Mod Edit: I'm going to use this thread as the TLHC thread for this mission since there's already a lot of discussion going on here!
Please use this thread to discuss the nineteenth and final level of the LotV campaign, "Salvation". This is the third return to Aiur mission. Clearly mark spoilers using the spoiler tag. Plot events that occurred in the prologue or Missions 1-18 do not need to be spoilered.
Feel free to use this thread to ask any simple questions you might have about the mission, or for tips/help/advice on completing the mission.
Original post: So has anyone already beat the final mission on brutal? I can get to only 97.5% with Destroyer Void Rays but that's not enough. Any ideas how this mission in supposed to be beatable?
I did mass taldarim voidrays. But it took me several tries, so there must be easier way. It's the only hard mission. I wish the rest of campaing was this hard. The building placement is important, you can distract and slow down last push a lot by just building pylons/cybernetic cores/etc. But it's close. So there is probably better way.
standard voidrays, mass upgrades, you can support 4 stargates with the 2 bases, dumping minerals into static defense. don´t let anything touch your keystone before the final battle, i lost on my first attempt @ 99,7% because some random muta fly-by took about 1/4 of it´s hp earlier on :/
massed carriers will hold just fine up until the last final surge at like 97%. But since ur carriers will never die you will have shitloads of resources left to make the mightest cannon/battery/monument wall the world has ever seen.
i get mass destroyer void rays and always getting killed at 98-99,5%, berserkers, immortals dragoners and so on kills the key....i walled of the whole base with cannons and pylons and get rekt, some tips? early game?
With a maxed out army of carriers / void rays you'll dominate the air battle, the only real threat from here is the immortals in the final push that will ignore your air units and go for the keystone, so you just need the biggest wall you can afford. Make sure you take your nexus ASAP. Mix layers of attacking buildings and gateways / shield batteries since this messes with the ai a bit.
Honestly I was a little let down, beat this on my first try, found the WoL final mission a lot harder and a lot of the earlier missions were harder and more fun.
already made it now =D, made mass carriers and walled of at the 2nd nexus base with mass cannons / pylons, the same at the orange base in the south. had a big window at the end, the keystone took nearly no damage
If you're using void rays and have trouble with the immortal zealots killing the keystone: 1. build a mothership 2. save up 200 energy 3. Around 96%, when a ton of immortal zealots attack, spam vortex 4 times in a row 4. ??? 5. ez win
Had gate units while building to 190/200 destroyer rays. Used the remainder limit for emergency zealot. Found that solar passive useful that prevents units from dying for 5 sec. That, plus rescurrecting zealot gives some precious seconds. Batteries, gates and pylons near ramps, and at couple occasions splitting the void rays to equal sized groups helped beat this one. Around 98% you're pretty much forced to retreat to main with evertything and defend 'til 100%. I actually had to warp zealots til last microsecond to help block the keystone from masses of melee to prevent it from being wrecked. I would suggest some other strat tho...with the rays had to take around 40 reloads to beat 91%->100%
Go for Corsairs + Dark Templars and use all of your excess minerals to build canons. Doing it this way was really ridiculously easy. The corsairs disable all of the enemy's attacks while your DTs completly massacre everything. I did it like this:
1. Fast expand 2. Get all the gasses (Have the Spear of Adun abilitty that allows for automatic gas extraction) 3. Use Spear of Adun abilitties to fend off initial waves 4. Start upgrades 5. Build DTs and Corsairs. Use these to move around and defend where necessary 6. Put mass canons + shield batteries at the lower right attack path 7. When your have excess minerals, use it to build canons + shield batteries at top left and bottom left.
Like I said before, this was totally OP. None of the nexuses fell.
So I had a lot of difficult with this until I sat down and work out what units/abilities would be most useful. Here are some of the more useful things:
Chrono surge is super good. Use it to spam out upgrades before it gets disabled.
Orbital Assimilator is useful to get more gas (and boy, you'll need it).
Guardian Shell really really useful for my strategy since it relies on maintaining arbiters and this keeps them alive
Solar Bombardment is great for cleaning up Golden Armada forces
Arbiters are fucking amazing. Get one at every entrance asap while you build up an army. Add more when your economy is online. Stasis field is an amazing stall; use it against Armada attacks, detection units (nerazim especially) and pretty much any time you can. Great for stalling out the end.
Corsairs are also fucking amazing. Get +3 air weaps and they wreck shit. Disruption web is so amazing at keeping stuff alive and is super underrated.
Energizers are really useful.
Colossus. AoE OP.
Tempests. Great once you're army is established, long range siege is really useful against Guardians etc.
Defenses aren't as essential as you might think. Fortifying the purifier side is worth it since they can almost take care of themselves. The other sides need bare-bones defenses if you keep your army near.
For what it's worth, I got all the achievements for this level on Brutal with this strategy.
On November 11 2015 23:45 fezvez wrote: Dark Archon are OP as fuck. I mean, I had 200/200. And probably an additional 150/150 in mind controlled carrier/tempest/colossus toward the end.
On November 11 2015 23:45 fezvez wrote: Dark Archon are OP as fuck. I mean, I had 200/200. And probably an additional 150/150 in mind controlled carrier/tempest/colossus toward the end.
I thought about that as a strategy (similar to WoL where you mind control mutalisks/air units to victory) but I couldn't get DA's to work in Brutal. Problem being they cost so much gas that its difficult to hold out against the early waves while you're building up your DA flock.
I beat it by starting off with a few Dark Archons (Since mind controlled units doesn't take up supply it's good to get them early, try to take the enemy protoss air units) Then i just went into mass carrier. For the last 5% i had like 10 sentries on the highground forcefielding the ramps to buy time. I'm sure there's a more simple way to complete it though...
On November 11 2015 23:45 fezvez wrote: Dark Archon are OP as fuck. I mean, I had 200/200. And probably an additional 150/150 in mind controlled carrier/tempest/colossus toward the end.
I thought about that as a strategy (similar to WoL where you mind control mutalisks/air units to victory) but I couldn't get DA's to work in Brutal. Problem being they cost so much gas that its difficult to hold out against the early waves while you're building up your DA flock.
If you take the "Extractor passively get gas" then you easily build a shit ton of gas in the early game (when you spend all your minerals chrono boosting probes anyways)
DA suck a bit because they can't mind control ultralisks, so you have to place them where Protoss attacks hit. Basically, I have steamrolled every map where I would use them. This map included
I play on brutal and up to this mission it was a good difficulty. had to reload here and there but until this everything was fine. But this mission seems totally undoable for me:
First try: In the Solar Thingy i had Reinforcement Pylon, Temporal Field, Warp Stargates/Warp Robo, Mass Recall, Guardian Shell and Time Stop. Since that was the configuration that worked best in the missions before. Nexus first of course, then i tried walling off asap and tried massing carrier. I got overrun when the first double pronged attack comes (around 30% charged).
