Beating Heart of the Swarm Without Building Anything?

no production wings of liberty was a ton of fun unfortunately there's a few problems with no production heart of the swarm mainly this tutorial mission throughout the run there are going to be three times that the game will soft lock if i don't build anything i couldn't find any glitches to get past this so i have to add a rule if the game requires me to produce to move on i will build exactly what it says and nothing more and then kill off every unit that i built without them doing anything extra beyond that the rules are the same play on normal and don't build anything on top of that i'm going to count spawning with heroic units as production this means that named heroes cannot use things like spawn banelings or drop pods but things like the swarm host spawning locust is fair game and the final rule is that kerrigan is not allowed to respawn if killed after labrad's frustrating tutorial where i've already technically failed the run i kill off my zerglings and start on a drone adventure my initial drones are fairly weak and have a rough time with the starting warbots but once the first group is down the mission is already won liberating this group of zerglings is enough to grab the second one who can take the third and fourth without issue after that i make quick work of the eradicator and move on back in the saddle is the customary early campaign no build mission almost one quarter of heart of the swarm is no build missions making this run significantly shorter than the other campaigns the run really starts with rendezvous this mission has always been surprisingly difficult for the third mission in a campaign i start with four zerglings two spine crawlers and a spore crawler to help me hold out for 15 minutes i immediately send kerrigan towards the first bonus objective clearing each cave entrance gives me a queen who has a transfusability it's not possible to stand up against the enemy attack waves without their healing and an early rescue means more time to regenerate energy my combat strategy is simple get the enemy attacking my bulky buildings and then burrow ambush the queens keep the damage off with transfuse and the zergling drone strike force does the majority of the damage this works fairly well but i do lose a good number of my melee units after 15 minutes knock tools reinforcements arrive and i click on the objective for an easy win i went into harvest of screams a bit unsure on how it would go on one hand the flash freezes trivialize getting the objectives but on the other hand the protoss strike with pretty powerful armies despite that i decided to head to kaldir before char because char is really hard and this planet has a bit more room for tricks there are three styling spires guarded by protoss bases and two ursadon matriarchs that are available to kill for kerrigan levels part of the swarm's difficulty is designed more around kerrigan than her armies i will be fighting tooth and nail to get every bonus objective so i don't fall behind in power when the first flash freeze hits i split my forces and dive the first two objectives kerrigan and my roaches take the nearby spire while my drones and zerglings dive what is normally the final one with one objective and two bonuses left the flash freeze ends and the first protoss attack wave comes it's fairly tiny but if i waste any time on it i'm going to be in bad shape i let the zealots fight my undefended base while kerrigan heads to the first ursadon matriarch at each one of these bonuses there's a squad of frozen roaches who bulk up my forces once the second flash freeze hits i'm determined to end it kerrigan heads to bonus number two while some roaches fan off to hit the final objective after the matriarch has been slain my forces joined together and clean up the final spire without much issue shoot the messenger was another mission that i was pretty concerned about i have to fight a decent bit of sky toss with only four hydrolysks and some spore crawlers plus kerrigan it turns out i had no reason to be worried there are a good number of frozen hydras around the map that can be rescued that really helps out my army and while void rays and carriers do eventually attack there's generally only one or two in important fights and then the remaining units are scouts who are probably the worst unit in all of starcraft as is tradition in the starcraft campaigns the protoss suffers from a lack of units when they attack the small attack waves are just too easy to peel apart with proper targeting making the mission a joke completing shoot the messenger unlocks the first evolution mission these are great for me the majority of them are small no build missions which provide some pretty great perks to my units this means they're a series of free wins with pure upside after i get past the zergling evolution mission the first part is a typical a move showcasing the raptor zergling's ability to jump up cliffs part two is a bit more tricky the enemy has 16 marines four landed vikings a siege tank a thor a barracks and a factory i have two queens and six drones the first problem is the attack wave it's too large to fight with what i have i have to segment their attack force i grab my overlords and charge this distracts the marines while the vikings and siege tank move forward at this point in my life i've gotten pretty comfortable fighting with workers in weird scenarios giving me an easy kill to finish off the marines i kill one of my useless hatcheries and swarm them with broodlings next is a bunker with a line of marines behind it i hit the bunker to aggro the marines and notice something really weird why does this bunker take 50 