------------------------------------------------------------------------------- /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unreal 2: The Awakening In-Depth FAQ and Walkthrough v. 0.95 By Jonathan Soule ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: 1. Version History 2. Legal and Contact Information A: Legal Information B: Contact Information C: Other Version of the Guide 3. Introduction 4. Weapons Guide A: Weapons Group 1 B: Weapons Group 2 C: Weapons Group 3 D: Weapons Group 4 E: Special Weapons F: Weapons Comparison Chart 5. Difficulty Distinctions 6. Mission Guide A: Preface B: Sanctuary B1: Mining Complex Entrance B2: Mining Complex B3: Power Plant C: Swamp C1: Speedship Crash Site D: Hell D1: Descent D2: Discovery D3: Desolation D4: Disclosure E: Acheron E1: Outside the Terreforming Plant F: Severnya F1: Waterfront G: Kalydon G1: Obolus Repair Facility H: Sulferon H1: Secret Izanagi Facility H2: Defend I: Janus I1: Outside Polaris I2: Polaris Entrance I3: Polaris Geological Research I4: Polaris Geological Research Exterior I5: Polaris Geological Research Rooftop J: Na Koja Abad J1: Na Koja Abad J2: Na Koja Abad- Izanagi Xeno Research Facility J3: Na Koja Abad- Excavation Site K: The Drakk Hive Planet K1: NC962VIII Scrutiny K2: NC962VIII Subjugation K3: NC962VIII Subordination K4: NC962VIII Solitude L: Avalon L1: Avalon M: The Dorian Grey Starship 7. Cheats A: General Codes B: Summoning Codes C: Secrets and Easter Eggs 8. Appendices A: Organizations and Alien Races B: Collected Enemy Strategies C: Questions and Answers C1: Weapons C2: Enemies C3: Levels and Strategies \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ 1: Version History /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ 0.1- Contents layed out, comprehensive plan devised, weapons guide completed and other sections started. 0.71- First 6 missions completed, all other sections completed (but not necessarily finalized). 0.73- First 9 missions completed now, a few touch-ups made on mistakes that were pointed out by E-Mail. 0.80- First 10 missions are completed and the formatting has been improved and made more consistent. Section 8 (appendices) added. 0.95- First 12 missions done now and a new appendix has been added- 8C: Questions and Answers. Future Plans: 1- Finish the final mission. This is my top priority and I'm in the process of doing it now. 2- Respond to any E-Mail suggestions and use that information, along with anything I catch myself, to revise and touch up this guide. 3- Flesh out certain sections of the guide, particularly the cheats, which isn't very comprehensive right now. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ 2: Legal and Contact Information /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ ----------------------------------------------------------- 2A: Legal information ----------------------------------------------------------- This guide is Copyright 2003 by Jonathan Soule, all right reserved. It is illegal to reproduce it, in part or whole, without my permission. If you want to post it somewhere, please be SURE to E-Mail me first (see below) and I’ll be willing to consider it. The following sites have every right in the world to post this: -www.artandentropy.com -www.gamefaqs.com. -www.neoseeker.com -www.megagames.com If you see this guide anywhere else, please E-Mail me. Unreal 2: The Awakening is a copyright possessed by Legend Entertainment, among others, as detailed in the manual and on Legends’ Unreal 2 website (http://www.legendent.com/games/unreal2.html). Use of the games’ title and other text in this guide is not intended as a challenge to any registered copyright or trademark. ----------------------------------------------------------- B: Contact Information ----------------------------------------------------------- You can contact me at LunarZenith@hotmail.com. Any comments, suggestions, corrections, etc. that you might have are welcome. I'll credit anyone who offers helpful advice that I end up using to enhance this guide. Also, I’m interested in adding a “frequently asked questions” section to this guide in a later version, so feel free to E-Mail me questions about the game, under one condition: Please make sure the question isn’t isn’t answerable by a section of the guide that I haven’t written yet but plan on writing. If you have a question about a mission I haven’t finished yet, wait until I finish it first. Also, if you think it's probably in the guide somewhere, look for it there first. Other than that, E-Mail of any sort is greatly appreciated. Except, of course, for flames. Just for the record, any flames about this guide will be ignored; they WILL NOT BE REPLIED TO, just straight to the trash and the block list. Don’t waste your time. I haven't gotten any yet and don't expect to, but I just wanted to state that. I'll also state, though, that criticism made reasonably respectfully is cool. You don't have to like my guide, just don't be a jerk about it. So far I haven't gotten a whole lot of mail about the guide, but I appreciate any kind of help I do get, even something as small as pointing out a typo. I'd like to thank the following people, though, for helpful suggestions they've provided me with: -Rampage88 (author of the first Unreal 2: The Awakening unofficial online FAQ and guide) -Evil Man -Nemesis If you offer me any help that I choose to implement in a future version of this guide, I'll make sure to credit you as well. ----------------------------------------------------------- C: Other Version of the Guide ----------------------------------------------------------- Another version of this guide can be found on my website, Art and Entropy, at www.artandentropy.com/other/unreal2guide.htm. It’s done a little less formally, uses a lot of HTML formatting rather than a standard ASCII layout, and it includes new appendices intended solely for humor that aren't actually useful for gameplay. Just thought I'd let you know... Back to the actual guide. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ 3: Introduction /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ I’ve written a lot of things for a long time: Stories, poetry, prose. And I’ve been hooked on video games since I got a Nintendo at age 5. But I’ve never written a game guide before; this is my first. I’ve thought about it, but time was always a concern. Why I felt the need to write up a guide about Unreal 2, I don’t honestly know. But that doesn’t mean I made a half-hearted effort. I made sure that this came out as what I’ve always considered a good guide to be, and if it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have wasted your time by posting it. I've tried to be as absolutely comprehensive as possible; I want this to be *at least* as good of a guide as what you'd buy in a store (except that I can't match their maps and graphics, due to the limitations of the ASCII format). I hope you'll find this guide helpful. I've chosen to leave out a couple possible sections that a lot of guides include but that I've never found useful. For example, many guides provide information about the weapons... not tactical information, mind you, but