The title says it all, how do you succeed last mission on brutal, i found it very frustrating even on hard difficulty.
The defenses are all fine and good, but when Kerrigan comes she does some one hit killing and massive storm on some tanks or static defenses, and then zerg pour loose through the hole in ur defense and unleash the hell and its impossible fix that hole.
When explaining please mention your tech on protoss and zerg technologies, did you use slow zerg or mind control zerg, which units did u upgrade, which units and structures did u use, where and how did u position them, and which choice did you take - no nydus or no fliers
I use M&M and spread them like a boss. I haven't beaten it on brutal though so I may not be in the best position to give this advice. Basically Marines+Stim=the best unit composition in single player
the way i did it was spam bunkers on each side and filled with mariens ( upgraded bunkers are a must) and all the scvs have auto repair enabled already ok so what i did was i just put 6 bunkers at each spot and suicided the mauraders and medics for more pop filled them all up with marines and put 6 scvs in the middle of them all ( x2 repair) then after that was done its starts to get harder so you wanna get seige tanks i got 5 for each bunker group and 4 on the hill on both sides so thats about 15 siege tanks and i got hero tanks as often as i could DONT FORGET YOUR vheical upgrades and weapons upgrade so this defense should hold you on with no problemes now the tricky part you become maxed so you have spare cash PUT MISSILE TURRETS EVERYWHERE and i mean i spent about 3k on missile turrtes for the overlords get 2 starports with reactor techlabs and start pumping banshees with the left over pop you have which should get you 8-16 banshees use these to clean up nydus worms in and ooutside your base and to kill kerrigan now carefull because her frenzy spell will wreck you because of the cluster so wait till she does it meanwhile just flying around and once she does it dodge it and start to kill her and if you want wait until shes close enough so the tanks can give a hand to Hero tanks with 3 ups do 120 i think so yeah :D i didnt need to use the nova once excecpt i accidently clicked it XD but yeah this should work for you just dont stress out and 6 scvs repairs fast if you wanna be really safe put 3 siege tanks sieged around your base to kill the nydus worms when they pop up for safety incase your banshees are somewhere else this will avoid disater sorry for all the mistakes and blah blah but i dont really care i just wanted to help :D PM me if this worked for you
I played through it twice with each of the 2 choices, and no air units is about 10 times easier. The nydus worm is a complete joke compared to the insane amount of broodlords and mutas you would get otherwise. And you also get that ridiculously big zerg flier too.
So yeah don't choose to destroy the Nydus if you're having difficulties with the mission. It only makes it harder in pretty much all aspects.
I've only just beaten it. It's worth mentioning the previous missoin in your post - did you take out Zerg air or Nydus?
I took out Air, and had one hell of a fight. First thing you need to do is get another factory, another starport, and two armouries up. Upgrade weapons constantly and slap those reactor labs on the structures (If you didn't get those, then get another fact/port). You then need to balance tanks, banshees, and battlecruisers as well as wall off as best you can with bunkers/depots.
Tanks Get the mercenary tanks, they're super super good, but otherwise you simply can't have too many. I had about eight or nine at each side before the last few moments, and they can basically hold off everything as long as you're doing well on Nydus.
Banshees You'll want a squad of 6-7 banshees for as long as possible, use cloak to get in and snipe Nydus worms. Only use battlecruisers for this as a last resort. If they're not sniping nydus, use them to reinforce your defense.
Battlecruisers I've found BCs are the strongest option against Kerrigan, and keep them around for pretty much that. Don't use yamato on her - it barely scratches her - instead just burn her down using their regular gunfire. Her insane damage reduction isn't very good against their rapid fire, although she has a habit of one-shotting them away one at a time.
The overlord swarm Use the artifact, problem solved.
KERRIGAN By far the hardest part of the mission is dealing with Kerrigan. I'd give my right arm for EMP or Feedback, just to stop her spellcasting. Alongside her insane damage reduction, you need to be careful of her one-shotting things with a spell, and after about 50%, her psi-storm-alike spell that will wreck any defense. The advice perfectflaw gave is solid: Use your banshees to poke her and make her use the spell, then run away and fight on.
Towards the end Save the artifact's charge for as long as possible, and if you feel stuff breaking, pull back so you're wrapped around it on that little island. Focus on Nydus worms above all else, using tanks to whack-a-mole them as they appear.
I had 3 planetary fortresses on the actual island and 4 at every entrance, 2 more in the middle of my base (eventually), spammed scv's out of all of them till I had enough to chainrepair on each side. You can mule out of the OC before you morph them giving you some of the CC minerals back.
Also built a fuckton of missile turrets for the overlord wave, maybe it was overkill, but hey, it was held off easily.
The one problem with mass PF though is they take minerals and gas to repair, I'd run out of gas sometimes and not be able to repair, I remedied that by building lines of bunkers in front of them, soaking up most of the damage (you have to rebuild those ALOT).
I was nearly chainproducing siege tanks out of just 1 factory too, using the merc tanks whenever available (theyre sick!)
To deal with the nydus I had a group of 12+ banshee's, replenishing with 2 starports.
every time kerrigan pops up I had to swarm out quickly with the banshee's though before she lolstormed all my scv's (made sure she stormed the banshees, could move them out). She can punch a huge hole in your defence if you aren't careful.