damage from every queen attack i don't have an answer for this it's really bizarre i haven't found anything else in any of the campaigns that does this just this bunker after clearing out the marines and the paper mache bunker the biggest threat of the mission appears this thor i cannot fight this straight up and killing it is an objective i'm gonna have to get tricky i burrow my drones near the choke point at the base's entrance and pull the thor with my queens the way that the ai works is that if an enemy kills its target or loses vision of them they attempt to reset to their initial position but will fight things on the way if they're pulled to a certain radius away from their initial placement they will instead reset with a move command ignoring enemies i pull the thor until it resets while it gives chase i unburrow my drones and put them on hold position creating a wall as the thor heads home on move command he runs into the drone wall and my queens can start attacking him if a unit is trapped like this for more than a few seconds it will get angry and start attacking after putting some damage on i have to disengage and let him go home after repeating this process the thor goes down and my heroic army can slowly finish off the dominion base i'm starting to believe that the most overpowered composition in starcraft is six workers after finishing an unexpectedly difficult zerg mission comes one of the missions that i knew would be insane enemy within i'm expected to use niagara's ability to spawn literally an infinite number of zerg to crush through the protoss in this romp of a mission instead i have a queen who has 200 health and deals 8 dps that's about the same as a single unupgraded zergling as niagara consumes biomass creep spreads on the floor instead of taking fights straight up i have to kite every individual enemy onto the creep and then use my rapid regeneration passive to stay alive after clearing out the cannon rush room i come to a problem this tube i have to send zerglings through the tube to disable a force field niagara is too thick this is the second time that i unfortunately due to mission design am forced to build something after taking out the field generator i make sure the zerglings are dealt with without dealing any damage to enemies after clearing the next room is the same problem again there are only two of these tubes in the mission and despite my best efforts both of them are soft locks without building zergling fortunately for me this is the last time that a scripted event will get in my way during this run after the warp drive is down the mission becomes exponentially harder every segment is now timed and my horrible damage output is making my life tough the first segment is a hallway where sentries continuously force field the exit until destroyed usually i have no idea why this sentry got so angry at me and decided to attack instead of force fielding but i'll take it the next room is what i've been waiting for after eliminating a few more zealots niagara gets to 150 biomass allowing her to morph to level 2. while being able to spawn roaches is useless niagara gets a big boost to damage durability and wait she gets 50 hp and no damage are you kidding the address sucks and the next room proves that once entered the protoss start rapidly exiting stasis until the entire room is fighting leading me to play the most ridiculous game of ring around the rosie that i've ever seen i started kiting these zealots at the 18 minute mark it took me 11 minutes of constant micro to kill them all and that was the easy room the next chamber has ranged units including an immortal kiting is impossible after being slaughtered a few times i remember the bonus objective in the next room an ursadon that niagara can enslave he's significantly stronger than the address so i rushed to him ursadani is strong but he isn't as good as i'd hoped i spend the better part of an hour retrying this fight over and over and over i reset more than 50 times before i got it right the big problem is that the final segment is a very harsh timer impossible for niagara alone this means that i can't just win this fight but the ursadon has to survive as well after i finally won the fight a wave of relief passes over me that was miserable but at least niagara leveled up and got 50 more hp which is nice i guess after waiting for my units to regenerate i open the gates to the escape pods the first army looks big but it's actually mostly comprised of hallucinations after they're cleared the countdown begins i try to use niagara to soak damage while the ursadon tears through the protoss defenders each escape pod has a limited window to kill forcing rapid progress at the final pod i don't have the time to regenerate my urchidon instead he valiantly sacrifices his life to snipe the final pod for his queen once the pods are finished and the timer is gone all that remains is to clean up the protoss the majority of the units here i've fought before and have gotten good at killing this arcon on the other hand is a complete pain he can solo neadra many times over my only option is to attack him burrow at low hp regenerate unburrow and repeat it takes niagara about three minutes to kill a single archon and then there's another one after a brutal 56 minutes the protoss have been cleared out and the mission is a victory now that calder's done i head to zerus i could have gone to char but that probably would have been too difficult without primal kerrigan awakening the ancient is broken into two distinct phases first i collect seven quilgore meat while the enemy does the same and then i have to fight brac collecting the biomass is incredibly easy in theory i'm racing