Electromagnetic interference is wreaking havoc on your communications. Giving orders to your army can prove costly, so make every action count. Intel is limited and vision is obscued, and even the simplest task could take a while to complete. Get through it and save the planet.
Map: The Vermillion Problem
Micro Transactions Giving commands to your units costs resources based on the unit's cost. Darkness Previously explored areas remain blacked out on the minimap while outside of player vision. Time Warp Enemy Time Warps are periodically deployed throughout the map.
To give an idea: giving any command to a worker, including making a building, cancelling, and patrolling, costs 2 minerals. A Marine costs 1 mineral to micro; a Hydralisk costs 2 minerals and 2 gas to micro, and a Dark Archon costs 4 minerals and 4 gas to micro. Given that, I think a good estimate of micro cost would be the amount of resources dropped when killed under Kerrigan's Assimilation Aura, divided by 10. Even hero units like the Hyperion and Kerrigan cost resources to micro. Giving commands to workers, making units, and changing building rally points costs resources. Spreading creep using tumors requires 1 mineral. Orbital Strikes cost 10 minerals per shot. Auto attack does not cost minerals, so static defense should not cost anything to work. The Xenon Crystals are NOT visible through the darkness, including the minimap. This is the first mutation for The Vermillion Problem. Micro Transactions is a new mutator, whereas Darkness and Time Warp are both old mutators.
Unlike the last 5 or so mutators, in which I was able to do it first try, this one took me 3. Though it might have been simply me playing bad more than it was the mutation itself.
I did it with Kerrigan and an Artanis ally. I thought it would be free to use her, since the description says "based on the unit's cost" but unfortunately she's hella expensive, at 5/5 per command. So what I did when she spawned was assimilation aura + clean the first wave, then just a-move command her into the expansion zone and let her solo everything with pure attack and minimal commands. I oversaturated my main and made a nydus as my first lair building, then nydus transferred a ton of drones and build another nydus in my natural. Then I just rallied both hatcheries to their respective nyduses and used kerrigan to search for crystals and unleashed my ling ultra queen army whenever I needed to. (Though it was expensive to put them back in the nydus.) I had a bunch of drones in the nyduses too so I could easily start gathering crystals when I found them. Later on the cost isn't so bad because the number of enemies guarding platforms or in attack waves on this map are pretty small, so I didn't have to remake my army very much. The real trouble later on was in finding crystals when they got scarce, since you don't see them on the mini map. Maybe knowing the map well helps, but ever since mutations started I almost never played regular maps, so I might have played this map a whole of 3 times before this mutation came about.
I tried Swann. Unfortunately when you tell your army to get picked up by the herc, it's a command on each unit, not just the herc alone. (If you tell the herc to pick them up individually, you still have to pay 3/3 per pickup so you might as well pick up the normal way.) I got crushed, though, when in the early game I prematurely dropped my tank/thor army on a platform, lost all my hercs to scourge, got my army blinding clouded and crushed by aberrations. Then it just went out of control from there. But I think he's worth trying again.
My thinking is that the best thing to do this mission is play Vorazun, use an oracle to move around and find locations, then drop a dark pylon and call your whole army with it, without ever commanding your army. I'll try that later on.
It's interesting spin off on that good video. But it's rather unenjoyable mutation on not fun map.
The most important is to know where crystals spawn. The cost is of micro is important early. But since they didn't buff enemy units in any way, your midgame army should crush them and you can spend all money on amoving if you want.
The first 8 crystals always spawn at the same location. If your ally left, controlling his units do not cost your money. Units in "follow" order do not cost additional money if you control only the leading unit. Units require lest micro but F2A cost less money, such as Zagara's swarm, Carrier and Tempest. The units inside a transport do not cost money, such as Nydus and Hercules. If you have no money at all, you can still order your army at will.
ps: I wonder if blizzard can make a mutation that "micro units do not cost money, but every attack cost money."
On August 23 2016 02:32 Rehio wrote: I don't even have trouble with the money or killing the enemy, I just can't find the damn crystals in the fog.
Seriously, At first glance I thought the micro transactions mutator was gonna be the main focus, but its the damned blacked out map that is terrible. You can't see where crystals are, or where the enemy attacks are coming from. This is one of those do it once and not play it again mutations.
Not seeing crystals on the map is really ridiculous.. even playing raynor and spamming OC sometime can't help!! Kerrigan however helps a lot and can easily solo the map early on, as long as the other player defends the main.
Problem is I have died for lack of crystals at least 5 or six games until now!!
Not the hardest mutation, but it's certainly the stupidest. Seriously, what possessed the devs to think this would ever be a good idea? Blizzard humor is fine when it's off to the side so you can exhale slightly harder than normal then go about your business. I never thought I'd see this actually happen (0:48):
Anyway, beat it with Zagara. Just rally your banes and hatches to her and attack move around. Better than Kerrigan IMO even though she costs 10/5 instead of 5/5 each because you have to micro Zagara less and her units don't bankrupt you if you do need to micro them.