In the end I managed to win with most of my base still intact playing like this, I'd lost all my banshees at the end though and wasn't able to take out nydus anymore which was kinda scary, but that's what the I win button is for!
Edit : I got the mindcontrol zerg thing btw, which is nearly useless, I suppose I couldve used it to MC the ultra. If I knew a mission like this was coming up though I wouldve gone for the slow, which sounds just about perfect for this.
i just finished it on brutal with nydus worms. it took 30+ saves, a butt load of siege tanks, marines, banshees (who died at around 80%), PF, bunkers, exhausted the mercs...
i made a ball of tanks at the merc compound. but once 70% or so is reached i had to move up because all the zerg just steamroll to the artifact instead of my base.
the biggest things would have to be, dont let your tank ball get stormed from K (i just dumped marines on her), kill nydus as fast as possible, and use the artifact wisely
i didn't have the upgrade for tech/core cause i advanced with only 24 protoss research, which i definitely regretted. so i had to pump mad factories and barracks.
tech that is super important: all banshee upgrade (i wish i got longer cloak!) all tank upgrade all marine upgrade auto repair structure auto repair vehicles/ships scv speed up repair tech/core all mercs turrets on bunkers, bunker life, PF orbital command
I think the biggest thing really is getting all the upgrades the above poster mentioned...I was kinda stupid with mine and was missing a bunch of them which hurt big time. Other than that a heavy tank/banshee strat and lots of reloaded saves -_-. One thing that also helps a lot is the thing the AOE slow thing for zerg.
the prior mission, I opted to kill the nydus canals. I built bunkers on either side, loaded with rines and firebats. turrets on cliffs, and flamethrower static just in front of the bunkers. siege tanks on high ground behind. I called down the merc vikings, and massed thors on the platform with missle turrets. whenever kerrigan comes, have thors use their cannon on her to stun her. tanks and bunkers should eat away at her health. again, SCVs everywhere to autorepair. keep a watch out for broodlords, and quickly snipe them. they are the biggest concern to your towers, bunkers, and tanks. when the giant zerg flying unit comes, don't send Battlecruisers. they will get 1-shot. send in wraiths/vikings/ try to draw him close for thors to hit. soon, he will attempt to attack your front line, and your thors should make short work of him.
Woah woah, you guys need to use Thor's 250mm cannon for Kerrigan. back-to-back 2 shots with focus fire while you are at it, and Kerrigan becomes no problem.
How to: Step 1: Kill air, brood lords are nasty, the nydus canals won't do anything. Other stuff I had used were flametowers (which are really good), siege tanks upgrades, mercenary siege tanks, turrets on top of bunkers, automatic refineries with mining bonus, the regenerating metal and the add-on combination. That's all I can think of right now.
Step 2: Look at the chokes. On the top one, I held the choke between the right high ground and the artifact high ground, on the left side, i held the two ramps up, usind the little high ground inbetween to put as many tanks as possible.
Step 3: 2 factories with the combined add-on pumping siege tanks plus mercenary tanks on cooldown, upgrade siege tanks, spam fire towers in front, if you want to a few bunkers with units of your choice or turrets, keep scvs in front on auto repair. 2-3 Vikings on top of your siege tanks to kill the overlords to deny vision.
Step 4: When Kerrigan comes, use the artifact. Takes 200 hp off of her and let's you deal with her alone. Not that you really need to, but w/e, might as well use it.
Did it on 3rd try, at first i tried to do it with a lot of bio units and a few tanks, second one i started using more tanks and battle cruisers, then i just spammed tanks and it was really easy.
Just abuse the terrain, don't put the siege tanks near the ledges of the high ground, if enemies run past the ledge (for example north side of the artifact hill), put the flame towers there.
Edit: Thors stun Kerrigan, eh? Well, that makes the mission easier
Slow+flame is key. Killing the air instead of the ground makes it 100x easier.
I spammed bunkers at the double chokes, with a slow field behind it, and the flame turrets in front of it. Keep a few scv's on auto repair around there, and make sure you get that zerg up that makes your buildings auto repair under 50% hp. Massed tanks on the ledges, and also on the island, and kept like 4-5 banshees to snipe nydus worms. Mass marine maruder when waiting for kerrigan to spawn, and push out on the lane she is going down to make her waste some energy. I probably had 5-6 tanks on each ledge.
Also, the bunkers on the island are badly placed. I salvaged them and replaced them. After that, I built a slow tower behind that (and next to the tanks) and a flame tower on the ramp. Just make sure tanks can get back up onto the island cause kerrigan kills them every now and then.
The key is to make sure your island defenses can support the choke defenses with tank fire. Then also make sure they can draw off the swarm if kerrigan punches a hole in your defense. You can clean it up and push MM to the choke while you rebuild bunkers, or use the GG button if they are just swarming through completely into your base.