Second try: Swapped the solar thingy to: Chrono Surge, Temporal Field, Auto-Geysiers, Mass Recall, Guardian Shell and Solar Bombardement. Nexus first again then all the minerals into DTs (used the Blood Hunters) and Corsair. This Unit Mix is really great, it beats everything but is way to slow. Managed to get to 65% charge, when there was just to much shit on the screen to kill.
I do not like this kind of mission.. i think its stupid and i just want to get it over with. I think i'll wait for a youtube howTo.
So I had a lot of difficult with this until I sat down and work out what units/abilities would be most useful. Here are some of the more useful things:
Chrono surge is super good. Use it to spam out upgrades before it gets disabled.
Orbital Assimilator is useful to get more gas (and boy, you'll need it).
Guardian Shell really really useful for my strategy since it relies on maintaining arbiters and this keeps them alive
Solar Bombardment is great for cleaning up Golden Armada forces
Arbiters are fucking amazing. Get one at every entrance asap while you build up an army. Add more when your economy is online. Stasis field is an amazing stall; use it against Armada attacks, detection units (nerazim especially) and pretty much any time you can. Great for stalling out the end.
Corsairs are also fucking amazing. Get +3 air weaps and they wreck shit. Disruption web is so amazing at keeping stuff alive and is super underrated.
Energizers are really useful.
Colossus. AoE OP.
Tempests. Great once you're army is established, long range siege is really useful against Guardians etc.
Defenses aren't as essential as you might think. Fortifying the purifier side is worth it since they can almost take care of themselves. The other sides need bare-bones defenses if you keep your army near.
For what it's worth, I got all the achievements for this level on Brutal with this strategy.
THANK YOU.
I spent many hours trying to beat brutal with mass void ray and never got past 97%. Then I did it your way and it wasn't too bad. Just had to constantly save in case I screwed up micro and let my arbiters die.
So I had a lot of difficult with this until I sat down and work out what units/abilities would be most useful. Here are some of the more useful things:
Chrono surge is super good. Use it to spam out upgrades before it gets disabled.
Orbital Assimilator is useful to get more gas (and boy, you'll need it).
Guardian Shell really really useful for my strategy since it relies on maintaining arbiters and this keeps them alive
Solar Bombardment is great for cleaning up Golden Armada forces
Arbiters are fucking amazing. Get one at every entrance asap while you build up an army. Add more when your economy is online. Stasis field is an amazing stall; use it against Armada attacks, detection units (nerazim especially) and pretty much any time you can. Great for stalling out the end.
Corsairs are also fucking amazing. Get +3 air weaps and they wreck shit. Disruption web is so amazing at keeping stuff alive and is super underrated.
Energizers are really useful.
Colossus. AoE OP.
Tempests. Great once you're army is established, long range siege is really useful against Guardians etc.
Defenses aren't as essential as you might think. Fortifying the purifier side is worth it since they can almost take care of themselves. The other sides need bare-bones defenses if you keep your army near.
For what it's worth, I got all the achievements for this level on Brutal with this strategy.
THANK YOU.
I spent many hours trying to beat brutal with mass void ray and never got past 97%. Then I did it your way and it wasn't too bad. Just had to constantly save in case I screwed up micro and let my arbiters die.
not exactly sure what do you use to kill shit if ur not massing voids and using arbiters?
hmm, arbiters sounds like a good idea. I just massed up carriers n got a few voids in @ the end, then i just split up my forces n roflstomped everything. I had to reload the ending a few times because the damn immortals kept recking the keystone, but i just had to focus fire them all down n win. carriers with the heal + VR's really roll over everything though.
On November 12 2015 08:03 Tankz123 wrote: hmm, arbiters sounds like a good idea. I just massed up carriers n got a few voids in @ the end, then i just split up my forces n roflstomped everything. I had to reload the ending a few times because the damn immortals kept recking the keystone, but i just had to focus fire them all down n win. carriers with the heal + VR's really roll over everything though.
how do you survive early? i was only successful with vrs lol, tried healing carriers, but early part was so shit they couldnt kill shit even if i boosted upgrades
Damn corsairs+DTs are so freakin easy on brutal! :D I was just a-moving them where the enemies were attacking and building random walls of gateways, shield batteries and cannons in the meantime. Lost only one friendly nexus because I was careless.
On November 12 2015 08:37 FanaticCZ wrote: Damn corsairs+DTs are so freakin easy on brutal! :D I was just a-moving them where the enemies were attacking and building random walls of gateways, shield batteries and cannons in the meantime. Lost only one friendly nexus because I was careless.
Edit: got the final 00.01% by pulling probes to distract the enemy, my army was 90% jumping DTs, Corsairs and cannons with a few filler zealots here and there.
5-8 healer carriers+mass maxed out void ray, throw away all your probes and make mass gateway/nexus/cannon on entire map- you should have lots of minerals left
Make Nexus your first thign to build w/o any prob ebuliding, hold out intiial 3-4 waves with your reglar, get 4 stargate asap.
Use the max chrono trait on your nexus asap to get the probe count up.
I retreated every single air into the center of map when the wave struck but the immortal/zealot wave didn't even reach the cetner until it hit 99% because of how much building was blocking their advance.
On November 11 2015 22:21 Merchz wrote: Go for Corsairs + Dark Templars and use all of your excess minerals to build canons. Doing it this way was really ridiculously easy. The corsairs disable all of the enemy's attacks while your DTs completly massacre everything. I did it like this:
1. Fast expand 2. Get all the gasses (Have the Spear of Adun abilitty that allows for automatic gas extraction) 3. Use Spear of Adun abilitties to fend off initial waves 4. Start upgrades 5. Build DTs and Corsairs. Use these to move around and defend where necessary 6. Put mass canons + shield batteries at the lower right attack path 7. When your have excess minerals, use it to build canons + shield batteries at top left and bottom left.
Like I said before, this was totally OP. None of the nexuses fell.
On November 12 2015 08:37 FanaticCZ wrote: Damn corsairs+DTs are so freakin easy on brutal! :D I was just a-moving them where the enemies were attacking and building random walls of gateways, shield batteries and cannons in the meantime. Lost only one friendly nexus because I was careless.
which upgrades/abilities?
DT & Corsairs make this really easy. I would just add the ability that allows your units to fend off death for 5 seconds when they are critical, forgot what it was called. Also..make sure you have 20+ corsairs at all times w/ +3 air weapon upgrade ASAP.
