So I am stuck on Terran Achievements and I cannot find the “Mastery Archive” Button. I have completed the campaign and all optional missions.
I have tried “Band of Brothers” in “Gates of Hell” 4x so far - once I failed due Medics, but the other 3x times I only hired Mercs, Medivacs&Science Vessels, but The achievement does not unlock.
I have read people adding error messages in the map editor - is that possible to edit the map and receive the achievement/a message indicating why it failed?
There are no archives for WoL campaign, instead of doing the whole campaing all over again, im using the save files that are posted online and playing with it.
Anyways, im dropping some achs until they are fixed, its aint fun trying over and over until you somehow check the trigger because of how poorly tested some of them are.
I’ve completed Contract Saviors in 3:22 - Before mutalisk finishes spawning. Here was my build:
1: Train 2 medivacs, first medivac heads left and picks up goliath and marine.
2: Slow game down to normal speed once reinforcement medivacs arrive (and save often)
3: Medivac with Goliath and marine heads north (counter clockwise) to 2nd objective. Drop goliath on high ground, marine on low ground. Marine has to constantly stim and focus fire on objective while goliath holds position (will defend itself but only attack objective when not being attacked)
The lone marine at objective #2 has to constantly be stimming, objective #2 must fall ASAP in order to trigger the long audio cutscene.
Everything is unloaded, marines are stimmed, medivacs heal up, and the army makes a direct push to objective #3 via right click (avoid attacking or else zerglings will auto spawn at the nearby hatch). It helps a ton to have the goliath and marauders “tank” the damage above the marines, while the marines stutter step attack the objective and wench themselves to the left of the objective and a nearby building. Medivacs can do some last second healing before being wiped out by spores, and marines can stim a second time to get the extra damage in.
When using this strategy, I finished as quickly as 3:22. Step #6 always yielded different results based on my performance. The 3rd medivac with a few extra marines was always about 10 - 15 seconds behind, but the push can be started early. Stim ahead of time and heal up to get in there quickly.
I was unaware of the “bully” zerglings morphed @ objective #2 mentioned in recent posts. If they automatically morph based on objective health or unit proximity, I don’t see how that could be prevented with my strategy as there’s only 1 goliath and 1 marine there (a huge lack of dps).
Good luck with this,
-Valas
Sorry it’s such a long description instead of a video, I don’t quite know how to make a video. If you’d like to join me on discord, I can share screens and show you if that helps at all. May give it a few goes (again) myself today.
Updated: Just tried my particular strategy again. I’m convinced with the resources available and current time restrictions it is not possible to complete the mission by the 3:30 mark while at the same time preventing the northern zergling eggs from hatching. My strategy focuses on as much units (dps) as possible grouping up for the 3rd objective to make the 3:30 time, which then prevents anything from being done (killing eggs) @ 2nd objective. Even if you were to kill the egg @ 2nd objective, you’d 1) delay destroying the 2nd objective which pushes back the long audio cutscene, and 2) make destroying the 3rd objective even difficult due to a lack of army.
-Valas
I don’t want to seem like I know the true issue behind this particular achievement. SC2 triggers is essentially its own programming language. Specifically to the language of the editor, I’m a bit limited in what I can understand. But because I have some knowledge of programming in general, I can draw parallels when looking at the triggers. (That’s why over in my bug report thread, I tried to take a ‘might be’ approach to this achievement.)
Partially to your question, something that occurred to me over night was that it appears that Narud dies during the cinematic. And since triggers can be set to count or not count deaths in cinematics, perhaps the devs intended his cinematic death to be the final run of the achievement trigger. But maybe for some reason, it doesn’t. It may take someone who understands the editor better than I to hunt through all the calls, subroutines, variables, and general jumping around that triggers do to find the root cause.
If you skip the cutscene, deaths that wouldve happened in the cutscene don’t occur (unless specifically designated by “skip cutscene” editor triggers, which I don’t think this one is).
There is a VERY real possibility that watching the ending cutscene is the difference between getting the achievement and missing it because the trigger didn’t fire.
Whoa. That is an excellent point! I’m going to add that to my post in the bug report forum.
If you’ve completed the WoL campaign you can simply click on Continue and it’ll take you to the master archives
Playing normally, I can prevent the northern ling eggs and still get 2nd objective. But I have no idea how to prevent the muta from hatching at 3:30. And this will require a team of all the units you get at your base, plus the 2 marau 2 rines from near 2nd objective, and preferably the 1 goliath and 2 rines that you get from 1st objective. So yea, I guess the dps won’t be enough to meet the 3:30 timer.
The northern ling eggs will start when you start hitting the base. So unless you are telling me that hitting from the north of the 2nd objective won’t trigger that. I’ll explore just abit more. If you have time stamps for the actions so that I can just ensure I am on the right track, do let me know.
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[UPDATE] Okay the northern lings won’t spawn. Now the only issue is whether I can make the top finish earlier.
https://imgur.com/a/rZjSZoK 3:15
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[UPDATE 2] I managed to finish top really fast and even the objective with tonnes of time to spare. Now the next issue is, when I start assaulting the 3rd data core, they will start to build lings there. So far I see up to 3 eggs. Not sure if I should just spend abit of time shooting eggs instead.
https://imgur.com/a/VrGc8KD 3:04
If the game can end just 3 secs earlier, then the lings wouldn’t be a problem. I will try to optimise again to beat the 3 secs haha.
