SC2 HOTS Brutal Campaign: Mission 19 Death from Above – With All Achievements

This mission has two acheivements Terran up the Sky and Apex Predator.

Terran up the Sky can be achieved within the first few minutes.  After your primal leader knocks out the generator you will have a few minutes to do some damage.  The achievement is to knock out 20 buildings before Drahara’s second attempt at knocking out a generation.

Start by attacking the southeastern base, it will offer little defense.  After this is out spend your time trying to hit outlying buildings around the planetery fortress.  Kerrigan’s nuke spell can be very useful in quickly dispelling enemies.  Spawn banelings as always is very useful.

Once you are at 1:30 on the clock Kerrigan’s ultimate spell will pop up.  Hopefully you went with Drop Pod.  Drop Pod on top of the planetary and destroy it.  You can just A+move north to clean up and you should be able to knock out 25-35 buildings by doing this.  Be aggressive with Kerrigan’s spells as they will dispel buildings very quickly.

Accomplishing Apex Predator is not especially challenging.  However note that the longer you take the more damage your units will take.

Drahka (the primal leader) in the first round will have a heal.  If you feel like you will still die he can burrow and wait for his heal to come back up.

In the second round he gets a yank.  This yank is far more useful than it is sold as.  The pull ability not only pulls a unit to Drahka but it also happens to stun the unit.  This makes it not only useful in these little engagements, but it also makes it useful later on when he joins the main army.

In the third round he gets a spawn primals ability.  This ablilty allows him to call in two primals who can jump up like he can.  In the third round you can actually skip over a lot of the fighting by jumping along the top.  This also keeps Drahka safe from all of those evil things on the ground.

For the ground attack having an army composed largely of roaches and hydralisks will be very valuable.  Note that on the main attack the psi destroyers will actually just out right destroy giant chunks of your army.  So when it comes to this final engagement, it’s wise to right click all of your units on it.

Drahka is especially useful because he is not effected by it.  As well since he can melee air units he can solo the final area.

Unfortunately just like Krukov, this is one awesome hero you will never see again.

SC2 HOTS Brutal Campaign: Mission 18 Planet Fall – With All Achievements and Secondary Objectives

You are almost there, a full brutal run with all achievements!

In this mission you can easily accomplish all achievements and the mastery on brutal.

The two achievements are called Fully Operational (let no bial launcher die) and Death Start (complete the secondary objective before the fifth bial launcher lands).

So for this make sure to have the drop pods ability, this will be very useful.  Almost everything else can be used as you choose.  I found jumping banelings and jumping zerglings to be very useful for engagements however.

To start you can have Kerrigan chip away at enemy buildings using her abilities.  As an opening you should head northwest of your base and take control of that space.  This will give you access to another mineral patch and two more gas geysers.

The majority of your army should be roaches for most of this.  Mixing in some abberations has strong effectiveness.  You should be constantly upgrading ranged attack and armor using two evolution chambers.

After this you can start removing some enemy buildings.  There is an awkward position north of your base that gets in the way of reinforcements.  Removing this one first will help you a tonne.

As well you can move to the east of your base and get rid of that door and the base there very quickly.  This is where you should drop your first drop pod.  With the drop pod troops you should be able to wipe out the base very easily and plant down a hatchery to start snaking the minerals and gas.

After this you should only be attacking in the north for a bit.  Attacking north means you will be intercepting most attack squads that come after your bile launchers.

Your second base should always have about six spine crawlers.  Every other bile launchers should have at least 3.  You should put six at the bile launcher to the east of your base.

After you have three bases fully saturated and a nice bit of roaches (around 110 supply) you should switch over to hydralisk tech as you will need ranged units and you will also enjoy the increased damage.

To get the mastery have Kerrigan and a small group of units destroy the remaining bases using drop pod timings.  There is a base center north, northeast, southeast, and northwest.

A lot of the time you can rally your next group of units to defend bile launchers as well.

As you will see in my video above I was sleeping and missed the mastery by six whole buildings which were very easy to kill.  Best of luck and good hunting.

SC2 HOTS Brutal Campaign: Mission 14 Hand of Darkness – With All Achievements and Secondary Objectives

Hand of Darkness is the mission in which Blizzard pulls the sheeps wool over your eyes.  For the entirety of Starcraft 2 the zerg were the ultimate enemy with various changing Zerg leaders from the Overmind, to Zsaz, and finally to Kerrigan.  But the Xel Naga weapon removed the essence of Aman from Kerrigan making her pure and no longer in control of Aman… an entity that has never been mentioned up until this point.

This mission you face off against a shapeshifter named Narud who Kerrigan is convinced she has never met despite Narud constantly informing her that he remembers her.  Of course for people who played the original campaign they’ll remember that Duran (Narud backwards) guided the United Earth Directorate into Kerrigan’s hands and eventually Duran abandoned Kerrigan for his own hybrid zerg-protoss projects.