As others have mentioned, kill air the mission before because Terran ground defense is still by far the best in the game. For the actual mission there is really only 1 important thing you need to remember: Have a LOT of tanks. If you have to choose between something and tanks, go with tanks. If you are unsure what to make, make tanks. If you are unsure what to upgrade, upgrade tanks. I think I ended with something like ~17 or so tanks on each side at the end. It didn't matter if Kerrigan stormed a bunch since I would still have at least 10 left on the side after she went away.
Next you want to add some things to tanks. Some people like to wall with Planetary Fortresses. If you didn't get the PF, Bunkers with HP upgrade work pretty well too. Build Turrets around your base and make sure you have a couple bunkers within your base since some Nydus things pop there also. Your remaining food will probably go to Banshees to kill Nydus outside the base. I personally just went with Battlecruisers to Yamato them. Science Vessels healing the BC's means only Kerrigan can kill them effectively. Chain spamming Yamato is still effective at killing Kerrigan although she will kill a couple BC's each time. Not really a big deal though.
firebat bunkers to the front, a few hellions just behind these with psi disruptors thor-science vessels right behind that
merc tanks and banshees to round it out
hunt nydus with shees, use the artifact to blow the overlord wave out of existence, suck kerrigan's shredder spell with banshees then stun her with thors. pull your SCV's in a pinch.
upgrades you want: thor hellion tank banshee turret SCV bunker firebat
scivessel biosteel disruptor damage buff bunker health
Destroy the barriers at the start and wall off all entrances with barracks, put 2-3 bunkers at each side, leaving plenty of room for SCVs (3-5 each side) to repair. Mass tanks + banshees to kill nydus.
Thanks a lot guys, ill try some of these strats, depending on the choices i already made in the game, cause i wont be replaying it from the begining, i ll try adjusting tactics. I usually massed tanks at each choke, used the slow tech, and massed battlecruisers, but had no luck with that battlecruisers are too expensive cause Kerrigan just one shots them, and i think i had not enough tanks around 6-7 at each choke. Guess at first ill try Thor stun, more tanks and maybe 1 or 2 planetary fortresses for wall off.
Got it on the third try, basically what everyone else said - Tanks, bunkers, zergy slow building. Put 3 on each side covering every angle of approach. I gave up on the banshees going after nydus worms around 70-80% because i was only on one port, but it wasn't really a problem... I'd stay away from BCs, Kerrigan always one-shots them. Someone said something about burning her mana first, which I guess would be ok...
The one thing I would add, is that around 85-90%, start building a fall back line around the base of the high ground. Like the other defense missions, the last 10% is ... unpleasant. Just another bunker wall off (& slow) inside that you can hide your tanks behind to hold on for that last 3-4%. Don't burn the artifact nova early in the last 10% either.
I killed the nydus worms and this mission took me like 5+ hours.. I had a hunch that killing air would be easier but I just wanted to finish the mission.
I just made a bunch of marine/medic/viking. Not having any viking ups from armory didn't help either. -.-
i needed like 10 or 12 times until i was able to bet, and that was aswully close to still losing.
what i did was the following. (2 scv tech) spam scvs in the beginning like hell. build two planetary fortresses on each side. 3-4 bunkers filled with marines on each side. a good amount of vikings (+their splash upgrade) to snipe broodlords (i did the "no nydus mission"). like 10 scvs on each side for the bunkers. 6-10 vessels (irridiate still kcks ass) turrets + 4 or more bunkers on the high ground. at least 1 bunker behind your mineral line. get 5 or so barracks to spam marines. helps a lot in the end, when you have a lot of minerals. UPGRADE use your nova very wisely. i was able to save the last one to the very end, which was extremely important.
On July 29 2010 19:26 ohN wrote: I killed the nydus worms and this mission took me like 5+ hours.. I had a hunch that killing air would be easier but I just wanted to finish the mission.
I just made a bunch of marine/medic/viking. Not having any viking ups from armory didn't help either. -.-
Can you give a few more details? I also have no viking ups, and killed the nydus worms. I am getting dominated when the Leviathan shows up.. I just can't get more than 14 or so vikings (inc merc vikings) before it shows up. Can I cheapen my (bunker, rine, tank, psi disrupter, flame turret, a few thor) defenses and get more vikings? Is there a trick to killing the Leviathan?
This is impossible with air units if you havent got the right upgrades. I got no viking and turret upgrades so the broodlord just wreak too much havoc in my base destroying my bunkers and SCVs from faaar away.
According to a friend who beat it on brutal (eliminating nydus before), he massed Hive Emulators and won with an army of mutalisks or some such, saying that it was essentially making a free army for him. Not to say he didn't have problems I imagine, but that's just what he told me.
The leviathan has a *fungal growth* ability if you try to attack him with your vikings...So, you need to drag him towards the ground so your ground forces can help you kill him.
I did it with just mass mass mass tanks on both sides with Psi Emitters sitting 1 on each side of each choke.
This is after choosing to take out air rather than Nydus. For about the first 60% or so I kept my bunkers up in front of the tanks but didn't bother after, instead I started using minerals to pump vultures out of 2 of my tech/reactor factories while the other pumped tanks with what gas I had. Spam mines when you can and try make Kerrigan waste her storm on the vultures. Used a group of 5 banshees(3 normal, 2 mercs) for sniping Nydus. Think constantly having every avenue effected by Psi Emitters was key for me, meant the tanks just annihilated everything.
