Mission 04 Smash and Grab

Alright, back to Starcraft 2 Walkthrough, onto the 4th mission: there is a choice here to go to either Agria or Monlyth, this is the Monlyth Mission, the agria mission is also easy but like i said previously firebats are pretty much useless without both of their bought upgrades and marauders are useful.

I don't think I mentioned but the second mission of the 2 that you do nets you mercenaries, which are powerful versions of certain units, they are the number one buy you should buy in the campaign, they are pretty much useful in every mission, the only ones that are questionable are the firebat mercs and perhaps the battlecruiser merc, because it isn't that useful in any of the final missions where you can use it..

However onto this mission, I'll just briefly explain the mission and what it introduces. Firstly this mission Introduces Marauders (obviously) and Research Bonus objectives.

Marauders are the backbone of any infantry army, they demolish armored units, this is amplified in multiplayer where marauders also have access to stimpack, making them very powerful in Multiplayer, they are also powerful in single player, especially if you know the enemy has alot of armored units or melee units (later), mostly they are a compliment to your marines in the campaign where you would rather go like 4 marines:1 marauder : 1 medic type armies in most missions, however on hard (note: not brutal) there are no air in this mission so you can go mostly marauders and be pretty good.

The second thing in this mission are the bonus objectives granting you research, you want every single bonus objective because a) you want to max protoss/zerg research asap as they unlock abilities/units/structures that are essential for making the campaign easier and once you max these you gain extra money from bonus research to unlock upgrades. If you want to do achievements and stuff I advise making sure the last playthrough you do nets you all the artifacts you want.

Right, onto the mission basically the mission format is that the zerg is racing you to get to the artifact, the zerg will send units over to attack your base occasionally, the protoss will not besides the first stalker attack. Essentially I think it takes the Zerg around 30-35 minutes to get to the artifact on hard, and around 25 minutes on Brutal, takes forever on normal and casual :P.

Basically, on Hard difficulty or easier you don't have to care about the zerg, you can max your army before pushing if you want and the Zerg won't reach the artifact before you do. On Brutal it's a little harder and you have to move out at around 100 or so food or the zerg will beat you to the artifact.

Firstly Mission Objectives

Main: Recover the Artifact

Bonus: Recover the Protoss Relics (4)

Achievements: Take 0 losses from the Artifact Guardians on Normal Difficulty

Finish the Mission in less than 15 minutes.

Ok to start with you are given 1 Command Centre, 5 scvs, 1 Refinery, 1 Barracks /w Tech Lab, 2 Supply Depots, 3 Marines and 1 Medic. Also you will get 4 marauders via drop-in (3 on Brutal), To start with pump scvs and marines and follow the build order below, remember these are rough guides, how much damage you take from zerg waves will affect your supply rounds, I'll make some comments on specific parts of the build after.

25-Supply Depot

27 - 2 Scvs in Gas*

33 - Supply Depot

39 - Supply Depot

47 - Supply Depot

50 - Barracks

54 - Engineering Bay

55 - Supply Depot

57 - Reactor, Stop Scv Production, Barracks, 3 Scvs in Gas

59 - Attack Upgrade, Bunker

63 - Supply Depot (continuous from now on), Tech Lab, Barracks, Turret

69 - 2nd Bunker

83 - Armor Upgrade

Macro out of your 4 barracks from now on, you don't need an addon on your last Barracks.

A few comments on this build order.. Firstly you may think that putting that putting 2 scvs in gas is actually too much, but 2 means you can build up gas to get upgrades earlier and can have continuous production later, you will definitly need to cut some marauders for marines early on for supply depots.

Your Barracks should be producing 1st: Marauders, 2nd: Marines, 3rd: Medics and 4th: Marines. Note: If you lose your first medic to a zerg attack, produce one immedietly from your 1st barracks or you are going to lose way too many troops.

