvest fast enough to prevent being overrun. I built mostly Dragoons and Reavers in this early part of the mission --there are not many air forces on the map yet, so you can focus on ground control. The orange base where the crystal is is very heavily defended, so you cannot hope for a quick victory; the only way to win this mission is to slowly take over the map and build up a large force. There are several white Terran/Zerg bases which pose the most immediate threat to your survival, and which are also the ones you will need to take to secure resources. There are small white bases at both southern corners of the map, and larger bases in between them (one directly north of you, one directly south). The corner bases are not well-defended and should be your first tar- gets for expansion. The one in the southeast has nothing but a couple Sunken Colonies and can be taken with just a couple Reavers and Dragoons; once you have set up a base there, you can build up an army to take the one in the southwest corner, which will put up a bit more of a fight. While you are taking these bases, you will also need to constantly rebuild the defenses at your main base in particular, and perhaps the satellite bases as well. Your main base will be under constant attack from all sides: Terran ground forces will frequently assault your photon cannons at the north and south entrances, and Seige Tanks will shoot at you from the cliffs above. Zerg will also drop units to the west of your base and try to come in behind your minerals, so you will need cannons or units back against the Western cliff as well; before long, you will also start facing heavy air attacks from Wraiths and Mutalisks (later in the game they will be replaced by Battlecruisers and Guardians). The sooner you can build up an air fleet, the better you will be able to defend against these threats. At this point in the game I was facing the most attacks at my main base, was getting hit less in the southeast (but still hit hard enough that I had to rebuild my cannons there regularly), and hit very infrequently in the southwest--but that doesn't mean you can leave the southwest alone, as there will still be some attacks there. Now you can work on slowly building up an attack force to take the crystal. The orange base defending the crystal is on an island, so you will need a large air fleet to have any hope of penetrating it; I used carriers for this. (You should have at least two Starports and try to keep them churning out carriers constantly, as enemy attacks will inevitably destroy some of your carriers while you're still building the fleet). If you have lots of extra vespene gas and few minerals (from building bases and photon cannons), now is a perfect time to build as many Archons as possible. Finally, keeping the fin- al assault in mind, you should build three or four Arbiters with the Recall ability and energy upgrade researched--that will be much more effective than shuttles when you need to get your ground units across to the island. By now you may be running low on resources, and the constant attacks may be keeping you from building an offensive force. So taking out the larger white bases north and south of your original base should help; the northern one, in particular, is resource-laden and less well-defended than the southern one. Once you have taken them, you can set up more bases and churn out as many units as possible (you should be hitting the psi limit by now; I freed up some psi by taking the probes from my bases that were out of minerals and sending them into enemy camps). Be forewarned, though, that with white mostly out of the way and the center of the board yours, orange (Zerg) and red (Schezar) will start attacking like crazy; at this point in the game a large fleet of Guardians and Devourers wiped out my southern and middle bases (forcing me to re-climb the tech tree in my new bases) and fleets of Battlecruisers, Seige Tanks, and Goliaths began to pummel the eastern side of my northern base. My other bases were left alone in this part of the game and all attacks focused on the north, so I gathered my troops there. If any of your satellite bases, especially ones with no tech tree buildings and few or no resources left, get hit with a major attack, feel free to let them fall--you don't need those bases anymore, and trying to protect them is just a resource drain. You will save resources by consolidating to one or two bases and not spreading your units so thin. Assuming you survive the pummelling, make sure you have 10-12 Carriers, as many Archons and Reavers as possible, and at least three Arbiters. Then send the Carriers directly west from your northern base, moving along the very top of the map until you see the orange Spore Colonies. Do not try to penetrate orange anywhere else--most of their base is ringed by another white base and you would have to fight through twice as many defenses if you came from another direction; if you attack the hole in the northwest part of their base, you should just barely be able to puncture their defenses. Once your carriers have taken out the Spore Colonies and cleared out some space on the ground, send in your Arbiters and then recall in as many Archons and Reavers as pos- sible. The Archons, Reavers, and Carriers can do their thing, taking out as many units and defensive structures as they can (don't worry about destroying the harvesters and hatchery) while the Arbiters pull back out of harm's way. Your attack force will probably be overrun, so don't expect them to be able to take out the whole base; just clear as much of a path as possible to the cry- stal. Once the path is more or less clear, tell your probes to stop harvesting and gather them in a bunch, then send your Arbiters to the crystal--hopefully you still have some Carriers or Archons alive to distract the enemy and draw their fire. Once your Arbiters are over the crystal, Recall in as many probes as possible. Ignore the Sunken Colonies there; as long as at least one probe survives them and touches the crystal, you will win the mission. [If you want to destroy Schezar's Command Centers, you have a tougher battle ahead. By definition, it's a harder objective--not only do you have to get some units to a location, but you have to keep them alive there long enough to take down two heavily defended buildings--plus Schezar's base is just downright stronger than the Zerg base. You need to act quickly; if you wait too long and give him time to build up, completing the mission objective will be honest-to- goodness, he will simply build too many units for you to defeat with the resour- ces and psi available to you in this mission. So once you have your two mini- expansions set up in the corners, if you have enough units you may want to fore- go attacking one or both of the large white bases, and just go straight at Sche- zar when you have a chance. Whenever you do decide to attack Schezar, your Ar- biters will be useful just as they would be if you fight the Zerg: you can use them to go through the weak point of his base and warp your units in on top of his Command Centers. The two ground entrances to Schezar's base--in the