Blood Reavers, Corsairs, Arbiters, Tal'darim Immortals, even a mothership if you can get it. The AI doesn't know how to react to disruption web and will usually bottle itself up trying to get around it. Dump minerals into tons of static defense on the left and right sides, and position your army at the middle. Solar Beam (or whatever it's called) if timed right can destroy the first couple golden armada waves.
I did this mission on brutal on my second try massing carriers, nailing all the achievements too. Here's a quick rundown of the strat I used:
Relevant upgrades:
Spear of Adun Tier 1 - Chrono boost Tier 2 - Lasers Tier 3 - Automated gas Tier 4 - Mass recall Tier 5 - Mechanical healing Tier 6 - Time stop
Units - Zealots - reviving zealots Stalkers - dragoons Immortals - normal immortals Carriers - healing carriers
1.) Make 2 probes off the bat, send the first one to your natural and take it. Continuously make probes from your first nexus and plant those 4 assimilators down when you have minerals to do so without interrupting probe production.
2.) Your first 75 energy goes into a chronoboost on the natural to pump out a dozen more probes or so. At this point you should be broke.
3.) Start a fleet beacon, then drop 3 more stargates as income allows. Spam carriers out of them when you can. Ramp up to max mineral saturation slowly, could maybe stay with 2 probes per patch.
4.) During this macro period, you should just be a-moving the initial units you started with to the lanes that are being attacked. Don't worry if you lose a few (or all) of them, they're just to tide you over until carriers.
5.) Second 75 energy to chronoboost out two carriers as soon as fleet beacon is done. You'll start roaming with this force. Start air attack upgrade asap.
6.) During the mid-game, use time stop and lasers to help you when the mass attacks are coming. Normal attacks are easily held off by carrier dps and allies tanking.
7.) Try to use a chronoboost on air attack upgrades since you need to work on air armor too. You can make another cybernetics if you'd like, but I recall that by the time I had minerals to spare, I was almost done with air upgrades anyway. Otherwise, spend all your energy on lasers. Shield upgrades are well, they're available to get, but I wouldn't be too concerned about it because most of the damage will be on armor anyway.
8.) Once you get 12 carriers, split them into two groups of 6 and assign newly minted ones to a third group. These should be generally static defenses - you'll want them to be a little ahead of your allies to soak damage if possible (they heal really fast - about the most micro you need to do is pull an injured carrier back to let it heal up in like 15 seconds. They have such a long range that it'll probably be attacking the whole time too.)
9.) During the mid-game, just keep carrier production up, try to distribute new ones fairly into the three groups, and not lose too many carriers during engagements. As your minerals start stockpiling, feel free to mass some cannons around where your allies are holding position. I only bothered to cannon up the right side since the other sides were so full of stuff.
10.) As you get into the late game, if you've stockpiled around 5k+ minerals, just suicide all but two of your probes so you can end up with 11 carriers per side. Your last two probes can just build stuff - defensive cannons, or to be more useful, just ring the keystone with pylons, cannons, and gateways.
Reading this thread during work I thought this was going to be tough, but noob mass carrier strat worked out. I guess if you get overwhelmed at one base you can just pull back and defend the keystone, but I was able to nab both achievements (one is damaging a bunch of ships with your laser, other is keeping all nexuses up), without too much trouble. Good luck!
just finished on brutal using the DT/Corsair method. was pretty straightforward. just my extra 2 cents
1. attack upgrades for DT and corsair are both pretty good. I used whirlwind DTs.
2. dunno about production but i used 3 starports. i started emphasizing corsairs more and more after 50%, effectively going corsair/cannon/arbiter.
3. you only need ~2 arbiters per base I feel until 80% so long as you dont lose them. I mixed them in a bit after that (I think I had 12 at the end?) starting around then in order to chain disrupt at the end.
4. cannons everywhere. if i was struggling, since i kept my self at or near 0 gas, i just resolved that i needed more cannons
5. finally, maybe it seems obvious, but just try to be good about disrupting optimally to maximize damage. usually when i reset it was because i disrupted too many units and wasn't killing enough
On November 12 2015 16:07 Phael wrote: I did this mission on brutal on my second try massing carriers, nailing all the achievements too. Here's a quick rundown of the strat I used:
Relevant upgrades:
Spear of Adun Tier 1 - Chrono boost Tier 2 - Lasers Tier 3 - Automated gas Tier 4 - Mass recall Tier 5 - Mechanical healing Tier 6 - Time stop
Units - Zealots - reviving zealots Stalkers - dragoons Immortals - normal immortals Carriers - healing carriers
1.) Make 2 probes off the bat, send the first one to your natural and take it. Continuously make probes from your first nexus and plant those 4 assimilators down when you have minerals to do so without interrupting probe production.
2.) Your first 75 energy goes into a chronoboost on the natural to pump out a dozen more probes or so. At this point you should be broke.
3.) Start a fleet beacon, then drop 3 more stargates as income allows. Spam carriers out of them when you can. Ramp up to max mineral saturation slowly, could maybe stay with 2 probes per patch.
4.) During this macro period, you should just be a-moving the initial units you started with to the lanes that are being attacked. Don't worry if you lose a few (or all) of them, they're just to tide you over until carriers.
5.) Second 75 energy to chronoboost out two carriers as soon as fleet beacon is done. You'll start roaming with this force. Start air attack upgrade asap.
6.) During the mid-game, use time stop and lasers to help you when the mass attacks are coming. Normal attacks are easily held off by carrier dps and allies tanking.
7.) Try to use a chronoboost on air attack upgrades since you need to work on air armor too. You can make another cybernetics if you'd like, but I recall that by the time I had minerals to spare, I was almost done with air upgrades anyway. Otherwise, spend all your energy on lasers. Shield upgrades are well, they're available to get, but I wouldn't be too concerned about it because most of the damage will be on armor anyway.
8.) Once you get 12 carriers, split them into two groups of 6 and assign newly minted ones to a third group. These should be generally static defenses - you'll want them to be a little ahead of your allies to soak damage if possible (they heal really fast - about the most micro you need to do is pull an injured carrier back to let it heal up in like 15 seconds. They have such a long range that it'll probably be attacking the whole time too.)
9.) During the mid-game, just keep carrier production up, try to distribute new ones fairly into the three groups, and not lose too many carriers during engagements. As your minerals start stockpiling, feel free to mass some cannons around where your allies are holding position. I only bothered to cannon up the right side since the other sides were so full of stuff.
10.) As you get into the late game, if you've stockpiled around 5k+ minerals, just suicide all but two of your probes so you can end up with 11 carriers per side. Your last two probes can just build stuff - defensive cannons, or to be more useful, just ring the keystone with pylons, cannons, and gateways.
