I got the Heart of the Swarm Speedrun World Record! [Speedrun Showcase]

originally i was going to make an intro skit about people complaining my last speedrun video only had me getting third place but people were incredibly kind and supportive in the youtube comments of all places weird after making my wings liberty speedrun video i sat down and started working on more deathless stuff then i got the heart of the swarm world record so here we are hello ladies and gentlemen this is giant granite games and today i'm here to brag about the fact that i got the heart of the swarm speedrun world record this is a highly edited showcase of the run if you want to see the twitch vod of the whole thing check the description below to link to my other channel the rules of the run are exactly the same as wings liberty so i'm not going to go over them let's begin lab rat is the first mission of the run after getting zerglings out the only thing that matters is killing the eradicator most speedruns were going for the safer and more consistent nine pool so to gain a small edge i cut one drone and went for a riskier eight pool relying on my unit control once my wings are out i pull the drones and it's time to go the lings and drones rip through the first group rescuing some reinforcements on the way from now on drones lead the charge past the enemies they're tankier than zerglings and their deaths don't matter as much after running to the eradicator drones split up to distract the smaller bots while zerglings nibble on the eradicator back in the saddle is all about microing jim raynor i don't have direct control over him instead the ai gym follows my lead somewhat he'll target my attack target but if he starts shooting it can be difficult to get him to stop causing time losses majority of the mission is kerrigan running around trying to get jim to actually fire the right target and ignore other things after the first mission is a series of timed segments the key is that while it says kerrigan has to reach the objective in actuality it's jim who has to i run kerrigan through ignoring as much as possible so jim doesn't get distracted the final boss is a bit random the allied emoji marines put out some serious damage but mine acted like complete dunces losing me a bit of time rendezvous is a fake defense mission in theory you defend until noctual arrives for reinforcements a bridge extends and then you send the reinforcements to kill a taren base blizzard was nice enough to allow me to skip the waiting round if i just kill all the terran bases on my side of the bridge to begin kerrigan moves out solo there are three caves on the map where zerglings need to be rescued i head to the east to secure the first one kerrigan's energy regeneration is pretty bad at this point i generally save her kinetic blast for bunkers and later crushing grip for heliums after securing the first cave i moved to the northwest for a second one during this i get another hatchery and plus one attack for zerglings the upgrades really help zerglings tear quickly through buildings the outpost is the first scary part my army is still rather small and i need to keep the losses to a minimum otherwise i won't be able to efficiently clear later after the outpost falls comes the first optimization i made to the run unlike wings liberty where i copied the world record as best as i could i've made a good number of optimizations and consistency boosters in heart of the swarm other runners were clearing the north base first saving the last cave of zerglings for later instead i force myself awkwardly south and grab the reinforcements asap my losses are high but i believe the cost of getting the zerglings early and an extra queen is really worth it after the main terran base falls there's a small eastern outpost that remains carrying and blasts the bunkers the zerglings flood over it and it falls as well after a quick cut scene i'm given an enormous army i send everything across the map and kill the objective after the mission i grab metabolic boost for zerglings and head off to char domination is a mission i'm super excited about in preparation for a 24 hour stream 100 all campaign achievements run that i'll talk more about later this year i was routing this mission efficiently once i started speed running i realized that in order to collect 100 eggs i had just made a better route than the world record one not slightly better but about 30 seconds better on a good day the route consists of kerrigan running down a very set path stopping only to blast things with spells my zergling reinforcements fight the enemies clear a path for kerrigan and kill the bonus objectives once a hundred eggs have been hatched i get another death army i a move zagar's base the trigger to end the mission is killing a set number of buildings in her base so slamming bailings into buildings is fine bailings are going to be integral to the rest of the run so i upgrade them with corrosive acid i also switch out kerrigan's crushing grip for chain reaction fire in the sky is one of the missions i was most stressed about in practice everything that could go wrong did go wrong chain attack on kerrigan gives her a massive boost in damage per shot while it doesn't scale well into the later