First thing you should accept: Either be confortable with save/load or go back to the previous stage and change your choice.
Broodlords are going to rape you, and if you leave one alone for too long, your wall goes down. This was actualy a great multitask practice for me.
Begin by having 1/1/2 with tech reactor, wall with barracks and have bunkers and tanks behind them. Slow aoe thing is also great. leave 8-10 scvs at each wall.
Make a medivac to rescue your trapped scvs, these will appear very often since you will be making a turret ring. Also try to leave some troops around the middle to deal with broodlings.
Now to the hardest part: You are going to pump vikings of 2 starports with reactors. Spread them into four groups (I'm assuming you have their upgrades), one at each choke, one over the relic and one over your command center. Snipe ANY air your see, but don't leave your base, failing to do this will lead to a loss.
Use the nova on the overlords or if your wall goes down.
Save often, you are probably going to miss a broodlord or 2, so just go back and reaload.
In order: wall -> tanks + bunkers + vikings -> aoe slow -> upgrades -> turrets -> even more scvs repairing.
goodluck! It all comes down to not wasting more gas then needed on siege tanks and being active with your viking fleet.
I gave up on trying to beat the last mission with air on after around 3 very painful hours. I made it 'til about 85%, but the air boss quickly followed by Kerrigan killed me every time. I think I could have completed the mission, if I had made some better upgrade/research choices along the way.
Then I tried it with nydus worms. 1st try: 99,8% complete: didn't foresee the nydus worms right next to the relic at the end. Second try, I completed the mission comfortably.
Two crucial tactics to use are: - Get a bunch of thors and use the strike cannons on Kerrigan; the cannon stun-locks her for a while, so with enough thors she won't do any damage (permastun). - Get ~10 banshees, and go around sniping nydus worms as soon as they pop up. I often split my banshees into two groups of around 5.
I mass thors, a few tanks, mass fire turrets, and a few slow turrets for my walls.
On July 29 2010 19:26 ohN wrote: I killed the nydus worms and this mission took me like 5+ hours.. I had a hunch that killing air would be easier but I just wanted to finish the mission.
I just made a bunch of marine/medic/viking. Not having any viking ups from armory didn't help either. -.-
Can you give a few more details? I also have no viking ups, and killed the nydus worms. I am getting dominated when the Leviathan shows up.. I just can't get more than 14 or so vikings (inc merc vikings) before it shows up. Can I cheapen my (bunker, rine, tank, psi disrupter, flame turret, a few thor) defenses and get more vikings? Is there a trick to killing the Leviathan?
THIS MISSION ENRAGES ME.
Not sure why you have so few Vikings. When the Leviathan showed up in mine, I already had 8 BC's + Merc BC. I just unloaded all my Yamato Cannons onto him and he died in 5 seconds. If you are dealing with air, you don't need that many tanks. 2-3 Tanks on each side with 2-3 bunkers is enough to hold off the small groups of ground forces. The rest of your resources should go into air defense.
If you have nydus, you're gonna have to send forces playing whack a mole. If you have brood + mutas some vikings patrolling plus some turrets should do it.
As for kerrigan, it seems like it doesn't matter what the units are she pretty much 1-2shots it. throw low tier units at her while tanks do the dmg.
Guy above me covered the nydus, that one is fairly easy
as for air, i successfully did it with siege tanks mass vikings & an M&M ball for Kerrigan
4 or 5 siege tanks on each side, 3-4 bunkers there aswell, aswell as a few turrets, build a reactor on your rax and start pumping marines to each side, marines must go in the bunkers or your siege tanks will just fall to the few mutas that come each side, i also got the siege breakers from the mercenaries, 1 each side, they help alot with the increased damage. Another important thing is to have plenty of spare SCV's at each side, just sitting out of harms way and on auto repair. You can afford to spend time on defending the ground at start, once you've got a decent setup on each side, start massing vikings with 2 ports/2 reactors. The hard part is to make sure you're constantly aware of each side to go and snipe all broodlords, as they have infinite broodlings of course. It's also VERY important to have a few vikings and turrets at the back of your base, i'm not sure when but at around 30-40% of the charged artifact, air attacks will come at the back of your base, i had 2 vikings hovering over my CC, used the turrets to snipe the 2 mutass that come and then take the vikings and kill the broodlords.
It gets pretty crazy at around 80% with the boss and stuff, just watch your control on your vikings at each kerrigan attack, kerrigan picks them off one by one very fast, so just get them out and deal with her with the tanks. I made one thor for each side at around 45%, you can use the 250mm strike cannons on her to stun and she'll get pounded by your tanks and your small M&M ball (i had around 5 marauders, 10 marines and 5 medics, stimmed and killed her with +2 wep upgrade each time with the siege tank fire it was enough).
DO NOT FORGET UPGRADES FOR AIR UNITS, super crucial, build an extra armory at start.
At 90% i had to abbondon my sides and take everything to the artifcat, i built 2 bunkers at each side and got a few tanks behind, and barely managed to hang on.