south- east and the northwest--are very heavily guarded and tough to break. The wall connecting them, though, is pretty weak, with only a couple turrets and units defending it. If you have several Arbiters, you should be able to attack that wall with your air units (aim for the spot right in the middle, near a Science Facility--that's weak and close to the Command Centers), and fly your Arbiters in during the confusion and recall in two dozen or so troops. (Reavers are the best for this; they deal the most damage, can take the most beatings, don't need to fear Science Vessels, and their long range means they don't need to move from one Command Center to the other. If you don't have enough Reavers, Archons and Dark Templar are ok as well.) I needed three Arbiters to make this work: one to use Stasis Field to disable the defenders for long enough for my other Arbiters to get in, and two to bring in enough units to take out the Command Centers. Be- fore I did this maneuver I attacked that wall once with Carriers to soften it up (basically just removing the Missile Turrets.) Don't try doing much more than that, because after you make a big attack anywhere on this base Schezar will swarm that area with troops after repelling your attack. In essence, this means that you can't attack the same place twice. Anyway, here should only be those two Command Centers, so if you can perform this maneuver successfully and get in enough units to take them both down then you'll win the mission, though not in a very heroic fashion.] ---------------------- Mission 4A [00044] Desperate Measures ---------------------- This is an interesting and fun mission. You have one hour to take your Dark Archon to five Kaydarin crystals, mind-controlling Zerg along the way to reinforce the troops you start with. The time limit should not be a major pro- blem, as the mission can be completed in 40-50 minutes without much trouble; it just means you can't dally along waiting for your shields and energy to re- generate all the time. You don't start with much, but it's just enough to get you through the mis- sion. The first crystal to go for is north of your position, on higher ground. You will need to proceed slowly, taking out Sunken Colonies and units one at a time to get up the ramp and to the crystal. Use your Scouts to take out isola- ted Sunken Colonies (such as the one up the cliff just north of your starting position); for Sunken Colonies backed up by Spore Colonies or Hydralisks, use your High Templar to create some hallucinations of your Dragoons, then attack the colony with Dragoons behind the hallucinations. Slowly proceed west this way, then north when the path forks, and you will reach the ramp to higher ground (by now you should have gone past two or three Sunken Colonies). At the top of the ramp is one Sunken Colony, two Spore Colonies, and several Hydra- lisks; if you lure the Hydralisks out you can kill them with a psionic storm from your High Templar, and there should be just enough room for the Scouts to take out the Sunken Colony without getting hit by the Spore Colonies. Once that is clear, you can go up the ramp and proceed west towards the crystal. By this point you are in the middle of a Zerg base, so move carefully; psionic storm may help to deal with a small group of Zerglings and Hydralisks. There is one more Sunken Colony to deal with, which you can probably take care of just with your two Dragoons (just make sure to pull one back when its shields get low). After that, send your Dark Archon to the crystal; the moment you touch it, the whole base will become inactive and enemies will stop attacking you, although they will still be sitting around if you want to mind control any (a Queen may come in handy for the next crystal, which is defended by se- veral Ultralisks). You can probably be done with this crystal in 5-7 minutes. Now move north towards the base that has the next crystal. Be careful about the yellow Spore Colonies on the cliffs to the east; if you want you can take them out from below with Dragoons. You will go down a ramp and through a nar- row strip of land leading north; here there is a burrowed Lurker (send your Observer ahead of your other units), which you absolutely should mind control; Lurkers are the key to winning this mission. After you have it, proceed north- east along the bottom of the cliff (again, you can take out the Spore Colonies above you with your Dragoons and Lurker, then they won't bother your Scouts) until you reach a ramp going up to higher ground. At the top of this ramp is another Lurker, which you should mind control, and some other units that you can kill easily; just above them are a single Sunken Colony and an Ultralisk; there are some Spore Colonies and Overlords around here, so you can't use your Lurkers or Dark Templar just yet. Maneuver carefully around the Sunken Colony, keeping out of its range, to take out some of the Spore Colonies surrounding it, and kill some of the Overlords if you can; once you have the detectors out of the way, you can take out the Sunken Colony with your Lurkers. As for the Ultralisk, youcan mind control it if you have enough energy, or kill it with your Queen's Spawn Broodlings ability, or just kill it old-school; either way is fine. (There are more Ultralisks in this base later, so there's no need to wait around for energy to mind control this one in particular; and besides, I personally didn't find Ultralisks that useful in this mission, although they certainly don't hurt.) Keep going through the base this same way--taking out detectors while avoiding Sunken Colonies, then sending your Lurkers in to fi- nish the job. Just watch out for a group of Hydralisks and an Ultralisks north of where you met the first Ultralisk. Once you're through them, go north through a narrow strip of higher ground, and you will be just below the crys- tal. This crystal is guarded by two Ultralisks and several Hydralisks. Mind control the Ultralisk or hit it with Spawn Broodlings; during the confusion caused by this, you should be able to send your Dark Archon in unharmed. Once he touches the crystal, the enemies will become inactive. By now, 10-15 mi- nutes have probably elapsed. Now head all the way back south from where you came; near the lower center of the map there is a ramp leading down to the next area. Gather your troops that don't have air attacks at the bottom of the ramp, and move forward with your Scouts and Dragoons. Soon you'll encounter a large number of Mutalisks hover- ing around; fortunately, they are quite spread out, so you can pick them off one by one and lead them away from the main group to kill them. As long as you don't pull out more than three at a time, your two Scouts and two Dragoons will be able to take care of them handily. Don't bother trying to psi-storm them; they are so spread out you'll only hit one or two, and psi-storm will soon be useful somewhere else anyway. Continue cutting a path through the Mu- talisks towards the south; when you reach the bottom of the map, proceed west (killing Mutalisks on the way) until you see Spore Colonies. From there, bring in your Lurkers to take them out, and use them or