Reading this thread during work I thought this was going to be tough, but noob mass carrier strat worked out. I guess if you get overwhelmed at one base you can just pull back and defend the keystone, but I was able to nab both achievements (one is damaging a bunch of ships with your laser, other is keeping all nexuses up), without too much trouble. Good luck!
This strat did it for me.. though i lost two of the three nexi, but whatever
the cossair DT method worked wonders for me, tried it after 2 failed tries and i didn't even lose an allied nexus, the web thingie of the cossairs is crazy op
On November 12 2015 08:37 FanaticCZ wrote: Damn corsairs+DTs are so freakin easy on brutal! :D I was just a-moving them where the enemies were attacking and building random walls of gateways, shield batteries and cannons in the meantime. Lost only one friendly nexus because I was careless.
which upgrades/abilities?
The respawning DTs and Corsairs. I had the time stop so that I could stop enemies if there were attacks on all three sides. The three solar lance strikes and shield boost. Maybe even that thing that makes your units invulnerable for 5seconds upon dying. Really EZ.
On November 12 2015 08:03 Tankz123 wrote: hmm, arbiters sounds like a good idea. I just massed up carriers n got a few voids in @ the end, then i just split up my forces n roflstomped everything. I had to reload the ending a few times because the damn immortals kept recking the keystone, but i just had to focus fire them all down n win. carriers with the heal + VR's really roll over everything though.
how do you survive early? i was only successful with vrs lol, tried healing carriers, but early part was so shit they couldnt kill shit even if i boosted upgrades
DT's and canons/the big canon thing till a sizeable carrier fleet gets up.
I beat it by going mass tal darim void ray and throwing up as many buildings around the keystone as possible. They were tearing into my elite team of nexus and couldn't even get close; my army however, was torn to shreds at that point anyways.
Got frustrated about 20 tries in on brutal with each ending at 97%-99% doing different builds so i dropped it down to hard.. i felt like was on casual mode and almost fell asleep beating it with all nexas's up and 2 of the heroes still alive.
Beat it on brutal keeping all 3 Nexi alive. I could have gone another few minutes with it - and still at 200 supply after the last push.
Its really easy and keeping all 3 allies alive helps a great deal, you need the speed buff pylons, vespene gas gain and time freeze (rest gets shut down early anyway)
Unit wise, just make the tal darim voidrays with 3-3-3. Placing pylons everywhere, so they can fly around and help your allies quickly. You will lose very few units this way, and have enough to place 30 cannons at the end.
The goal is to lose as little as possible (which shouldnt be an issue with voidrays).
On November 12 2015 23:22 weikor wrote: Beat it on brutal keeping all 3 Nexi alive. I could have gone another few minutes with it - and still at 200 supply after the last push.
Its really easy and keeping all 3 allies alive helps a great deal, you need the speed buff pylons, vespene gas gain and time freeze (rest gets shut down early anyway)
Unit wise, just make the tal darim voidrays with 3-3-3. Placing pylons everywhere, so they can fly around and help your allies quickly. You will lose very few units this way, and have enough to place 30 cannons at the end.
The goal is to lose as little as possible (which shouldnt be an issue with voidrays).
mind sharing replay if you have ? keeping 3 nexus with vodrays seems a bit too hard lol
I used the collosi on basically every mission that wasn't a defense mission. For the defense mission I went void rays and carriers. I mean I'm a protoss after all
The answer is to go Corsair and those immortals that are like mortars, I think they're the Tal'Darim immos. Basically fast nexus into 3 robo 3 stargate. The corsair are silly broken in that they prevent other units to even fire. So eventually you will simply need 3 armies composing of about 10 corsair and 10 immos each. Also use the pylon bonus from the spear of adun. Put some pylons up at the ramp, later add canons. The pylons give you a movement and firing speed bonus. I also used the 50 energy laser and fenix calldown. Fenix usually used with the robotics army on the right. The corsair basically do all the hard work, they block the enemy from firing once they reach teh ramp. Whenever a big fleet approaches you just take all your corsair and snipe it down quickly. I only realised this in the final mission of the campaign, but Corsair are basically the best unit ever and should be used in every mission when possible.5-6 corsair and your army won't ever take any damage. It's not even an energy spell but a time one on the corsair.
This is actually super easy. Just get taldarime void rays and hover from vorazune to the taldarime with the blood shard vrs. you need a mother ship as well. The only thing i lost in this mission was alarack and i think hes supposed to die. he just runs out like a fucking barbarian. kept all nexi: i can try to get replay. as for strat: -mass blood shard vrs 3/3/3 -get mother ship -the preservers can hold their own side if you put 4 long range cannons and keep replacing regular ones without any help until the end. -leave mother ship on the top right side of vorazunes side and use vrs to save taldarime -if you need extra help for vorazune you can split vrs or just bring them all and go back. -4 sgs is all you need P.S. i didnt even have like any cannons near the keystone either and if they are killing it just blackhole it with the mother ship
On November 13 2015 05:38 Toph Bae Kerrigan wrote: This is actually super easy. Just get taldarime void rays and hover from vorazune to the taldarime with the blood shard vrs. you need a mother ship as well. The only thing i lost in this mission was alarack and i think hes supposed to die. he just runs out like a fucking barbarian. kept all nexi: i can try to get replay. as for strat: -mass blood shard vrs 3/3/3 -get mother ship -the preservers can hold their own side if you put 4 long range cannons and keep replacing regular ones without any help until the end. -leave mother ship on the top right side of vorazunes side and use vrs to save taldarime -if you need extra help for vorazune you can split vrs or just bring them all and go back. -4 sgs is all you need P.S. i didnt even have like any cannons near the keystone either and if they are killing it just blackhole it with the mother ship
I just used Nal'zarim Void rays, reinforced each base, Builds lots of support for each base. When you max out and are holding just fine, build MASSIVE cannons everywhere. A nexus in a couple places helps hold the line (damage absorber).
When the final wave comes I find that the north west side (Nal'zarim or w/e the protoss chick) needs the most support so send your entire fleet that way, thin about the forces then retreat to high ground. The Protoss Engineer seems to hold pretty well so just retreat back to the artifact once air units start to attack it. Thats How i beat it on Brutal.
