Guide to Beat "Adun" Final Mission

First let me say that the "Adun" campaign had some annoyances--like reusing melee terrain. For instance, the final mission is actually Crystal Castles for the final map http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Crystal_Castles ; "The Battle of Rosewood" is Rosewood, http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/Rosewood ; etc.

But whatever, it's there to be beaten so here's how to beat it:

Third way to beat final map without cheats (not the same run as the one in the above video):

1 - Secure the center
2 - Golis, tanks, goons. Get them. Lots of them.
3 - Don't lose stuff.
4 - Observers (for detection, durr)
5 - Reavers, valkyries, wraiths, scouts. Don't build them. They suck.
6 - Take the upper left, preferably before Mr. Plum completely mines it out like a noob tool. Expo.
7 - Arbs + recall
8 - Take the air-only to the top mid-right. Expo.
9 - Take the upper right corner where the expo is of the endless ridge at the mid-right top. Expo.
10 - Push down where the computer hopefully isn't mining. Take the top toss; expo. Take the brown terran right; expo. Push down to the other terran. Expo.
11 - Clear through the probably mined out and useless cannons along the right.
12 - Push down into white's main. Take white's main minerals which he seems to not mine. Expo.
13 - Clear white, take white's other minerals, exp.
14 - In my case, poop and pee broke and decided to stop attacking me at this point.
15 - Mass cars/BCs
16 - Kill everything left
17 - Profit.

Basically, control the center until it's almost mined out, then push to the 9 o'clock position and clear everything clockwise, avoiding the center to give the comp a fighting chance.

2:33:33 run time.
About 2k kills.
Rep unavailable because I had to load every time brown nuked my army lawl.

It got a little dicey right before I finished clearing out white when they finally took the center. You really can't lose it until you're at least half way down the right and the entire top is cleared.

I'm still left with an inexplicable desire to try this "sundrop" stuff. It seems pretty sweet.

Edit: since it wouldn't let me save a rep, here's the furthest-back save I kept: http://www.4shared.com/file/124526894/a22e24da/mission7.html No idea if save games work when downloaded, but w/e.

-Lost main, but have white's minerals
-Almost full ups
-poop and pee broken
-Look for the untouched tank with 50 kills ;)

Strategy Guide for 'Hell'

So, the last mission of WoA has gotten a few comments about the difficulty, notably a friend on b.net calling it "Insane." Well, the mission is titled "Hell" so difficulty was part of what I was looking for in it. ;)

But here's a large part of my strategy build for "Hell":

IF YOU DONT WANT SPOILERS, STOP READING NOW

First, you should by now be well familiar with the scout/arbiter attack spells, and the carrier shield recharge. You will still be using these spells frequently, probably the carrier spell more (I'll get to that in a second). But first, let's refresh what the spells do:

-The Arbiter/Carrier spell kills BROWN units
-The Hero Hunter (Shuttle) kills WHITE units

In this section of the map, you have to be careful to pace yourself, because you will often need to use the Sword of Adun (Corsair) when battlecruisers start attack you. If your apm/micro is good, the Sword of Adun can actually be more consistently helpful than the Hero Hunter, because the Sword of Adun can cast disruptor web more than once and still have time to kill battlecruisers.

All that being said, there's so much that goes on toward the beginning I usually hope the player will experiment and siege their way in to kill the Barracks, Factory, and Starport where enemy units spawn from--basically kill the entire first row, defending as necessary.

It's really the second row that you have to get more creative. Basically, you might want to pace yourself, keep killing rines and let Thulera kill units up top so that you can slowly but surely increase your amounts of upgrades. I wouldn't even suggest going near the Crucio-Alpha siege tanks until you're at least 5/5/5. Let them come to you until you're good and ready.

At this point, the most reliable strategy I've found is to then save up and research Hallucination. Then, build 4-6 templar, and bring them to the near entrance to where the Crucio-Alphas are.

Here's where one of the sneaky parts really starts. If you hallucinate Kane, and run the Hallus in without Kane, you take 0 risk of Kane dying, and the splash damage from the siege tanks will kill enemy bunkers and sometimes even ghosts. Remember to buy observers when the ghosts start ganging up on you with invisibility.

This might seem like a slow method, but there's a trick that makes it go a lot faster. When your *hallucinations* take damage, use the carrier spell. The carrier spell heals the shields for *all* your Kanes, including your hallucinations. This way, your hallucinations will usually stay alive through the entire hallucination period and you should be able to get the most damage in. Once there's only a few ghosts/tanks in a section left, Kane can usually run in and with your carrier spell clean up, so that you can then move your templar up and start the next section.

This is a strategy I only really discovered until later on. The difficulty of the level is really there to encourage experimenting with spell effects. Maybe you want to run Kane in, throw out a reaver grenade, and run back and heal. Maybe what will work for you is using the Sword of Adun and using disruptor web on enemy tanks/bunkers.