When making your barracks load them with 4 marines and 1 marauder each, this is probably the most optimum barracks lay down until you get the last zerg research (discussed later)

Also note that you can probably stim on every engagement with your marines, stimming and letting your medics heal them back up can be very powerful. The key thing is, don't save stimpack, use it as much as you want to (you can use it in bunkers).

Last thing is that the turret is there to deal with the 2-3 mutalisks that come, it is optional on hard mode, but you need this on Brutal, perhaps a second and you want to position your first barracks like on the top of your ramp to the left and your second one behind this with the turret right next to it.

Right, depending on whether you want to do the hard achievement you have a leisure of when you want to push out, its nice to push out around like 100 supply if you don't care for the hard achievement, if you do care about the achievement you should move out at around 70-80 supply, you get a couple of auto-saves so if you are late just move out earlier and repeat.

Onto the actual walkthrough though: I am going to move out at around 100 supply, leaving both bunkers full with the above composition and have all 4 barracks rallied to my main force, firstly move down your ramp and grab the artifact there.. move to the west towards the zerg and push up the ramp, there are 2 spine crawlers that will attack you as you move up: attack-move micro works wonders here and just attack the crawlers as you move up the ramp. There is a spore crawler (anti-air) and an overlord here aswell, take them down if you want but not necessary.

Continue moving west and south. Do not go north into the zerg front lines, although you could perhaps take it out, I personally haven't tried and don't want to :D. Once you move off the zerg creep (the purple stuff on the ground) continue moving south till you see 2 cannons, 2 pylons and a lone stalker (3 on Brutal), attack-move micro through them and take the small path to your east and pick up the artifact. Then move back to your ramp.

Ok, once you are back at your ramp you can start to push east, take out the units and the pylons first, taking these down powers down the cannons and they no longer attack. The golden rule is that taking down 1 cannon is quicker than 1 pylon, but 1 pylon is quicker than 2 cannons. Continue moving across the bridge where you will run into a new unit: the sentry, they forcefield you on the bridge, take down the pylons to the north and south of the bridge and then kill the sentries (On Brutal there is a High Templar here who storms your units, move them out of the storm and then kill him asap when the storm ends). Once this is done take down the powered-down cannons and the continue moving east around the path.

You should get to some protoss force at the bottom of the ramp consisting of some stalkers and zealots and cannons, take them out (on Hard mode there are 2 void rays here, stim your marines and take them out asap). There is a small path to the west, go down it and take out the 3 cannons and pylon located here, remember snipe the pylon first after the forward cannon and grab the relic.

Up the ramp is a Protoss base, attack move up there and demolish the force, you will see the sentries other moves here: Hallucination and Guardian Shield, you should focus on the Sentry first so your ranged attacks do more damage to the rest of the protoss army, take out the units first and then the cannons and then the probes (workers) and then the nexus then the rest of the buildings (on Brutal there are archons (and hallucinated archons) up here, they do lots of damage to your infantry so focus them down first).

Once the base is down there is the main bridge to the artifact and to the east of that is a small path with 2 pylons and a relic down here, just go and grab it and then go to the bridge, the sentries again forcefield you off. This time they have stalkers that hit past the forcefields which you can barely hit, snipe off the sentries then charge across the bridge and take out the stalkers.

Now depending on whether you want to do the achievement or not stop or just charge ahead to the artifact with your force. If you want to do the achievement, leave all your marines outside of the artifact area and take only your marauders and medics. When you go over the green thing the GUARDIANS will activate, they are basically reskinned colossii meaning they do aoe damage to your units, hence why you want to leave the weaker marines out of your force if you want to do the achievement, just choose the furthest left statue and surround it with your infantry and focus it down, then the south one and then the east one. If you want the achievement remember to pull back marauders/medics taking damage so they don't die.

Otherwise just attack-move to victory and watch the cut-scene. I was sure the dropship would get shot down since it showed it and had kerrigan saying I WONT UNDERESTIMATE YOU NEXT TIME, but alas it didn't (spoiler?).

