Stacraft II: Wings of Liberty Challenges Guide (V.1.05a) By: Draconicfire/BlackDra90n ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents.......................................................[cgtoc] 1) Table of Contents [cgtoc] 2) Recent Changes [cgrcs] 3) Introduction [cgint] 4) Basic Challenges [cgbcs] - Tactical Command - Path of Ascension - For the Swarm 5) Advanced Challenges [cgacs] - Covert Ops - Psionic Assault - Infestation 6) Expert Challenges [cgxcs] - Harbringer of Death - Opening Gambit - Rush Defense 7) End [cgend] 8) Legal Stuff [cglgs] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Introduction............................................................[cgint] Alright, so the original game of Starcraft has pretty much reached legendary status among gamers. It doesn't matter if you even played it or not, you heard of it. It's pretty much the most popular RTS of all time due to it's amazing multiplayer, and really, it's great. Now that SC2 is out, a lot of people are wondering if the sequel will match it's predecessor in terms of gameplay, popularity, and many other things. But, this guide will not talk about any of that. One thing people forget when talking about Starcraft is it's single player, with it's fun missions and awesome storyline. In Starcraft 2, theres more of that with a pretty cool single player campaign, but, Blizzard also added something new called "Challenges". These Challenges are designed to test the player's skill doing certain things, and can be pretty fun and challenging. Note that there are many different ways of doing them and I'm pretty much just going to be writing about the way I did it. If you found a better/easier way to finish a challenge, then feel free to email me, I'll add it in to the guide. In addition, I also have replays of myself getting the gold achievement for every challenge, so if you dont understand my explanations, or just want a visual, I can provide you with a replay pack if you want one. Patches shouldn't affect challenges since Single Player isn't patched when Multiplayer is. The only things that may change are the glitches, if there are any. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Recent Changes..........................................................[cgrcs] Latest update on 12/8/2010 (v.1.05a) - Removed the side strategy in the Rush Defense section since it was patched. Latest update on 11/21/2010 (V.1.05) - Rehauled the Rush Defense section - Minor changes throughout Latest update on 9/4/2010 (v.1.04) - Added a small section for Psionic Assault - Added a player submitted strategy for Rush Defense Updated on 8/16/2010 (V.1.03) - Added player submitted strategies for Path of Ascension and Rush Defense Updated on 8/11/2010 (V.1.02) - Added the Recent Changes section (This section) - Added some strategies for For the Swarm that were emailed in to me by users. Player submitted strategies will be blocked in by stars (****) - Added some more detail to the highground/lowground thing in Psionic Assault, and added a diagram to help clarify what I mean. - Minor changes and amendments throughout the guide. - Changed my contact information ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Basic Challenges........................................................[cgbcs] All three basic challenges are essentially the same thing, but they give you different races to deal with. All of them comprise of you controlling a group of units to kill the computer units while losing as few units as possible. If the structures you are tasked with protecting are destroyed, then you lose. - TACTICAL COMMAND - Bronze: Protect all Structures Silver: Lose 20 Units or Less Gold: Lose 10 units or Less Tactical Command is the mission where you control various Terran units to make sure the enemy Zerg units do not destroy your supply depots. I personally found that this was the easiest mission to get the gold achievement on, even though I don't main Terran. -- Round 1 -- The first round is pretty simple. In terms of units you can control, you have a group of Hellions, a group of Marines, two Medivacs, a Ghost, and a Seige Tank. In terms of opposing units, you have to deal with a swarm of Zerglings, a group of Banelings, and a fleet of Mutalisks. First, move your Hellions over to where the Zerglings are. Then, move your Seige Tank up right in front of the supply depot where the Banelings are. Lastly, send over your Ghost, Marines and Medivacs over to the Mutalisks. Before we hit "Ready", theres a few things we need to do. Go over to your tank and seige it up. It'll stay seiged even after you hit ready, so it'll save some time. Then, go and cloak your Ghost, it has enough energy to stay cloaked for the entire round. Then, make sure your medivacs are in range of your marines, and stim them. Immediatly hit ready. For your first sub round, you will be taken to the Hellions and Zerglings. This is a pretty easy fight, just kite your Hellions around the supply depot. The Zerglings shouldnt even come close to killing any of your Hellions. The second sub round is the seige tank vs the Banelings. Since your tank is already seiged up, you really have nothing to do but wait. Your tank should get two shots off on the Banelings, which will kill all of them but two. It doesn't matter because two Banelings wont be able to kill your depot, and since they explode on death, the round ends. For the last sub round, position your Ghost in between the Mutalisk and your Marines. Then just wait. Your Ghost will start attacking the Mutas, which is fine, since they can't attack a cloaked target. Start sniping the Mutas as soon as you can. Each snipe takes off a decent chuck off the Mutalisk you hit, so it'll lower your casualities. The marines should be able to wipe the floor with the Mutas pretty easily with Medivac and Snipe support since theyre stimmed up. Some Marines might die, but it's not a big deal. -- Round 2 -- For round two, you have some Marauders, Marines, Medivacs, Seige Tanks, and a Ghost. You have to deal with Roaches, Hydras and an Ultralisk. Move your Marauders to where the Roaches are, Tanks to where the Hydras are, and the Marines, Medivacs and Ghost goes to the Ultralisk. Again, seige up your tanks and hit cloak on your Ghost, then hit ready. For the first sub round, you get control over the Marauders. Hit Stim on your Marauders and kite them around like you did with the Hellions and Zerglings in round one. It's exactly the same thing. The second sub round is with the Marines, Ghost and Medivacs. Position your Marines behind your cloaked Ghost, and hit Stim. Your Ultralisk will go for your Marines, but with Stim you can outrun it, thus you can kite it. Kite the Ultra around your Ghost so your Ghost can still shoot it. None of your marines should die since your Medivacs do a great job of keeping you alive. The last sub round is again with tanks, which means waiting. Seiged tanks require no micro at all (nerf kthx), so just wait and watch as the Hydras evaporate. -- Round 3 -- In this last round, you have control over a more diverse amount of units. You have a group of Thors, Marauders, Seige Tanks, Medivacs, Vikings, Hellions, and once again, one Ghost. You will be facing a Hydra-roach combo, Broodlord and Zergling