psionic storm to take out two groups of burrowed Hydralisks just behind them. With them out of the way, you can send your Dark Archon in unhindered. Don't bother mind controlling anything down here, as these small units are not worth the energy; just touch the crystal. You should be 20-25 minutes into the mission now. The last two crystals are not on the same landmass as this, and there is no bridge. Fortunately, directly north of the crystal you just destroyed there are two Protoss Shuttles. Mind control them and shuttle your units north (there is a single Spore Colony in the way, so you may want to destroy it from below with your Dragoons and Lurkers) and drop them on the low ground. Try to do this quickly and be wary of this position, because there are some large ma- rauding groups of purple Zerglings and Hydralisks that may come across you at random; if they do, a psionic storm should take care of them. The next base to take out is the purple one north of you. (Judging by what's in it, I bet the mission was designed such that you're "supposed" to do this base last, for plot reasons, but whatever; I find it easier than the white base, and it has some units that will come in handy at the white base.) You will need to shuttle units to higher ground again; use your Dragoons and Lur- kers to destroy the Spore Colonies on the cliff and then shuttle your units up there. There are a bunch of Sunken Colonies here, all of which you can destroy the same way you did in earlier bases (take out the Spore Colonies and Over- lords, then use your Lurkers on the Sunken Colonies). Ultimately you want to head northeast, around a curling stretch of cliff, and down the ramp into their base. This spot has a lot of things that can kill you, including the usual Spore and Sunken Colonies, Devourers, and Dark Templar (bring your Observer!). Proceed slowly, taking things out one at a time from far away. Make a special effort to destroy the Spore Colonies and Hydralisks around the Devourers and then mind control the Devourers; they will come in handy at the final base. (You want to isolate them before mind controlling them, though, so they don't get immediately killed.) For the Dark Templar (two hanging around the first Sunken Colony, and two hanging around a Spore Colony just below the crystal), a single psionic storm will put their health down in the red and then you can finish them off with Dragoons or Lurkers. This base is slow going and will take more time than the last ones, but the overall strategy does not differ much from that of the second base you went through. Once you touch the crystal the enemies go inactive, and hopefully you will have stolen two or three Devourers. You should be 30-40 minutes into the mission by now. The final base, white, is in the center of the map and guarded by a massive fleet of Guardians and Scourges, as well as a bunch of Sunken Colonies. It's up on high ground, and the ramp leading to it is choked by Sunken Colonies; between them and the Guardians, a ground attack is unadvisable. The Scourges are less of a problem; you can take them out with your Scouts and Devourers. You won't survive--eventually the Scourges will destroy all your air units-- but the main thing is just getting rid of them. Your High Templar might also be able to take out a group or two of Scourges with a psionic storm if you put him just below the cliff; be very careful around here, though, because not on- ly can the Sunken Colonies above hit him, but also there are a large hordes of Hydralisks and Zerglings burrowed all around the area. You don't need to de- stroy all the Scourges above the plateau; you only need to destroy about half of them, enough to open up a clear air path to the crystal. Once that is done (and your Scouts and Devourers probably dead), simply load your Dark Archon into a shuttle, which the Guardians and Sunken Colonies cannot touch, and drop him directly on the Crystal. The mission ends; if you did things right, all this should only take 40-50 minutes. ---------------------- Mission 5A [00045] Showdown ---------------------- You are in for one long, hellish mission now. Finally you have a chance to kill Alan Schezar, but first you will need to deal with an EMP generator, in the middle of a strong Protoss base, that removes your units' shields every 10 minutes. The EMP generator is not as huge of a pain as it may sound (10 mi- nutes is a long time in StarCraft), but it can still cause you to get des- troyed quite suddenly if you don't pay attention to it. As long as it's up, you'll want to keep your eye on the clock, and when it's close to EMP shock time you'll need to make sure your defenses are ready, and certainly make sure you're not going on attack when a shock happens (not only will your attack force be ripped to shreds, but your bases will become easy prey as well). The enemies enjoy gathering troops just outside your base and waiting for an EMP shock to attack while you're weak, so if you see them doing that you may want to send a foray a minute or so before the shock to take the attackers out, or lure them to attack early. Because of the EMP, I wouldn't waste resources in- vesting in shield upgrades too early in the mission (later on, when you have a couple thousand resources sitting around not being used, then you can do those upgrades), and I wouldn't rely too heavily on Archons until the EMP generator is taken care of. You begin the mission in the corner of an enormous map, with a relatively well-developed base. You don't have many resources, though, and you will cer- tainly need a ton for this mission (over the course of the mission, don't be surprised if you have to build up 12 Carriers/Reavers/Archons/whatever more than once, as you will be suffering quite heavy losses). Therefore, you will need to quickly focus on expanding, and making powerful troops that will be able to defend your expansions while you're getting set up. There are three expansions that are accessible to you early in the mission and are poorly de- fended, shown with numbers on the map below (other important locations are also marked, for later reference): ------------------------------------ | EMP | | Nexus-P | | | |Nexus-W | | Nexus-W Schezar| | 1 2 | | | | | | Start 3 | ------------------------------------ Expansion 1 is defended by a Pylon with a couple Photon Cannons around it, and can be taken with a single Reaver (although I would send others along to back it up in case it gets attacked). This expansion has no gas, but a ton of mi- nerals--enough to get you through the EMP portion of the mission pretty com- fortably. Expansion 2 is totally undefended, and has both minerals and gas. It's in an awkward place, though, hard to defend with ground units and easy to attack from several directions, so holding onto it will be difficult. (You will need to hold onto it anyway, though.) Expect heavy attacks here from both the Terrans and the Protoss; if you lose a base entirely, it's likely to be this one. Expansion 3 is defended by a Missile Turret and a few weak units, so it also is easy taking. Personally, I didn't worry about it until I had a nice force of Carriers, since by then it could be