So to say that this battle has been leading up for quite some time would be understating.  Most importantly they are introducing the new major villain, Aman.  Many suspect this is so that Blizard can make Starcraft into an MMO later on… but honestly who would want to play as a first person Zerg?  That game would play as terribly as Aliens: Colonial Marine.

Oh wait you’re here about the mission, not my introduction on why I hate this mission.

Hand of Darkness requires you to kill Hybrids as they spawn from cages before they kill off Kerrigan.  There are 7 in total.  They spawn in the order of the following:

Keep in mind this map is very important because the achievement Power Underwhelming requires you to pre-emptively open three cells before their natural time.

This achievement doesn’t come off as being too hard because Kerrigan with a few unit can destroy any Hybrid.  Simply follow the numbers and make sure to open the first three first and you will quite easily get Power Underwhelming.

Getting Shattered Command is a little more challenging.  This achievement requires you to destroy two command centers.  Looking at the map above the first command center is directly west of your first base (I’ve plopped down a new base there) and the second is west of the 6th and 7th hybrid cells, there is a ramp up there.

You have to destroy the first command center before you kill off the five hybrid.  You have to kill off the second command center before the final two hybrids are released.

Unit compositions do not matter too much but some tips.

First, stay away from hydralisks.  With the number of tanks and flamebats an army of hydralisks, despite their high DPS, would get torn a sunder in seconds.

Also infestors tend not to be too useful.  The enemy uses high amounts of mech and spreads his infantry very well.  There is really never much worth taking over either via neural parasite.

For my pushes I stuck with roaches (with the spawn roachlings ability) and zerglings (with the jumping ability).  Having jumping zerglings allowed them to jump up ramps and snipe out tanks.  It also offered something for the tanks to hit that wasn’t my main army ball.

The roaches were heavily armored and able to take far more than the lings.  It also didn’t hurt that the hybrids happened to just wipe out lings in seconds, whereas roaches they had more problems with.

The two secondary objectives are must grabs.  They will help you take command centers and help you kill hybrids.  You can grab both with very little effort and very little extra time added on to the mission.

SC2 HOTS Brutal Campaign: Mission 12 Supreme – With All Achievements and Secondary Objectives

Getting these achievements on Brutal difficulty means completing the mission.  Falling under 100 health isn’t a real concern because you can just heal yourself.  This page will explain how each boss is done.

Before I get into that.  The hard to find secondary objectives are located northwest in the first area and northeast in the third area.  You have to jump some platforms to get to these.  The first one is full of guys who can die to the dash.  The fourth one has various spitters on platforms you will have to kill off.

On to the bosses!

Boss #1: Yagdra

This worm (I guess nydus worm) has two main abilities.  Yagdra will target a few areas around you and spew fireballs at them.  You simply move out of the red circles.

The second ability is to spew fire in a circle.  This can be side stepped.

The key to beating this boss is using Kerrigan’s jump ability on the boss as much as humanly possible.

The boss will also spawn eggs. The little ones can be dashed through.  The big one can either be targeted down or jumped on.  It’s important to prioritize getting rid of these eggs over killing the boss.

Boss #2: Kraith

I have no idea what this guy is supposed to be.

However this boss has two abilities.  The first ability is to spin in a circle and fire thorns at you.  You simply spin around him to dodge these.  You can move fast enough to actually get extra damage in on him as well.

His other ability is a charge, it is marked with a line where he will charge.  Move out of the way of this and after he does it you can get a Jump attack on him and get some extra damage in.

He will spawn a lot of ads.  To deal with these make sure to heal p your own minions and run away from them all.  They will follow you in a line, a perfect opportunity for a Dash attack to kill them all at once.

Much like the first fight this one is about avoiding damage and killing minions.

Boss #3: Sleven The Eternal Mother

This boss is unique in that it has absolutely no abilities.  This boss is simply perpetually spawning banelings around her, which makes her hard to hit.

As well she will call on Acid Spewer minions.  These acid spewer minions have to die pronto (as in as soon as possible).  You can jump attack them and finish them off with another hit easily.

Make sure to keep healing up Kerrigan whenever she takes damage.

The TRICK to this boss is that the banelings do not work like normal banelings.  First and foremost they deal friendly fire damage.  This means that the banelings if activated on Sleven, will hurt her (and the acid spewers).  The second is that upon moving near them they do not immediately explode, they wait about 5 seconds then explode.

This boss is about walking around the boss and exploding as many of these banelings as possible without getting hit by them.  If you get trapped you can dash out of the banelings.  The baneling blasts will kill Sleven alone.

The mother will walk around and not always be escorted by so many banelings, it is here you can deal some awesome Jump attack damage to make this go faster.

Boss #4: The Ancient

We always knew we’d be killing this wind bag.