Definetly the hardest mission in the game (with air enabled)
On July 30 2010 04:03 naventus wrote: Ignore the advice about Thors. I tried this out, and the cannons do not stun her at all.
Maybe that mission got to me and I am now crazy, but I could have sworn the stun works. FWIW I was spamming the 250mm cannon with 6+ thors in very quick succession. Can anyone else confirm/deny?
I agree that nydus is easier because it allows you to pretty much spam tanks as the sole solution. If you're behind in whacking those worms, tanks can cover D for sometime before it gets overwhelming. If you're behind in dealing with broods, your tank will splash away your base right away.
That and banshee+wraith in far fewer numbers compared to vikings in air mission can handle nydus worm effectively.
On July 30 2010 04:03 naventus wrote: Ignore the advice about Thors. I tried this out, and the cannons do not stun her at all.
Maybe that mission got to me and I am now crazy, but I could have sworn the stun works. FWIW I was spamming the 250mm cannon with 6+ thors in very quick succession. Can anyone else confirm/deny?
It definitely works, I was able to comfortably beat it with all my walls still up and sitting at 200/200 because of this, before I used this Kerrigan would constantly break through my wall and the swarm would follow before I could rebuild it.
I had 4 Bunkers at the south entrance with 6 Marines in them each backed by 3 SCV's, 3 Bunkers at the north with 6 Marines each and 2 SCV's, something like 40 workers getting resources, and then literally the entire remaining room in my food cap was Tanks. I had at least 20 Tanks at each entrance. Absolutely destroyed them until Kerrigan's last attack, then they just started to break through before I won.
Oh, and I was dealing with Nydus Worms, and I didn't go out and eliminate the ones outside of my base. Ended with something like 8500 kills. :D
I beat the one with the nydus worms by massing tanks and bcs with psi emitters. BCs could easily roam the map and kill a few nydus worms. It's not really necessary to kill the worms because if they're close to your base you can kill them with the Artifact. The BCs are there because they kill kerrigan faster than any other unit (except perhaps thors, I've heard those are good for stunlocking her)
So I spent the better part of my night trying this, then read the thor tip and one shotted it without even needing to use my artifact once! (got the achievement too)
Basically, in the beginning tech lab your starport, and tech lab 4 factories. Get at least 5 tanks on each side, then get 3 thors, then continue to spam tanks. Also, get the banshee mercs whenever up. With your collection of about 8 banshees, constantly use them for hunting nydus worms and nothing else. Keep on building tanks, you should hit 200/200 soon. Whenever Kerrigan comes, but your thors in front of your tanks and chain 250MM. She wont be able to get a single shot off because she'll be stunned the whole time. This was literally the difference between spamming the artifact, tons of tanks and still getting crushed on her waves, and not even having to pull back once to the artifact higher ground. I even had that bunker that you get in the beginning on the left side survive the whole mission!
I kept going mech until I realized that I upgraded ghosts to not use energy while cloaked. That meant that I could keep them alive and cloaked and just spam snipe as fast as possible. It worked like a charm. I did this on hard but it worked so well that I think it could transfer over to brutal as well. I literally had like 20 ghosts chain sniping on the high ground. Oh, and I took out the zerg air beforehand.
You can also snipe the Ultras since you'll have a ton of energy left over. I blocked off with bunkers with mass marines also and Kerrigan was only able to take out one bunker most of the time before I sniped her to hell.
One thing is that the first time you shoot her with a ghost, she'll do that dark swarm AOE damage spell on the area where said ghost was. So instead of having them all die to that, I pulled them back, kept one up there, shot her once and made her cast that spell, and avoided it for the time being.
I kept ghosts everywhere, because they are awesome versus lings and hydras, and they cant die unless there is an overseer nearby.
WOW....Just beat it with Air. Reaaaaaallly hard. Just wow...
MAKE SURE YOU UPGRADE WEAPONS TO LEVEL 3! It helps sooo much. Armor doesn't matter as much.
Bunkers/Marines/Barracks are your friends. They will keep the sides blocked until around 90%. Make sure each side is properly blocked and that you always have a constant supply of SCV's repairing. I had about 3 Barracks and 5-6 Bunkers on both sides. 3-4 Tanks on both sides help too. Kerrigan only takes out about 1 Barrack and 2-3 Bunkers each attack. DONT USE YOUR BC's TO ATTACK Kerrigan. She will simply one shot and and they are too valuable for that. Marines + a few tanks take her fine with weapon upgrades.
Against air, I found that getting both BC's and Vikings are helpful. Have the BC's target Mutas and the Vikings against Broodlords. Against the rear attacks, a few turrets + 1 BC picking off Broodlords seemed to do it for me. On the cliff, keep constant turrets + SCV supply. Repairing your air units are so important.
Air will kill your sides if you are not active with your vikings. I had 1 BC on each side for safety's sake and it seemed to work ok, but Broodlords need to be taken out asap. That bigass air unit didn't attack me so I left it be.
Like some people said earlier, saving your Blast for Kerrigan is a good idea. it lets all your units target her without any distractions. When your are around 95% and you are losing stuff, USE IT. Don't save it for Kerrigan. By the time she gets to you, Curruptors would've corrupted the Artifact and you won't be able to use it.