combo, and a fleet of Mutalisks. Move your Thors and Ghost over to the Mutalisks section. Then, move your Vikings and Hellions over to the Broodlords/Zerglings. Lastly, move your tanks, Marauders and Medivacs to the Hydra-roaches. Once again seige up your tanks and cloak your ghost. Press ready. You will be brought over to the Vikings and Hellions. This sub round is exactly the same as the very first Hellion round, except this time you have to do something extra. Select your vikings and a-move them into the Broodlord group, then wait for the Zerglings to attack your Hellions. The Broodlords move very slow and cant attack air, so your Vikings can kill them all before they even get in range of your Hellions, so you can forget about them once it starts. There are less Zerglings than in the first Hellion round, so if you did that with 0 deaths, then this one is laughably easy. The second sub round is the tanks, Marauders and Medivacs. Move your Marauders and Medivacs to the side in the start so you dont have to worry about splash. Once the Hydras and Roaches get in range of your tanks, a-move your Marauders into the mix, everything should die with minimal deaths. The last round is with your Thors and Ghost. Thors are so OP against Mutas, so their splash will essentially kill everything. You don't have to worry about them. This sub round is almost like the first Marine sub round. Dont worry about the Thors, just control your Ghost and snipe things. Voila, easy gold achievement. - PATH OF ASCENSION - Bronze: Protect all Structures Silver: Lose 20 Units or Less Gold: Lose 10 units or Less In this challenge, you control Protoss units to go destroy Terran units. In my opinion, this is the hardest challenge of this set. Why? Because Zealots aren't the greatest units against Terrans imo. -- Round 1 -- In round one, you have control of a group of Zealots, Stalkers, Collosus, and a single Sentry. You have to face a group of Hellions, Marauders and a large army of Marines. Now already in multiplayer Zealots are the last unit you would build against this army, but hey, Blizzard gave you them to use. Move your Stalkers over to the Hellion section, Collosus to the Marines, and the Zealots and Sentry to the Marauders. Spread out your Stalkers in an arc like formation so that they will have a slightly easier time to get into position. Make sure your Collosus are once again side by side so they can all attack. Also make sure your Sentry is in the middle of the Zealot blob. After you hit ready, you will be brought to the Stalkers. Once the barrier is gone, a-move your Stalkers into the Hellions and start paying attention to their health. Protoss units are different from Terran and Zerg units in the sense that they have shields, and since they have shields, their HP is generally lower, so ideally, instead of waiting until their health is yellow, look to see when their shields are gone. When their shields are gone, their icon will have a darker background. When this happens, blink them back to safety. After the Hellions all explode, you get brought over to the Collosus. Just a-move them into the Marines. None of your Collosus should die, but if one does, dont worry about it. This last subround should be where most of your deaths come from if any. Right before your army engages, get your Sentry to use it's Guardian Shield to reduce some damage. Manually move your Sentry into Melee range so most of your Zealots are covered by it. The Marauders should all fall when the Shield falls so if you want, you can summon a Halucination to help soak some damage. An Archon or Collosus works great. ******************************************************************************* Gingercakes sent me an email saying that another way you can do this is to use only 4/5 of the Collosi given to you to deal with the Marines. Start off your Collosi by placing them on the cliff next to the bubble force field thinggie and have them attack from the highground. The Marines cant hit you from the lowground, so while they walk past, you can shoot them. After they start to hit the pylon, move your Collosi down to engage them. Whenever one of their shields go down, move that Collosus back onto the cliff so that it's safe. As for the last Collosus, she had them attack with the Zealots to deal with the Marauders for additional damage. ******************************************************************************* -- Round 2 -- In round two, you have control of Void Rays, Carriers, Immortals and a High Templar. You have to face some Thors, Seige Tanks and Battlecruisers. Move your Carriers and High Templar to the Thors, Immortals to the tanks, and your Void Rays to the Battlecruisers. Make sure your Immortals are spread out in an arc. After you hit ready, you will be brought to your Carriers and High Templar. Get your Carriers to start attacking the Thors, and shift control over to the Templar. You have enough energy for two Storms and a Feedback, both will do pretty decent damage to the Thors. Start off by using your Storms, you should be able to get a decent amount of Thors in your first Storm, and just place a second wherever you think could use some destruction. After both storms, you have just enough energy for a Feedback. Feedback is pretty awesome. Choose a Thor with high HP and Energy (The purple bar underneath HP), and Feedback it. All the energy will get converted into damage, so it takes off a decent chunk. Now wait for your Carriers to finish the job. One may fall, but dont worry about it. Next up is your Immortals. Just a-move them into the tanks. One or two might go down, but again not a big big deal. With your Void Rays, they do like no damage to the Battlecruisers when their beam isn't charged, so get them to focus down one Battlecruiser while watching their health. If their shields get low, move them back as best you can, but it's likely that it will still explode. Once the beams are all charged, the Battlecruisers die really fast when you focus them down. One thing you could try is to charge up your beams on your Pylon before you engage the BCs. I didnt really give it any serious tries, so I'm not sure if it's possible, but go ahead and give it a try if you have some issues. NOTE: Gingercakes actually tried this and confirmed that it's possible to have your Void Rays charge up on the pylon before you engage the Battlecruiser army, but it's really close and your Pylon may burn down. So she suggests to have your army attack the Battlecruisers when the Pylon is at yellow. -- Round 3 -- In this last round, you have control of Zealots, Collosus, Immortals, Archons, Stalkers, and a single High Templar and Sentry. You have to face a BC/Viking combo, a Hellion/Reaper combo, and a Marauder/Tank combo. I had so many issues with this because my Zealots kept dying, but then I tried a different strategy and it worked very well. Move your Zealots, Stalkers and Sentry to the BC/Vikings. Now you may be asking, "Why are you bringing your Zealots over to air units?". Thats because the Vikings will automatically go into ground mode if there arent any air units in the area, and I found that Vikings own Phoenixes in the face. Move your Collosus and High Templar to the Reapers/Hellions, and move your Archons, Immortals and