[Starcraft 2] Campaign Difficulty

[Jergmo]

What is the highest level of difficulty you have completed for the campaign? What missions did you find truly difficult? etc.

I recently completed the campaign on Brutal difficulty, and I have to say, there are only a handful of missions that were genuinely difficult.

Zero Hour: completed with a flying command center, seriously no more than one or two seconds away from being destroyed.

Engine of Destruction: Completed with a flying barracks and Jackson's Revenge at half HP.

The Gates of Hell was completed with two brood lords at the last second - and a flying command center at half HP. I accidentally got 100 supply before I was ready. Then, frantically trying to save Warfield, my base was overrun.

All In has been troublesome for me at Hard and up, but that's only when I foolishly went with the Psi Disruptor. They seriously need to do something to fix that. Kerrigan's forces are no match for 120 mutalisks, a dozen Hunter Killers, half a dozen ultralisks and about a score of brood lords, along with a couple battlecruisers and as many mercenaries as could be pumped out onto the high ground. When I completed it on Hard, I actually went ahead and destroyed nearly everything on the map. The artifact activated as I was in the middle of destroying the primary base.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I won everything on hard except for the final mission (and one other I can't remember), which I had to go down to normal for and found it rediculously easy to the point where I only lost 2 siege tanks and they were both to Kerrigan's ability before she was quickly splatted. That was with psi-disruptors as far forwards and supply depoes in front of my bunkers and tanks.

[Seppl]

Brutal, everything. Most of the missions were disapointingly easy, especially the ones where you get a new unit and just have to build a bunch of those to win. There were some hard ones though:

Warning: Mild spoilers. But I don't want to put all of my post into Spoiler Tags.

Cutthroat: Maybe I just used the wrong strategy by going for M&M&M (Marines, Marauders, Medics) instead of the new vulture unit. While my infantry did well against the units on the map, I had trouble to meet the mineral quota. I only collected the required amount when the enemy was at something like 95 % of the quota.

Safe Haven: I found this a lot harder than the "Havens Fall" mission.My vikings could not deal well with the ground attacks on my base, thus I had to spend a lot of ressources on base defense. This in turn left me without the minerals to build enough vikings to defend the outlying bases. They were all destroyed by the protoss fleets except of one. Only in the last few minutes of the missions did I have enough vikings to assault the protoss nexi (Is that the correct plural of nexus?), defend the last base and destroy the mothership. Felt like a real accomplishment to finish the mission (Although I missed all the bonus objectives for the actual achievements).

Piercing the shroud: The mission went quite well until the second part. Then things went downhill. Only Raynor with 30 % of his hitpoints escaped, running for his dear life, not even stopping for any enemies, just throwing a grenade here and there, if that meant to get to the dropship faster . This one was really close. And I didn't even safe for the last ten minutes.

A Sinister Turn: I don't think this mission is actually that hard. It is just that my first attack on the enemy base failed miserably because of bad timing (I had to fight the enemy and the hybrid at the same time). After that it took some time to fight my way back because I was under strong pressure in my own base after losing my army.

All In (Air): I made the error of going for the nydus worms in the previous missions. Not having to deal with worms all over the map and in the back of your base sounded like a good idea. But what good is that if instead you have zerg spores dropping all over your base? Thats even worse than those worms! And in addition you get attacked from the air. And even worse: The leviathan is there! I could not stop the last attack wave, it broke through my lines. But at least I could throw units at the zerg long enough to give the zerg something to shoot instead of the artifact. When the charging was complete, the artifact was already pretty damaged. But then I just had to press the I-win-button.
I tried the nydus worm mission afterwards and thought it was a real pushover.

[Blayze]

I'm trying to complete everything on Brutal in one playthrough. I'm growing to hate Welcome to the Jungle and The Great Train Robbery, though.

[Eldariel]

Huh, shouldn't this be in the Starcraft II thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=165601)?


Anyways, on Brutal, the hardest parts I found:
- Zero Hour: Completing the Achievement "The Best Defense..." was very micro intensive as I didn't realize you can let them rebuild the hatcheries to get it; I hit the second base and in addition to having to deal with an Ultralisk with a bunch of Marines, I was dealing with lots of Banelings; took lots of sniping to get out of that one alive.
- The Great Train Robbery: Completing the Mission Objective "Find all Diamondbacks" proved a real pain; took me forever to locate the one in the top left.
- Safe Haven: Completing the Achievement "You Shall Not Pass" proved very, very complex as the amount of forces you can get together when you need to push out in order to kill the Purifier before the third settlement just isn't very large. Having to micro the handful of Vikings and Marauder/Medic against Colossi, Templar, Carriers and so on just was a pain. And then taking down the 8000 HP of a Mothership which summons a superfleet when you attack it with just a handful of Vikings and Marines was far from trivial as well.
- Welcome to the Jungle: Completing the Feat of Strength "You're So Crazy" was extremely difficult due to the amount of forces Toss has defending the base and the speed at which they replenish. The Templar and Colossi were especially troublesome
- The Dig: Completing the Achievement "Yippee-Ki-Yay" was quite hard as accumulating enough units to push out without losing the main, or winning, just required very precise play.
- All In (No Air): Completing the Achievement "Aces High" proved quite the challenge; Nydus Worms spawning in distant locations with Spore Crawlers in-between along with stray Hydralisks, and maxed supply army threatening to constantly get overrun after QoB cleaned out some of the bunkers and tanks - it was extremely hard.


Overall, the missions themselves were by and large rather easy but some of the achievements were very difficult to get on Brutal and took more solid play than most of my ladder games.

[Runestar]

I have recently completed the entire campaign on hard, and now replaying on brutal.

Anyways, here are my findings, in order of missions completed.