I had trouble the last 2-3 percent because I always got completely overrun. There was no way I could defend it. Every time I would lose with ~.5%. So before I started losing everything, I lifted everything and landed them on the cliff and it gave me enough time to reach 100%.
I hope that helped. This level made me rage so hard.
Ha the last 2-3% hurt me so hard too. At 90% i ran all my tanks/hellions/scvs into middle after a pulse. Then i walled myself in with and targeted the nyduses. I finished 100% with the weapon, 200 hp cc, and 3 burning factories. I lost all my guys at 99.4% ;]. I was like O DAMN i can't believe that just worked :O!
On July 30 2010 13:41 Repok wrote: Air will kill your sides if you are not active with your vikings. I had 1 BC on each side for safety's sake and it seemed to work ok, but Broodlords need to be taken out asap. That bigass air unit didn't attack me so I left it be.
This. If you don't kill the leviathan boss and let him spawn as much as he wants, then you won't deal with kerrigan anymore. At least that's how it went for me.
I finally got my Sarah Kerrigan pic today after about 5 frustrating hours with this mission! I wanted to share with you guys what worked for me!
1. Block out Air. 2. make 2nd bunker at left and right spots (and make more if u have marines waiting), make 2nd rax with reactor+ 2nd fax with tech lab. make that slow turret. 3. make only marines and tanks. position the tanks near the bunkers and the plateau with the artifact. (important: spread the tanks so they can cover your whole base so they can gib nydusses that spawn in your base instantly) 4. Make Banshees constantly (get the merc banshees asap) (you need 8-10 Banshees hotkeyed to kill the Nydusses without having to worry too much about hydras) 5.Upgrade vehicle armor/attack and marine attk. 6. Save often (save only when you think you did very well the last few sec/mins).
key to winning is spreading the tanks to both sides and constantly repairing bunkers with 4-5 scvs while instantly killing the nydus worms with your banshee grp.
i always tried saving the artifact for when kerrigan attacked me so i only had to deal with her, just let her attack a bunker and repair it and let the tanks to the work. if there are no nydus worms send your banshees to assist you with kerrigan. After getting to 97% a couple of times i managed to get to 100% with almost all my defenses intact.
Banshees arent needed if you position tanks well, they will oneshot nyduses as they pop up inside your base, the ones on the outside can just be left alone, tanks demolish them
On July 31 2010 05:46 eNbee wrote: woah, thor cannons stun kerrigan? That pretty much makes it easy mode, she was the one ruining everything with her lolstorms
Ditto
I couldn't stun her with specters so I assumed nothing could. I guess you need an upgrade for the cannons?
just do a pf/tank defense all you need is 8-10 tanks on each side with the psi emmiter and 10 scv's repairing
that should take care of everything except kerrigan. for kerrigan use marines and medivacs. load them up right as your cool down for artifact comes up, then wait for her to come out and use it, then go drop them on her and stim up and kill her before she gets to base
almost everythign will die but you can remake marines and medivacs by the time she comes out again. just keep doing this over and over and its easy
I did 5 bunkers with 6 marines at each choke along with 8 tanks and 2-3 turrets. I have the middle part with the artifact completely empty and put 4-5 thors up their so when kerrigan comes i can chain stun her in front of my wall. I use 12ish banshees to fly around the map and just snipe the nydus worms and don't use the artifact at all. its much more rewarding ^_^
How can people afford to have all the mercs? I feel like I did 90% of the +research missions and +money bonus missions, but still there are a lot of armory upgrades I could not afford, and I only have the tank mercs. :S
I found this strategy is the best (no air). Basically involves putting mass siege tanks with upgrades at the base of the cliff housing the Xel'Naga artifact. I was surprised how easy it was after struggling with it for a couple of days.
No air here too. Mass siege tanks, a few psi distruptors and some battlecruisers to yamato-snipe Kerrigan. Oh and some banshees to snipe the nydus worms but don't just send them on a suicide mission, worms are not that dangerous till they start popping ultralisks, take your time and avoid losing banshees.
mass tank/bunker/planetary fortress/turret/mind-control device.
stole about 60+ mutalisks and they instantly kill kerrigan at that number. then stealing a good 12-20broodlords made it impossible for enemies to get close to the bunkers/PF/siege tanks.
I used masses of Bunkers, Marines and Siege Tanks, plus Banshees to kill off Worms. Used the Artifact ability only when Kerrigan was showing up/had just wrecked 5 Bunkers and 10 Tanks. Started to fill the plateau around the Artifact with Bunkers, timed my Artifact so that I could use it one final time about 15 seconds before the end. Everything I had went down except for a Barracks on the plateau, which was about to get destroyed as well. Artifact was under attack, including Kerrigan. Down to 20% HP. Falling rapidly. Progress Bar hit 100%. Talk about a close one.
- brutal - no fliers - without planetary fortress ---------------- In the beginning 1. I immediately salvaged all bunks and took out the destroyable fences(useless since they aren't repairable) at the choke. 2. keep 1 starport with dual addon 3. have 2 fact with dual addon (one rallypointed to the left, one to the right) 4. have 4 rax with dual addon (2 to the left, 2 to the right) 5. Wall off the chokes with ebays. 6. Make sure to keep 1 supply depot opening at the chokes closest to the artifact.. The ones where kerrigan comes.. keep them closed until kerrigan comes.