On November 13 2015 05:38 Toph Bae Kerrigan wrote: This is actually super easy. Just get taldarime void rays and hover from vorazune to the taldarime with the blood shard vrs. you need a mother ship as well. The only thing i lost in this mission was alarack and i think hes supposed to die. he just runs out like a fucking barbarian. kept all nexi: i can try to get replay. as for strat: -mass blood shard vrs 3/3/3 -get mother ship -the preservers can hold their own side if you put 4 long range cannons and keep replacing regular ones without any help until the end. -leave mother ship on the top right side of vorazunes side and use vrs to save taldarime -if you need extra help for vorazune you can split vrs or just bring them all and go back. -4 sgs is all you need P.S. i didnt even have like any cannons near the keystone either and if they are killing it just blackhole it with the mother ship
i just got standard colossus and standard carriers, mass cannoned lower right at first, then the other 2 entrances. ez win first waves just spam spear abilities at will since they wil get disabled
I had like 10 attempts here, closest was 99.99%, no that wasn't a joke. Was so furstrated, then I kept doing progressively better tries, even attempted to build mass cannons on the low ground and a huge fleet of carries to keep everything back, nothing worked. Then I just realized I could make 5 arbiters, store up energy and do mass stasis for the win. And yes it worked, Arbiters OP!
Idk if this has been posted yet but if you make your production structures near Karax you will get the master phasesmith bonus on them and you can crank out units really fast. Helps immensely with keeping your money low. I did the void ray strat + mothership, but never used the mothership. Automatic gas, solar bombardment, 200 shield (never used) and the 200 damage one. Chronosurged out some upgrades early too.
On November 12 2015 16:07 Phael wrote: I did this mission on brutal on my second try massing carriers, nailing all the achievements too. Here's a quick rundown of the strat I used:
Relevant upgrades:
Spear of Adun Tier 1 - Chrono boost Tier 2 - Lasers Tier 3 - Automated gas Tier 4 - Mass recall Tier 5 - Mechanical healing Tier 6 - Time stop
Units - Zealots - reviving zealots Stalkers - dragoons Immortals - normal immortals Carriers - healing carriers
1.) Make 2 probes off the bat, send the first one to your natural and take it. Continuously make probes from your first nexus and plant those 4 assimilators down when you have minerals to do so without interrupting probe production.
2.) Your first 75 energy goes into a chronoboost on the natural to pump out a dozen more probes or so. At this point you should be broke.
3.) Start a fleet beacon, then drop 3 more stargates as income allows. Spam carriers out of them when you can. Ramp up to max mineral saturation slowly, could maybe stay with 2 probes per patch.
4.) During this macro period, you should just be a-moving the initial units you started with to the lanes that are being attacked. Don't worry if you lose a few (or all) of them, they're just to tide you over until carriers.
5.) Second 75 energy to chronoboost out two carriers as soon as fleet beacon is done. You'll start roaming with this force. Start air attack upgrade asap.
6.) During the mid-game, use time stop and lasers to help you when the mass attacks are coming. Normal attacks are easily held off by carrier dps and allies tanking.
7.) Try to use a chronoboost on air attack upgrades since you need to work on air armor too. You can make another cybernetics if you'd like, but I recall that by the time I had minerals to spare, I was almost done with air upgrades anyway. Otherwise, spend all your energy on lasers. Shield upgrades are well, they're available to get, but I wouldn't be too concerned about it because most of the damage will be on armor anyway.
8.) Once you get 12 carriers, split them into two groups of 6 and assign newly minted ones to a third group. These should be generally static defenses - you'll want them to be a little ahead of your allies to soak damage if possible (they heal really fast - about the most micro you need to do is pull an injured carrier back to let it heal up in like 15 seconds. They have such a long range that it'll probably be attacking the whole time too.)
9.) During the mid-game, just keep carrier production up, try to distribute new ones fairly into the three groups, and not lose too many carriers during engagements. As your minerals start stockpiling, feel free to mass some cannons around where your allies are holding position. I only bothered to cannon up the right side since the other sides were so full of stuff.
10.) As you get into the late game, if you've stockpiled around 5k+ minerals, just suicide all but two of your probes so you can end up with 11 carriers per side. Your last two probes can just build stuff - defensive cannons, or to be more useful, just ring the keystone with pylons, cannons, and gateways.
Reading this thread during work I thought this was going to be tough, but noob mass carrier strat worked out. I guess if you get overwhelmed at one base you can just pull back and defend the keystone, but I was able to nab both achievements (one is damaging a bunch of ships with your laser, other is keeping all nexuses up), without too much trouble. Good luck!
Don't do this if you want this mission to be at least a bit challenging
I can confirm that this works flawlessly, I struggled a few times than did exactly as said here and I was not even under pressure during the final wave, no nexuses destroyed and I don't think units even managed to enter the bases. The chrono on the expansion probes ASAP is really smart and gives u a flying start for carriers.
Only thing I can add is, you can add 2-3 corsairs for each of the 3 entrances, as explained above their ability is OP. Also since your only macro is 4 stargate carriers you can build a shitton of cannons/batteries at each entrance. It's funny because I actually spent half of the mission building gateway/cannon walls everywhere but it never came to them lol.
After 4-6 attempts trying various things, I finished this final mission with ez just going corsair/DT (with the blink/teleport version thing) and using extra minerals for cannons.
This was a really fun mission to wrap up Brutal playthrough, one-shotted it with the Mastery to kill the Brutalisk as well.
After doing Hostbusters (Mission 18 Mastery) on Brutal, this was a godamn cakewalk
Adun abilities: Chrono, Solar Lance, Auto Gas, Fenix, Matrix Pylons, and Solar Bombardment Unit Composition: Purifier Colossus, Immortals, Havoc Sentries, Corsairs, Arbiter, Regen DTs, High Templar, Stalkers
the key to this is the matrix pylons... when the mission starts you want to crank out probes continuously obv, and get sexond nexus asap, and start positioning pylons so that their fields just cover enough of the entrance to lay gateways at
take your initial units to the first path to be attacked, use one beam from your first solar lance to soften up the first wave then spam the second two beams at the edge of fog of war towards brutalisk
once you get to about 5 immortals switch production to colossi, continuously be pumping sairs out of your one stargate throughout, your gateway unit production should be split between stalkers dts and the occasional sentry and in later stages high temp
once you get to a roughly one third split of colossi/sair/immortal for ~120-130 supply, with the rest of supply being probes, stalkers, sentries, dts, templar, everything literally melts, and with your whole base covered in psi field, your entire army is very fast and u keep buzzing between the walled off entrances backed up by the OP defense tower... havocs give your colossi stupid range and force fields + corsair disruption web + immortals with range, hybrids and ultras fucking melt, and corsairs when they are 15-20 in number thrash the golden armada, and at the end, you should have 2-3 arbiters, stasis lol
the brutalisk gets owned with Fenix + solar Lance + one solar bombardment, use your first solar bombardment cooldown on it, i think it takes 2 fenix cooldown
Im sure the energizer sentry would work too, you would have an even faster army bouncing back and forth at the cost of less range
In summary, Brutal one-shot, mastery done, no allied nexuses lost, Karax's wall finally broke at 99.5%, finished mission with about 130 supply still melting shit finally flooding through
The mass carrier strategy Phael described in post #33 is very robust and well-suited to beating this mission on brutal relatively hassle-free.