When you get back to the ship you should have 110,000 credits and gain access to the mercenaries. Like I said earlier: YOU WANT THESE, hire the marauders for 30,000 leaving you with 80,000.

You now have access in the armory to Marauder tech

You Have 2 upgrades for Marauders:

Concussive Shells - The Marauders' attack now slows the Enemy (note it is in an area around the target unit and not just the target unit) (70,000)

Kinetic Foam - Increases the life of Marauders by 25 (90,000)

Concussive shells makes marauders so useful in a marauder/medic/marine ball in the campaign and so you should upgrade this without question, unless you want to skip marauders completely, if you do I would get the Combat Shield upgrade for Marines for the extra hp, Personally I like marauders in my ground army and they are very useful until you get 25 zerg tech.

Discussion: Because marauders are slow (relatively) to marines/medics a marine/medic ball is almost always more effective in the campaign because it is more mobile, however throwing a marauder or 3 in there to slow melee units definitly pays off. Marines and Medics are the backbone of any army really and adding Marauders means you have a low gas-usage compared to other options, you don't need the extra life on marauders but the aoe slow is soooo useful in balls.

Personally my strat will be a Medic/Marine/Tank/Vessel Army on most generic maps, with the mercenaries mixed in of course. However Marauders are very good till you get tanks and science vessels so I recommend getting these upgrades, and you will get the marauder mercs most games so you might aswell grab this upgrade imo, but getting faster combat shield is just as fine, I will get both.

Please note my strat above isn't that viable in multiplayer because you can't get medics and vessels in multiplayer, Marine/Tank is a reasonable strat, but it requires good macro and micro to pull off, the most similar strategy in multiplayer are MMM (Marines, Marauders and Medivac) armies, which is probably the easiest strategy to pull off, but I won't comment too much on multiplayer, just note it is far more viable in multiplayer because marauders gain stimpack.

Patrol Quest Hub (Durotar)

Ok, so before we get onto the actual quest feedback and whatever I am going to talk about Druid level 8, first a little pic to explain some stuff :D.

Ok, so you get Cat form at level 8, by the way this is AWESOME, it allows druids to try out both Balance and feral before having to specialise, this is super important imo considering that choosing your specialisation is meant to be a big deal and being able to try out both "flavours" of the class before choosing it, is important.

Secondly though, I'm going to talk about cat form for Trolls, the first time I saw screens for the troll cats I thouught "LOL!" they looked seriously dumb looking in my opinion. Actually seeing them in-game has made me seen that they do fit in, although their models need some work for one major reason

They look pretty much like Night elf Cats with a mane+tusks, I'd kinda like if they modelled them a little differently so they don't look like re-skinned night elfs, I'd also like it if they toned down the colors a little, not too much, but at the moment they seem a bit too ott that could certainly put people off wanting to be feral imo.

On to the actual questing then like firstly, I like the interactions of this quest, like you head up to the quest guy and they are like THE GUY U NEED TO HAND THE QUEST INTO IS UPSTAIRS, I mean that sort of stuff is so useful to people, especially a newer player who might just be looking at the map for a guide and not reading the quest text.

Secondly this quest is awesome, but it does contain a fundamental flaw, I'll come onto this later because you only think of this flaw after doing the subsequent quests, but its cool you use your quest item, the spyglass 4 times and it shows you the 4 next areas you are going to be questing in, you are then sent to go help these people, similar to the zuldrak patrol, you have to complete their 4 quest hubs to complete this over-arching quest, I personally loved that zuldrak quest hub (although I hated the zone due to that shitty abomination quest... grrr).

So yeh you are shown where you need to go for this quest and then are sent out to help the 4 people you saw in the like "cut-scenes".

The first guy you are shown is Raggaran so I obviously went to him first.