From here on out 1. CONSTANTLY pump tanks/marine/medics/banshees 2. constantly pump scvs/mules 3. upgrade only mech/air/bio wep. (armor if u have extra minerals) 4. Group your banshees together need about 8-10 and fly around killing nyduses 5. Have about 5-8 scvs on each side on auto repair 6. DO NOT let walls break. 7. use the artifact killing thing BEFORE you start losing buidiings/units.. do not wait too long.. zerg will send units back faster than you can repair wall, make units and situate them properly 8. Should have about 8-10 tanks per side.
Killing Kerrigan 1. when they announce that she's coming.. make sure which side she is going to attack. 2. gather up ALL your marine and medic at the appropriate side and have them ready 3. seperate them in 3 groups (5 in the first, about 15 in second, and rest in 3rd) 4. This is where the supply depot comes in handy.. send out the first group BEFORE she gets to your choke to make her use her storm ability 5. send 2nd group + banshees while the storm is about to wear off 6. make sure to keep your eye on your banshees and micro.. do NOT lose them 7. Stim and send your 3rd group.. making sure kerrigan is in tank range. 8. With that huge 3rd group plus tanks plus banshees.. she will fall soon 9. With this method, i don't lose more than 1 or 2 tanks.. max
Some tips 1. make like 5 flame thrower turrets on the artifact platform. Sometimes a nydus will form there and the flame throwers will easily take care of it and lets you concentrate on other things 2. when nydus warning comes make sure to have your banshees ready to take out any nydus that form inside your base FIRST. 3. Do not lose banshees.. losing banshees will make it 1000x harder 4. Constantly save your game right as kerrigan is about to come.. so if you mismicro a storm.. you can just reload. 5. Save a artifact charge so you can use one after 95%.. I personally didnt need to use it with my method, but just in case.
I was stupid and got the MC tower. It really sucks lol. Don't get it if you want to beat it on brutal.
Still, I was able to beat it on hard. I found that near the end, when the charge is at 90% or so, start retreating all your units and defenses to the high ground around the artifact. This buys you more time and also reduces the number of possible openings.
Kill the merc rax, and mass siege tanks near the cliff, ignore nydus worms. after getting enough siege tanks mass marine and medics. when kerrigan comes activate the crystal, send your MNM's out and snipe her before she can touch your tanks
in the final stage, place your MNM forces near the artifiact to snipe the nydus worms that spawn there
I tried it ground at first but struggled majorly on hard. Finally I went back and did the neutralize the nydus option and did the air one to complete it for the first time.
I have since seen another strat that involves just massing a huge block of tanks on the low ground just below the relic plateau, static defenses on the plateau, and ignoring the nydus worms. I tried this against the ground version and it worked amazingly well.
So with that strat, the ground version is extremely easy, but if you defend at the choke and try to hunt nydusses, I'm not so sure air is harder.
I only beat it on hard with the nydus worms but this is how I did it...
-At the start I built a lot more scv's to oversaturate the minerals as well as an extra factory, starport with techreactors and an extra armory. I got level three on both vehicle and ship weapons upgrades first since with my research it increases attack speed by 15% -I massed seige tanks for a perimeter defense as well as placing psi-disrputors all over to slow the zerg -I massed banshees for my main army and sent them cloaked in squads of three to kill each nydus worm and then pulled them back to my base when the nydus worms were dead -I got like five or six science vessles and sent them around to repair my mech units as needed -I buit two planetary fortresses on either side of the artifact platform as well as putting four seige breakers and two psi disruptors right beside the artifact -I got like two more battle cruisers and Jackson's revenge and saved yomatto cannon's for whenever Kerrigan showed up and then I spammed them until she was dead.
Tried it at brutal for a while, made it to 99.6% before abandoning and finally doing it on hard. That was with air units activated.
The major problem is obviously the freaking broodlords since the AI is too stupid to go for the broodlord instead of focusing on his projectiles he throws. The second problem is dealing with Kerrigan.
Now, the way I was doing it is this one: Made about 6-7 flame turrets on each side, surrouding 2 bunkers (upgraded, 6 slots + top turret). I made 4 siege tanks per side. I massed vikings, had 5 on each side, and 6-8 in middle front (top platform). Finally, I tried to have a ball of marines/medics of at least 40 during the fight.
To deal with broodlords: Have 3 control groups of your vikings, one per side, and one for the middle. During the fight, you want to continually cycle through those groups to spot the broodlords fast enough before they break havok. While keeping the production of units, and reconstruction of defenses if needed. (You don't need to if you play correctly)
To deal with Kerrigan: That was the tricky part, to deal with her, you don't want to simply stim and attack, since she'll eventually do her AOE ability which basically kills all your units. So you just micro properly, by sending 4 lone units first (4 is the minimum needed for her to cast her AOE ability). Then send in your ball, hopefully she'll die without casting it again. If not, you can try retreating and keeping 4 units at front, but usually you just lose almost all of your army and just rebuild afterward.