Phoenixes to the Marauders/Immortals. Again, you may be asking "Why are you bringing Phoenixes to that group? None of them are air". Well, thats because were not going to be using the Phoenixes for damage. Read on. For the first subround, you have your Zealots, Stalkers and Sentry. Get your Stalkers to focus down the Battlecruiser first and just have your Zealots move into position for when the Vikings land. Have your Sentry pop it's shield and again manually move it so that it covers most of your units. The Zealots actually do suprisingly well against the Vikings, so you only lose a few in comparison to like everything. With your Collosus, a-move them into the giant blob of units, then switch to your High Templar ASAP and Storm them in the face. Two well placed storms gets rid of like the entire blob since both Reapers and Hellions are quite frail. The Collosus will easily pick off the survivors. Lastly, you have your Archons, Immortals and Phoenixes. Select all your Archons and Immortals and a-move them into the battle. Both of them dont require any micro at all, so you can put them into the same control group. Now with your Phoenixes, fly them over the tanks and have all four of the use their gravity beams on the tanks. Four tanks should be in the air. This is actually pretty big, since you are removing four tanks from the fight. By the time the beams wear off, the rest of the army should be gone, and you can watch as each tank falls back to the ground and instantly gets destroyed by the Archons and Immortals. - FOR THE SWARM - Bronze: Protect all Structures Silver: Lose 20 Units or Less Gold: Lose 10 units or Less FOR THE SWARMMMMM! Woooooo! Anyways, for this challenge, you control Zerg units this time around against Protoss units. I would say this would be the second easiest (and second hardest I guess) basic challenge. Your Spire is the key building this time around, but everything else is the same. -- Round 1 -- In round one, you have an Infestor, some Zerglings, Hydralisks and some Ultralisks. You will be facing a fleet of Voidrays, an Immortal and a group of Collossus. Move your Infestor and Zerglings to the lonely Immortal area, and then move your Hydralisks to the Void Ray area, lastly move your Ultralisks to the Collossus area. Before we start, spread out your Ultralisks a tiny bit so they can all attack, dont have them in a group, move them into a line. Same deal with the Hydras, although it's inevitable that some will group. Just arc them as much as you can. Press ready. The first group you get to control are the Ultralisks. Just a-move them into the group of Collosus. If you spread them out enough, then some of them will get into the red, but everything will die without any Zerg casualties. The second group is the Infestor and Zerglings vs the Immortal. Use your Infestor to Neural Parasite the Immortal, and get your Zerglings to kill it while it is under your command. Easy win right there. The last group is the Hydralisks and Void rays. A bit more micro is needed here. A-move your Hydras to the void rays, and watch your Hydra's health. The moment you see one dip into the yellow, either burrow it or move it back. Keep doing that for every Hydra you see get hurt and you'll minimize casualties. -- Round 2 -- In this round, you have two Ultralisks, a fleet of Mutalisks, some Roaches and an Infestor. You have to destroy some Void Rays, Stalkers and Zealots. Move your Ultralisks to the Stalker area, then move your Mutalisks to the Void Rays, and Roaches and Infestor to the Zealot area. Spread out your Ultralisks so that they are side by side, and make sure you spread out your Infestor from your Roaches too. Set the Roaches and Infestor to hotkeys you can press easily to make things easier. The first group you can control are the Roaches and Infestor. Select your Infestor first, and get it to Fungal Growth as many Zealots as you can. Then, use your Roaches to kite the remaining Zealots to their death. When the Fungal wears off, do it again if you can. If your Infestor gets under attack, burrow it. Keep kiting your Roaches back while attacking your Zealots. If they get too close, burrow them and let your Roaches regen a bit before unburrowing. The second group is the Mutalisks and Void Rays. I normally get them to attack the Void Ray in the middle, but I guess it doesn't really make a huge difference. Like the Hydralisks from the last round, keep tabs on your army, whenever one gets into the yellow, move it back. The last group is the Ultralisks, which is pretty simple. Just a-move them into the Stalker army, they'll kill everything pretty easily. ******************************************************************************* Alternatively, I had some emails with some suggestions on how to approach the Zealots and Void Rays differently. Credit goes to these GameFAQs users on their submissions. Both MrOmega2 and aleksazen emailed me with the same strategy for the Zealots, where instead of having the Infestor and Roaches all working there, they just used the Roaches. What they suggest is to abuse the burrow mechanic as much as possible to keep the Zealots running back and forth between your Spire. What you would do is start off your Roaches burrowed and wait until the Zealots run over you. After they passed you, they should be in between you and the Spire. After that, just unburrow, attack attack attack, and burrow when they hit you. After a brief moment, they will go back to running to the Spire, so just rinse and repeat. Both of those users also gave me a different strategy for dealing with the Void Rays. MrOmega2 suggest to have the Infestor there to Neural Parasite one of the Void Rays while your Mutas are attacking them. They should attack your Mutas, but when they are not charged, they do barely any damage. Once theyre charged, move your Mutas back and instead of chasing them the Void Rays will attack the Mind Controlled one. Once that one is dead, move your Mutas back to clean up the rest of the Void Rays. aleksazen also used the Infestor to deal with the Void Rays. But instead of using Neural Parasite, he suggests on using Infested Terrans instead. Spam as many Infested Terrans as you can and position them in front of the Mutas when you attack. This way the Void Rays will attack them instead to minimize deaths. ******************************************************************************* -- Round 3 -- In this round, you get some Ultralisks, Roaches, Broodlords (!), Corruptors, and yet again a single Infestor. You have to destroy a Immortal/Stalker combo, a Archon/Zealot Combo and some Carriers. Move your Ultralisks, Roaches, and Infestor to the Stalker/Immortal area, then move your Broodlords to the Archon/Zealot area. Lastly, move your Corruptors to the Carriers. Make sure your Ultralisks are spread out in a line, and your Roaches are spread out behind them. Also make sure your Infestor isn't blocked by anything. When the round starts, you get to control your Ultra/Roach/Infestor army. Immediatly Neural Parasite an Immortal, and then a-move your Ultra/Roaches into the battle. An immortal needs to be mind controlled or it'll wreck your Ultras pretty hard. The mind control makes most of the ai units to attack it, so your units gets some free killing