taken without batting an eye, whereas you try to take it with ground units at the beginning of the mission it requires at least a bit of work. Anyway, you will need to set up bases at all three of these expansions and de- fend them well. Don't neglect your main base, either; you'd think it would be cushioned by these other bases, but the enemy will still often sneak through and hit your main base hard. Also, don't rely on Photon Cannons alone; both enemies love Seige Tanks and Reavers, and Photon Cannons can disappear in the blink of an eye if you get attacked by them and have nothing to counter it. For this mission I once again fond Corsairs invaluable (the usefulness of their Disruption Web against slow, heavy units are discussed a bit more in the walkthrough for Mission 2, "Hung Jury"). Since you have so many bases, it's not possible to keep a full army stationed at each one, and Corsairs are fast enough that they can zip from one base to another quickly; the Terrans' main powerhouse on this map is Seige Tanks, and the Corsairs' Disruption Web abili- ty is the perfect counter to it. In fact, I will be so bold as to say that Corsairs are _the_ key to winning this mission. It also helps to put Observers in front of each base to get a bit of a prior warning whenever an attack is coming. You will spend a good long time just defending yourself, struggling to stay alive while building up an attack force. The EMP device has a number of Dark Templar and Reavers defending it, and the path to get there weaves around se- veral other Protoss bases, so I would not recommend attacking it with ground units (I tried, it looked something like a large number of flies splatting against a windshield). Therefore, you should probably build Carriers and Cor- sairs for the attack; I was able to take the EMP device with about 8 Carriers and 10 Corsairs. (That doesn't sound like much, but considering how hard de- fense is in this mission it will take a long time to build up a force that large and enough defenses to leave behind.) Once you have that, proceed di- rectly north from Expansion 1. (Again, remember not to attack when an EMP blast is imminent.) There is a white Protoss base on higher ground here; the base is large, but its defenses are measly, it has only two or three Photon Cannons. Drop a Disruption Web on the cannons and take out the Pylon (thus shutting them down) and the few Dragoons that bother you; once that is clear, fly north straight over the base. Don't waste your time taking it out right now, you'll have a chance for that later. There is a nice triangle of safe space above this base and below the EMP device. This is also the safest route to assault the device. The device is de- fended by a number of Photon Cannons, Dragoons, and Corsairs, as well as some Archons, but the units you really need to worry about are the one Arbiter and two Dark Archons; for me, the most successful way to deal with them was to use my Corsairs as kamikazes. After laying Disruption Webs on the Photon Cannons closest to the edge, I sent the Corsairs into the base; the Dark Archons mind- controlled two (better the cheap Corsairs than the expensive Carriers!) and the rest of my Corsairs destroyed them. The Arbiter then wasted one of its Stasis Fields on the Corsairs. (If you're lucky, you might even be able to kill it before it gets a Stasis Field off; if not, you've at least softened it up for the Carriers.) After this, I sent the carriers in, keeping them as far northwest as possible, taking out Dragoons, Pylons, and Corsairs as I went. At the EMP device, rather than taking the time to destroy all 6 Photon Cannons, you can just take out the 2 Pylons and shut the cannons down. Once the attack- ing units are out of the way, the EMP device will fall quickly. Purple has a lot of High Templar that can really ruin your day, but hopefully you already killed a lot of them when they tried to attack your base earlier. With the EMP device gone, your new priority is to get your Carriers and Cor- sairs out of there--the area has no resources so it's useless to you, and it will soon be swarmed by Dragoons. Some Wraiths may come as well, and personal- ly I had not brought an Observer, so even one or two of those would be deadly. Unfortunately, by now the white base that you flew over is probably full of Dragoons (and I mean full--like, so full they can barely move around). This is where the Corsairs, once again, are a godsend: lay down a line of Disruption Webs across the edge of the base, and the Dragoons will just sit under them while your Carriers take them out. Once you've cleared out this base you can send in some Probes (several of your other bases have probably been harvested dry by now) and set up a Nexus and some photon cannons; this base might not have many minerals anymore, but it has a ton of gas. (10,000 to be exact, at least when I played it.) And now that the EMP device is gone, Archons are a bit safer again, although you still need to watch out for Science Vessels. The Protoss are not totally finished off when you take out the EMP device. They are close, though; while they have several bases, both white and purple only have one more base each with Nexuses, so if you can take out the Probes and Nexuses you will cripple them. The white base in the center of the map is pretty easy taking (and has enough resources to last you through the remainder of the mission), just watch out for High Templar while you're attacking. Once you've destroyed the white base here, you can set up a base of your own. You might as well go crazy with Photon cannons (at this point I had something like 3000 minerals and 5000 gas, and had already hit the psi limit and gotten most of my upgrades, so why not?). Once you're ready, the purple Nexuses are more or less directly north of here. They will probably put up a much nastier fight than white did; purple still has Arbiters, Dark Archons, and absolutely ridi- culous numbers of Dragoons and Dark Templar (I wonder if the CPU players in this mission get to ignore the psi limit?). Attacking with just your Carriers and Corsairs may not be enough; when I did it, I sent over 12 Archons (which I had started building around when the EMP device fell) right around the same time I started the air attack. You'll want your Archons (or whatever you send) to get there _before_ the purple Dragoons start swarming the base, otherwise you'll be blocked off. Take out the Pylons or Photon Cannons that threaten you, and if the Dragoons come try to block them off at the choke point and use a combination of Disruption Webs and Carriers to take them out. If you got Ar- chons into the base on time, you can divide the work--have your Carriers take care of the enemy units that are coming, while your Archons wipe out the Probes and both Nexuses. Once those are taken care of (make sure you do not leave a single Probe!) feel free to retreat if you're getting overwhelmed, which you probably are; the point right now was to cut off their production, not to wipe them out. Don't feel bad if your Archons get stranded and killed in the base; you can build more later, by now you should have almost limitless resources. With the