A video guide of me applying that strategy can be found here:
Even with several mistakes on my part (a mistimed time stop, sacrificing less probes than optimal, building less static defense than possible, losing several carriers due to mis-micro), this strategy still gives a solid win.
Managed to finish this one on brutal after several tries and even managed to get the achievements Built a lot of battery/canons/monolith on the 3 bases. Made a 10-12 void ray army to get rid of those Carriers/Tempest armies. Added templar for storms and colossus on the 3 spots.
So I had a lot of difficult with this until I sat down and work out what units/abilities would be most useful. Here are some of the more useful things:
Chrono surge is super good. Use it to spam out upgrades before it gets disabled.
Orbital Assimilator is useful to get more gas (and boy, you'll need it).
Guardian Shell really really useful for my strategy since it relies on maintaining arbiters and this keeps them alive
Solar Bombardment is great for cleaning up Golden Armada forces
Arbiters are fucking amazing. Get one at every entrance asap while you build up an army. Add more when your economy is online. Stasis field is an amazing stall; use it against Armada attacks, detection units (nerazim especially) and pretty much any time you can. Great for stalling out the end.
Corsairs are also fucking amazing. Get +3 air weaps and they wreck shit. Disruption web is so amazing at keeping stuff alive and is super underrated.
Energizers are really useful.
Colossus. AoE OP.
Tempests. Great once you're army is established, long range siege is really useful against Guardians etc.
Defenses aren't as essential as you might think. Fortifying the purifier side is worth it since they can almost take care of themselves. The other sides need bare-bones defenses if you keep your army near.
For what it's worth, I got all the achievements for this level on Brutal with this strategy.
This is how I beat it. I had a ball of ~3 arbiters, ~12 corsairs, ?? DTs, 6 collosus, and dragoon/zealot remainder. I also had 2 corsairs at every entrance.
This actually became a problem, because I had an arbiter at mid, and then alarak made a mothership. So he almost lost his nexus simply because everything was running past the army.
Fenix lost hist nexus at the end, and I had to stasis the ramp for last couple of percent, but I'm sure you could do it without losing any nexus. I just messed it up.
All you who are stuck on 98% or so, did you get arbiters? I beat it on my 2nd try going the dt/corsair strat, but I kept 5 arbiters at the keystone. When stuff started going to hell at 96ish %, I just statis field'd the big balls over and over again until I won. Pretty simple backup plan method to win near the end.
On November 14 2015 05:06 BreakfastBurrito wrote: Idk if this has been posted yet but if you make your production structures near Karax you will get the master phasesmith bonus on them and you can crank out units really fast. Helps immensely with keeping your money low. I did the void ray strat + mothership, but never used the mothership. Automatic gas, solar bombardment, 200 shield (never used) and the 200 damage one. Chronosurged out some upgrades early too.
This is actually huge. I put my stargate by him and pushed out a stack of ~20 corsiars in seconds. Later Carriers come out in a few seconds a piece too. You wont need more than one stargate/robo if you stick it next to Karax.
tried massing carriers, restarted, massed taldarim voidrays and cannons/towers and beat it easily without reloading on brutal, almost got the achievement as well, taldarim nexus died at 99.8%
kinda lame, late game toss units ruined the campaign, before you got cols, missions were good and hard on brutal, afterwards it was just mass macro and win, and the missions got increasingly tedious, too much "mass shit and amove" bullshit
I still think the easiest and most stress free way to do this is with a combo of Immortals/Colossus/Havocs to hold the ground attack, mass carriers to clean up the worst threats and 5 full energy arbiters to stasis for the final 10%.
Edit: Oh and yes, Dark Archons are good if you have the multi-tasking to jump between locations and cast either the spell that makes friendly units attack each other or mind control.
I think the best composition is corsairs/arbiters/carriers. Especially arbiters are great, cloaking and stasis is so strong. Split your army in 4, 1 in each entrance + one roaming to defend where it's more needed (especially when golden armada attacks). As upgrades I used Chrono surge (the 1st one is a huge boost to your economy, the others on upgrades), Warp in harmonization (warping air units instantly and anywhere with lower cooldowns is just great) , time stop. Solar lance to clean up golden armada ships for the achievement. Can't remember the other ability I used but it probably wasn't very relevant. Once you're maxed out, mass cannons. They shouldn't even breach your entrances before you win (brutal ofc).
One thing I was wondering is how the heroes (karax, alarak, verazun) inevitably die during this mission but it goes completely unnoticed, there isn't even an achievement which asks you to protect them or anything... what happens to them?
Damn, I hate these kind of missions... So far I managed 96,5% with mass voidrays. The mid-game looked stable. And then everything collapsed. Especially at the end of the mission things get out of hand really quickly. Alarak is a complete moron... I think, if he didnt have his charge ability(or if they let me control him), the middle path would be so much easier to hold. When you talk about DT+Corsair tactic, what do you mean exactly ? One huge roaming corsair flock and DTs on every base ? I find the corsairs terrible vs capital ships. Often I need time stop or laser to stop the armada wave quickly.
On November 16 2015 17:06 Pr0wler wrote: Damn, I hate these kind of missions... So far I managed 96,5% with mass voidrays. The mid-game looked stable. And then everything collapsed. Especially at the end of the mission things get out of hand really quickly. Alarak is a complete moron... I think, if he didnt have his charge ability(or if they let me control him), the middle path would be so much easier to hold. When you talk about DT+Corsair tactic, what do you mean exactly ? One huge roaming corsair flock and DTs on every base ? I find the corsairs terrible vs capital ships. Often I need time stop or laser to stop the armada wave quickly.
The disruption web is ridiculous, it derps the enemy into the wall of cannons without firing, any that get through get dt'd. Once you have enough corsairs with good upgrades you can focus down the capital ships, they go down fast individually.
Take the auto assimilator upgrade, get your natural going asap, drop a plyon and stargate next to Karax and then you can just hold the button down to get out 16-20 or so of the things. As long as you nail the detectors quickly a big ball of DT's under them will dice anything on the ground up.
Later on and as the DT's die off and the money rolls in start throwing out carriers and or collosus for the big dps (one stargate/robo next to karax, the starting ones not worth using its 10x slower!!!!). Although not many of my DT's went down before the very end. You just have to pull them back occasaionlly when they get over eager.
Also the arbiter or two by each entrance trick can put the enemy on hold while you get over there, or just statis everything towards the end, but that feels like cheating....