He is like RAWR QUILLBOAR ARE ANNOYING ME HATE U KILL ALL MUST DIE etc, so you go out kill some quillboar and he is like ARALWRRLARHALRAR KILL EVEN MOREE!!!!!, so you go and kill more. There is a rare here, as shown in my picture and he is actually REALLY strong, his enrage is like so... powerful I killed him but he killed me at the same time, personally I feel he is a little too powerful for an area you are hitting at level 8, also some of the quillboar here tend to multi-aggro so perhaps spreading them out a bit wouldn't go amiss.

I dinged level 9 here though, and after killing those final set of stuff he is like AHH I FINALLY CALMED DOWN and tells you to leave before he turns back into the hulk or w/e he is trying to impersonate.

Next I went to the hut..

and here is what I realised a fundamental flaw of the spyglass quest. It shows you the 4 locations in like the worst quest Order Possible, this quest here is like ESCORT ME TO RAGGARAN, and I'm like I've just been there... seriously?... really the spyglass quest NEEDS to show the areas in the optimum quest order, which imo is probably, almost, the reverse of the order it actually shows Farm->Hut->Raggaran->Bridge, for the most optimum quest order, I suppose at Raggaran you could go north to the quillboars and escort her on the way back, but the south west quillboars are much nearer so unless you knew this quest was going to be this than you would naturally go south west.

This quest though is actually a really awesome escort quest, you barely fight anything other than a few raptors on the way and maybe a few crocolisks (Can't remember) but the old orc is like CBA SWIMMING GIVE WATER WALKING BUFF, and she gives u one (it's especially powerful because melee attacks don't cause you to lose the buff like water walking/levitate) and then she's like AHHH SPRAINED MY ANKLE and is like RAWR I'M THRALL LIKE POWERFUL and summons a cyclone to lift her to raggaran, pretty damn awesome if you ask me. Obviously I was kinda annoyed that I had already done the Raggaran quests but ye, I moved on to the bridge quests..

Ok, so this troll guy is like I WISH I WAS A MEMBER OF DEHTA or w/e they are called on wow and asks you to chase off some birds into the barrens (which is ironic because the orc girl in the barrens later tells you to kill them (Spoilers? D:)) but the mechanics of this quest are cool, you attack them and at around 30% health they run away to the barrens, pretty cool.

You then get asked to kill this raptor thats gone rabid or something, this is also the first time they show you their new PORTRAIT TO DO WITH QUESTS thing, and tbh I wish all quests had this feature, its so nice immersive and helpful, its a great summary of the quest text, gives u a great visual stimulii to help on the quest and yeh, it's just a great addition, I really hope this gets put on most quests tbh. Anyway you kill this raptor (he does nothing special, a bit disappointing :() and thats the end of that hub, so onto the last area.

And she is like YO GO COLLECT 250!!!!!!!!! teeth to make this necklace for my lost son. Whilst this is cool, immedietly I am like WTF 250?!?!?!, but actually thinking about it now its actually adding some realism to wow, It would be kinda weird to kill say a crocodile in real life and only be able to take 1 tooth per kill, here you are collecting around 30 or so per crocolisk, which is realistic and so immersive (again props to the little portrait thing). This quest also nets you the typical 8-slot bag that you get in every starting zone now.

After this you go back and hand in the patrol quests, I also Magically dinged here unlocking talent specialisation to me (I think this should be separately pointed out when you ding along with the talent points. I took some nice screenshots of the masteries stuff, I might have already posted about it so I'm going to check, but a few summaries on this quest hub I LIKE these ways of spicing up generic kill/gather quests, they give you a sense of progression and are having an over-arching quest I just feel adds to the immersion of the kill quests.

:D

Razor Hill

Ok, so FINALLY I got my ass in gear after orgasming over starcraft 2 (it's awesome btw :D) I finally finished the next 2 areas of durotar pictures/write-up. Haven't uploaded vids for the previous one, for a few reasons: 1) I live in the UK so my upload speed is horrible, 2) my computer sucks so rendering takes forever and 3) I really don't have the time for some strange reason, got so much to do at the moment etc.