the primal zerg intercepting their harvesting attempts and doing my own at the same time but the mission is so lenient with time that i ignore them then comes brac last time i was here things did not go well brac is faster than kerrigan bulky and hits hard in order to combat him i build a giant path of creep the idea being that kerrigan kites brac only stopping to kinetic blast him this should limit the number of times that she's hit once she reaches the bonus objective in the top right it will fully heal her so she can stand her ground for the kill it turns out that i forgot to factor in the 30 speed bonus that kerrigan gets on creep she walks faster than brac and can kill him without being touched the crucible is a funny mission i honestly believe that in starcraft's standard playthrough it's one of the easiest missions in the game but as soon as you get any sort of challenge applied to it it instantly becomes one of the hardest with that in mind combined with the fact that i don't get kerrigan it's obvious that this is going to be one of the hardest missions in the run there's more than 500 enemies that need to be killed by five swarm hosts three mutilists a queen and ten drones at least i have the drones there's no beating around the bush here i had to save scum my way to victory each time i held off an attack wave i would save scout where the next wave comes from reload and try to defend while in position locust from the swarm host absorb damage while the mutalists dish out the pain to get the most from my units i send my swarm host forward to release locus while the attack waves are still building up allowing me to thin out the enemy a little bit before things get into the fight after 9 minutes i unlock the mission's gimmick every 2 minutes i can call in a group of allied locusts to fight the mission would be entirely impossible without this ability but it also poses a problem the enemy attacks more than every two minutes until i reach the final attack the mission now consists of saving after every victory scouting the next attack wave harassing it with swarm hosts pulling back defending with all that i have repeating for the next attack but realizing that i need the locus wave for this one and it was on cooldown reloading multiple saves in the past to get the ability off cooldown and holding on to it meaning that i then have to defend attack waves without the ability or losing anything so i can have her prepared for later i would often land on situations requiring me to spawn locus prematurely only getting a little bit of value out of the ability but this would then allow me to have it off cooldown for the final half of the next attack wave after micromanaging every wave i've reached the final few minutes of the mission and if you've watched zerglings only you know what that means i died a lot i don't have the tools required to take fights on three sides at once after about 30 or so attempts i came to a conclusion i had mistimed a locust wave about 10 minutes earlier in the mission this left me unable to use the cooldown to survive at the end so i head back and try again after repeating this pain i reached the final attack again i knew i would have spawn locust available for the remaining 20 seconds there were only a few more problems mainly that i was dying before there was 20 seconds left it's difficult to parse in these chaotic battles but the problem was the primal ultralisks my drones have been on hold position around the objective the chrysalis has the same target priority as an attacking unit meaning that nearby drones will be ignored and can block traffic but when an ultralist comes it hits in a cone this splash damage cuts through my drones opening up surface area for more ultralisks who repeat the process until kerrigan's egg is scrambled the plan that i landed on is simple and a little bit dumb give the ultras something else to do i watch the fight a few times and learn where each ultra enters the arena and win once i know that it's time to act i send my queen to go flirt with the ultras and bring them back to my base they gladly accept and are brought into my trap miss queen has been on a diet recently and can easily slip through these minerals while the chonky ultras can't they lose sight of the queen and start fighting my buildings instead of going for the chrysalis after catfishing a few more ultras the chrysalis is surrounded by multiple layers of primal zergling their damage on the objective is minimal at 20 seconds remaining i smash that primal locus button and barely pushes me over the edge whenever i don't have kerrigan this run is hard completing the crucible gives me primal kerrigan this unlock is by far and away the biggest power spike in starcraft 2. after completing the no build mission supreme i head to char to play with my powers i knew that going into it this route would make char easy and even then i was surprised how trivial it was on domination i collected a hundred eggs in under four minutes and the bandlings i'm given wash over zegara effortlessly fire in the sky doesn't put up more of a fight kerrigan crushes through all of warfield's meager defenses and destroys seven gorgons in eight minutes and for the finale old soldiers kerrigan is so powerful that the mission can be won during the sneak attack i had to rain myself back so that i could wait for the bonus objectives to activate after the sneak attack ends the char missions took me a combined 20 minutes and 50 seconds it took longer to do the zergling evolution mission than an entire planet after char is a pair of no build missions that give kerrigan a ton of bonus levels i know that all the missions after this point are specifically built