I was having trouble just massing the Destroyer Void Rays, it sounds like the way to go, but you get ground to dust eventually. I tried my hand at a late-game build with Carriers and Colossi, but most importantly Corsairs, and a few Arbiters. They straight up let you win engagements without taking any damage. The Guardian Shell passive is amazing for extra insurance. I won the mission still having 180 supply, and if I were more dilligent I wouldn't have lost the 1 Nexus I did. It went from 'I can't see how to win this' to 'oh my God that was easy'.
I might have made it hard on myself... Energizer sentries + mirage phoenix + purifier col + regular void rays worked out in the end for me, but I had to try a bunch of times. The sentries allowed me to run back and forth pretty fast. Just had to be super careful with my units and dump everything else in to zealots/cannons/monoliths. It's interesting seeing what everyone else is doing!
On November 17 2015 08:16 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: Ugh I keep dieing at 99%, can't stop the zealot dragoon flood before they kill it.
Really interesting to see you can keep the allies alive, mine die before 50% guess that's where it goes wrong lol
Tried again this morning with corsairs, and won it. Never used them earlier they seem quite useful :D. Also if you keep the allies alive they actually start building proper units in the later stages. Just need to be quick with solar lance to kill the armadas in the start when your still building up.
Damn any1 have the save file with 98-99% of this mission ? i am tryin like 2 days to beat this mission max i reached 97% qq tryied few tactics and still didnt work, emo rage xD
I beat it on brutal with dark archon and normal voidrays. Start with using spear of adun abilities and then when they get removed use the disrupt. Save MC for the golden armada and then work on your mass void rays that increase damage and range the longer the yattack. The key is to keep the fight at the 3 entrances, because once you hit the 98%+ the immortal count will be too great to hold off at the keystone alone.
On November 11 2015 19:21 hellokitty[hk] wrote: If you're using void rays and have trouble with the immortal zealots killing the keystone: 1. build a mothership 2. save up 200 energy 3. Around 96%, when a ton of immortal zealots attack, spam vortex 4 times in a row 4. ??? 5. ez win
This strategy actually helped quite a bit, managed to get to around 98% with just Void Rays but with zeal/immo killing the building it wasn't even close, spamming the Black Hole on southern ramp while killing stuff on the northern managed to get to 100%.
truth be told if you have enough apm, you could probably capture every last protoss ship with dark archons and not even let anything get through using the corsair & sentry havoc.
but as a casual I will have to settle with void ray "a-move".
Around 70%, going corsair DT, everything just becomes too much. The Golden Armada armies are the ones that do the most damage, they take out most of my corsairs and leave me with little to web with. And then from there it's a slow downhill ride until I'm overwhelmed.
On November 22 2015 04:58 Lysergide wrote: Good god.
Around 70%, going corsair DT, everything just becomes too much. The Golden Armada armies are the ones that do the most damage, they take out most of my corsairs and leave me with little to web with. And then from there it's a slow downhill ride until I'm overwhelmed.
Bleh...
FE --> Mass 3/3/3 voidrays, u only need 1 stargate near Karax for superfast production --> You will start banking minerals at 200/000, make khaydarins and cannons everywhere. Use abilities liberally while you can and dont let your allies die, because they will rebuild and help you hold... if only to stall for a few seconds, lol
Yeah, the Karax phasesmith bonus is indeed a thing. Doesn't work on upgrades, sadly, but if you intend to pump out multiple units of any kind, it's quite insane.
On November 22 2015 07:32 Perfi2_0 wrote: Yeah, the Karax phasesmith bonus is indeed a thing. Doesn't work on upgrades, sadly, but if you intend to pump out multiple units of any kind, it's quite insane.
forgot to mention karax is awesome make sure he survives!
edit -- Heh, I don't think you get credit for it from the saved game. o_o edit2 -- I lied, was just 'buggy'. Had to go rebeat another mission on brutal to get it to re-check for the chievos. That Ouros portrait is preeeeetty fugly. Haha!
On November 17 2015 07:29 NewSunshine wrote: I was having trouble just massing the Destroyer Void Rays, it sounds like the way to go, but you get ground to dust eventually. I tried my hand at a late-game build with Carriers and Colossi, but most importantly Corsairs, and a few Arbiters. They straight up let you win engagements without taking any damage. The Guardian Shell passive is amazing for extra insurance. I won the mission still having 180 supply, and if I were more dilligent I wouldn't have lost the 1 Nexus I did. It went from 'I can't see how to win this' to 'oh my God that was easy'.
I'm with you on Guardian Shell. It helped my probes tank for the artifact when I beat this on brutal. If I were to do this mission again, I'd get a bunch of regular immortals near the artifact near the end to tank for the artifact. I imagine guardian shell + mass immortals will buy me quite a bit of time. Also, guardian shell synergizes amazingly well with carrier healing + shield battery since you can heal while invulnerable. I also imagine that tal'darim zealots are also good tanks for the artifact. I think carriers give you very good mechanical healing so the spear of adun healing passive is a bit redundant.
On November 17 2015 07:29 NewSunshine wrote: I was having trouble just massing the Destroyer Void Rays, it sounds like the way to go, but you get ground to dust eventually. I tried my hand at a late-game build with Carriers and Colossi, but most importantly Corsairs, and a few Arbiters. They straight up let you win engagements without taking any damage. The Guardian Shell passive is amazing for extra insurance. I won the mission still having 180 supply, and if I were more dilligent I wouldn't have lost the 1 Nexus I did. It went from 'I can't see how to win this' to 'oh my God that was easy'.
I'm with you on Guardian Shell. It helped my probes tank for the artifact when I beat this on brutal. If I were to do this mission again, I'd get a bunch of regular immortals near the artifact near the end to tank for the artifact. I imagine guardian shell + mass immortals will buy me quite a bit of time. Also, guardian shell synergizes amazingly well with carrier healing + shield battery since you can heal while invulnerable. I also imagine that tal'darim zealots are also good tanks for the artifact. I think carriers give you very good mechanical healing so the spear of adun healing passive is a bit redundant.
BTW, that video above is amazing. Nicely done.
Dark archons + Voidrays I didn't even think to use corsairs, but the dark archon ability did its job really well
The corsair/arbiter/DT/carrier thing makes it so easy, I struggled to get past 80% with void rays and ended up winning while barely losing anything on the first try with that comp >.< Thanks Merchz/Plexa!
Finally beat it with collective advice from here. What worked for me:
1. Dark Archons, mind controlling any tempest/carriers. 2. Mirage (phoenix) because Destroyers (void rays) are too expensive. 3. Cannons and shield batteries; Khaydarin monoliths are too expensive.
I play the campaigns on brutal and don't use in game attack or armor upgrades. That makes Carriers useless as the enemy armor means they do pitiful damage.