Ok, so basically I'm going to write up both the Razor Hill and the Patrol quest hubs today, along with a write-up on the Druid Specialisation choosing stuff at level 10, bear in mind that this data is already a couple of beta builds out of date, probably a few bugs have been fixed since I played through this and stuff but yeh I'm still going to bung my feedback here because I think it's valuable personally.

Lets get on with Razor Hill anyway, although you haven't seen the video (COS I'M LAZY) you get taken from Sen'jin to Razor Hill on a wolf with this amusing grunt who is like "YOU SMELL FUNNY" in a peon voice, it amused me greatly :D, anyway we get to Razor Hill and they are like..

Ok.. so the Humans from Northwatch Hold in the Barrens invaded Durotar and we need you to take them out.. theres also this amusing Goblin, I'm not sure if Gail Nozzywigg is meant to be a reference to some slut/wag or something but I find her comments amusing like STAY AWAY FROM MY MEN, cos we all know that troll female is obviously the girl all the guys want etc.

Anyway you go to Tiragarde Keep and kill a bunch of guys and collect treasure, pretty generic quest really, I like how the marksman put Hunters mark on you. I would have liked the named guy to be a bit more special considering he flex's his muscles and does some hero leap at you whilst saying stuff, (I know error texts are ftl D::) but actually all he does after that is melee you, which is kinda a disappointment would have loved to see some whirlwind or Mortal Strike or something from him to be a more iconic warrior.

Nothing much to say about the quests though, they are nice and simple and really quite functional and explain why Tiragarde is still under alliance control even though the cataclysm like fucked it over.

I also Dinged in this area as shown by the Pics :)

After that you hand in and we get a new bunch of quests..

They explain that the cataclysm has washed up a bunch of elementals and that his worthless Orcs he sent out there haven't reported back. Also the goblin girl is like "IM NOT FINISHED WITH YOU MISS TROLL SLUT #23" and sends you on another gathering quest. You arrive in the area and there are Orcs littered over the place, if you click on one you get a quest to save 4, my grief here is that the quest should really be flagged or it should be an auto-quest when you enter the area, I prefer the latter as it makes you feel like a more righteous hero than choosing to help or not, but regardless.

When you click on the soldiers they follow you around and help you kill elementals for a bit, the say is a bit confusing and implies you have to defend them, but you don't they actually follow you and fight for you whilst they recover.. seems a bit anti-recovery to me but regardless. The elementals do an awesome Tidal wave animation at you, which took a long time to screen shot correctly, you don't see it if you are near them so you have to be at range, I'd prefer it if it wasn't targetted (the animation) and worked like typhoon so everybody could see it, cos it is fricking cool.

After that you head back and hand in. I didn't include it here but you get the generic GO TO YOUR CAPITAL CITY AND LEARN HOW TO USE FLIGHT MASTERS quest, which are of course useful and give you a nice overview of the rest of Durotar, but they are a little side-tracky so I won't include them here.

Yes this is a little short as an area really, I was tempted to include the follow up to this, which is to investigate a Demon infestation in the north, but I actually did this after the Patrol Missions, not realising this quest was a one-off before leading to a new area. Ideally you should do this quest before doing the Patrol Missions and then doing Patrol Missions and then the North of Durotar, but yeh that was a little erroneous on my part.

Patrol Quests are next up :)

New Cataclysm Launcher O:

Ok, so new cataclysm Launcher is here, not particularly liking how I'm going to have to re-install my beta client :(, but regardless.. just going to comment a little about it.

Reminds me of pretty much every other major MMO installer, which basically allows you to play asap and then downloads the minor stuff you don't need, like I particularly remember lotr online when I tried it out once, after around like 15 minutes or so of the download I was able to go into game, create a char and do the tutorial type area, I always thought this was a nice touch so you weren't just sitting there waiting to download/install the game. It's also nice how they will install and download at the same time instead of downloading then installing hopefully streamlining the process a little.

I am not sure if this kills alternative download links: probably not but ye it can only be a good thing.

Gonna try and get up the Durotar thing later, might be only thing I do though D:.