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I definitely found this to be the hardest mission in the game on Brutal. All-In was cake compared to this.
First off, I think DT wall is a terrible way to do it on Brutal, waste of Gas, takes too long and taking out the detectors is a PITA. Instead I decided to wall off with Gateways, seriously worked perfectly
Started off with getting more probes. Built a forge (Upgraded everything 3/3/3 Ground 3/3 Air) / Robo Bay (or whatever gets you Colossi) straight off then sent my hero probe down to the three entrances and blocked them off with Gateways and a few cannons.Started pumping out Immortal / Colossi in that order and hot keyed my Air and Ground to different keys. Use the Gravitron beam on the Pheonixes and Hybrids are a joke.
Got a nice mix of Immortals / Colossi, replaced the Phoenixes that died and then pumped out a few Void Rays when they were available (But saved my gas for Carriers). Once I had access to Carriers I made them almost non-stop.
I made sure to cover my high ground / main base with Cannons for the second Nydus wave and retreated back at around 1 minute - walled off both entrances with more Gateways and pretty much got the 2500 kills really easily. After that I gave up and still got to 3400 before my last units fell.
This way you should easily be able to defend the Archives and get the two kill Achievements on Brutal.
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On July 28 2010 18:44 Latham wrote:Utter darkness is actually a lot easier than it seems at first. + Show Spoiler [Utter Darkness on Brutal] +
First thing is don't panic. There are 3 entrances to your base. The enemy will come in waves 1 entrance at a time for a good part of the game.
Start by queueing up more probes and putting down a 2nd forge + robotics bay so you can train colossi.
Hotkey all your ground forces together, and hotkey all your air units together. Watch the observers closely. You'll see the enemy massing in front of them before attacking. Move your army to protect the cannons. Don't cross the bridges.
Keep making colossi and keep up all the upgrades both air and ground. Non stop. Also, try to replenish your phoenix numbers if any die.
I started to float on minerals around the 16th minute mark before the archives achievement, so I walled off the south-eastern bridge with lots of cannons.
When the hybrids will start coming, lift them up with the phoenixes and focus fire. Do this on the ranged ones preferably, but later on use it on all the hybrids you encounter.
Finishing the archives bonus mission should be a cake-walk at that point. I was floating on around 5K mins and 200/200 food army worth of colossi/phoenixes/voids.
Once the archives submerge, retreat to the higher ground of your base and start to wall off with cannons too.
If you start losing units, make colossi and void rays. No more phoenixes.
At this point you should easily have 3-3-3 ground army and 3-0 air army. When I killed the 2500 necessary, I just kinda gave up after that. I didn't build anything any more. The enemy needed another 25 minutes to finally beat down my whole army :/. The corruptors and mass mutas come waaaay too late for the Z. Before that, the heroes+ void rays are unkillable.
In the end I defended for 49 mins and killed 3100 units.
lol my Zeratul died first cuz I was too lazy to micro him =(
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awesome thanks very much for the strategy with the gateways, went perfectly on second try (first try i screwed up the positioning of the gateways)
even did it with archive which i didnt care much about 
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On August 30 2010 04:52 TriniMasta wrote:Show nested quote +On July 28 2010 18:44 Latham wrote:Utter darkness is actually a lot easier than it seems at first. + Show Spoiler [Utter Darkness on Brutal] +
First thing is don't panic. There are 3 entrances to your base. The enemy will come in waves 1 entrance at a time for a good part of the game.
Start by queueing up more probes and putting down a 2nd forge + robotics bay so you can train colossi.
Hotkey all your ground forces together, and hotkey all your air units together. Watch the observers closely. You'll see the enemy massing in front of them before attacking. Move your army to protect the cannons. Don't cross the bridges.
Keep making colossi and keep up all the upgrades both air and ground. Non stop. Also, try to replenish your phoenix numbers if any die.
I started to float on minerals around the 16th minute mark before the archives achievement, so I walled off the south-eastern bridge with lots of cannons.
When the hybrids will start coming, lift them up with the phoenixes and focus fire. Do this on the ranged ones preferably, but later on use it on all the hybrids you encounter.
Finishing the archives bonus mission should be a cake-walk at that point. I was floating on around 5K mins and 200/200 food army worth of colossi/phoenixes/voids.
Once the archives submerge, retreat to the higher ground of your base and start to wall off with cannons too.