stages of the game it allows kerrigan to act independently early on unfortunately i made a bit of a mistake early on in this mission generally i fully saturate my base and begin zergling production i was kind of hyper on adrenaline and i just started making zerglings with an incomplete economy this gave me an early army that i didn't need and slowed me down about 30 seconds in the long run after activating the first two scourge nests it's time to stop spreading creep it's inefficient and slow instead i use a drone to start constructing a hatchery then i cancel it and rush a queen onto the remaining creep and lay down a tumor next to scourge nests now all i have to do is clear to those nests i ended up rerouting this mission heading south before heading to the more typical north this avoids a few attack waves and allows kerrigan to grab a level up at the end of the mission instead of suiciding a bunch of units in the middle of it i think if i had done everything properly on the mission it would end up being a time save but because i messed up early on it didn't make a difference after dropping two more hatcheries and getting kerrigan another level up i head north after targeting down a tank and a thor the queen and a drone make a tumor on the last objective while kerrigan and her army dive the final bonus objective my time ends up being pretty bad here i honestly thought about restarting but i was streaming so i decided to finish off the run old soldiers was pretty inconsistent in my practice using the giant death army i'm given kerrigan slams into the dominion force once the area is clear of units i immediately banked left and surrounded a group of factory units kerrigan pushes up and grabs another large group of mech units as much as i tried these guys are not skippable and will slaughter my reinforcements have i let them live once my first set of reinforcements arrive i push up the ramp to the core of warfield's base the objective is behind another giant wall that takes a large amount of firepower to breach keeping kerrigan alive here is integral losing her during the sneak attack would be catastrophic rallying with my second round of reinforcements i push the objective and get as much damage as possible before the first strike is over with a perfect run it might be possible to kill the objective before phase one ends but i've never seen it without primal kerrigan once i get control of my base i grab everything i have build some zerglings and follow the path of destruction back to the objective and finish it off as i head to zerus kerrigan gets her third tier of abilities i grab zergling reconstitution if i was stressed about fire in the sky i was terrified about waking the ancient this is the mission i by far need the most practice on i send kerrigan to the south blast the verse quilgore and move on to the second meanwhile my army banks right to kill another kerrigan kites the third quilgore away from its spawn kills it as well and then heads east while the main army moves into kerrigan's old position this is important because the ai sends an attack wave to this third quilgore kiting it away means ai goes to its spawn gets confused and leaves kerrigan starts working on the eastern defenses while i gather three of the meat at the same time the army defends the drones and then joins up with kerrigan once the meat is harvested i grab four drones i target down four more quill gore and harvest them as all four quillgo are harvesting my army is set in position to defend kerrigan moves off on her own to grab two of the three bonus levels on the mission the first bonus level is near the beginning i could have grabbed it earlier but it fully heals kerrigan and there's a wall of enemies that we have to get through to the next bonus and then i mess up and kerrigan dies without getting the bonus that's not good all the bonus levels that i grab on this mission are specifically timed out so that i get level 50 at exactly the right time so i'm gonna have to grab another level from some other point later on as kerrigan was busy getting killed i moved my zerglings into a safe spot near where brax spawns and morphed some of them into banelings once he does spawn i slammed my bangs into him and melted him into a puddle of acid there isn't much to say about the crucible it's a timed defense mission kerrigan bypasses the initial group of enemies to start the defense portion more quickly after that there's no speed running to be done i did find that massing units on the water could sometimes cause my frame rate to drop so i avoided that but mostly just hung out with my stream there is a tyrannosaur that acts as bonus objective for kerrigan to get a level kill it and there's nothing else to worry about supreme is another simple mission skip the trash burn down the bosses and win i do have to take a detour however i missed a bonus level on waking the ancient and i have to make it up normally i would skip the first bonus relic it takes about 15 seconds to get but sometimes you have to think on the fly to salvage a botched part of the run yagdra is an easy fight spend all cooldowns on her kill the big eggs and ignore the small ones she has a bit of rng for burrowing and i didn't get particularly lucky kraft does the same