background information in the context of the plot (something to the effect of "This gun is the standard rifle of the TCA and was used in the Strider Wars, it's popular due to its low cost and ease of use for new recruits", or something like that). This kind of information is all in the instruction manual, so I see no reason to include it. Everything here should be useful in the game at some level and after reading this whole guide and playing the game for a while you should be able to beat every level on Unreal difficulty with relative ease; that's my ultimate goal. I also didn't include any ASCII art, not so much because I don't like it (I think it looks nice, if it's not overused) but because I'm not very good at it and it's in no way, shape or form necessary for making an excellent guide. This guide will look much more professional with no ASCII art than with ASCII art that is poorly done. A couple rather boring quick notes about the format of the guide: I chose to capitalize the names of all the weapons you can wield, the types of ammunition those weapons use and the names of all enemies, as a way of highlighting them as key elements of the game. When listing a set of 5 or more types of items found together in a location (or any other group of 5 of something) I list them line by line with dashes in front of them to seperate that treasure trove, or whatever it may be, as its own highly important element as well. And all enemy tips and major plot points in the missions get their own indented areas, as well as any other individual, large segment of the guide that is important, such as ASCII-drawn maps of various areas. Until version 1.0 is complete, at which point every mission will be in here, I'll be updating pretty regularly so you might want to check back once in a while. After 1.0 I'll still update, but probably more irregularly. Once again, back on with the guide. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ 4: Weapons Guide /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ I decided to make this a lengthy section for a few reasons. One is that I love most of the weapons in this game. Another is that with double triggers all around, there’s a lot you can do with them. I find that they have a lot of strategic potential. And then, of course, there *are* 13 of them, plus Drone Guns and a super weapon. To avoid insulting the readers intelligence, the only reasons I list all the trigger functions is as a spoiler for people interested in knowing what weapons they don’t have yet do and to occasionally indicate features some people might not realize. ----------------------------------------------------------- 4A: Weapons Group 1- Power Weapons ----------------------------------------------------------- M700 “Crowdpleaser” Shotgun Trigger 1: Standard pattern-spread shotgun shell. At close range, it can do heavy damage *and* knock some enemies off their feet. Trigger 2: Incendiary ammunition. Uses the same ammunition as Trigger 1 for game purposes; you don’t pick it up separately. Fires slightly slower, but the spread is greater and it ignites enemies. Tips: The two triggers of the Shotgun work well together. The first makes easy hits due to the enhanced spread and renders the enemy helpless long enough to kill him with the first trigger. If his few seconds of helplessness are almost up, light ‘em up again! This doesn’t work against heavy-armored troops, though; they’ll just keep coming, even though they’re on fire. Also, make sure to use Trigger 1 for point-blank shots or you’ll incinerate yourself! UA69 “Vulcan” Flamethrower Trigger 1: Sprays a continuous jet of flames. Trigger 2: Sprays raw napalm that can stick to walls. It can be ignited with the first trigger or certain other weapons (see below). After several seconds without activity it will self-ignite. Tips: First of all, these are the weapons you can use to ignite raw napalm: -The flamethrower (of course) or any other incendiary attack (i.e. incendiary grenades, incendiary Shotgun shells, Drekk Laser Cannon’s second trigger etc.) -The Combat Assault Rifle’s second trigger (Rifle-Launched Grenades) -Explosives such as Rockets and Fragmentation Grenades -The Dispersion Pistol (either trigger). Other tips: Against weaker enemies, preserve fuel by tapping the trigger to fire quick jets of flame. Against powerful enemies, holding a continuous jet of flame on them kills tough enemies quicker than almost any other attack you can make. Enemies are completely blind to seeing napalm so don’t worry about whether your Trigger 2 trap will work based on that... it will. Try getting enemies attention, then retreating and trailing napalm to ignite when they follow you into it. This works particularly well when you find yourself outgunned; run out a door into a hallway backwards, laying your trap as you go. You can use Trigger 2 to attack enemies from above that are too far away to normally attack with a Flamethrower, but it’s rarely useful. P400 “Avenger” .50 Caliber Magnum Pistol Trigger 1: Fires a single shot. Accurate and very powerful. Trigger 2: Fires a three-round burst with no penalty to the accuracy. Tips: In most levels, .50 Pistol ammunition is very limited, so keep that in mind. A headshot with this kills most weaker enemies; a couple bursts does wonders on the really tough ones. ----------------------------------------------------------- 4B: Weapons Group 2- Rifles ----------------------------------------------------------- Drakk Laser Cannon Trigger 1: A high-powered, slow-firing energy burst very comparable to a railgun shot. Uses 5 rounds of ammunition. Trigger 2: A continuous beam of laser energy that can ignite enemies like a Flamethrower. Tips: Trigger 1 is frequently useful, especially at medium to long range, but it doesn’t really lend itself to strategy. Do keep in mind that outside of the Drekk Hive Planet you won’t be finding any ammunition refills for this. Trigger 2 acts like a flamethrower with unlimited range; I’d suggest using it in very short sweeping bursts to ignite enemies and render them helpless temporarily. While they run around screaming, they’re sitting ducks for Trigger 1 shots. Be careful not to fire Trigger 2 for too long since it gobbles up ammo so quickly. M32 5.56mm Combat Assault Rifle Trigger 1: Fully-automatic rifle fire. Trigger 2: Launches a grenade of sorts consisting of five bullets fused together. The grenade breaks apart on impact, sending bullets ricocheting off of surfaces-except, of course, if it hits an enemy directly. Tips: Trigger 1 is pretty self-explanatory and pretty useful for the first few missions, and occasionally after that. Trigger 2 makes the gun highly versatile, though. At closer ranges, it’s usually a better choice for direct attacks since it knocks weaker enemies off their feet, can be fired quickly before you retreat behind cover, and can’t be blocked by a charging Skaarj’s arm blades (although it can be dodged). Bouncing it around corners is useful in many situations. It can be used to blow up turrets without exposing yourself to danger, and if you know where an enemy is, are fairly close, and have a fair amount of ammo, repeatedly launching