I expanded immediately used mass Void Rays (not the Tal'darim ones, they also need upgrades to deal sufficient damage) along with the Mothership while building Cannons at my allies bases. I also had packs of Dark Templar (the ones that revive at the Dark Shrine) running around killing stuff. Very important for them to have the Guardian Shield Passive so you can pick off Overseers with Void Rays. Also make wise use of Spear of Adun abilities (I used the Pylon with units, Bombardment, 200 shields for everything and Solar Bombardment).
I was able to hold relatively easy with that composition until the very last minute or so when huge numbers of enemies swarm in with full upgrades. I had to retreat to the artifact, which was surrounded by cannons and use Tal'darim Sentries to forcefield off the ramps. When they broke through those (which was because I ran out of energy) I used Vortex from the Mothership to buy time until the end.
Tough mission. Only harder one was the one where you mass Pheonix, which deal no damage without attack upgrades.
Beat it on Brutal w/ all achievements by only building Corsairs (like a fuck ton of them) and static defense.
Just keep like 8-10 Corsairs at each entrance, turn off Disruption Web autocast and then spam 2x dweb in front of your shield battery / gateway / cannon wall nonstop.
They literally can't touch your buildings and +3 attack corsairs destroy all air units with no issue. The end was fun swapping from CTRL groups 1 - 2 - 3 placing dwebs over and over until the timer finished.
Just a casual player that set himself a challenge of doing the game on brutal, I managed to do the final mission. Here I tried to make a guide for those struggling. I go through what solar core / units and map set up I used. Hopefully this will help people.
On November 12 2015 16:07 Phael wrote: I did this mission on brutal on my second try massing carriers, nailing all the achievements too. ...
After a lot of failed attempts on hard, using this strat made it easy on HARD. I didn't have any problems so I guess it'll work on BRUTAL as well. Check out post #33 for detailed instructions.
I struggled a good bit initially but ended up beating it with all the nexuses up and the final wave didn't get close to the artifact.
These were the keys for me: 1. Put production structures near Karax for near-instant build time 2. Build a bunch of corsairs
Other than that, just build something to kill ground units, be Johnny-on-the-spot with your space lasers when the large attacks come (I like the 3 stripes one), and start building static defenses once you near supply cap. Personally, I chose the aoe immortals and threw in a few carriers to keep things repaired but I'm sure there are many viable options.
Micro needs were minimal: basically it was just get corsairs to the battles promptly, kill warp prisms first, and keep the armies balanced. I didn't even bother manually placing webs. There was no need for dark archons or arbiters.
on hard massed arbitors at the very end (after going collosi, stalkers, some corsairs)... managed to stasis most of the units from 92-100 %.. Haha not a recommended strategy.
I think the key to this mission is keeping the other heroes alive. That asshole in the middle always had to die so quick though.
On December 06 2015 11:59 Strela wrote: For some reason I cant keep the heroes alive. Especially alarak he loves to charge towards his death.
Are you trying to beat the mission with all heroes alive or are you just trying to beat the mission at all?
In the latter case, you want to prioritize keeping Kharax alive. He makes you build units incredibly fast. Build your army buildings next to him. Also, build a ton of base defenses for him. Since he buffs base defense structures, he'll be safe from everything except the Golden Armada. Make sure to use your army to kill the Golden Armada fleets asap. Also base defenses for Vorazun are nice. If you can keep all three nexuses and Kharax alive til at least around 95%, you should be set on beating this mission. Imo, Kharax is the most valuable hero in this mission.
Finally beat this mission as well. I massed Corsairs and build massive walls at the east and west entrance (because it was easy there) with the first layer made of Warpgates, the second of Pylons and Batteries and the last layer of Cannons. The main entrance I held with the main army.
You can watch my attempt here. Go check the huge walls.
On a sidenote, unfortunately I didn't get the achievement to keep all Nexi alive, because I hadn't read beforehand that I should. I could have kept it alive easily, if I had known.
Was holding this mission off because all the horror story i've heard and didn't want to abuse DT/Crosair. Decided to give it a shot and one shotted it and I can tell you i'm pretty bad at multitasking.
Key is really using Karax because his field makes you pump out units at a stupid rate, which means you can reach a critical mass of units (I used Carriers because well, Carriers) without wasting money on extra production facilities.
I went with Auto Vespene, Solar Lance, Surge, and Time Stop. Dropped an expansion as soon as I can and defended first couple of waves with existing units (I used resurrecting Zealots and Taldarim Immortals for the default units, didn't replace them when they eventually died). Used first Chrono Surge to reach max workers and used the rest on air upgrades before it was wrecked, dropped 2 Startgates next to Karax and walled him with structures so he doesn't suicide, although I think one of the Stargates was a waste. After that's done I just A-moved my Carriers around. I think I had to split them once for a double wave near 50% but it might not even have been necessary.
Early usage of Solar Lance is pretty important since you want to preserve your allies as much as you can with no units early game.
Once I had 150+ supply of Carriers I just spammed cannons for both Taldarim and Nerezim side. I had cannons+batteries+monolith on Karax's side very early on to wall him in and he really can almost hold his own completely with just defensive structures from you: I only reinforced once or twice, one of which being 3 guardians shooting cannons from out of range
I still had a few blunders and I am honestly just bad at tower defense so the bottom was overrun by 99% mark while floating a million minerals and gas (I also didn't upgrade shield, epic fail i know). But at that point it didn't matter: Keystone didn't take a single hit.
Mostly, just disappointed with how Highlord Q did. It's what you get for putting spikes on your lightsaber arm. And generally being a dick to Picard and Janeway.
I might try this again (maybe on brutal) b/c it was kind of fun, but like everyone else has said, Corsair/DT/Arbiter is OP. I only lost 10 units on hard, lol.
On January 20 2016 15:49 1qa2ws wrote: Would anyone mind posting a save file for Brutal on the most recent patch? Unfortunately the other save file was played on an older version.
On January 20 2016 15:49 1qa2ws wrote: Would anyone mind posting a save file for Brutal on the most recent patch? Unfortunately the other save file was played on an older version.
Anyone?
I think that I should still have those saves and I finished the campaign on brutal 2 days ago so I'm guessing it was the most recent patch. Anyway, gonna post those saves when I get home from work.
ps. though, when you load a save, you don't get the achievements, so you can only look at the strategy etc. which inevitably you have to repeat yourself to get the achivements
On January 20 2016 15:49 1qa2ws wrote: Would anyone mind posting a save file for Brutal on the most recent patch? Unfortunately the other save file was played on an older version.
Anyone?
I think that I should still have those saves and I finished the campaign on brutal 2 days ago so I'm guessing it was the most recent patch. Anyway, gonna post those saves when I get home from work.
ps. though, when you load a save, you don't get the achievements, so you can only look at the strategy etc. which inevitably you have to repeat yourself to get the achivements