Outlaws - Fairly straightforward, just look out for the seige tank towards the end (didn't expect it, lost a chunk of my marines, had to reload).

Zero hour - actually quite easy if you just focus on walling in and not bothering about the 4 hatcheries. No trouble holding off the zerg swarm, though I did lose a bunker.

Evacuation - Easy, the zerg aren't really numerous enough to be a threat against your ever-growing ball of marines.

Smash and grab - Marauders+medics. War pigs+stim own void rays, be ready to micro against psi-storm. Used CC to drop a SCV on the artifact beside my base as I didn't feel like making a detour.

Devil's playground - no timer was unsettling, but I got into a fairly good rhythm of noting when the lava would rise. Decided against taking out the final zerg base (which had brood lords). Reapers+marines+medics FTW.

Outbreak - Again, reapers own. 2 bunkers at each entrance more than suffice, with SCVs and hellions for extra firepower.

Welcome to the jungle - this one gave me fits. I fortified my position for the 1st 6 geysers with turrets, then slowly mined them one by one. Suffered heavy casualties along the way, saw that my base was lost, so I moved my CC near the last geyser and snuck an SCV in. Mined successfully, then got killed on the way back. Had another SCV bring it back while using what remained of my pitiful army to distract the protoss. :

The dig - Again, this gave me fits early on, because I kept getting overrun before my defenses could be properly set up. Bunkers were just too fragile, until I tried walling in with Pforts. They worked like a charm, and distracted the stalkers while my seige tanks behind pounded them into pixie dust. No opportunity to go for the 50-building achievement though.

Whispers of doom - no problem, just be very careful with Zeratul.

Sinister turn - Maar was a real headache because he resurrected so quickly. Often, I had to abandon a base assault halfway to return to main base to defend. But you get so much resources that even with heavy losses, you can quickly mass a huge army of stalkers and immortals. The final bridge was also an irritating chokepoint, but finally pushed in. :smalltongue:

Echoes of the future - played enough to build 2 pylons to power the obelisks (for the research), then trained a small army of zealots/stalkers/collossi/immortals. Worked my way clockwise, with probes building pylons along the way for reinforcements. Lost my base halfway (beside I didn't bother to defend it), but had ample forces to bash my way to all the 4 checkpoints. Not a problem - the resistance is really pitiful.

Utter darkness - stuck at 1500 kills before being overrun, but unwilling to use the dark templar wall. Abandon for now.

Safe Haven - Fairly straightforward. Massed vikings, which sufficed in taking down the first 2 bases and fending off air raids. The trick is to catch them enroute, since they apparently don't bother defending themselves until they reach the settlement.

For the final base, supported with marines/marauders/medics. Mothership didn't even attack (think it was too busy moving), and no other forces were around, and 12+ vikings made short work of its 8000 shields.

Breakout - No problem.

Train robbery - just completed this, also gave me fits. Key is to quickly take the 1st expansion on the top, then mass diamondbacks. Offed the marauder teams with marines+seige tanks. Suicide-rushed the final train because I didn't have enough firepower to first take down the guards and destroy the train in time, but hey, a win is a win. :smallbiggrin:

Cutthroat - ridiculously easy. Planetary fortress utterly rapes the infantry Orlan sends against you (forgot it had a splash effect, jaw dropped when I saw the marines go down like flies). Marines+medics+bikes took down the 3 CCs in quick order, picked up the scrap. Subsequently trained more mercs, then sent them all - Orlan's base is quite poorly defended. . Didn't even bother microing, just a+left click.

[Corlindale]

I first played the campaign on normal, and on reflection it was probably a little on the easy side - even for a fairly unskilled RTS-player like myself. Most missions could be completed with little trouble by simply massing whatever unit the mission gave you - until I got Banshees, then I just massed Banshees with some Viking support (except for in the BC mission and All In). Didn't go for all achievements, but got almost all research.
The only mission I failed first try was All In (No air), and that was only because I was foolish enough to completely overlook the Nydus Worms spawning outside the perimeter of my base.

Replaying on Hard now (about ½ way through), and it's much more challenging and interesting. I have to work more for my victories, though I still haven't encountered very serious trouble (I haven't actively focused on getting achievements, though).
I've started to rely much more on the awesome power of fully upgraded MMM with stims and concussion grenades, rather than just going with the mission unit (worked especially great in Welcome to the Jungle). I also expect that my "mass air" strategy from normal won't quite cut it for the later missions anymore.
One mission I actually did better on on Hard was In Utter Darkness, which I finished just 11 kills away from the final achievement:smallmad:

[Xefas]

I'm not terribly good at RTS games, so I took the Normal Mode campaign as a time to learn those "hotkeys" you RTS folk are always gabbing on about. :smalltongue:

I could feel the difficulty increasing as the campaign went on, but about halfway through, I figured out how to use hotkeys to manage my economy while also directing my army, and it's pretty safe to say that everything became rather trivial after that. Even the last mission, I was yawning as wave after wave of zerg splattered against my walls, and I spent all the free time I had directing my fleet of battlecruisers to do little silly jigs in the sky.

Going through the campaign on Hard Mode hasn't been that hard either. I've done the first 6-7 missions, and haven't gone any farther just because of being busy with other things.

[Jergmo]

@Those above who mentioned it, I'm glad it went well for you but jeebus I hated it when the worms spawned farther away. It was difficult for my army to go out and deal with them as well as Kerrigan when she popped up. I ended up having 4 at a time, then of course they start popping up more. At that point, you're going to be overrun.

@Cutthroat on Brutal, truly it isn't so difficult! A small force is all you actually need to start yourself up. I think I only created like two medics and maybe a couple more marines on Brutal. Just grab what scrap you can in as few fights and focus entirely on the three mining bases. After one or two of those is down, it's trivial.