thing every time his spine volley deals low damage i mend and dps through it he charges towards my army always so i intentionally move towards the exit of the arena a couple more leaping strikes and he drops sylvain is the lowest hp of the bosses kerrigan dashes through the primal banelings clearing a path after the area is mostly clear i ignore additional bailing spawns and focus down sylvain she was nice to me this time and didn't spawn very many additional band links zervan is a bit of rng as well his tentacles are easy to dodge but whenever he spawns primal zerg they have to be dealt with and this takes time i had to deal with not one but two enemy zerg spawns and this was just a bad luck fight for me that cost a few seconds if i get a little bit more lucky it's entirely possible to kill zervan before he fires off a single lightning breath but my bad luck compounded and i wasn't able to do that either oh well after the mission i could show off another time save i found normally when kerrigan unlocks new ability tiers there is about a 5 second animation i found that exiting the upgrade screen and reloading it undoes that animation and saves me a few seconds every time i need to change up kerrigan after the mission kerrigan's energy to regeneration is significantly higher for the rest of the run so i change up my setup pretty considerably kerrigan is juiced and that means this is where the fun begins i send kerrigan solo through the first portion of the map she leaps over the rocks and spawns a group of banelings after the flash freeze an ursodon matriarch dies and makes me immune to any subsequent flash freezes there are three spires to destroy on the map and two urson matriarchs for bonus levels kerrigan charges to the north of the first spire spawns bailings to blast it and then burrows whenever she has 100 energy i unburrow her leaping strike the objective twice and then reburrow after a minute or so the objective falls and kerrigan moves on to the first bonus meanwhile i'm creating a large swarm of zerglings and putting them in position for the first flash freeze kerrigan kills the first matriarch which provides a level up and a full heal i send her back to my army as the flash freeze hits it's time to strike i split my army in half attacking each of the remaining spires at the same time kerrigan be lines it to the third ursodon matriarch and gets herself another level up then kerrigan leaps to the top tower and they both fall simultaneously shoot the messenger is another timed defense mission i have to wait for waves of shuttles to be launched and then shoot them down and then i have to repeat this process eight times what they don't tell you is that if you destroy all the shuttle launch base well that works fine as well i send kerrigan north and my army east kerrigan slides past two rescueable hydraulists and then moves on to the first bonus objective some banelings quickly finish off the bonus while kerrigan waits for an overlord to provide high ground vision to leap onto this plateau my roach hydra force clears to the second bonus then the roaches stick around to start killing it i jump kerrigan into the main base spawn banelings onto the launch bay and bolt out of there after killing the second bay kerrigan is almost dead oh what do i do oh wow that bonus objective that fully heals kerrigan died at exactly the right time how convenient after waiting on her bailing cooldown kerrigan dashes to the final shuttle bay right as the first shuttle flies directly over my hydralisks i see why the launch bays are indestructible in co-op enemy within doesn't have any funny business just fast clearing i grabbed the ursadon punch the protoss and then explode it to create enough essence to make niagara constantly spawning zerglings is key here niagara has to constantly be grabbing essence throughout the mission so the zerglings are gonna do the heavy lifting one of the benefits of going to char before going to call deer is banelings it's often more efficient to spawn banelings than it is to wait for zerglings to get the kills for example this section right here where sentries are normally obnoxious with force fields after blowing up the first section of the map there are a couple rooms of stasis pods as niagara grabs the essence to evolve i send my army to trigger all the pods from multiple rooms at once once niagara has enough essence to level up a second time it's time for the final room i don't think i manage this part well i spam zerglings and pushed as quickly as possible but i feel like it might be more efficient to morph banelings instead in the end niagara crushes through and the mission ends i didn't spend much time figuring out this mission it's really weird after unlocking the hyperion i bolt it across the introductory section blasting everything i can yamato goes on to the ordinance towers the hyperion attack fighters kill the smaller enemies to progress through this section every enemy must die i lost some time because a fighter one shot from death had to be chased down in the main section i blast another ordnance tower to help the ai forces progress and then head over to the first mineral field grabbing the hyperional level up each level up gives more fighters a better yamato cannon