grenades off walls to strike around corners is very effective. Still, this is definitely one of the weaker weapons… when heavy-armored troops come stomping along, put it away! Izarian Shock Lance Trigger 1: (Sort of) Rapid fires two slow-moving energy bolts at a time that pack a fair punch (after the limiter is removed by Isaak after the Swamp mission) and bounce off walls. Trigger 2: Fires a slow-moving EMP pulse along a straight trajectory. Tips: Tip number 1 for this would have to be, realize that until your mission on Hell, you’re using a cheapo Shock Lance with a limiter. The first trigger will be pathetic and I’d recommend not using it until Hell; even the Dispersion Pistol was more useful to me until that point. From then on out, the first trigger’s energy bolts are surprisingly powerful, but so slow moving that it’s almost impossible to hit most enemies. If you do use them, fire at a fairly close range or against slow targets. Personally, I still never use them. Theoretically, you could use the wall-bouncing ability for anything suggested above under the Assault Rifle’s second trigger, but even then the shots tend to ricochet into some strange places since they’ll bounce off several surfaces before they dissipate. The second trigger can be very useful, so I’ll lay out below everything you can do with an EMP: -Destroy drone guns (generally in one direct hit) -Destroy plasma barriers (again, in one direct hit) by shooting either the posts that generate them or the barriers themselves. -Destroy Drakk enemies of any type, *especially* Overlords which, sure enough, go down in one direct hit. -Damage any power-armored enemy, although usually not severely. There are usually better uses for EMPs than this. You can also sap away huge amounts of shield energy and sometimes even small amounts of health from yourself if an EMP goes off close enough to you, so make sure to give yourself some space for it to burst. ----------------------------------------------------------- 4C: Weapons Group 3- Explosives and One Odd, Odd Weapon ----------------------------------------------------------- MP3 “Shark” Rocket Launcher Trigger 1: Fires a single rocket with four explosives connected to form its warhead. Trigger 2: Fires a rocket that breaks apart after leaving the barrel, launching four mini-rockets. By default these are “drunken” rockets with very little accuracy, but by holding down the trigger and sweeping the crosshairs over enemies, you can lock the mini-rockets on one by one to anywhere from one to four enemies, then release the trigger to fire and they will home in on their target or targets. Tips: When using the Rocket Launcher against a tough enemy like a heavy-armored troop, if you’re pretty sure you can hit him with the first trigger than use it so you can pump out ammo as quickly as possible. Locking on becomes more useful at longer ranges, especially as multiple weaker enemies advance on you (you can guess what to do there). In Unreal 2 your character wears a heavy suit of power armor, so DO NOT bother trying to rocket-jump. M406 “Hydra” 40mm Grenade Launcher Trigger 1: Tap to launch a grenade that explodes on contact or click, hold and release to set a delayed fuse. Delayed grenades take the same length of time to explode (a few seconds) regardless of how long the trigger is held. Trigger 2: Switch to the next of 6 types of grenades. Tips: The Grenade Launcher is one of the most versatile weapons in the game. The majority of the time you will use it for direct attacks with no delay to the blast but it can also be used for firing over barriers, bouncing grenades off walls to strike from behind cover, or occasionally striking slow enemies from far away by utilizing the grenades’ arc or delayed fuse (or both!) although beyond mid-range there is usually a better weapon to use. The six grenade types are: Fragmentation: A simple explosive. Usually available in large enough numbers that you can use it quite liberally and against weak or low-priority enemies. Incendiary: Damages enemies and ignites them, usually resulting in temporary disorientation. It’s a little more damaging than a Fragmentation Grenade in damage dealt. Toxic Gas: Bursts into a lingering green gas cloud. Potentially the strongest of all the grenade types. If you can keep an enemy in the gas cloud for awhile, they will suffer massive damage. Great against big slow enemies, enemies confined to fairly small areas and, of course, groups of weak enemies. EMP: This is identical in effect to the EMPs launched by the Shock Lance, but a little more powerful. See the Shock Lance (above in Weapons Group 2) for a list of all its uses. Concussion: Emits a shock wave and a concussive blast. This grenade does literally NO DAMAGE. The shock wave trips up enemies, but only for a second. The only major use I’ve found for these is that if one goes off right at the feet of an enemy they’ll go flying. Therefore, if your aim is good enough, you can use it to knock enemies off of precarious edges. It is possible to do a “concussion jump” using concussion grenades, but you can’t get very much more air than a regular jump gives you so I wouldn’t recommend it. If you do want to mess around with the idea, fire the grenades straight at your feet without jumping. Personally, I never use concussion grenades. Smoke Grenades: These emit a small cloud of thick smoke for several seconds. They’re supposed to help you escape from fights or something, but as far as I can tell they do nothing. Enemies *will* fire through a smokescreen and enemies *will* run through a smokescreen to pursue you. I suspect that firing through smoke might slightly diminish an enemy’s aim, but I actually even doubt that. I never, ever use smoke grenades. If anybody knows something worthwhile or otherwise that smoke grenades do, please E-Mail me (LunarZenith@hotmail.com). Spidergun Trigger 1: Launches a spore pod that bursts on enemies, covering them in spiders. This does no damage, but it disorients them for a while as if they were on fire (except for heavy-armored troops and other badasses that are immune to fire disorientation). Trigger 2: A quick trigger pull launches a small pod of slime that sticks to any surface and later, when an enemy comes near, bursts, launching a spore pod at them (identical in effect to Trigger 1). Holding down and releasing the trigger launches a bigger slime pod that hatches after several seconds into a spider who crawls around and (theoretically) attacks nearby enemies. You can also fire a small pod of slime and shoot it with Trigger 1 to make it enlarge into a pod that will hatch into a spider. Either function of Trigger 2 uses up 5 shots. Tips: I’m gonna be honest with you. I think this weapon is worthless. To make any use of the first trigger you need to fire and hit (tough to begin with most of the time since the spores are slow moving) and then switch over to a real weapon to do some damage with. Needless to say this tends to get you hurt. The second trigger isn’t much better; it’s possible to make use of the spiders, but not enough use in any situation that I even bother. I’ve found the Spiderguns spiders a bit finicky, especially