EMP device and the Protoss Nexuses out of the way, the hard part of the mission is over. You can leisurely work on rebuilding your army, upgrading whatever you still have, and wiping the remaining Protoss stragglers off the map. (White, whose last base is just west of the purple Nexuses you destroyed, will go out without a peep; purple will still have a lot of units throughout their large base which covers more or less the entire northern edge of the map, but by now you should be able to overwhelm them with sheer numbers.) Schezar's Terrans will still try to bother you, but as long as you have a cou- ple Reavers or some Carriers near each base (to deal with Seige Tanks) you shouldn't have a problem--he certainly doesn't seem as dangerous now as he did during the early part of the mission where you're struggling just to stay alive. Once the Protoss are destroyed (you don't really have to destroy them entirely, or even at all--technically you could win the mission without kil- ling anything other than the EMP device and Schezar--but it feels good to de- stroy every last one of them) you can focus on Schezar. Again, you don't need to destroy the entire red base, you just need to destroy Schezar (a yellow Go- liath). You first find him in the small base at the east-central portion of the map, up on high ground (on the way, you can take out a small island with three Starports if you want to stem the flow of air units). When you attack that base, huge swarms of Marines, Goliaths, and Ghosts will descend upon it, and Schezar himself will get into a dropship and fly away during the confu- sion. Marines and Goliaths are normally pretty puny, but their numbers are so great here that they could actually destroy your whole fleet of Carriers if you don't bring support to bear, so make sure to get your Archons, Reavers, or whatever else you're using to the scene. Once you've gotten some space, you can go after Schezar again. The Dropship took him north, to the base in the northeast corner of the map. It's not all that well defended, and you can pretty much rush it head-on with all the units you have. When I did it, my forces overwhelmed the base so utterly and so quickly that I didn't even see Schezar fall. When he does fall, however, you will get a message from Zeratul and the mission will end. Congratulations! Give yourself a pat on the back and crack open a beverage of your choice, because you just beat one of the toughest single-player campaigns in all of StarCraft! If you haven't had enough yet, you can always try doing the other branch of this campaign, by replaying Mission 3 ("Nemesis") and de- stroying the Command Centers instead of retrieving the crystal. ---------------------- Mission 4B [00046] Turnabout ---------------------- If you choose to play the non-canonical path, in Mission 3 ("Nemesis") you can destroy Schezar's command centers instead of retrieving the crystal, and then you will be directed to this mission. At the beginning you have four Dark Tem- plar, four High Templar, and two Dragoons, and no base; you are charged with finding Schezar and killing him. Like Mission 4A, you have to proceed slowly and use take advantage of your units' abilities to proceed through the map. The strategies should be fairly familiar by now: use cloaked Dark Templar when you can, take out detectors from afar with your Dragoons if possible, use Psi- onic Storm to take care of Zerg gangs, and use Hallucination in the few places where you do need to make a frontal assault. Directly east of your starting position is a group of Seige Tanks, Bunkers, and other units; you can take them all out with Dark Templar. Zerg are bur- rowed near here, so be careful when bringing your non-cloaked units in (in fact, this admonition remains true for the entire first half of the mission). From here, go south and fight a small group of Zerg and Terrans; there is a Spore Colony here and a bunch of burrowed Hydralisks, so you can't just charge in with your Dark Templar. Psionic Storm and Hallucinations should do the trick. Once that is done, send your Dragoons up the ramp to the west and past a vespene geyser; from here you can see 2 Spore Colonies on the ground below. Take them out and then go back to the first group of tanks and bunkers you de- stroyed. From there, go east and fight another group of units (including de- tectors and some burrowed Hydralisks) and up a ramp. At the top of this ramp you'll see some minerals, and below them a pair of Bunkers supported by a Mis- sile Turret and a Spore Colony. Two Lurkers are burrowed here; to get past this point you will probably need to make a lot of Hallucinations and then try to take out the detectors while your Hallucinations draw fire. Once the detec- tors are gone, you can have your Dragoons and High Templar retreat while your Dark Templar take care of the bunkers. From here, go down the ramp and take out a few Marines. There is a Science Vessel patrolling here; take it out with your Dragoons (you will probably only be able to get in one shot at a time, but be patient and don't try to chase it--there are Seige Tanks just out of sight). Once the Science Vessel is gone, send your Dark Templar to take out the Bunkers, Sunken Colonies, and Seige Tanks. From here, go around the cliff and up the ramp on the other side, then proceed west along the higher ground (take out the Bunker with your Dark Templar on the way). At the far western part of this cliff you can see two Spore Colonies below; take them out with Dragoons, making sure not to get too close to the edge (there are Seige Tanks that might take a shot at you). While you're up here, go south to take out a turret and Seige Tank at the southern extremity of the higher ground; the way I did this was making some hallucinations, then bringing all four High Templar down behind them and hitting the tank with four Psionic Storms at once. Take out the turret from afar with your Dragoons, then backtrack and go back down the ramp you came from. This time proceed west in the valley, towards the Vul- ture; make sure to clear the ground ahead of you with Psionic Storms, because this valley is littered with Spider Mines. At the western edge of the map is a group of Sunken Colonies and Terran units with no detectors (your Dragoons took all the Spore Colonies out), so take care of them with your Dark Templar. Go south now and stop when you see the Missile Turrets below you. Take out the Science Vessel the same way you did for the last one (one shot at a time), and take out the Missile Turrets from afar; then send your Dark Templar in and hit Schezar (no need to take out the bunkers). The moment you hit Schezar, he'll surrender and give you control of his large Terran base; he wants you to destroy all the Zerg on the map for him. (Hence the title of this mission, "Turnabout".) Now the mission turns into a normal "destroy-all-the-enemies" mission, albeit a very hard one. When you first get the base it will be attacked by the units and structures that were originally in it, but they fall pretty quickly. Get started right away on building SCVs and defenses. You'll need lots of resources, so send two SCVs north to build Command