time and a free dead Immortal. Your army should wipe the floor pretty easily with this group as long as you get your Parasite off. For the next group, Broodlords vs Archons/Zealots, I used to have the Roaches here instead, but realized they were useless. This is because Broodlords are like the greatest things ever. They have long range and they spawn ground units when they attack. Due to this, this round is easymode. Just get your Broodlords to attack an Archon. When they attack, the Broodlings they spawn will help you kill the group, plus it makes all the Archons and Zealots attack them, so the Zealots wont be like "Hey, nothing we can kill, lets own that Spire lawl". Just take down the Archons one at a time and then wait as your Broodlords take down the dumb Zealots. The Archons may attack your Broodlords, but it's not a big deal. The last group is the Corruptors vs the Carriers. Make your Corruptors attack the nearest Carrier and get them to cast Corruption on all of them to speed things up. Make sure you always have your Corruptors attacking Carriers, or they'll act like the Zealots from the previous round and attack the Scarabs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Advanced Challenges.....................................................[cgacs] Advanced Challenges are designed to test your ability to make the most of what you have. I guess you could say theyre there to test your efficiency. They all have some sort of timer involved and all the achievements are related to how many units you can kill with the limited units given to you. - COVERT OPS - Bronze: Kill 125 Enemies Silver: Kill 150 Enemies Gold: Kill 175 Enemies Covert Ops is a timed challenged where you have control of two types of Terran units, Ghosts and Ravens. You need to kill a lot of Zerg using these units. Thankfully, you have the awesome thing known as nukes. You have seven nukes under your control, so you have plenty to work with. The Ghosts are going to be the main units you will be focusing on in this mission since nukes are just awesome. Ravens normally arent really an offensive unit, but you have enough of them that you can spawn a good amount of turrets to deal damage and to soak damage. The one thing you have to be careful of with your Ghosts are detectors and your energy. Detectors can see through your Cloak, so obviously thats not a good thing. If you see a Spore Crawler, stay away from it. If you see an Overseer, use your Ghosts to snipe it out of the sky. Just have your Ghosts selected and spam "R" -> Click and repeat until it's dead. Snipe uses energy though, and if your Ghosts run out of energy, they decloak, so only use your snipes for Overseers. After you hit ready, select one of your Ghosts, cloak it, and send it to nuke the expansion on the right path. There are Spore Crawlers at this expansion but your nuking range can outrange the detection. You dont have to care about this Ghost after that, just let it attack buildings or something. Now take the rest of your Ghosts and Ravens and move them along the left path. The moment the you see the Hydra/Roach/Muta group, cloak your Ghosts and kill them using regular attacks, that way they dont harass your Ravens. After they are gone, move your Ghosts up to a ramp, there should be a group of Zerglings there. Kill those Zerglings using your Ghosts and have your Ravens place some Turrets pretty much everywhere. Have one Ghost nuke the Hive with all the drones mining, and have another Ghost nuke the group of units to the left of the Hive up on the highground. There is an Overseer that patrols here, so if you see it, snipe it. After the nukes go off, move your army past where the Hive used to be. You should see another ramp. Go up there. Theres another Overseer that patrols this area, so again take it out. From here, place some turrets and have your Ghosts kill off the units to the north of the ramp. After those units are dead, follow the path and you'll encounter a split in the road. On one side of the road, there are a ton of Spine Crawlers. Nuke them. Have another Ghost Nuke the lowground opposite of the Spine Crawlers, there should be a bunch of Hydras and Roaches there. Move the rest of your Ghosts that arent nuking back to the area where that Hive used to be. Head North and you should see a small path with an Infestor and other Zerg units, kill them normally. After they are dead, continue down the path and you'll see a group of Mutalisks and an Overseer. That Overseer just stays there, so you dont need to snipe it. Have a Ghost nuke that area, you can outrange the detection. By now the two nukes you set off before shouldve landed, so take your Ravens and fly into the area where the Spine Crawlers were, lay down a ton of turrets and just wait. You should have the gold achievement by now. If not, take your Ghosts and nuke the main Hive where your Ravens are. - PSIONIC ASSAULT - Bronze: Kill 75 Enemies Silver: Kill 150 Enemies Gold: Kill 225 Enemies The first time I did this challenge, I honestly thought it was going to be the hardest challenge of the nine. However, after a few attempts, it just became memorizing where to put your stuff when they are needed. In order to get the gold achievement for this challenge, you need to go through 21 waves with the same 11 Sentires and 6 High Templars. Before you hit ready, keybind all of your units. Make sure you know where everything is so you dont get confused. I personally used 1 for Sentries and 2 for High Templars. However TheJzzler emailed me saying that if you were to use 1 for all your Sentries, and then a pair of Templars in 2, 3 and 4, you'll have better management of your energy. This is because you can use one pair at a time, and when they run out of energy you can transform both of them into Archons. This will save you from a bit of hassle since you wont have to manually check your templars for energy, and you only work with two at a time. Obviously to kill that many things, you need to conserve your MP as much as you can and try to not let your stuff die, but thats a given. Another trick is to abuse the highground as much as you can. Due to Starcraft II mechanics, if a unit is on the lowground and has no sight of the highground, they cannot attack back. So if you keep your Sentries a small distance away from the ramp, you can forcefield in a way so that your forcefield's lower side is touching the intersection of the ramp and the lowground. If you do this, the enemy units will walk up to the forcefield and be stuck on the lowground. The moment they are touching the forcefield, a-move your Sentries to engage them. Your Sentries should engage them while techincally on the highground, so the enemy units cant attack back since they have no sight of you from the lowground. ENEMIES (LG) __ __ /|FF|FF| / / |__|__| / / RAMP / / / SENTRIES (HG) I'll be going through each wave one by one. The first wave is a group of zerglings, use Force Fields to block off the ramp and have your sentries kill them. Dont use storms. Next are Marines, again block off the ramp and have your Sentries kill them. If they can shoot you, you need to either place your Force Fields lower on the ramp, or move your Sentries back a bit. Dont use storms. Next is a Hydra/Ling combo. Do the same thing as