If you start losing units, make colossi and void rays. No more phoenixes.
At this point you should easily have 3-3-3 ground army and 3-0 air army. When I killed the 2500 necessary, I just kinda gave up after that. I didn't build anything any more. The enemy needed another 25 minutes to finally beat down my whole army :/. The corruptors and mass mutas come waaaay too late for the Z. Before that, the heroes+ void rays are unkillable.
In the end I defended for 49 mins and killed 3100 units. lol my Zeratul died first cuz I was too lazy to micro him =(
Working as intended. He's supposed to kick the bucket 1st. He's a melee char, he has no place on that map.
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Gaaah just a question, I stupidly went to Char without finishing this mission, and then beat the Char missions, is there an easy way to play this again? I thought for sure that I'd be able to play it, as it said I wouldn't be able to go to other planets but I figured I'd keep the lil artifact thing with me. 
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@numlock, check the mission archive after u beat the game. if u see it, then yes. if not, then u have to load a saved game from before char.
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I have passed it with almost no problems but what is high yield everyone is talking about and gold minerals, where is it ? lol
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Did it just now with DT walls, fenixes, carriers and void rays - lot of air i.e.
Make sure to not leave any holes in that DT walls. Double check it between attacks.
Gateways, photon canons, zealots, stalkers, even colosses all BS on brutal. Even on Hard it's not good. On normal I did just collosses + carriers.
Key to snipe out detectors, at least 2 times of 3 when they come from both sides of three possible and in batches of 3. Use phoenixes for that. Like 10-15 for each entrance. And make upgrades too. Use mothership abilities ofthen it have full mana from start. Did 3150 kills on my first try.
Really have no idea why people call it HARDEST. Try Engine of Destruction on Brutal with Wraith only, that what I call Brutal. This mission is really piece of cake. 3 tries max even for newbie.
They simply send lot of times like 1500 zerlings overall mission. Not hard to kill them all Maybe even 2000 of them.
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Hey all! Registered just to post this. Since it is on page 13 (?) maybe people won't see it, but hopefully it is helpful!
I am now 99.99% sure that if you have no ground units, the zerg come all anti-air. This is important 1) if you are going for the 750 achievement, or 2) you are losing all of your buildings at ~2200 and cant make it the last few kills.
I personally got the achievement even though my base was overrun by the time the mothership arrived. My method? I kept a few buildings cloaked so the zerglings and ultras kept on coming!
I went dt/colossi, then void, then carriers as each became available. When the mothership came, I had ~12 each void rays and carriers. I just camped out over one of my nexusses (nexi?) and kept it cloaked. Of course, observers are a problem, but if you keep your air forces on the enemy-side of the buildings most of the overseers/corruptors will stay far enough away.
The nice thing about all this is that only ~1/3 of the units coming at you are threats. I was not sure I would hit 2500, and ended up hitting 3500! This was only my second try, too, so I'm sure you could do better with a little effort.
(PS yes all of this was on Brutal)
Good luck!
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PPS if you want a play-by-play, I:
pumped out 20+ more probes for mineral mining
immediately built robo bay, dt thingy, forge, and cyber core.
Upgraded air fully, and ground as much as I could until I got void rays (then only shields from forge).
Ended up with tons of extra minerals, so I used extras to build cannons (kept a few probes on call by the archive).
Built ~10 DT and ~4 colossi before void rays were available. With those DT I owned many waves, up to ~1000 kills. The last few I had to snipe a few overseers with the pheonixes. It was easy to know when this started because the hydras attacked my observers.
By the time DT are no longer effective, I had about 8 colossi and as many void rays as I could pump out (gas was always the limiting factor). I kept on building tons of cannons, and moved my whole army from entrance to entrance (although sometimes I had to split it).
At some point just after the archive was done I retreated to the upper level, making sure I had lots of cannons up there first. Soon after I was overrun, but the mothership came just in time! Then it was a matter of camping out over a few buildings and killing all the delicious ground units that came my way.
750+ on Brutal! Voila!
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On August 30 2010 02:28 Sirmixalock wrote:
I definitely found this to be the hardest mission in the game on Brutal. All-In was cake compared to this.
First off, I think DT wall is a terrible way to do it on Brutal, waste of Gas, takes too long and taking out the detectors is a PITA. Instead I decided to wall off with Gateways, seriously worked perfectly
I find walling off in general to be unnecessary when you can just turret ring the archive and make a giant doom ball of units. The AI attacks from one side at a time, so they're already funneled for colossi to hammer.