Centers at the vespene geyser and mineral patch you passed on the way here; these bases will be left alone for most of the mission, so there is no need to defend them much just yet. Your main base will need a ton of defenses; the Zerg hit you with great hordes of bigger and bigger units. I needed three Bunkers and 6-8 Seige Tanks at each of the eastern entrances to the base (and even that will be insufficient later--towards the middle of the mission, around when you are starting to take out the Orange zerg, the green and brown Zerg will send what seem like dozens of Ultralisks at you). The long northern section of your base, up against the cliffs near where your EMP building and supply depots are, also needs defending; the enemy will often send ridiculous fleets of air units there. Missile Turrets alone won't be sufficient here, be- cause you don't have room to build very many of them; I used Valkyries to de- fend here (they do really suck up resources, but there's not much room in this part of the base for Goliaths to move about, and Valkyries might be somewhat useful later when you attack the enemy bases). There are a large number of bases you will need to take out on this map; they are labeled in the diagram below (T for your original base and for free re- sources you should take right away, Z for Zerg bases): -------------------------------------- | T Z(brown) Z(green)| | | | T | | Z(green) | | | | | | Z(orange)| | T Z(orange) | -------------------------------------- With three Command Centers set up and a wealth of resources (your original base has so many that it may not run out for the entirety of the mission), you should be able to have at least two Nuclear Silos pretty soon, and a small force of units to back up whatever Ghost makes use of them (for this purpose, you can use either Battlecruisers or Seige Tanks and Goliaths; with nuke sup- port, you don't need a full 12 of anything yet). You desperately need to stem the flow of Zerg attacks or else you'll be overrun pretty soon; to do this, you'll have to take out at least one player. Orange is the easiest and the closest. Two nukes should be enough to get through the main line of defense in the closer orange base (in the middle of the map), after which your support units can fly/roll in and mop up the base, and during this time you can re- build your nukes as well as have new units constantly churning out in your main base. Once this base is cleared out, proceed west and repeat the process with the other orange base. Mopping up all the buildings takes a while, but when it's over you should have one player eliminated. (If you're getting bea- ten, you can always retreat once you've destroyed the Hatcheries and Drones-- for now, making orange unable to produce more units is just as good as beating him.) This is a messy fight early in the mission, so don't be surprised if you lose most of your attack force; removing a player from the board is worth the sacrifice, and hopefully you will have been building replacements while the attack was going on. Just don't leave your main base empty while doing this attack, because brown and green are sure to retaliate. When you're ready, set up a new base at the first orange base you destroyed, and dig in with bunkers and Seige Tanks. Do not try to just leave your attack force there for defense, it won't work; brown, and especially green, will hit you with large enough forces that you're going to need real defenses to hold them off. If you think you can spread yourself far enough, you can also set up a base at the ruins of the other orange base. I didn't do this when I played, and ended up in a resource crunch later in the mission; just keep in mind that, in this mission, you should not expand to any place you can't defend yet, or you'll regret it. By this point your mini-bases in the north may be running low on resources; if you want, you can let them fall, although you'll want to replace the Nuclear Silos. (For me, the mineral base there didn't get attacked until after I had wiped out orange, and I was able to hold off the first few attacks with just Dragoons before it finally fell. The gas base never got attacked at all.) At this point the mission becomes a resource battle--who can build more units and overrun the others. The most accessible resource patch is the peninsula smack dab in the middle of the map; it is actually free resources when the mission starts, but by now green has probably taken it. Since it's an expansion, it is probably not very well-defended, and you can probably take it with Battlecrui- sers and Seige Tanks; nukes will help too, although I ended up using mine elsewhere. This is about the time in the mission where the enemy will start attacking you with giant waves of Ultralisks (backed up by Hydralisks). This means you can't just hunker down in your base; you need to patrol around the map. This is where Battlecruisers and Valkyries came in handy for me; with air domination, you can keep a good eye on more of the map. The enemy will often gather his Ultralisks and Hydralisks somewhere on the map for a few minutes, waiting un- til he has a ton before springing the attack; if you see him doing this, you can make a pre-emptive strike. That's where I used up the nuke I mentioned above--after one particularly devastating attack, I was forced to re-load the game and I just found where the forces were gathered and nuked them from out of sight. If you don't have a nuke or don't want to use it, use your Battle- cruisers: take out the Hydralisks quickly, and then scatter the Ultralisks. They'll run around when you shoot, and this way you can either kill them from above, or cause them to run helter-skelter into your base and get killed one by one. It is absolutely critical that you do this to the attack groups, ra- ther than letting them come to you; late in the mission my first expansion, which had three Bunkers and five Seige Tanks, almost got taken out by just a random group of Zerglings and Hydralisks that green threw at me while I was attacking their own base. If the enemy can do so much damage to you even while it's on the defensive, imagine what he would do if you let him attack with those Ultralisks whenever he wants. Assuming you're still alive and have taken the green base in the middle of the map, set up a base there and defend the northern part of it with Missile Tur- rets--the brown base is just across the ice from here, and might try to attack you. With this new base I was able to get away without building very robust defenses, because this is when I started my attack on the brown and green bas- es. Brown is significantly smaller and weaker (at least, it was in my game), and I could destroy the entire base with just about 8 each of Battlecruisers and Valkyries: use the Valkyries to take out air attackers and defend against Scourges, while the Battlecruisers take Spore Colonies from afar and focus- fire the Hydralisks on the ground. From there you can proceed northwest to the green base, which is up on higher ground; there's significantly more resis- tance there, though, and your units are already softened up, so I would bring 8-12 Tanks along to help out. The