the previous wave. Dont use storms. The next one after that is a Marine group with a single Marauder. Again, do the same thing. Block off the ramp and use only Sentries. Next wave is Zerglings, Banelings and a single Roach. Block off the ramp and use one Storm. It should kill most of the lings, have your Sentries clean up the rest. Wave 6 is Marine/Marauders. Block of the ramp and storm them once. Sentries again should be cleaning up the survivors. Now on wave 7, things will start spawning on the South East portion of the map. It's essentially the same, but now you need to move around a bit. I like to move my units to that little alcove to the right of the bottom ramp. I like to block off the choke immediatly below the alcove because you can use one forcefield instead of two, since you can storm the gap thats left behind and since your sentries have the highground advantage, they can kill things before they even get up the ramp. This wave consists of just lings. Use one force field to restrict their movements and storm them once. Wave 8 is again on the SE side, it has Zealots and Sentries. Fully block off the choke and storm them once. Have your Sentries attack as much as you can, but move one or two back to the beginning ramp. Wave 9 are Reapers. They may spawn while your Sentries are still killing the remaining units from wave 8, which is why you moved one or two back. Block off the ramp and Storm them once. One storm should finish them all, if not, use your Sentries. The next wave also consists of Reapers, but on the SE side. They will jump up on the rightmost side, so preemptively place three forcefields side by side on the highground, starting from right under the pile of trash and moving down the edge. The reapers will jump into the force fields and get stuck, so Storm them. Wave 11 consists of Banelings and Hydralisks on the SE side. Again, block off the choke and Storm them while your Sentries attack. Wave 12 are Banshees coming in from the original side. Take your High Templars and Feedback them both. One feedback will one shot them. The next wave are some Stalkers on the original side, again just block off the ramp and Storm them once. If you have any High Templars at this point with sub 75 energy, fuse them into Archons, you'll need them. If only one is less than 75, but another is just above it, manually control that one to storm the next wave, and then fuse them. Wave 14 are a bunch of Ghosts and Reapers on the SE side. These Reapers will jump up to the highground near the alcove. So preemptively place some force fields to block off the area and storm them. Have your Sentries DPS down the Ghosts. Wave 15 are a bunch of Mutalisks. This is where having an Archon is super helpful, because Mutas will kill your Sentries quite fast. Kill them using your Sentries/Archon if you have them. If you dont have an Archon, storm them once and hope that not many Sentries die. Wave 16 is once again from the SE side consisting of two Vikings and some Marines and Marauders. This is another dangerous wave since the Vikings provide sight for the Marines and Marauders, so they can attack back. Get your Sentries/Archon to focus down the Vikings and storm the ground army twice. Side by side storms should wipe them out. Wave 17 comes from a new direction, the north west side. The north west side is on the highground, but has a destroyable rock on the ramp. This rock needs to stay undestroyed for as long as it can. This first wave on this side are a bunch of Zerglings, Storm them once and have your DPS units kill the rest. A group of Roaches are next from the same side. Storm them twice and have your army blast them. Also at this point your High Templars are probally all really low, so again if you have 2 of them that are sub 75 MP, Archon them. Wave 19 is an Ultralisk from the NW side. This guy will most likely destroy your rocks unless if you have a decent amount of Sentries and Archons. Focus him down as best you can. Do not storm him unless if he breaks through the rocks and you really need to. Wave 20 is a group of Banelings from the original side. This group may come while the Ultralisk is still alive. If it's still alive, keep your units attacking him. If it's dead, block off the ramp. If the ramp is blocked, one storm should finish off this group. If it's not blocked, you'll need to kite them through two storms with your Templars while your army finishes off the Ultra. The last wave consists of two tanks from the SE side. Take everything you have and unleash it on them, cause once these are dead, you have your achievement. Storm them if you have the energy, if you dont, Archon them. Take your remaining Sentries and Archons to blow em up. At this point you'll have your achievement. If you wish to continue, you can though. I didnt have the units to do anymore though. - INFESTATION - Bronze: Kill 100 Enemies Silver: Kill 125 Enemies Gold: Kill 150 Enemies Infestation is a timed challenge where you have to take control of Roaches and Infestors to take out as many Terran and Protoss units as you can in the time given to you. I personally found this challenge to be pretty awesome, because hey, you get to mind control things to kill their friends. Cant get much more awesome than that. After the introduction, you have as much time as you want to go survey the surroundings. Take this time to familiarize yourself with your enemy locations as best as you can. You'll notice that there are many clumps of lower tier units like Marines, and in the area theres also a few Collosi, tanks and High Templars scattered around. Take note of where these are, these are the most important units. As for your own units, you have Roaches and Infestors. Honestly, after looking at the enemy unit compositions and stuff, you would have probally noticed that your Infestors are the key units for this challenge, the Roaches really wont do that much. The key to this challenge is to Neural Parasite all the big AoE units to go wreck the smaller balls of units to bits. There are three physical levels on this map, from top to bottom, they will be levels 1, 2 and 3 respectively. When you are ready, click Ready. Once the countdown finishes, immediately burrow all your units. Hopefully, you remember where the key units that you need to mind control are. There are two tanks on level one, so move one Infestor to each tank, and make sure they are right on top of them. Now using your Roaches, move them to the second level to help give your more vision of the area. Unburrow your Infestors that are underneath the tanks, and immediatly NP them. The tanks would not be able to attack you since you are so close. They will begin to destroy things on level two. While this is happening, move more Infestors to level two and find the tanks there. The tanks are in similar positions to the ones on level one, again make sure you are right underneath them, unburrow and NP. There are also some High Templars on the side, if you want, go ahead and get some Infestors to Mind Control them too, they don't fight back. With them under control, Psi Storm the Infantry groups nearby. Afterwards, move more roaches and the rest of your Infestors to the final level. You'll see that there is a Command Centre with a ton of SCVs mining stuff being guarded by a tank and Collosus. Bring two Infestors there and make sure both of them are underneath the tank. Unburrow them both and immediatly Mind Control the Collosus first, the tank cannot attack, so you can take your time with him, but the Collosus can. Once both are under your control, make them kill all the SCVs and the unit groups nearby. At this point you should already have a ton of kills. If you want, you can now unburrow your roaches and just give them free reign, if they kill stuff, great, theres no penalty if your units die anyways. You should already be able to get the gold achievement using the units you mind controlled, just move them around a bit to make sure they can kill stuff. But, if you want, you can use the rest of your Infestors to move around the map mind controlling other units. Theres an unseiged tank on the second level at the top that you can get if you want. Overall, this should be pretty simple. The time limit is forgiving enough that you can take your time. Just make sure you know where eveyrthing is. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Expert Challenges.......................................................[cgxcs] Expert Challenges are designed to test your micro and economic skills. There really isnt any link between the challenges. - HARBRINGER OF DEATH - Bronze: Kill 50 Enemies Silver: Kill 100 Enemies Gold: Kill 150 Enemies Harbringer of Death is a challenge with a focus on multitasking Protoss units. I personally think that I'm pretty bad at multitasking, but this challenge is just as much about planning your moves as much as it is actually executing them. As a note, you cannot click your spells and actions in this challenge, you have to use the keybinds. When you start the challenge, you are given a sizeable amount of resources to work with and various groups of units. These units are the ones you will need to control to defeat as many Zerg and Terran units as you can. You have control of Warp Prisms, Carriers, Stalkers, High Templars, Sentries and Phoenixes. Each group of units except for High Templars and Sentries have their own "wing" where they go do their stuff. Like the other challenges that require you to kill x amount of units in a certain amount of time, they give you as much time as you want to survey the map and plan your actions before you are ready to take on the challenge. I suggest using this time to set up keybinds and to familiarize yourself with the layout. Since theres so much that has to be done here, I'm going to go over each wing and describe the strategy that I used, afterwards I'll go more into depth about how I actually did it. You are given three warp prisms on the very northern side of the map. Warp Prisms cannot attack, but they can transform into essentially a pylon where you can warp in units from Warp Gates. The map gives you seven Warp Gates to deal with, so you dont have to worry about building them. These Warp Prisms need to be transformed individually, so select all three and hit "E" three times. This will generate a psi field for you to warp in units, so hit "W" to select the Warp Gates. From here you can summon units. I used Dark Templars because Dark Templars are like the greatest units ever, and since in that wing they only have one detector, they are quite strong. If you plan on using DTs, summon them using "D". Once all seven are finished warping in, a-move them into the top left corner of the map. There should be a small staircase with a small platform up top with a bunch of Roaches and Hydras on it, a-move them there. Whenever you can, warp in more DTs. You have enough resources to do this so you dont have to worry about it. Once your second wave of DTs are finished warping in, select all of them and a-move them to the opposite side of the Roach/Hydra platform. When they have killed all that stuff, a-move them to the far end of the wing. Theres an Ultralisk there with other units and an Overseer. The Overseer will allow your DTs to be killed, but they served their purpose. Next are the Carriers. You have five Carriers with four Interceptors each. Carriers can have up to eight at a time, so get them to make four more. After that, a-move them to the end of the wing. Chances are they will run out of Interceptors because the Marines and Turrets are noobs and decide to kill them instead of the actual Carriers, however this doesn't matter that much. As long as they kill mostly everything on the ground, it's fine. Dont worry about the units on that tall platform just yet. For the Stalkers, you need to Blink them onto the platform they are facing. Chances are you won't get them all up to that platform on your first try, but it doesn't really matter. If you have the apm to spare, go ahead and Blink up the stragglers, but as long as you have a small group of them, you will be fine. Get them to kill everything on that platform, and then Blink them down to the lowground. Get them to kill everything on the ground. When thats done, Make them move to the Northeastern side of the wing and get them to Blink to the platform there. There should be a bunch of SCVs there. Once everything is dead, Blink them down into the Carrier wing. Once the cooldown is up, Blink them onto the Highground in the Carrier wing using your Carriers to give you sight. If your Carriers already wiped up everything up there, then you dont need to do this, but I found that my Carriers always lost all their Interceptors, so I would bring my Stalkers along to clean up those units. Next up are the Sentries and High Templars. Honestly, I just used the Sentries for soaking up damage and doing as much damage as they can, but I didnt really use them that much. The main unit here are the High Templars. There are a ton of Marine/Marauder groups here and one well placed storm can kill all the Marines and then the Sentries can take out the Marauders as best they can. There really isn't much of a strategy here except to storm everything. You have plenty of storms, so just storm each group. You get a large portion of your unit kills in this wing, so make sure youre efficient at storming things. Storm is bound to the "T" key. Lastly, you have the Phoenixes. In their wing, you have some Mutalisks, Hydras and Zerglings. Phoenixes cannot attack ground, so your main targets are the Mutas. You can lift ground units off the ground using your Gravity Beam, but I thought that wasnt needed. Just select all your phoenixes, and get them to kill as many mutas as you can. As for actually executing all these strats, it's up to you how to do it. Not everyone can multitask the same way. However, I would suggest doing the Warp Prisms and Carriers first, since they require time to warp in units and to create Interceptors. How I did this was I started doing the Warp Prism wing first, and while the units were warping in, I created Interceptors on my Carriers. Then, after I told my DTs to a-move, I got my Carriers to a-move as well and started to get my Stalkers to start their wing. After that, I went to my Phoenxies and set up some way points so they would go after as many mutas as they could. After I finished doing whatever needed to be done with my DTs and Stalkers, I did the High Templar/Sentry wing, since they actually require more