The ancient evolves new abilities over time.  His first ability is to slap down his arms to hit you. They are large and pretty easily dodgeable.  You do not need your minions to beat this boss, but keeping them alive longer will make this fight go on shorter.

Every 30 seconds he will spawn a few minions.  These are hydralisks and one ultralisk.  Most of these can be killed with the dash, ultralisk will need a Jump.

If you can continue to dodge damage and kill the minions eventually you will reach a second phase in the fight.  In this phase The Ancient will start to spew electricity from his mouth at you.  Simultaneously there will be sparks on the ground you will have to dodge, all of these cause high damage.

You can heal up through this but remember the more heals you use is the less energy you have and the less energy you have the less opportunity you will have to use Jump attack to squash him down faster.

Overall he’s only the third hardest of them.

Upon killing him you will have completed your achievements!

Note if you don’t have 500 kills for Kerrigan you can get them all on Sleven the Brood Mother by dashing through the banelings.  Each dash will kill about 50-60 banelings.

SC2 HOTS Brutal Campaign: Mission 11 The Crucible – With All Achievements and Secondary Objectives

If you played the original Starcraft’s zerg campaign you will remember the entire campaign was surrounding the creation of a super creature.  That mission culminated on one major event in which Kerrigan Queen of Blades hatched from a pod and became an independent minion of The Overmind.

This mission draws from this event.  You will also find parallels between this mission and the All In mission from the Wings of Liberty campaign mechanically.

You will start the mission off introduced to the Swarm Host.  The Swarm Host deploys small short ranged attackers.  The primary use of these is to act as soakers so that your army can run in and deal damage, and then retreat once the swarm dies.

There are two major achievements in this mission.  Epic Meal Time is accomplished by simply using a Spawn Locusts ability almost every single time it is up.  By doing this you make the mission easier and the achievement is simply to accumulate kills, not all at once.

This ability will become unlocked after the second wave of units.

The second achievement, Don’t Touch This Chrysalis is much harder as it requires absolutely no damage to the chrysalis, even from flyer bounces.

Upon getting to the base you will have access to two spine crawlers, five swarm hosts, three mutalisks, and one queen.

Make sure to use the queen to extend your creep.  You will need this extended creep around the eastern flank, the western flank, and a southern flank that doesn’t get realized until later.

The first attack will come from the west.  Deploy your spine crawlers in front of your swarm hosts.  When the attack comes you can pre-emptively spawn some swarms to soak some damage and get some extra kills.  This wave has NO anti-air units so you can deploy your mutalisks after it immediately.

The second wave will require some creative thinking.  I choose to make banelings and burrow them.  I get the baneling upgrade in which a baneling destruction spawns two mini-banelings.  This messes with the computer AI and can deal some crazy damage.  With them burrowed you can do crazy high amounts of damage to their numbers through AOE splash damage and you can also slow them down so you can deploy more swarms.

The cost of six banelings is not that much considering during this time you will have an extra hatchery working on a second base and will be making nothing but drones until you are near maxed.

For the next wave you will have the new ability show up which you can use on this wave.  You can also have some spine crawlers move over there to support.

At this point you will want to work on some spore crawlers covering the middle plateau on the eastern flank and some directly west of the chrysalis.  This will defend your queen from flyers.  You will also want to make a lot of spine crawlers.  These are just solutions that will allow you to survive.  Remember to keep some banelings around as well.  They are great for emergency problems and will buy you more than enough time.

Your main unit will be the hydralisk.  Make sure to get the frenzy ability (50% damage for 15 seconds).  This ability seriously owns.  Hydralisks are anti-air units and have high single target damage, making them perfect defenders.  You can deploy more swarm hosts to both flanks and just keep them there permanently.  As well as your money (minerals) get really high make sure to expand your gas production and make even more spore crawlers and spine crawlers.

It is important to get the ranged attack and armor upgrades over time.  They will be critical in winning those big battles.

To get the secondary objective wait until you are near max army.  Wait for one more attack and after that attack is over rush through the enemy lines.  You can burrow to get some of the enemy’s forces off of you.  Frenzy up and kill the Tyranascour within seconds.  You can run back to your base, expect to lose about 30 hydralisks in this run.  With your economy you can easily replenish this and you will also have the Spawn Locusts ability to cover you for the next enemy attack.

On Spawn Locusts.  The ability only works within the radius of your base.  This means you have to wait for the enemy to begin to attack in order to use it.  This also means your front line will take some damage.

Near the end the enemy will start breaking down the bottom rocks.  You can actually just run some lings at them and stop them from breaking down these rocks.  But regardless make sure to have tones of spine crawlers and spore crawlers planted around this area.

At the end of the mission spawn locusts as often as you can and make sure to keep hydralisks roughly in the middle splitting them off to deal with flanks that need more or less help.

This is considered to be one of the harder brutal modes to accomplish but with some practice with macro management you will find it easy.