green base is also pretty nuke-able once you get past the ramp's defenses: there's no point wasting your nukes on the Sun- ken and Spore Colonies ringing the base, but once you get past them the base's interior is pretty tightly packed. Again, however, don't be surprised if you lose most of your attack force here, so make sure you're still churning out units back at your home base; as long as you soften up this base, and perhaps even take out its Hatcheries, it will be easy to take out on your next as- sault. While this is going on you may also need to set up a new Command Center over what was the brown base; there should still be plenty of minerals there. (The green base, though, will have been bled dry by now.) Make another attack to finish off the green base (or just take it out in one fell swoop if you were able). If that was the last base, the mission will end now. If you didn't set up your own base in the southeast corner, though, green probably will have set up there, so you'll have to go down and take that out as well. It should be weakly-defended, though, and without any advanced tech- nology, so it will fall much easier than the last base did. The mission ends once every Zerg structure is destroyed. If you're having trouble getting it to end, check the locations of the old bases you destroyed, it's possible that one of the Zerg groups set up a new Hatchery after you left. ---------------------- Mission 5B [00047] Dark Vengeance ---------------------- Here's another interesting mission (although I don't find it as difficult or as fun as the canonical finale, 5A "Showdown"). Your only main objective is to destroy the Warp Gate, which is in the middle of a large purple base in the center of the map. There is an optional objective as well, though. The Protoss enemy in this mission has the ability to create souped-up Zerg units (the "Hunter Killer" hydralisks and "Devouring One" Zerglings) and attack you with them. You can impair his ability to do this, however, by collecting and de- stroying the Kaydarin crystal that are scattered around the map (5 in all). The Zerg units are powerful, but not anything that's likely to overrun you outright, so destroying the crystals truly is optional. (Don't take that to mean that the Zerg are pushovers, though; if you get hit by Protoss and spe- cial Zerg units at the same time, you'll be in some trouble.) While the only structure you need to destroy in this mission is the Warp Gate, you probably won't be able to do that without taking over most of the rest of the map. The Protoss are extremely numerous (there seriously is not a single open spot of map without at least some Photon Cannons on it), and the purple base will be effectively impregnable as long as the Protoss have such a pre- sence on the map. If you remove the white Protoss from the picture and seri- ously damage the purple, then you will stand a chance in an assault against the gate. The gate itself has 5000 hit points, so it can take a serious beat- ing. It's not the kind of building that you can sneak in and destroy quickly before the Protoss muster defense; you really need to be committed when you go to take it out. When the mission begins, five beacons are revealed on the map; these are the locations of the Kaydarin crystals, which you can destroy by retrieving them with a Probe and bringing them back to your base. Each one is defended by roughly the same thing, a combination of Protoss and Zerg defensive struc- tures. (The one closest to your base, though, also has Dark Templar in it.) They can all be taken in roughly the same way--whatever units you happen to like, these little outposts can be destroyed easily with heavy units like Car- riers, Seige Tanks, Reavers, or Archons; whenever you finish one, you can use your Shuttle to take a Probe there (research the speed upgrade at the Robotics Support Bay for this--you don't want to just send a probe out by itself, there are too many marauding Protoss on the map), collect the crystal, and bring it back. When you destroy a crystal, you effectively eliminate one of the Zerg spawn points; Zerg will still come from other spots to attack you, but the more crystals you destroy the less frequent Zerg attacks will become. You can take the crystals in any order you like--any time you're near one and don't have the strength to attack a real base yet, you can often afford to take a crystal in the downtime. Since the collection of the crystals is optional and the order in which you do it is pretty flexible, I won't really bring it up after this. Now on to the defense. Just like in 5A (the canon version of this mission), the enemy is pretty relentless. This time, though, you have one major advan- tage, thanks to your recent alliance with Schezar: a few Terran units are available to you. You have no SCVs so you can't do much, but you have a fac- tory and an Armory, and can build Seige Tanks. Research Seige Mode right away; tanks will be your saving grace in the beginning of this mission. Once you've got resources rolling in, build at least six Seige Tanks and position them in the front of your base, along with an array of Photon Cannons at least two rows deep; this will get you through almost the entire mission, although you'll need to rebuild a couple times. Also build about four more Seige Tanks for offense, and some Dragoons; you will need to expand soon. Another thing to consider in your defense is Dark Archons--this is the first and only time in the campaign you get to build them. Unfortunately, there's nothing really fun to mind control (no SCVs or Drones on the map, so you can't double your psi limit by building multiple races), but it could come in handy if when you get attacked by Carriers and Arbiters, if that's your thing. Personally I didn't use them much in this mission, but they are an option. You will eventually need Photon Cannons on the eastern corner of your base, where air units will occasionally try to sneak in; you don't need that right away, though. There are two expansions nearby that are easy pickings; one is northeast of your starting position, and the other directly west. Both are comparable (al- though the one to the northeast is slightly more defensible), but the one to the west is closer to even more expansions, which you'll be needing, so I chose to expand in that direction at the beginning. Get used to this pattern; during the course of this mission I used 7 bases, 6 of which I drained dry. You should also get your third and fourth expansions set up as soon as it's safe to do so; there is another resource patch in the far southwest corner of the map (the same place your main base is in Mission 5A), which incidentally is also the location of one of the crystals, and there's a fourth resource patch northeast of that base on a semi-island. The more expansions you have the harder your defense job will be, but you really are going to need this flow of resources. I would advise concentrating all of your important buil- dings (unit-producing ones and tech tree structures) in your main base and perhaps one other expansion), and let the other expansions be nothing but a Nexus and a bunch of cannons; that way, if one