after they’ve fought one enemy and another is nearby. If an enemy is busy dealing with you, the spiders’ attacks will add up and eventually kill it, making it moderately useful. If the enemy fights the spider, though, the spider is as good as gone. Creating multiple spiders may cause them to fight each other… not kill, mind you, they just sort of go next to each other and poke back and forth. If anybody has an explanation of how to use the Spidergun effectively, please E-Mail me (LunarZenith@hotmail.com). ----------------------------------------------------------- 4D: Weapons Group 4- Other Weapons ----------------------------------------------------------- Type 72 “Widowmaker” Sniper Rifle Trigger 1: Fires a single shot. Trigger 2: Toggles the zoom. By default the mouse wheel zooms in and out. Tips: For anybody who has played first person shooters before, use all the tactics you usually use with a sniper rifle. This one (unlike almost every other weapon in the game) is standard-fare FPS weaponry… except that the scope screen looks really, really cool. LEPEW-13 Dispersion Pistol Trigger 1: Fires bursts of energy one after another. Trigger 2: Holding the trigger down charges up energy and releasing it fires a more powerful energy burst that does some splash damage as well when it hits. Tips: If you can find a position where you can shoot at a turret without receiving fire back and you have some patience, taking it out with the Dispersion Pistol is a great way to save some ammo. In fact, if you encounter a single Rocket Turret at long range and nobody else is firing at you, you can take it out by firing while dodging rockets, which is not at all difficult to do. Other than that, I’d suggest never using this weapon unless you’re about to run completely out of ammo, and Unreal 2 tends to provide you with plenty. ----------------------------------------------------------- 4E: Special Weapons ----------------------------------------------------------- Takkra (Part of Weapon Group 5) Trigger 1: Launches the Takkra against the enemy that has been auto-targeted. The Takkra will circle him firing energy bolts that do minimal damage and, theoretically, disrupt his fighting ability. Trigger 2: Launches the Takkra in a defense mode. It will circle you and automatically attack any nearby enemies that attack you. Also, it will shoot most projectiles out of the air before they can hit you. Tips: While this is definitely a *cool* weapon, it doesn’t seem to be a very good one. Takkra shots do so little damage to enemies that even after repeated hits it hardly amounts to much. For example, it takes at least 25 hits for a Takkra to kill a medium-armored Skaarj on Medium difficulty, making it slightly weaker than Trigger 1 blasts from the Dispersion Pistol. That makes the first trigger sort of a waste of time. The second is somewhat more promising, because the Takkra can circle you potentially forever and its ability to shoot projectiles out of the air is fairly effective. Also, it can be launched before battle begins so you don’t have to launch and then switch back to another weapon while possibly being fired upon. I’d suggest using Trigger 2 over Trigger 1, but personally I don’t even bother using Takkras. Singularity Cannon (Included as part of Weapon Group 4 once acquired) ***WARNING: SPOILERS*** Trigger 1: Generates and projects an instance of quantum singularity- in other words, it shoots a black hole. A miniature one, but still incredibly destructive. The hole slowly travels out in a straight trajectory and draws enemies towards it, and anything that touches the hole is sucked away into oblivion, destroying it instantly. Anything. No Second Trigger. Tips: No tips necessary with this sucker. Shoot it anywhere near an enemy and they’re through, it’s that simple. You even get hundreds of rounds when you pick this up; more than you would ever need. Of course you only get the privilege of using the Singularity Cannon very briefly… ----------------------------------------------------------- 4F: Weapon Power Comparison Chart ----------------------------------------------------------- The following chart should provide a general indication of the relative capabilities of Unreal 2’s weapons. Only easily rated weapons are included, so a few weapons are missing, and I may add them later. Some of the values provided may be very slightly off at this point, but I’ll continue working on it. The Strength Rating works like this: The number given indicates the number of direct hits to the torso that it takes to kill a Medium-Armored Skaarj on Medium difficulty. Therefore, the lower the value, the more powerful it is. --Weapon-- --Shots/Second-- --Strength Rating-- Shotgun, Trigger 1 1.1 2-5+* Shotgun, Trigger 2 0.9 2-5+* Flamethrower 10 15 Magnum Pistol 3.5** 6 Laser, Trigger 1 0.7 3 Laser, Trigger 2 8.5 15 Assault Rifle 10 25 Shock Lance 3.5x2*** 6 Rocket Launcher 1 2 Frag Grenade .65 2 Incendiary Grenade .65 1 Toxic Grenade .65 1 Sniper Rifle .65 2 Dispersion Pistol 4 20 *: Standing as close as possible to the enemy, 2 shots from the Shotgun kills the Skaarj. From a longer range that number can increase dramatically. **: This rate of fire reflects the Magnum Pistols’ first trigger. The second trigger pumps out ammo a little bit faster, maybe 4.5 or 5 shots per second. ***: The Shock Lance fires about 3.5 times per second, but it fires 2 shots with each trigger pull. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ 5: Difficulty Distinctions /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ So what does distinguish the three difficulty levels from each other? I’m still not totally sure about this myself and still doing various tests. Here’s what I *think* the distinctions are, but I can’t guarantee this information quite yet. What *Doesn’t* Change: -AI. The enemies react the same to your every move on all three difficulty levels. -Item Placement. It seems that the same power ups are distributed in the same places and quantities on all 3 difficulty levels. -Enemy Placement. I’m fairly sure that you face the same quantity of enemies in the same places on any difficulty level. -Missions. You have the same mission objectives regardless of difficulty. What Does Change: -Enemies do more damage to you on higher difficulties. For example, on Easy, if you are at full health and full energy, it will take 5 direct hits from enemy rockets to kill you. On Medium it only takes 4, and on Unreal it drops to 3. -I THINK that your enemies’ aim improves slightly with each successive difficulty level. -I also suspect that enemies take slightly more damage to die with each difficulty increase. So what does all that amount to? Put it this way… you might as well use almost exactly the same tactics on Unreal that you use on Easy; you won’t be facing anything new on Unreal. But realize that on Unreal there’s very little margin for error, whereas on “Easy” you’ll have to be pumped chock-full of holes to die. \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ 6: Walkthrough /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ Below is a step-by-step, mission-by-mission guide to Unreal 2. You’ll notice