focus since you cant just a-move your way to victory in that wing. - OPENING GAMBIT - Bronze: Train 30 Marines, 8 Seige Tanks and 8 Ghosts Silver: 2 Minutes Remaining Gold: 4 Minutes Remaining Now I may have mentionned this before earlier in the guide, but I dont play Terran. In fact, it's like my worst race and the only real experience I have playing Terran is in the Campaign and in these challenges. So, for this strat, my build order may suck terribly. However, it got me the achievement so I'm not complaining. This challenge has you controlling a Terran base and you have to defend your base from waves of Zerg units while building up a fantastic army of Tanks, Marines, and Ghosts (wut). I personally thought this was the hardest challenge out of the nine, but again, I'm terrible at Terran. So we start off like we start off any game of Starcraft. Get your workers to start working, and start building more SCVs. When you are at 10/11 supply, move an SCV over to your ramp. Blizzard thoughtfully decided to add in a ghost image of where you should put your buildings to block off the ramp, so build a supply depot where it tells you to. In the meantime, keep building SCVs as much as you can. After the Depot, take that SCV and have it build a Barracks on the spot where Blizzard tells you to. Keep building SCVs. Build a Refinery at about 13 or 14 supply, and wait. Make sure you have 100 minerals to build a Supply Depot after your Barracks, and make sure you have 150 minerals to make your CC into an Orbital. By the time your Barracks is done, get that SCV to build a Supply Depot to finish off your wall, get your CC to morph into an Orbital Command, and move two SCVs from your Mineral Line to your finished Refinery. Whenever you can, build a Marine and rally it inside your base. At this point, I'm going to stop mentionning Supply Depots, so just build them when you need them in advance. Having your unit production blocked because of lack of depots sucks. The first wave of Zerg should appear roughly the time your wall finishes, so if your SCV finishes building and walks onto your ramp, lower a depot and get it inside before it dies. You should already have a Marine out and another on the way when the Zerglings start hitting your wall. This Barracks needs to be pumping Marines for the entire duration of the Challenge until you have the 30 needed. Now at this point, take the SCV that built your wall and have it build a Factory if you have enough gas. If you dont, have it build a second Refinery and take another SCV to build it when you have enough gas. When this Refinery is finished go throw two SCVs into it. At this point, I doubt people can really follow any build order exactly. I'll tell you how I did it, but you should really only take it as reference, do things when you can. I built a Ghost Academy at about 25 supply, and a second Command Centre at about 30 supply. The moment your Factory is finished, get it to build a Tech Lab immediatly. At about 35 supply, I made a second Barracks. As soon as your second Command Centre is done, turn it into an Orbital. When the second Barracks is done, give it a Tech Lab immediatly, and the moment it is done, you need to have it making Ghosts until you have 8. Now if you have been following my strategy so far, you should be fine on Seige Tanks well before the four minute mark, but you may potentially be close on Ghosts. Ghosts take 40 in game seconds to build, and since you need 8 of them, were talking 320 seconds of actual building time. Factor in potential resource and supply blocks, you should have at least 10:30 left on the cloak when you start building Ghosts. Even if you are slightly under that, you should still be ok, but you may need to bring out a third Barracks out faster. Once your second Orbital Command is done, land it at your expansion. Lower your Supply Depots at your wall, and have your first Barracks fly back a bit and build a Reactor. Move some SCVs (About halfish) from your main to your expansion, and build two Refineries immediatly. Once those are done throw some SCVs in them. At this point, build a third Barracks when you have the spare minerals and get it to build a Tech Lab when it's done. Use this as your second Ghost Pumper. When your Factory is done building the required amount of tanks, lift it off the ground. Now look at your units. If you are close to having 30 Marines, but still need a good amount of Ghosts, finish off your Marines with your Reactor Barracks and when thats done, lift off your Barracks and fly it over to where your Factory was and use it's Tech Lab. This will mean you have three Barracks to pump Ghosts from, which should be enough. In the event that two Ghost Barracks are enough, and you actually need more Marines, just have all your Barracks pump Marines after your Ghosts are done. Note that when I got the gold achievement, I actually had so many Marines next to my first Barracks that the game couldn't place anymore units on the ground so there was a blockage in the unit queue. At this point I was freaking out because I only had a few seconds left and those were my final two Marines. So if this happens to you, move your Marines away from your Barracks. You can do this preemptively, or better yet, just rally your marines so theyre not next to your Barracks. - RUSH DEFENSE - Bronze: Survive the Zergling Rush and Destroy the Protoss Structures Silver: Lose 16 Units or Less Gold: Lose 9 Units or Less In this challenge, you control a Terran base and have to go through two phases in order to beat the challenge. The first phase requires you to defend your base from a Zergling rush, and the second phase requires you to defend your base against a Zealot rush. I think Blizzard designed this mission to help newer players deal with early pressure in multiplayer, but the way I did it would fail miserably in multiplayer. It works great in the challenge, but dont try it in multiplayer. -- Phase 1 -- In the first phase, you start off with eleven SCVs already mining, so you dont have to worry about getting them to mine. You have 55 seconds to prep your defenses for the initial wave of Zerglings, but since you are already given 250 minerals and a supply depot to start off with, you can start right away. First, pick one SCV off the line and immediatly make it build a refinery on the closest geyser. Then, pick another SCV off your mineral line and move it over to your ramp, and build a Barracks so that it blocks off half of your ramp. When you have about 100 minerals again, move another SCV off your line and get it to build another Barracks one space over from your first one. So at this point, you should have something like this.. SAFE ZONE ________ ________ | |G| | |BARRACK|A|BARRACK| |___1___|P|___2___| / / / RAMP / Yes I know my diagram sucks. I just hope it turns out alright. But what you want to do is to block off the majority of your ramp with Barracks, but leave a small gap in the middle thats big enough for Barracks 1 to make an addon. Whenever your Refinery is finished building, the SCV that built it would automatically start mining from it. Move another SCV off the line to have it gather gas. When you have time, double click on one of the SCVs that are building the Barracks so that both of them are