of these expansions does fall, it doesn't get set back so much (and indeed, once the minerals are mined out, you are free to abandon these expansions and focus your attention elsewhere-- although the trickle of gas from depleted geysers is still useful). The best way to keep your expansions secure is going to be to go for air pow- er (I wouldn't call it air "superiority" this early in the game--you are still going to be getting pummelled pretty badly). You're going to need to be able to get from one expansion to another, to zip out of expansions to deal with Reavers or to harrass potential attackers, etc. For a temporary fix early in the mission, I would suggest getting 6-8 Corsairs; these will help keep you alive while you wait to get Carriers. They're not as much of a game-changer in this mission as they are versus Terrans, but they'll still help; your Carriers will not be effective until you have at least 6 of them, so Corsairs can help keep you afloat while they're building. Once you have Carriers, though, you can more or less let your Corsairs die--get as much use out of them as you can, but don't worry about replacing them later, as the Carriers will be enough to handle most of your needs. You should also make sure to always have plenty of Dragoons or Archons, though, as an Arbiter can disable your Carriers just before a big attack. And it should go without saying that you should al- ways be maxed out on Seige Tanks--since you can't build new Supply Depots your psi is maxed at 24, but you should build as many tanks as that allows (free up some psi by killing off your Marines, who are not going to be useful). For me, the most serious attack in the mission came around this time, at my fourth expansion, the one closest to the center of the map. An Arbiter dis- abled the Seige Tanks in this mission, some Corsairs laid Disruption Webs over all my Photon Cannons (and my Dragoons got stuck behind them), and then some Hunter Killers showed up and laid waste to much of that base; I was only able to ward them off by luring them into the Disruption Web and harrassing them with my one surviving Dragoon until my Carriers (only two at this point) ar- rived. So be prepared for a big attack like this at some point. After this at- tack, though, I got a small reprieve. Small Protoss and Zerg forays still at- tacked the front of my original base (indeed, they will keep doing this for the entire mission), but a good while passed without any attacks I actually needed to worry about. Whenever you get a reprieve like this, use it to take out some of the white Protoss. White has three bases with resources and Nexuses: two on the western side of the map, one on the eastern side. (For future reference, purple has two: the huge base in the center of the map, and another just above it.) I would go for the bases on the western side, since they are close enough together that you can probably take both in the same attack (assuming enough of your fleet sur- vives the first), and you get two resource patches out of it. I used my Car- riers (12 by now) and a herd of Reavers that I had been building; also make sure to bring at least one Observers, because both of these bases have Dark Templar. The southernmost base here is on sunken ground and only has minerals (many of which have probably been mined out by now); the one north of it is on high ground and has both minerals and gas, and for some reason white had bare- ly touched the minerals. Once these bases are taken out, set up a nexus at whichever mineral patch is better, send Probes over from the bases that are dried up (make sure to escort them; this map is always crawling with Dragoons and Zealots), and set up defenses. The enemy will attack all of your expan- sions, including this one, so you can't afford to neglect defenses at any of them unless you plan on losing it; don't expect the outer expansions to safe- guard the inner ones, because the enemy seems to find ways around. In the northwest corner of the map, near your new expansions, are two more Kaydarin crystals, so now is a good time to get them if you haven't already (it's pos- sible to get them early in the mission if you skirt the white bases). Once you've taken out these white bases, white will not be totally out of the game but he will be crippled (he only has one base left, and that base may well be out of minerals by now); you'll still run into his units here and there, and maybe even face a half-hearted attack from him, but you basically don't need to worry about white anymore. You will probably need to spend a few minutes recuperating, and once you're up and running again you can choose whether to finish white off once and for all, or to try to cripple pur- ple by taking out the nexus north of his main base. Since white is already a non-issue by now, I would go for the purple nexus. It's easiest to attack by air, since getting there by ground requires passing dangerously close to purple's base in the north; I was able to break this base with 12 carriers. Once you see it, take out the Photon Cannons that are in your way and focus- fire Dragoons when they show up (after you take out the first wave, there will be a pretty constant stream of one or two of them). Don't worry about razing the whole base, just do a surgical strike and take out the Nexus. Before long purple will send something like 30 Dragoons there, as well as Scouts and Cor- sairs, so you don't want to be around when that happens; take out the Nexus and Probes, and then get out of there. You might lose half of your Carriers in the battle, but if you take out the Nexus it's worth it. When I played, purple never bothered to rebuild the Nexus even though it had ample Probes in its other base; it just dumped a ton of Dragoons there and left them there, kee- ping them tucked nicely out of my way for the rest of the mission. If you make it this far, the rest of the mission is in the bag. Both white and purple are crippled; purple will still produce units and still attack you, but with nowhere near the intensity there was earlier. If you decide to collect all the Kaydarin crystals, the Zerg will be out of the picture. All you really need to do is hunker down (taking the expansion on the eastern edge of the map if you need it) and build up enough units to assault the Warp Gate. You can finish off white if you want (by now you can pretty much do it for free, there will not be much resistance); I wouldn't try to finish off purple, though. Whenever you're ready, gather all the forces you have around the central pur- ple base; by now you should have bases all over the map, so just empty them out. You can attack purple from three or four sides at once with Carriers, Archons, Reavers, Seige Tanks, Dragoons, and whatever else you have....trying to defend multiple entrances at once, purple won't be able to send more than a unit or two to each spot. When you're close enough that you think you can take it, ignore the units and structures and focus all your fire on the Warp Gate. Just remember that it takes a long time to fall, so only start attacking it once you're no longer taking heavy damage. When the Warp Gate falls, you win the mission.