and better hyperion stats i'm going to get two of the three levels that seems to be the sweet spot the souped-up hyperion rams through the middle of the map continuing to clear for my ai allies i can't help but think there's a sneaky way to get past everything on this map i'm gonna have to investigate that in the future after leveling up a second time the hyperion is powerful enough to finish the mission i stick to the north on the final leg jumping over an enemy starport and then broadsiding the final starbase the enemy base does tons of damage but there is a repair bot to the south i grab it when my health is low and finish off the station conviction is another power clearing mission kerrigan starts off on her own i blast the first group of enemies with spawn banelings and move on to the second reinforcements come from the nidus and can take down the stragglers the initial few groups are easy kills focusing on high priority targets like tanks and thor's makes cleanup a joke halfway through the first section is another skip i found here the ai is entrenched and defensive so i walked past it the second to last group in part 1 gives reinforcements based on units lost replacing whoever died in that last skip spawning some bangs on the reinforcement reapers is a quick answer after them is a quick cut scene that refreshes all of kerrigan's ability cooldowns the final room has a large number of enemies that must be killed the missile turrets for some reason count as enemies and ignoring them means the next section will never trigger i'm never going to make that mistake twice part two is the same as part one but timed oh no how will we ever keep up after slapping down a few defensive lines i run my army to the final door busted open and cleared the defenders with a few more reinforcements easy through the run i've specifically targeted various kerrigan bonus levels and ignored others the goal is to end this mission with kerrigan at level 50. now she has the ability efficiency upgrade i'm going to ignore all other carrigan levels now that i have this ability efficiency and mend are required for the mission infested unfortunately this means that spawn banlings is going to be permanently retired from the run the first segment of infested gives me four investors fungal growth kills packs of marines quickly and then mind control is used on hard-hitting enemies waves of infested terran tank while my mind-controlled enemies burn down the terran outpost once i get my base i'm almost done i grab all four overlords i start with and move out kerrigan the enemy fortress is on multiple layers of high ground while kerrigan waits for the overlord she clears out a little bit of the defenses now comes the great dive the overlords provide high ground vision for kerrigan to jump up but they take serious damage keeping them separate to avoid aoe but close enough together to be healed by kerrigan's mend is important after some pushing they get vision of the second level of high ground kerrigan abandons her overlord friends and sneaks to the back of the objective and it explodes previously runners were building two additional overlords before heading out with kerrigan i found a path that was safe enough that my initial four overlords were enough this saved me about 15 seconds in the run hand of darkness is my favorite mission in the run it is so sweet there are seven hybrid to kill on the map guarded by terran but they aren't allied with the terran so i'll be making them do most of the work kerrigan dashes towards the first hybrid drops its shields with leaping strike and then drops him off for a playdate with a nearby taran outpost sometimes this guy resets his position but today he was a good boy and let himself get killed for the southwest hybrid i used tunneling claws on the roach to sneak over to it the roach targets down the containment chamber and then the hybrid is led to another group of terran this can all be queued up so i don't have good footage of it after kerrigan reaches the northern hybrid there aren't strong enough terran defenders instead i blast through what they have and rescue a nearby brutalist to do the job for me for the southern hybrid i found a consistency booster you spawn with two roaches so previously runners were sending a single roach down to grab this hybrid however the route is pretty risky due to many missile turrets being around to detect and can easily cause resets i realize that if i make a roach warren i can make about six tunneling claws roaches the hybrid still dies well before the mission ends so i just don't have to micro there are four more hybrid in the mission in three locations i head to what is traditionally the end of the mission to grab double hybrid pack they take longer to kill so this is the most efficient way to do it after kiting them into the main turn base and almost losing kerrigan i turn around to the last two hybrid the first is past a terran base but the edges are fairly poorly guarded kerrigan can slip by and pull the hybrid i try to kite as many taran as possible to the final hybrid but a lot of them end up resetting their position oops looks like kerrigan is finally gonna have to do something herself in phantoms of the void we get stukov and ultralisks i like stukov