selected. Now hold down Shift and rally them over to the safe zone so that when they finish building the Barracks, they go there instead of on the ramp and get slaughtered. While both SCVs are still selected, right click the Repair command they have so it's set to auto cast. Also, rally your Barracks so that the units they create spawn inside your base in the safe zone. Your first Barracks should be done building just as the Zerglings reach your ramp, immediatly build an addon. It really doesn't matter what you build, but if you can, build a Reactor if you have enough gas. If not, dont worry, build a Tech Lab. This addon should fully block off your ramp, if you messed up your wall in, this strat wont work, so just restart until you get it right. The Zergling AI is kind of dumb, so they wont run into your base and wreck havok on your mineral line like an actual player would, so even if you dont have the gas to build an addon right away, you have some time. Just hope their pathing doesn't get into the way of you building your addon. MARINES AND SCVS PEW PEW ________ ________ | |o| | |BARRACK| |BARRACK| |___1___| |___2___| / ZERGLINGS / / KEKEKEKEKEKE / It's possible that if youre unlucky the SCV building Barracks 2 will die since he might be building on the ramp instead of somewhere safe, if that happens, you can move another SCV off the mineral line to complete the building if you dont want to restart. Now that you have your ramp fully blocked off and your SCVs safe inside your base repairing your Barracks, start creating Marines. When you can, build a Reactor for Barracks 2. After that, transfer both SCVs that were mining gas to your ramp and set their repair commands to auto cast. With four SCVs repairing your Barracks, they will not be destroyed. So just slowly pump out Marines and you'll beat this level with hopefully zero losses. ******************************************************************************* Tidbit.352 emailed me another strategy that abuses the AI pretty similarly to the strategy I used in Phase 2. What you would do is you would build a Barracks first on the lower right edge of the Command Centre, and then immediatly build a Supply Depot to the right of the Barracks. This would mean that you now have a tight wall from your Command Centre to your gas. After that, save your money until you can build a second Supply Depot right above that gas, and to the right of that single mineral patch. This would essentially wall off that entire side. When you can, start creating Marines and rally them to the inside. When the first wave hits, you shouldn't have a Marine yet, but be patient and let them wail on your buildings for a bit. After the Marine spawns and gets rid of a decent amount of Zerglings, have your SCVs repair your buildings, and build a bunker to house your Marines in. Repair your Bunker when needed and just fill it up. ******************************************************************************* -- Phase 2 -- In this phase, you have to defend your base from a constant Zealot attack while building up an army to destroy his pylons, gateways and photon cannon. When I first did this, I had a really crazy strategy. Now, I realised it was super crazy, so thought of a new way to do it. If you ask me for a replay of this section though, I may still only have the old strategy. Anyways, so for this phase, the Protoss start off with a cannon and a pylon on the lower ground, and with a Gateway warping in on the high ground in your base behind the grass. When the game first starts, send an SCV over to the Protoss "base" and build a Barracks to the right of the grass. It should be placed so that it looks something like this. ______ ______ | P | | | B | |____| | |____| Where P is the pylon warping in, B is where you need to build your Barracks, and the two lines where the grass is. This actually blocks the Protoss from making a second Gateway, since you're in his way, and the probe is too dense to make the gateway somewhere else. Now when you have 150 minerals, build a second Barracks in a position right above the only gateway, above the grass. So somewhere like this. ______ | B | |____| _______ \ ______ \ | G | | |____| | Where B is where you need to place the Barracks, and G is where his Gateway is. The lines are obviously for the grass. This will block the third Gateway from being created for the same reason as above. So now you have two Barracks versus his one Gateway. The moment your first Barracks finishes, take that SCV and build a bunker next to your Barracks. Make sure to keep it on your side of the grass. Make a Marine immediatly from Barracks 1 and rally it to the corner of the map. The Zealot should spawn first, make sure it does not kill your SCV making the Bunker. When your marine spawns, it should chase after the marine, so just send your marine to the corner of the map to keep the zealot busy. When you have 150 minerals, build a third barracks wherever. Rally all 3 barracks to the bunker and just mass marines. You have three Barracks and a Bunker versus his one gateway. You will overwhelm his Zealots eventually and kill the gateway. When the gateway is dead, just take all your marines and snipe the pylon on the highground, and then just kill the cannon and pylon on the lowground from the highground. Since the cannon doesn't have sight, you can kill it without it shooting you. Man, that was a lot simpler than my first strategy. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- End.....................................................................[cgend] Alright, thats it for the challenges, hurray. Enjoy your Spectre portrait. I hope my strategies weren't confusing or hard to follow. If you have a better strategy for certain challenges, or want a bit of clarification, feel free to email me at Draconicfire@hotmail.ca or message me in game. My character name is Draconicfire with a number identifier of 506. If you decide to email me, please include the words "Challenge Guide" somewhere in the email subject please, chances are I will not open it if you dont. Also if you decided to send me a new strategy, be sure to give me a username or something that I can use to give you credit! If you want a replay pack, just ask, but dont be expecting some 1337sauce play, I made a bunch of mistakes in them (See: Fail Fungul Growth in For The Swarm), but you can still get the general idea from them. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Legal Stuff.............................................................[cglgs] All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders. This may be not be reproduced under any circumstances except for personal, private use. It may not be placed on any web site or otherwise distributed publicly without advance written permission. Use of this guide on any other web site or as a part of any public display is strictly prohibited, and a violation of copyright. This guide can be hosted on the following sites. www.gamefaqs.com www.supercheats.com www.gamershell.com www.gamesradar.com www.neoseeker.com www.strategyinformer.com If you would like to host my guide on your site, feel free to email me. My email is in the "End" section. Special thanks to TeamLiquid.net for being awesome. Copyright 2010 Gary Ng