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Final Missions
This is it, the home stretch. Three missions remain between you and success. These missions are difficult and failure can happen rather easily.
Planetfall Guide
Reward: Ultralisk Evolution Mission
WALKTHROUGH
“Zerg Drop-Pods will arrive gradually and over a wide area. Be prepared to divide your forces across a large battlefield.” What this means is be sure to make a lot of Drones to make plenty of Spine Crawlers and Spore Launchers and watch out for free units dropping in and around the map.
This is where it gets difficult. If you’ve read my guides I’ve said “easy” a ton of times, but these last few missions are hard. I’m talking REALLY hard. I’m talking not a cake walk. I didn’t have to reset the map, but getting all of the achievements the first pass was tough. For some you may want to focus on one achievement at a time and replay it especially if you’re having trouble defending the Bile Launchers and attacking the gates.
Anyway, this is how the mission works. You’re given a base and some units. Go ahead and move these units to the first landing spot and work on your economy / base design. What I do? I put a hatchery at every Bile Launcher to spawn Spawnlings / troops at if needed, to help defend. It actually saved me a few times, but you don’t specifically have to (although get a Hatchery or two extra going).
Alright, so when the first one lands, you’ll get two Spine Crawlers and a Creep Tumor, complimentary. The next one will target east of your base. You’ve got to start making some choices. The third one is going to land north of your base. The fourth is going to land at the mineral field northwest of your base. The last one will land outside of the northeastern expansion.
Defending the Bile Launchers won’t be too difficult, the gates is where the difficulty comes. You don’t have a ton of time before the fifth Bile Launcher lands and you need to clear out all three gates. If you haven’t done the evolution missions, then there might be some added problems. Like, for me, I had the Banelings that could cliff jump and swarmed one of the gates with a flood of Banelings, which made it a bit easier, but I still came in with about 1:30 to spare.
What I suggest doing is taking the western expansion early, that’s going to get you additional income (on a map where you’ll run out of Minerals before the final Bile Launcher lands) and is the path to the first gate you should probably take out. From there, start softening up the second gate in the middle while building up that base and establishing defenses (the third Bile Launcher should have landed around this point). Before the fourth lands, push towards the middle gate and take it out.
After the fourth Bile Launcher has landed and is defended, push the final eastern gate. That one is easier than the one in the middle, because you should be clearing out that expansion (where it’s going to land thereabouts). Just push all of your units there.
At random intervals, various events will trigger where the enemies will push back. The reason I built Hatcheries at each of the Bile Launchers is to build Swarmlings to help defend along with drones and random units. If you’re not doing that, then I suggest you leave some Hydralisks or other random units around to help take care of their defense while you’re out on the assault.
After the last gate is down and the fifth Bile Launcher lands, you’ll need to push into the northeast corner and destroy the two bases there. At this point, you can relax a little bit, rebuild your forces, and just make the push. I liked to use Infestors, because they are so good at dealing with Thors and Siege Tanks.
Speaking of Infestors, get some; seriously, it’ll help a lot because you can infest the Medivacs and other units to make it a lot easier for yourself. Throughout this section of the game I used roving armies of Infestors to basically take over the Siege Tanks and Thors to soften up a base before flooding it with Zerglings. You can obviously save up and swarm Ultralisks or Brood Lords or whatever you want to go for, but I really liked the Infestor method.
Achievements
- Fully Operational: Don't lose a Bile Launcher.
- Death Start: Destroy 3 Augustgrad Gates before the fifth Bile Launcher lands..
- Planetfall: Complete the mission.
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Mission: DEATH FROM ABOVE
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Death From Above Guide
You start as Dehaka with three Marines in front of you. He can jump cliffs, heal himself, and burrow. As you move forward, youll see a Siege Tank on a cliff, hop up there and deal with it. The pack guarding the Power Link will deal a good bit of damage to you, use Mend and you should be able to get through it.