there’s no mention of the phases in between missions when you’re on your ship. That’s because during those times there’s no action and everything is very straightforward; I assume that you won’t want to bother reading about all that. I chose to give away all the plot points in the game in case anyone is interested in knowing what happens later on, but to box plot information off separate from the rest of the walkthrough and label it all with spoiler alerts. Since the game provides you with so much cool background information about levels in the briefing room and at the beginnings of missions, I don’t provide descriptions of levels (levels as in planets, landscapes; I describe what's going on at the beginning of each mission, though). Later, when I have more time, I might go through and transcribe the background information word for word from the game. Finally, Unreal 2 is a very linear game. It has few places to get lost, few puzzles to solve, few branching paths or decisions to make, and lots and lots of direct physical conflict. My guide reflects that by providing lots of tactical advice. Hopefully if you’re finding a particular firefight here and there difficult my advice will give you an edge in combat. ----------------------------------------------------------- 6A: Sanctuary ----------------------------------------------------------- Mission Opening: Responding to a distress call, your first mission is to the planet Sanctuary to discover what has disrupted the civilian activity at a mining facility. That becomes immediately apparent when the mission starts and you are shown a series of brutalized bodies lying outside the base, along with a head on a shock lance jammed into the ground and an alien stabbing a dying human repeatedly with his weapon. He stops when your dropship arrives, fires an EMP at your dropship without effect and runs inside the base to escape. 6A-1: Mining Complex Entrance ----------------------------- After your dropship touches down, your adventure begins with you in possession of a Combat Assault Rifle, a Grenade Launcher with Fragmentation Grenades, a Dispersion Pistol, and that’s it. Advance ahead and pass through the automated door that the alien (referred to here on out by their proper term, “Izarians”) ran into. Head down the stairs and through another door. At the end of a hall, a civilian is trapped under a door, screaming for help, with an Izarian pulling at him from the opposite side. Unfortunately, when (and if) you run to help him the Izarian pulls him through and you’ll find that the door doesn’t work. Pass through either hallway through the right wall; they both filter through to the same point. Continue advancing and you’ll soon see an open door. An Izarian will run through the hall just past it, and you’ll see it through the door. You can shoot him with your rifle if you’re lightning quick, but it’s not important. Follow him through the door and round the corner and you’ll find a large room with some columns holding up the ceiling and some hatches in a grated floor with water underneath. A civilian is being threatened at lance-point by an Izarian, leading you into your first encounter! When you run to his aid, the Izarian will kill him and attack you and more will spring out from behind columns. In all, you’ll have to face a pack of 5 at once. Since it’s a new enemy, here’s some information about Izarians and how to fight them: /-------------------------------------\ New enemy: Izarian Description: Izarians are small, ugly four-armed psychotic alien servants of the Skaarj that you will only fight on Sanctuary and Sanctuary’s Swamp (the next mission). They are quick, like to spring surprise attacks, often fight in packs and have very little capacity to take damage. They are always equipped with Shock Lances. Attacks: Izarians attack mainly by shooting you with Trigger 1 energy bolts from the Shock Lance, described in section 4B (Weapons Group 2). Their Lances have limiters on them, though, so the energy bolts do very little damage. On occasion they will fire an EMP, which also is less effective than EMP blasts from later enemies. Tips and Tactics: The only dangers in Izarians are that they are fast, attack in packs, and sometimes attack in clever ways such as shooting you from an unexpected place or multiple Izarians attacking you from multiple directions at once. The ideal weapon for fighting them is the Combat Assault Rifle. It only takes a few shots to kill them and they can’t dodge your shots. Fire with the first trigger in short bursts for best effect, unless you need the second trigger to shoot them around corners. A pack of Izarians fighting in a small to mid-sized room can send energy bolts ricocheting around the room in massive quantities and is occasionally almost impossible to dodge. When this happens just keep firing at them in short, controlled bursts and KEEP MOVING (and you should really be doing this all the time with all enemies, except on rare exceptions). \-------------------------------------/ Kill the Izarians one by one while doing your best to dodge their shots. Using cover helps, and I’d advise not going near the center of the room because you’ll take fire from so many directions that your dodging will become completely random and largely ineffective. After the Izarians are dead, pick up their Shock Lances… or just leave them. The Shock Lances the Izarians use are so toned down from their original strength that between that and the ease with which all of your enemies in this level can dodge slow attacks, the Lances are hardly any better than a Dispersion Pistol. I suggest that you don’t use them unless you’re really starting to run out of Assault Rifle ammunition. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: After you’ve killed all the Izarians in the room, you’ll get a message over the rooms’ loudspeaker system. The same person who sent the distress call is now speaking to you, although you can’t speak back until you reach him. His name is Danny Miller. From here until the end of the level Mr. Miller will guide you to him and make various comments on what he sees through security cameras, which are set up even more frequently than loudspeakers. Danny informs you that all his friends are dead and that you’ll need to travel through the water under the room to get to him. He opens the hatches in the floor for you so that you can advance further. \-------------------------------------/ Head down one of the now-open hatches. Don’t worry about drowning or losing health underwater; your power armor protects you from that. Swim around under the room looking for powerups. You should be able to find: -A Combat Assault Rifle with ammo next to it -Another Assault Rifle with another box of ammo next to it -An additional box of Rifle ammo by itself. Once you’ve done that, find a break in the wall along the exterior of the room (underwater, of course). It leads out of that room and into a corridor with pipes running along the floor, sides and ceiling. Follow the winding corridor; you will pass by a dead body floating in the water, prompting your character to make a bad pun. At the end of the corridor, pop