and ultralisks and luckily i get to make stukov and ultralisks the goal is to defend stukov on five temples for one minute each while increasingly stronger attack waves of enemies press down on my army stukov can use spells while channeling at the temples but cannot move or attack the ultras act as a siege breaker soaking damage while steukop moves directly onto the objective while i fend off enemies i'm building queens and drones at home once i'm fully saturated and have five queens ultralist production begins the first two temples are easy i keep the ultralisks next to stukov to benefit from his regeneration aura and everything dies quickly the third temple is the scariest i don't have a ton of firepower yet and colossus hit hard i decide to play safe because i know that i'm going to end up with a pretty good time once the temple is secure the hybrid waves aren't that bad the fourth temple is annoying because enemies attack from both sides at once but by now my ultra-risk force is big enough and my army can take it the final temple has the strongest enemies but i'm not worried for two reasons the first is that my army doesn't have to survive it just has to stall until stukov is done and the second is that now my ultralisks have taken a liking to hybrid flesh and they're not going to pass up an opportunity for dinner heading to core hall i drop leaping strike for kinetic blast this is the setup i'm going to be using for the remainder of the run there's not much to say about planetfall it's a two-part mission first defend five biolaunchers as they land then destroy all the terran bases on the map to expedite the process i purge the map of terran filth before the final biolauncher lands at this point i can feel my heart racing my time is good but will it be good enough the final two missions are fast dahaka has to disable a side destroyer's power link he can barely get the kill before dying if he uses mend once i get my army it's solo kerrigan time kerrigan dashes through a predetermined route towards the side destroyer kerrigan's low on hp by the time she reaches it so i kinetic blast a tank use mend and then burrow in a safe spot manx does not like that he sends his first science muscle to provide vision for his army that's the plan though i blast the vessel heal up and move up the ramp my previous borough was just out of range of this missile turret let's make sure that that turret isn't a problem again when minx doesn't have detection he sends another science vessel i'm prepared for this one as well after the vessels are down i slowly whittle down the objective with kinetic blast burrow and mend i don't know if manx builds more than two science vessels and i intend to never find out did you enjoy the last mission because reckoning is the same exact thing i used psionic shift to cover as much distance as possible at the beginning of the mission once i hit a trigger the hyperion lands in gym is here to help out this doesn't actually matter but the cut scene does restore kerrigan's energy and gives me more dashes so thanks jim i slide through this bunker mend up and prepare for the final push siege breakers are elite tanks and i don't want to face them i intentionally psionic shift into the minimum range of the tank this causes the ai to unsiege them so that they can attack kerrigan by the time they're finished on sieging kerrigan is long gone i do this twice in a row move to the missile turret that is near the final objective kinetic blast it get mended and wait there's nothing to do on this mission besides hit the final objective it takes 10 kinetic blasts to kill it and kerrigan takes extreme damage every time she unburrows a single misclick would kill kerrigan but after the 10th kinetic blast the mission ends and rather anticlimactically time is not called when the door dies but when the fade to black happens 10 or so seconds later and with that i get to check my time and this time i got first place at 1 hour 56 minutes and 43 seconds i have officially taken first place in heart of the swarm normal any percent speed run the run wasn't perfect but as someone who's pretty new to speedrunning i cannot be unhappy with these results thank you guys so much for watching and if you haven't already check out my twitch stream i speed run every friday and do cool stuff almost every other day except tuesday i wanted to thank my patrons whose support makes it much easier to justify making more and more of these videos and i promise that nova covert ops deathless is next so stay tuned peace

Channel: GiantGrantGames

Views: 770,569

Keywords: starcraft, starcraft 2, starcraft ii, challenge, challenge run, campaign, starcraft campaign, sc2 campaign, sc2, single player, starcraft 2 single player, starcraft single player, speedrun, speed run, speedrunning, awesome games done quick, agdq, hots, Heart of the Swarm, sc2 hots, kerrigan

Id: yZCcmOQi_o0

Length: 23min 27sec (1407 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 04 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/lolfail9001]

For the record, this is showcase of what would be 3rd place run today.

[u/[deleted]]

congratz

[u/Skaarj]

I don't understand why they don't use in-game time or in-game time corrected for the gamespeed setting.