Alright, again, this gets difficult. You need to kill twenty, I repeat, twenty buildings before the Psi Destroyer activates. Youre given a base, two Lairs, and five minutes. Heres the deal, assign yourself about a minute to get your income high enough to produce troops, then start spamming Zerglings and Aberrations for the next four minutes and use Kerrigan to clear out the base beside and in front of yours. That should count for twenty buildings. Make heavy use of Kerrigan, real heavy use, because otherwise you wont have enough time to pull it off.
The second Power Link is a bit more difficult. Youll need to grapple Siege Tanks to protect your troops as you walk forward. Just be alert and remember that your base is still running, so feel free to build up units and defend your expansion during this time. The achievement requires that Dehaka doesnt die. Not that difficult of an accomplishment so far, just take it slow and remember time is running out but you do have an okay amount of time.
After the second PSI wave, you can start tearing up the Terran base again. Im not going to go through specifics, since at this point you can pretty much swarm everything (press F2, attack and move). You dont even have to attack; really, you can just build up your forces at this point because there is a third and final PSI wave coming.
For the last Power Link, its really difficult. I actually lost Dehaka this time through because I wasnt paying attention at the end. Youll need to use all of his abilities to stay alive and will probably prefer to ignore most of the buildings because there is not a lot of time before the Psi Destroyer reaches your main base.
After thats finished, you have an unlimited amount of time to finish the mission up. All you need to really watch out for is the choke point, which again Infestors. Infestors are the answer to everything by this point in the game. They are so different than the regular games Infestors because they permanently take control of something and that something can be a Thor or a Siege Tank.
Personally I just made a 200 food army, pressed F2, then attack moved to the Psi Destroyer. You can play a bit more finesse if you want (obviously on higher difficulties youd probably want to use a mix of Roaches/Hydralisks, Kerrigan, and Infestors and slowly advance forward), but on normal I found that was the quickest way to go about it.
Achievements
- Terran Up the Sky: Kill 20 buildings before the second Psi Destroyer field activates.
- Apex Predator: Don't let Dehaka die.
- Death From Above: Finish the mission.
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Mission: PLANETFALL | Next
Mission: THE RECKONING
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The Reckoning Guide
WALKTHROUGH
At the very start of the mission, youll come under attack. I suggest dealing with the attack on the left side of your base to save the Roach there. Shortly after that, youre going to come under attack from the right, and then the Hyperion will ride into glorious battle.
You have a pretty nice base; the entire back side of your base can act as a perfect storage for different buildings and Overlords. The enemies are a bit tougher, they're upgraded versions of normal units. You'll probably want to defend your base a bit and expand eastward first.
Achievement discussion time it is possible to do both achievements (prevent the Hyperion from taking damage and end the game within 25 minutes) but its going to require a constant relentless assault. Id personally start with the expansion to your right and move a few Hydralisks into Raynors base to help fend off the attacks.
Anyway, after you get your expansion setup, get some units there to defend the Hyperion, and get everything setup, its time to do the bonus. You have to break the three defense barriers. Once you break one open, the game gets a ton easier. I suggest doing the left side first then the two on the right, because the one on the left is going to flood the left side and clear it for you and push a good bit toward the right.
Then after you take the right side out, you shouldnt really have to worry with defending yourself anymore and focus on pushing the assault. There isnt many tricks, other than be sure to use Infestors liberally to gank Thors and Siege Tanks along with Kerrigan who can, if youve followed our guides, solo most of the map by this point.
There are a few events to be aware of; there are a few sieges on the Hyperion. I defeated them with some Mutalisks and Hydralisks, you may want to go about it with Swarm Locusts or something. The Odin comes after you, I used a Levithan and Kerrigan to duo it, but you could throw a legion of troops its way.
After you break open the bonus mission objectives and the flood moves in on the gates, just press F2 and attack move on the gate area. Use Kerrigans abilities to their mix to quicken it. Once youre outside of the gates, just focus fire the gate and ignore the units attacking you to save on time.
Achievements
- Zerg Rush: Finish within 25 mintues.
- Swarm Guardian: Don't let the Hyperion take any damage.
- The Reckoning: Finish the mission.
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Mission: DEATH FROM ABOVE
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