up out of the water and enter the dark corridor in front of you, where a dead civilian lies. Continue further until you reach a ladder running up a wall. /-------------------------------------\ Hint: How to use a ladder to your advantage. Once you walk up to a ladder and hit “up” for a second so that your character begins to go up the ladder, you are somehow stuck to the ladder. You can then turn around 180 degrees and continue to climb the ladder somehow by pressing up while you fight at the same time. \-------------------------------------/ While turned around backwards, climb the ladder and after a few seconds an Izarian on a ledge will start firing at you. Fire back and kill it. With your Assault rifle, this shouldn’t be difficult; especially since the Izarian has no room to move. Continue up the ladder and eventually you will be attacked again by another 2 Izarians toward the top. Continue through the door past the ladder. Pass up a dead body, head up more stairs, and find yet another dead body. Grab the health next to the enemy. Continue forward from here, through the gate and on, until you start to approach a fairly large room. You’ll find in the room 3 Izarians huddled around a camera, while Miller yells at them over the loudspeaker to get away from it. You can use the distraction to your advantage, but don’t expect too many free shots. As soon as the first round is fired, all three Izarians will disperse from the camera, reacting with surprising speed, and counterattack. Taking the defensive is probably a good idea here; move slowly away from the advancing Izarians while firing at them and dodging. Cross the room and you will find another gate. As soon as you go through the gate, there is an Izarian off to the right just past the gate in the next room that will surprise attack you from the side. Be ready to blast him. The room you’ll now be in has three large pillars a little up ahead, and twin staircases just past that. When you approach the staircases, an Izarian or 2 will come up the stairs and attack you. Take and hold the top of the stairs immediately and you’ll be able to fire down on advancing Izarians while they’re still at a long enough range that you can easily dodge their attacks. Since the stairs are the only way to advance from there, they’ll be forced to run straight up toward you, making them sitting ducks. If you can’t safely hold the stairs until the Izarians stop coming (and just so you know there will be 6 of them, total) and you need to defend yourself from further back, keep the pillars in mind- you can ricochet Rifle-Launched Grenades off of them to attack Izarians on the opposite side of a pillar from the side you’re on. Once you’ve wasted those Izarians, go down the stairs and you will come upon an area where the room narrows. An Izarian will run through this crevice to attack you; be ready for him and he’ll never have a chance. Once you’ve killed him, grab the health off the crate if you need it. If you’ve taken slight damage but don’t really need it, come back to it later. As you continue onward, you will soon get another message from Miller saying that he’s recovered an alien artifact, which you’ll find out later in the game is extremely valuable. Keep going and go up the ladder that you will soon come to, being sure to turn around and be reading to defend yourself as you climb. After a few second of climbing you will be shot at by an Izarian on a ledge; kill him, keep going and you’ll come across two more. To fight all these guys, once you hear their monkey-like voices you’ll know you’re almost in range. Try to shoot at them before they start shooting at you. At the top of the ledge are several power ups: An Assault Rifle, a health pickup and 2 packs of Frag Grenades. Grab them all and continue through the door. You will receive a message from Miller as you continue into the next hallway that some of the materials here are unstable (i.e. they explode when shot). Since the Izarians don’t realize this, it is easily used to your advantage. The fuel tanks throughout this hallway take only a few bullets to set off and the explosions will kill any Izarians that are anywhere near to them. The hallway is long and has several places where it is interrupted by a small bunch of crates. The crates will provide excellent cover for you to peek out, fire, and duck behind again. You can also get behind a crate and ricochet grenades off the wall of the hallway to kill advancing Izarians. Be sure not to stand next to undetonated fuel tanks. Most of the fighting here is pretty simple. Be aware that once you’re a ways into the hallway, Izarians will start attacking you from behind, so watch out both ways. Toward the end is a point where 2 red and 2 brown crates are set along the left side of the corridor (when you are facing in the direction that you are progressing through). Be ready because once you reach that point you will be attacked from both sides at once by what adds up to 8 Izarians (4 in front, 4 behind). Turn back and forth, keeping an eye out both ways and kill advancing Izarians immediately so that you don’t get teamed up on by large numbers of them and you don’t let them get too close. At the end of the hallway are 3 boxes of rifle ammo and a door. Pass through the door and continue forward through the next room into the Mining Complex. 6A-2: Mining Complex -------------------- As you go forward, Miller informs you that there appear to be no creatures up ahead. At almost the same time, you will hear the monkey-like squeaks and gibbers of Izarians. Two of them soon attack you. Blast them as they round the corner. The next area has pools of toxic chemicals to your right, forcing you to stay within a somewhat narrow area. To your left is a large structure. You will soon be attacked by 6 more Izarians, but not all at once. Three of them will come from up ahead and fire at long range as soon as they see you; since they too will be confined to a narrow area, they shouldn’t be too tough to defeat. Another 3 will run along the roof of the structure to the left firing down at you. If they get far enough, they will eventually jump down to your level, possibly flanking you. Stay back as you return fire, ducking behind cover off to the left if you need to reload. The Izarians on the roof should probably be your main concern; they’re more difficult to hit and more likely to hit you. Keep holding your ground without advancing until the Izarians stop coming. Then continue forward. Another Izarian will be waiting for you right around the corner; don’t let him ambush you from the side. Continue past another acid pit and you’ll find a broken gate with a bottom section that opens and closes while the rest of it is stuck. It looks as if it could potentially chomp into you and kill you, but if that starts to happen a clipping error will save you; the gate will basically go right through you without hurting you. Duck down and go through. Run down the steps and you’ll soon receive another message saying the drainage route ahead is “chock full of those monsters”, but that it’s the only way to get to Miller. Grab the health pickup before you pass through the