The only units seriously dangerous to your ground force are the Hybrids, and you should be lifting them when they're in range of the bulk of your forces anyway. Walling to block zerg units is redundant when they instantly die to 10+ colossi.
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PPPS (sorry to spam) I agree with seolinker that Engine of Destruction on brutal was much harder. But then, I have not used any research or credits, so ymmv. I imagine science vessels, fast repair, etc make that mission 10^20 times easier.
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I've started a series of video tutorials/walkthroughs for SC2 on Brutal. I just uploaded 2 version of In Utter Darkness today, one with and one without the bonus objective.
My channel: The Real Cromar
Direct link to the version with the bonus objective: Part 1, Part 2.
Should I make a full thread here about my channel? I came here to do just that, but it looks like TheThinkingGamer beat me to it by about a week. I don't know if it's kosher.
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man...i got to 3200 kills and died..so gehhhhh
is VR or carriers late game?
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Hi, can someone pretty please upload a savegame with the brutal achievements completed (a savegame in the mission itself, not on the hyperion), that way I can load it up let myself be killed and get my last brutal achievement...
Because seriously I can't see this mission anymore, I have every other mission done on brutal but sick of this one ... read this and other strategies on the web, watched video tutorials it just ain't working :'(
If anyone can upload a savegame in-mission i'd be thanks x1000
Thanks ! (999 will follow after the upload :p)
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On September 02 2010 21:44 Doraemon wrote:
man...i got to 3200 kills and died..so gehhhhh
is VR or carriers late game?
I prefer VRs (with ground support of colo/immo), because you can start massing them earlier, and it's easier to get a large number out without investing in additional stargates.
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Just pulled off 3340 Screenshot available if you care. 
Things to note about my strategy:
- I *immediately* retreated to my base and defended the ramp. Mass cannons, as much as I can spare.
- Obviously upgrading 3-3-3 is required.
- Mass phoenixes and colossi only.
- Make sure to auto-build your carrier interceptors
- Why mass phoenixes? Key point: I would use the grav beam on EVERY SINGLE hybrid that started coming up the ramp! Float 8 hybrids super quickly if you need to, then start picking them off with your anti air. More phoenixes = won't run out of energy to do this. This leaves your massive group of colossi with dealing mostly with the lings/hydras/roaches/etc. TRY TO FLOAT AND PICK OFF AS MANY HYBRIDS AS POSSIBLE!
This was my third attempt.. it was like night and day for me.
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On September 04 2010 18:09 mhousser wrote:Just pulled off 3340 Screenshot available if you care. Things to note about my strategy: - I *immediately* retreated to my base and defended the ramp. Mass cannons, as much as I can spare. - Obviously upgrading 3-3-3 is required. - Mass phoenixes and colossi only. - Make sure to auto-build your carrier interceptors - Why mass phoenixes? Key point: I would use the grav beam on EVERY SINGLE hybrid that started coming up the ramp! Float 8 hybrids super quickly if you need to, then start picking them off with your anti air. More phoenixes = won't run out of energy to do this. This leaves your massive group of colossi with dealing mostly with the lings/hydras/roaches/etc. TRY TO FLOAT AND PICK OFF AS MANY HYBRIDS AS POSSIBLE! This was my third attempt.. it was like night and day for me.
Yea I guess about 3350 is where you'd have lost it all by then.
I did about the same as you but I massed up collossi and cannoned up my ramp and in the beginning just walked aroudn with my starting units killing all units and canons do the rest.
Eventually got to 3359 and by then there were just too many it was l ike a 400 food army vs a 200 protoss food army ><
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Has any1 been able to do this while holding on to the low ground at 3250 kills? This is my next goal for this mission haha. I love defense missions (hence I play Zerg), and losing all those buildings on the low ground makes me sad =[
On Brutal obv.
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Well, IMHO this has to be the most epic and awesome mission in the whole campaign.
After a few tries I managed to get 3717 kills. I don't know how much is technically possible, but I'm actually running out of ideas how to improve my strategy. Yet, I might give it a few more tries
Maybe I'll even try to hold the low ground, sounds fun and should be possible with 3250 kills.
If you are still interested, I could also post my strategy, but I fear that I might be the only hardcore fan of this mission...
Regards,
Final_Judicator
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EPT