with primal kerrigan in mind so heading here first for the power-up was a no-brainer at least i thought the enemies were going to be more rough heading into infested kerrigan is once again able to slaughter through the enemies uncontested it may have taken 15 minutes but at no point was i actually under any sort of threat i'd gotten to the point where i was intentionally using heroic fortitude a meme ability to make kerrigan weaker i knew what i had to do hello ladies and gentlemen this is giant grant games and today i'm here to ask and answer the question is it possible to beat starcraft 2 part of the swarm without building anything on brutal because brutal is such a step up from normal kerrigan is going into serious mode i go for a build that i like to call murder care again i believe this build is so strong that it can clear most of brutal entirely on its own the idea behind murder kerrigan is to stack auto attack buffs giving huge reliable damage malignant creep gives kerrigan 30 attack speed on creep frenzy gives another 15 attack speed every time she attacks capping at 75 percent and chain attack means kerrigan deals 10 damage to up to four nearby enemies with full stacks and enough enemies around kerrigan now does 136 dps for perspective that's about the same as four carriers and this isn't including the burst damage from kinetic blast or my new apocalypse ultimate toss in mend for some healing and you've got a wrecking ball which is exactly what i need for hand of darkness the hybrid have quite a lot of health and strong area damage this means that i can't fight them with my army but i need to engage them quickly so i don't run out of time the biggest threat on the mission isn't actually the hybrid but the aggressive enemy terran this problem can be fixed quite easily every attack wave before the 15 minute mark comes out of this base to the left i send kerrigan in and immediately clear it out it's not like this base has initially weak defenses and builds them up over time it starts out fully fortified and remember that on brutal all of my units take an additional 25 damage this is how broken keriken is before the five minute mark the entire base has been cleared out in the north and south west their bonus objective to rescue brutalists with the buff from malignant creep they can keep my base very safe the rest of the mission is simple kerrigan murder i solo through the enemy bases to the hybrid and then kill them my only problem is the final objective there's two hybrid and mend is not enough to out-heal them this was gonna be a problem and then somehow a bunch of dominion forces just came over to help out this was not intentional at all but i'll take it after the slaughter murder kerrigan ends the mission with a nice 269 kills i originally thought that phantoms of the void was going to be impossible stukov is not nearly as powerful as kerrigan and the hybrid reavers are some of the strongest enemies in the campaign this means that i have to drop it back to normal difficulty just for this mission the two hydralisks ultralisks and spinecrawler are enough to fight hybrid alone which made the first four temples easy the problem was the final defense where three hybrid reavers spawn in quick succession i ended up on a strategy where i had to finish the mission by kiting the enemy with the ultralisks and drones while using a wall of creep tumors to distract until the timer ran out finally i reach core hall and the difficulty is going back to brutal planet fall is the first mission and by far and away the easiest going into it i was actually fairly concerned i thought the combination of large attack waves mixed with defending the biolaunchers on the map would pull me apart but it turns out that being murder carry again here actually has a big boon malignant creep does more than just increase my attack speed by 30 percent it also provides movement speed on creep and increases the rate the creep spreads using this i'm able to quickly create a network of vision with my tumors allowing kerrigan to easily answer any threat on top of that the fact that i only had to defend one base meant that i wasn't getting split up at all after the fifth launcher deploys i learned something interesting apparently this game gives you a giant army to clean the terran without at the end i just never noticed this before the unupgraded army kinda sucks and only slightly increases my kill speed but i'll take it death from above and the reckoning are the reason that i put the no cheesing with kerrigan rule in this run it's completely possible to finish both of these missions in a combined five minutes even on brutal i'm looking for a challenge and that would just not be satisfying after dohaka cleans up the first power link kerrigan gets to work the entire map is a massive terran fortress that leads to the side destroyer objective i have to get clearing unfortunately there is a problem whenever the destroyer reactivates it'll kill all of my creep tumors kerrigan is going to be working in a nerfed state not that it really matters the first line of defense is broken before i'm given to hakka and some primals to take down the next power link fortunately these sections are mini no build missions which means i don't have to worry about them moving into the middle of the map would be hard in theory but using the bottom of this ramp allows me to mitigate the number of enemies that can attack me at any time before the field powers up the majority of the base has been cleared but there are some production structures remaining so i decided to keep kerrigan out inside of the field of death and clean up some more seriously why is this possible it really shouldn't be