next door. The next room (don’t go in yet) will be a huge area with many pits of toxic chemicals and criss-crossing balconies forming the interior of the room, along with huge pillars presumably holding up the ceiling. Six Izarians will be inside in various places. When you open the door, fire through the doorway at any Izarians you can see and duck behind the doorway to either side to dodge their return fire. I’ve found the safest way to fight the Izarians in here is to let them come to you. If you run into the room, you’ll be attacked from multiple sides and probably be overwhelmed. If you wait, you’ll be able to fight the enemies one or two at a time and you’ll always have cover right alongside you. Gun it out with them until they stop coming, then go in and if there are still one or two left that didn’t come for you shoot them, too. As you fight them you’ll receive encouragement from Miller. At the end of the room is a security door. Miller will open it for you and warn you that up ahead there are no working cameras and so he won’t be able to see you and doesn’t know what’s coming up. Lucky for you, you have this guide. Grab the 2 boxes of Assault Rifle ammo and the energy pickup in front of the door, then enter and you’ll go into an elevator shaft. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: The elevator shaft starts going up, then stops abruptly. One by one the lights go out. After a brief pause a Skaarj drops down onto the roof of the elevator! He then slashes the cables, causing the elevator to go skidding down the shaft very quickly. It eventually crashes into the ground. \-------------------------------------/ Exit the elevator immediately; the Medium-Armored Skaarj will soon break into it. You should probably equip yourself with your Grenade Launcher for this encounter. /-------------------------------------\ New Enemy: Skaarj (Light/Medium-Armored) Description: Light and Medium Skaarj are similar enemies. They are fast, skillful and smart tribal aliens that often plot cunning surprise attacks. They are very aggressive and known to have enslaved several alien races, including the Izarians. The main differences between Light-Armored and Medium-Armored Skaarj are that Medium-Armored ones do much more damage with each attack and require more damage to kill. For example, about 12 Assault Rifle rounds or 1 direct hit from a Fragmentation Grenade will kill a Light-Armored Skaarj on Medium difficulty. A Medium-Armored one will take about 20 rifle rounds or 2 direct Frag-Grenade hits. Attacks: Skaarj will attack first by firing energy bolts at you from devices mounted on their arms while charging toward you. The energy bolts aren’t particularly powerful, especially from Light-Armored Skaarj which are only about a half to a third as powerful as Medium-Armored ones. Once they are close enough, they will slash at you with the blades mounted on their arms. They sometimes run up, slash a few times, then step back a bit, but other times they will leap at you, doing about double their usual slashing damage if they hit and rolling to avoid crashing into the ground if they miss. Tips and Tactics: Don’t bother shooting Skaarj with Trigger 1 of your Assault Rifle while they’re facing you. They can block the Rifle fire with their arm blades, which Medium-Armored Skaarj do with more frequency than Light-Armored ones but both do a large portion of the time. If they’re close enough, Trigger 2 can be effective, but they are excellent at dodging projectile attacks, usually by diving and rolling, so it can take some getting used to. Rockets and grenades are decent against them; Skaarj may be able to dodge them, but the splash damage ensures that if you’re a good shot your efforts won’t be completely wasted. Weapons that hit instantly tend to be the best things to use, though. This includes Shotguns, Flamethrowers, Magnum Pistols, Laser Cannons and Sniper Rifles. Incendiary attacks can be very useful since they negate the cunning and agility that make Skaarj such difficult targets. Get used to dodging their diving lunges; it’ll save you a lot of health. It’s usually a good idea to back away from Skaarj while you fire at them, since it decreases the number of chances they’ll get to make close-up attacks with their blades. \-------------------------------------/ Unfortunately, at this point in the game you don’t have any of the weapons that work best against Skaarj. I’d suggest using your Fragmentation Grenades; they kill in two hits (against this Medium-Armored Skaarj), the splash damage is great when the Skaarj try to dodge by diving, and you sure as Hell won’t need the Grenades for fighting Izarians. For fighting this first Skaarj, immediately launch 2 Frag grenades directly at him while he’s still in the elevator shaft, tapping the trigger as opposed to holding it, and you should be able to kill him before he gets a chance to do anything beyond giving you a bit of a scare. If he does manage to get out and start fighting you, don’t panic, just back away from him and give him another pop. After you kill the Skaarj, Aida and Dalton will exchange a few words. The room you’re in now is mid-sized, with raised areas along the left and right and a door at the end that doesn’t work. To the right of the elevator, though, is a lift. Take the lift up and you’ll get out into a small room with a stairway and a health pickup and energy pickup behind it. Grab them, go up the stairs and Miller will tell you quite ignorantly that he’s glad nothing happened in the previous area. In the area at the top of the stairs you should see a door. Not far past it are a Skaarj and an Izarian who will attack you in a huge courtyard with an archway and door at the end and netting overhead. Blast the Skaarj with Grenades while backing away, then kill the Izarian. In the left half of the courtyard is a small concrete bunker of some sort with ammo inside. Another box of ammo can be found on the ground toward the end of the courtyard, to the left of the door and next to a severed human hand. Grab them and go through the next door into a cramped corridor that leads into the power plant. 