Yeah, what's killing me in this map is the darkness. Every loss I've had was from just not being able to find crystals fast enough. And every win was because I was, I guess, lucky enough to find them. Maybe I need to spread things like overlords or observers to places that I've cleared more in case they pop up or something. But I guess I just suck at searching for them, or remembering where I've searched (since you can't tell from the minimap where you've been).
Also, that awkward moment when you can't build a worker at the beginning because you split your workers.
Crystals always spawn in the same order clockwise around the map. stupidly easy and boring. this is my least favorite mission anyway
ignoring the first 2 that spawn in your base the first one spawns right outside the top left enemy raised ground and then clockwise from there if you're having trouble with the darkness. basically you should finish sometime on the right side/bottom of the map
My best try was Zagara + Kerrigan. They can both roam with the army-follow trick, so finding crystals is easier, since they can split up. And you can nydus back for defense (some static is advised anyway).
Problem is we still can't find all those damnd f****** crystals in time !!
I have to echo the sentiment that this is a tedious one. I lost a lot of my first few due to not knowing where the crystals spawn. Another key part of the mission is that you have to be able to defend your bases and push/collect crystals.
Kerrigan: Kerrigan is extremely cheap to move at 5/5 for her power and can solo a lot of the mission. Nydus Worms also help her with mobility and vision. And Ultras are also relatively efficient.
Zagara: Zagara costs 10/5 to move but the Hydras and Roaches are free to move for some reason. Bile Launchers are also effective here at defending both your bases while Zagara is on the map.
Abathur; Rushing to Mutalisks seems like a solid strategy. Mutalisks are mobile, cheap to move, and powerful. Roaches cost 2/2 here to move for some reason even though they cost only minerals. 100 Biomass Mutalisks are probably better than Leviathans even though Leviathans cost 1/0 to move because Mutalisks self-heal.
Karax: Karax does poorly at pushing, but is excellent at base defense owing to his Spear. His two viable compositions on this map include Zealot/Colossi and Immortal depending on the types of waves you're facing. It helps a lot here if you have a competent partner.
Vorazun: Strong units all around and can clear the initial bases minus the few air units with ease.
Raynor: Mass orbitals allows you to go Marine/Medic and do decently well since Marines only cost 2/0 to move. Note that the Hyperion costs 1/0 to move even though Banshees from the calldown cost 3/3.
Artanis: Poor at clearing the expansions; you basically have to use up your ultimate ability. Archons are strong for their movement cost of 4/4.
Swann: Extremely slow to ramp up and clear the expansions. The extra gas is really helpful though if you can get to it. Definitely use the extra duration mastery for the Bots.
Managed it with a lovely fellow this morning, finally. We'd cleaned out the map by the 10th crystal gathered, but we just couldn't figure out where the others would spawn. Came down to seconds left a couple of times.
Kerrigan roaming with Nyduses while Karax defends is an amazing combination.
Done at last with Kerrigan, with a good karax ally, who was very good at remembering/guessing where the crystal should spawn.
We went for fast expo, then I went alone with kerrigan and some support of his, until I got full upgraded ultralisks. For antiair, his calldowns were more than enough. With his good defense, I did not even needed nydus so much, but was useful even just for getting drones immediately to the new found crystals.
Seems like Karax and Kerrigan is the theme of the last few posts. I'll have to give it a shot with Karax as I only beat it on Hard, but haven't tried on Brutal yet as my skill level is not there. I assumed people would insta-leave if they got a Karax ally since he doesn't make units to push those offensive bases as well.
looks like I was wrong about them always spawning in the same clockwise pattern. on my 4th time doing it they alternated left and right which I had never seen before. I have absolutely no problem doing this with reynor though just marines and medics with 4 OCs on 2 bases overloads you with minerals as long as you dont spam a bunch of move commands
Just crushed it first try with Zagara and a Vorazun ally using the tips provided here. Rallied my army to Zagara and just rolled through the map in clockwise rotation clearing everything out while defending with bile launchers (bile launchers + vorazun's vortex is soooo fucking good btw). I also left zerglings behind as we worked our way through the map to leave vision in the areas we already cleared so we could find crystals that spawned behind us.
I actually like the maps where they take away our vision of previously revealed areas so you don't know where the attack is coming from or where bonus objectives are. I don't like that it was combo'd with the micro transaction idea though. I think this would have been really fun if they actually randomized the spawning locations of the crystals a bit (with some limitations preventing them from being too deep behind enemy lines early on) and made the focus of the map about scrambling to find them in the darkness rather than taxing the action economy. Maybe combo with something that limits the use of air units so overlords or fast moving air units can't trivialize the searching aspect.