The reason I really like the hallucinated Kanes, is that the Arbiter/Scout spells effect those as well--as does the Hero Hunter, thus dramatically expanding the range of the Hero Hunter, and allowing you to group your units together with the arb/scout spell. As I said a few pages back, hallucinations + spells do krazy things! ;)

Even if you do get bored with the second row in "Hell" I still encourage you to turn off any cheats you might have turned on when confronting the first boss fight, because it's one of my favorite parts of the whole campaign.

Good luck and have fun!

Strategy Guide for 'Brothers'

This is a strategy guide for the Penultimate mission of "The Will of Atai": "Brothers."

If you do not want spoilers, STOP READING NOW

This is the primary melee-style map in the campaign (the other being the first half of "Kirin"). Since it is far more dependent on your melee skills than anything else, the stronger your melee is coming in to the mission, the more likely you are to survive.

This post will be a discussion of how to do well in this mission, even if your melee is closer to a C- than an A+.

That being said, everything that follows is MY strategy... I think that there are a myriad of strong options for what you can do in this map and how you go about winning.

First, let's talk about losing. There are three ways to lose:

1 - Thulera (in either form) dies. On your first playthrough, it might be wise to keep a shuttle relatively near him in case he ends up getting stuck somewhere. As my videos will show, I use him throughout the mission, but more at the very beginning and at the very end. I don't usually use him to fight the mutas because the risk of him dying is just too high.

2 - Your base gets completely destroyed. This has never happened to me, and probably won't happen to you.

3 - One of your allied heroes die. If you hide Thulera somewhere, and then afk and do nothing, this is how the game will end. (It will usually be Jack that dies first if you literally do nothing but instantly afk.) However, if you really do absolutely NOTHING to defend your allies and let the terran base get hit by the full brunt of the Mutalisks at the countdown, Hyperion will almost always die. I find that keeping a little as one Dark Archon with Maelstorm will often be enough to keep Hyperion alive and well.

Now length:

In my average run, there are something like four "quarters" of uneven length (the last quarter the longest, varying depending on how you do on the preceding three fourths). My slow runs tend to be about an hour and a half. My fast runs can get close to an hour. I would really love to hear anyone's strategy that manages to beat it in under an hour.

Now units I don't build:

-Carriers. A little known fact is that Cerebrate Kull hates carriers.

-Scouts. That can't kill enemy heroes, so screw em.

Early game:

-My first objective is to take the center. The southern ramp from the ice to the snow is what I currently feel is the best choke, but I only came to this conclusion after playing 2-3 times. I've tried a few different chokes (including not even taking the center at all), and I find that although I have to build less and take fewer casualties, ultimately my allies suffer much more. If you take the center, your terran ally is more likely to actually do some damage with its tank pushes.

-It's important to not just expand and build cannons. It *really* helps to start researching things like maelstorm and to get your templar archives up. Dark archons make or break your defense through the entire first half hour of the game, and continue to be useful later on. (No, you cannot get MC)

-When Cerebrate Kull taunts you or informs you you're about to die, that means he's going to send an attack aimed at yours *AND* your ally's bases. Prepare for this; always keep a dark archon by your allied heroes/main command posts. The first event is a hero drop that occurs about ten minutes into the game.

Early mid-game:

-This section of the game is after the hero drop and before the muta attack at the end of the countdown. During this time, I find it really helps to accomplish the following:

a) taking at least one air-only expansion (it's not unusual that both starting bases, both my early expansions, and the center will all wipe in late game)
b) getting and energy for dark archons and templar
c) researching recall and getting arbiters and reavers for the transition into late game

-If you do nothing else other than prepare to survive the mutalisk attack at the end of the countdown, you're probably doing fine. If you can come out of it with a strong recovery and minimal losses for you and your allies, you are doing good. However, it gets progressively more difficult to kill Benedict after this point. A lot of cloaked wraiths and scourges start flying around.

Late mid-game:

-This section is what you do after the mutalisk attack at the end of the countdown and *presumably* before you kill Infested Benedict. You don't *have* to kill Benedict, it is entirely optional. However, if you don't, I find it very hard to maintain an economy that can hold out long enough for me to take out Kull.

-This actually can be the shortest section in the game, if you prepared for it. My method is to hallucinate arbiters, and drop reavers pretty much top of him, with an observer so he can't cloak.

Late game:

-At this point, all you need to do is kill Kull. I have been experimenting lately and actually started to incorporate doing hallucinated arbiter drops to do this one too. Corsairs are very useful during this part, for webbing the ridiculous number of invincible sunkens. You will likely need to do some scourge control (goons and templar should be able to keep them in check). I also am usually mined out of the two starting bases (if they're still alive), the natural to the right of your main, and the center is taking such heavy assault from OJ that it's worth it to fly to the air-only expo in the bottom right and take it in case I run out of money first. However, what you have left and what you need to do at this point will greatly vary. It might be that you need to kill OJ and take the mid-right expansion as well (which pretty much never gets touched but is hard to defend).

There's some other stuff that happens after Kull dies but I'll leave it to you to see that... I've never had serious trouble dealing with it.

Good luck, have fun!