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[UPDATE 3] Okay, I conclude that it will be impossible because the northern lings will start up when the data core reached about 600 hp. I wouldn’t even have started on the 3rd data core yet. Though interestingly , the 3rd data core’s hatch possibly doesn’t start any ling until some nearby are destroyed. Now we’ll need to brain storm on how to kill the 2nd data core in time for the narrative LoL.
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Fun though, because I do feel this is what gaming is all about. Working around limitations. It’s a breath of fresh air than the 40% of the posts talking about buffing and nerfing units. Meh…
Just read your response, was playing lost viking achievements which I should have completed 10 years ago (managed to get 500k score finally!)…
You can prevent the 3rd objective lings from spawning by not attacking any enemies (focus fire the objective), the risk you run is losing your army by not clearing out the enemies, thought it prevents the ling spawn.
If lings always spawn at objective #2 due to the health then that’s a problem for sure. I was able to clear out objective #2 with 1 goliath and 1 marine from the north side (and it died maybe 15 seconds before I killed objective #3), however, if lings spawn @ 600 health on objective #2, the dps there with 1 goliath and 1 marine wouldn’t be enough to target the objective down before they spawn.
In my 3:22 attempt, I believe I failed due to earlier lings (not 600 health lings) spawning @ objective #2. However, even had they not spawned, the 600 health lings still would have (based on what we’ve seen). Bringing any further army to objective #2 delays objective #3’s push and/or weakens the strength of the push making it much more difficult to destroy.
(sigh)… your thoughts?
-Valas
Hmm, I wonder if bringing the 2 marau + 2 rines to #2 will still mean sufficient dps for #3. However, then I think you may need to do #3 first then #2?
Definitely give that a shot, though the new problems which would arise I anticipate to be:
Not having marauders @ objective #3 weakens the life of your army (marauders and goliath do a great job tanking for the marines, who otherwise die rather quickly to the zerglings)
Destroying objective #3 before #2 would fix the ling spawn problem at #2, However, the long audio cutscene (which I believe always occurs immediately after a second objective is destroyed) may delay a pre 3:30 finish.
In my 3:22 attempt, objective #2 was destroyed maybe 10-15 seconds before objective #3, allowing the long audio cutscene to trigger around 3:10, and the short audio cutscene to trigger around 3:18.
Playing on the slowest game speed does seem to manipulate this, meaning the audio cutscenes still talk at a fairly normal speed, but the game timer (and lings hatching) are slowed down tremendously. I assume you’re already playing on the slowest speed for micro-management, but it’s worth pointing out.
Also, in my 3:22 run, there are 2 groups of reinforcements I never go, as I felt they were a bit out of the way. It’s the group left of the 2 marauder 2 marine group (and there is also a 6 pack of marines on the building south of this “new” group. They can’t be seen until you fly over the building, and then they spawn from the building). Those may be useful to some of our new strategies we’re considering. Not sure how picking them up would effect our 3:22 time.
-Valas
Maybe we need to pull scvs from main base to help with dps on objective #2… Lol, gonna try that.
Also sent you a friend request so we can chat through there and avoid cluttering this forum, if you’re cool with that.
-Valas
Props to you guys for putting in the effort towards an essentially impossible (so far!!) challenge. This type of theory crafting and trial&error is usually reserved for stuff like speedruns…oh wait this is essentially a speedrun now.
It would be fantastic if this impossible mission could be done finally with precise execution. Thanks very much for your effort.
Please do provide a video for mediocre player like me to follow step by step.
How are you preventing the lings from spawning @ objective #2? Target firing the eggs? I can’t prevent lings from building there with the 1 goliath 1 marine strat. I’m wondering if we pick up the extra army to the left that I haven’t used (as I feel it’s a bit out of the way and surrounded by hydras), maybe a large force can clear out objective #2 while the original force (including marauders) head to objective #3.
-Valas
I think this is the most likely way. It all comes down to how fast the 2nd to last core (whichever one you decide is 2nd to last) dies, and #2 being the last one. It might be worth experimenting with pulling scvs for #3
I’m 5 seconds away from finishing with no eggs hatching and pre 3:30 (at 3:35)
I did it boys, dtails coming soon, may be easier to explain over voice chat
I think the gas pick up did it. Let me elaborate a bit more in the last attempt:
I killed every structure in the map, picked up every gas pick up except one, and left 1 raven alive at 22min mark, then saved the game.
Once i got the achievement i could not continue testing every variable, I mean, you should leave the following things in the map to test it thoroughly:
And (since order to kill them does not matter) you should begin making combinations of them, so: 4C1 + 4C2 + 4C3 + 4C4 = 4 + 6 + 4 + 1 = 15 attempts to get it (assuming you don’t want to include the possibility of leaving or not the first stage building, just kill it and eliminate that variable).
Or just kill everything and get every gas pick up and it (maybe) should work.