The most tricky part is at 80% or so, because at that point you get Kerrigan + Broodlords, so you need to deal with all of that at the same time. For that, use your ability-queue for your vikings. (shift-click + attack broodlords, then shift-right-click for them to get back in position)
Now, I didn't quite succeed in brutal (99.6% like I said), but that's mostly because I gave up after 5 try. Pretty sure it's possible to do it that way. I tried this mission on brutal while doing my campaign on hard, because I wanted to see if there was a big difference. Turns out that the difference isn't that bad. I'll probably start another campaign however and do the nydus version, just to make it easier, I don't like retrying too much ;P
The reason I didn't mass tanks is because they weren't upgraded. Also, my vikings weren't upgraded. I use the ability of the artefact when the big flying monster appear, and when needed otherwise. (probably at the end when it gets too hectic).
I like to share my experience. It took me about 18 hours to complete this no joke. I killed off the nydus. So I defended air =(. This was really tough for me to snipe the brood lords. I had to save and load everytime, and eventually I memorized the broodlord spawn patterns after so many attempts.
What I did was. I blocked the 2 chokes with 2-3 planetary fortress and 2 PFs on the middle hill. (I read somewhere here that gave me that suggestion I forgot who) Use the 3 BCs they give you and send them behind the mineral line, it will deal with all the harassment broodlords and mutas for the rest of the mission.
It worked great. I didn't make a single bunker. I had about 3-4 tanks on left and right chokes and I massed vikings and scvs to repair. I also massed marines to deal with kerrigan, I just right click passed her and surround her, then continue making marines for the next wave, but I didn't do so on the 2nd to the last time she came.
My groups: 1 - bioball marines (both left and right side of chokes) for kerrigan 2 - left side viking team with science vessel 3 - right side viking team with science vessel 4 - left marine team 5 - right marine team
I barely managing to win with like one hit away from kerrigan to kill the artifact. I had to lift off my barracks and starport to block off the hill on top to stall time.
Played against zerg air (which is way harder after all I've read)
- I had the psi thing to slow zerg down on each side - Used mass M&M with Vikings/SV for anti air plus ~10-15 tanks - One Planetary Fortress on each side (which I had to rebuild quite a lot) plus one fortress next to the artefact - 5-6 bunkers on each side, 2-3 bunkers plus a lot of turrets near the artifact and 2 bunkers with 2 marines each in my mineral line (In case I spot some broodlords too late, so I don't lose 10-20 scv's very fast) - Barracks, bays and supply depots at my chokes to confuse zerg pathing - upgraded air and infantry fully, plus vehicle attack upgrades. - 5 Barracks, 2 Starports and 1 Factory all with tech-reactors
Crucial point for me was to have enough Vikings by the time the Leviathan attacks (~15 plus repairing SV's). Another problem in my previous attempts was that I did not have enough bunkers, you literally cannot have enough of them. Didn't need too many turrets that way, only close to the artefact. I tried various mech strategies, but I couldn't get them to work. Tanks are not so good against Kerrigan and I didn't have the thor-stun upgraded. I believe in my strategie the most important thing is bunkers>>>turrets and being quick with your Vikings.
It wasn't even close, still was at~150 supply and both chokes holding up.
PERFECT way to deal with kerrigan. Worked wonders for me.
Use 4 thors to continuously barrage her. It actually stuns her, believe it or not. A little strike team of 4 thors and 3 bcs was all I used to kill her, every time she came.
I had some problems with this one until I found 1 of the strats used in that youtube video, which very few seem to use. Seriously, once I used that guys strategy this mission turned out to be so easy you'd just sit around do nothing for half of it because you didn't need to.
Destroy the merc compound, mass tank out of 2-3 factories and put them all together below the cliff to the artifact in your base. Make sure you upgrade their weapon damage immediately!
Once you've done this the tanks will seriously kill everything from the nydus worms the entire mission without you ever needing to go out and destroy any of them, so air forces like banshees are completely uneccessary.
If you have the psi disrupters its a good idea to put em a bit everywhere and it'll make the tanks jobs even easier.
Finally, mass marines and medics out of some raxes, use the Nova when kerrigan is close and use them to wipe her out instantly without losing any tanks.
You can put out some PF's etc too if you like, but really, tanks, marines and medics are all you need.
Thumbs up with the youtube video since when i played merch tanks got FOCUSED by kerrigan with her 1 hit ko move and just rapes your whole defence, since ive completed it i would say use a group of marines (alot) only and just stim and a left click her after u cast nova and save nova for her only. and defend somehow when shes not pushing of your choice.
Kill the merc rax, and mass siege tanks near the cliff, ignore nydus worms. after getting enough siege tanks mass marine and medics. when kerrigan comes activate the crystal, send your MNM's out and snipe her before she can touch your tanks
in the final stage, place your MNM forces near the artifiact to snipe the nydus worms that spawn there
and rebuild depots on the right hand side.
It's so easy it's like a TD game
thanks, this worked for me no problem. I had the towers that shoot flames for a little extra help but I don't think I really needed them. All you need are the tanks and marine/medic
EPT