after the power link goes down i grab all my forces and fight the first real resistance of the campaign since i got primal kerrigan manx does a great job of producing here after my army is cleaned up i have to use dahaka to slowly kick down all of the production while kerrigan provides cover both characters have mend allowing me to have higher healing power than normal once the top has been cleared out kerrigan and dahaka finish off the side destroyer but i ask menks is this all that you have can brutal really be beaten with kerrigan alone i need a true challenge on reckoning mengsk finally responds this mission is insane there are six bases around the map each is heavily fortified and has elite versions of normal units they all constantly produce huge attack waves to reach mengsk i'll have to finish all of them off my entire standing army besides kerrigan can survive about half of an attack wave if i ever have to ignore one i'll quickly lose all of my buildings and be eliminated a minute in i remember the other problem of the mission i don't have to defend just myself but also jim this means i have to hold two bases against huge and relentless attack waves while also finding time to put the pressure on i start with the right hand side the base spawns battle cruisers and banshees yamato cannon does high burst damage and if kerrigan dies i have to reset stopping this before it starts is essential there are three scripted attack waves against jim that will kill him without support the first is a viking banshee raid using my aberrations and zerglings i'm able to stop the vikings from landing efficiently buying kerrigan some time to help out jim took a lot of damage and my army is virtually dead but the first of three trials is done then comes the continued clearing which leads to a big problem kerrigan's damage comes from continued attacking if she isn't able to brawl straight up with the enemy her damage is massively nerfed the elite thor variant black hammers have none of this they crush her in a straight up fight and manx builds them from factories like normal units each black hammer must be kited using kinetic blast to slowly whittle them down because of this i can't make any progress against the next base by the time that jim needs saving again i'm holding on to apocalypse to keep gym safe the six to ten elite siege tanks will instantly kill kerrigan if they're allowed to connect after the battle cruiser squad is gone i go back to pushing and immediately regret this decision an attack wave catches me off guard and 12 reapers shred my base in seconds while i technically only need one building to avoid elimination having a bit of a buffer is important in case i am a long way away from my base such as when this air raid of vikings swoops in and takes down my evolution chamber now i only have an extractor and a spawning pool i use apocalypse to open up the middle i need more creep spread to spot my enemies and an easier way to move about the downside is that now i can't use it to defend against the odin i throw everything that i have in the way of this monster literally everything and after the fight i have zero supply remaining one kerrigan one dream jim also takes considerable damage but this is the last scripted attack he should be safe now 25 minutes in and i have nothing to fear this should be a quick cleanup right nope now manx enters turbo mode all of his remaining bases start producing huge numbers of attack waves and i have to fight every last one of them i push up the right hand side the reaper helium base is my primary target these units are faster than kerrigan and i'm worried about getting caught off guard and then they do just that after chasing them all the way back home and kiting them i managed to clean them up and start the push again right in time for a marine marauder attack force which i have to clean up right in time to watch jim almost die to a random attack wave i try to relieve the pressure on jim's side by pushing a nearby base right in time for a warhound siege tank attack this process repeats itself over and over for the next 25 minutes each attack that follows gives me a small time to scratch the dominion defenses before being pulled back to defend once again after every peripheral base is down it's time for the final push i finished all three bonus objectives in quick succession unleashing the massive attack waves of zaghara dahaka and stukov the northern push is crushed but the southern push who is supplemented by kerrigan does quite well i learned in zerglings only that mengsk is really bad at rebuilding production so i split off and take it down as jim comes in for another push minx cannot defend both sides at once and is cracked all that remains is the palace gate the gate gets two waves of reinforcements and is armed with heavy guns one wave comes at the beginning of the fight and another at fifty percent the cannons on the palace hit really hard and the marines from the first draw mean that i have to retreat kerrigan to heal her up the second drop pod is easy it's just more barracks units and i forgot the concussive shell slows kerrigan's movement speed by fifty percent i couldn't escape in time to heal kerrigan dies and i have literally nothing all i can do is wait for my allies to finish meng's golf and after one hour two minutes and thirty seconds with no units no kerrigan one extractor and one spawning pool i can confirm that it is possible to beat the reckoning on brutal without building anything thanks jim

Channel: GiantGrantGames

Views: 657,435

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Id: TiFOtUTjr3k

Length: 25min 45sec (1545 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021