6A-3: Power Plant ----------------- Open the doors and you’ll receive a message from Miller that he is up ahead and, although he won’t be able to see you while you’re outdoors, he’ll pick you up when you get near the Power Plant’s generator. Up ahead is a door, two fuel tanks, a dead body, and two boxes of ammo. Grab the ammunition, load up your Grenade Launcher and open the door. You’ll find yourself in a grassy valley, with hills to the left and right. A Light Skaarj will come at you from up ahead. Either take him out with a Fragmentation Grenade or retreat back through the door and further back a bit, let him follow you, and shoot the fuel tanks when he runs near them. Then step outside a bit and you’ll start taking fire from an Izarian at the top of each hill, to your left and right, shooting like very ineffective snipers. From their positions they’re stuck in one place, unable to dodge your own attacks so either take them out one by one with short bursts of Trigger 1 Assault Rifle fire or by firing a Rifle-Launched Grenade at each of them, immediately going back to dodging as soon as the shot leaves the barrel. When the Izarian on the left is killed, a second one will run up and take his place. Off him, too, then advance forward through the narrow opening between the hills and over a bridge. You’ll see a base up ahead in the distance, a man impaled on a stick just ahead of you, and a circular structure is toward the left with a smokestack protruding from it and emitting a jet of flames. As soon as you pass through the narrow area between the hills a Light-Armored Skaarj will attack you from the left. Take him out with a quick Frag Grenade and if he’s still alive after the blast and starts to get close, switch to the Assault Rifle (to avoid blasting yourself) and continue fighting him. Next, advance just a little more and a Medium-Armored Skaarj will run to attack you from your right side. Do the same routine with him, firing Frag Grenades until he gets close, then switching to your Assault Rifle. There is one more Light Skaarj in the general area and you’ll soon run into him one way or another. Run forward alongside the circular structure to the left, past the stream and in the direction of a dead civilian. As you near him you should hear the roar of the Skaarj nearby. Kill the Skaarj when he approaches through your usual means; you should be getting used to fighting them by now. Then grab the Assault Rifle and rifle ammunition sitting next to the dead human. The area you need to go to next is toward the right, quite a distance away. Go in that direction, keeping an eye out for a circular structure with a small stairway running partway up to a balcony that runs around the perimeter of the structure. Head towards it. When you start to get near to it, you’ll get another message from Miller. He’s excited to see that you made it and tells you he’s heading out. Dalton replies, trying to warn him that the area isn’t clear yet and he needs to stay put, but Miller can’t hear you. Keep heading further in the direction you were already going until the game shifts into a cut scene. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Miller, just outside the generator control building, is approached by an angry Izarian while carrying the artifact in his arms. He backs away slowly. Suddenly, a Heavy-Armored Skaarj marches out from behind the Izarian, waving for him to step aside. The Skaarj approaches Miller and is about to kill him when Miller falls over the rail of the walkway he’s on, plummeting to his death at the bottom of the generator shaft. The generator detects the “foreign object” and begins to shut down and close off the shaft with a protective barrier. Determined to get his hands on the artifact, the Skaarj leaps over the railing and falls down the generator shaft just before the barrier shuts completely over the top. Aida tells you to abort the mission at this point, but Dalton refuses. Aida reluctantly informs you that you need to go to the control room of the power plant if you want to open the generator again, but says that “You’d better hope that the Skaarj kill you, because if they don’t, I will.” \-------------------------------------/ There are a few things you can do now, because there are 2 routes that will take you to the control room, and there is a room that you technically could skip, but that contains important powerups. I assume you will want them, so I’ll tell you the way I recommend going, then I’ll tell you briefly about the alternate route. Go to the stairs of the circular structure and go up them to the top of the structure. Keep going and you will find an emergency hatch. Open it up, giving you a view of the room below, which contains a single Izarian. Fire through the hatch at him, killing him before he can do much to react. Once he’s dead, drop down through the hatch. You are now in a small room containing a dead body, a crate, a Grenade Launcher (which gives you 5 Fragmentation Grenades when you pick it up), an Assault Rifle and a health pickup. Grab all the goodies, then go through the only door out of the room. You’ll find yourself on a walkway which leads to another door a little further along. The alternate way of doing what you just did is as follows: Go around the structure instead of up it. You’ll soon find the generator, which is covered with a grating that you can walk across. Walk in the direction of the walkways, jump up onto the raised perimeter of the generator shaft and from there jump up to the walkways. To enter the room with the Izarian and the power ups, walk over to the door with an opening button to its right and hit the button to go in. Otherwise go straight to the automatic door; it’ll save you the slight trouble of an easy fight, but it’ll deprive you of valuable powerups. Through the automatic door is a narrow hallway with a door at the end. Go down the hallway and open the door and you’ll see a small to mid-sized room with an elevator on the opposite side, a dead body near it and something dripping from the roof. Up above the entrance, perched on piping, are 2 Izarians waiting to surprise attack you. Rather than accepting a straight fight, very slowly advance forward until you see movement up above. That’s the Izarians. Try to shoot them from where you are, using Assault Rifle Trigger 1 if possible and Trigger 2 shots ricocheting off of walls if necessary. Once they’re dead, enter the lift and go up. You’ll see an angularly shaped hallway stretching ahead of you. Notice the window on the left side of the hall, and switch to your Grenade Launcher. The glass will soon shatter and a Light-Armored Skaarj will jump through. Fire a Grenade at him the second he lands (or even a split-second before he lands) and you should be able to take him out before he has a chance to cause any harm. Almost immediately after he’s dead another Skaarj will come running down the hallway toward you. Because of the narrowness of the corridor the Skaarj can’t maneuver effectively. You should be able to take him out easily. Run down the hall, past the dead body, until you reach a door, then go through it. The hallway continues a bit further past the door you just went through and to your right is another doorway. Behind the new door a couple of Skaarj are killing a screaming civilian in the generator control room. Unfortunately, the button that opens the door is broken, so you’ll need to take an alternate route. Go to the end of the corridor. On the left side is a severed hand, an Assault Rifle and a box of Rifle ammo. Grab the ammo and Rifle, then look for a hole in the floor right next to the where the Rifle and all were. This is a passageway that leads underneath the generator control room, providing you with the alternate route that you need. The passageway contains a Skaarj, though; if you jump straight down the hole he’ll be almost right in front of you. Switch to your Grenade Launcher, aim at the wall adjacent to the hole, press and hold Trigger 1 and release it to launch a Grenade off the wall, down the hole and into the underground passageway. When it goes off you should hear the Skaarj growl. Two grenades will most likely be enough to kill him. An alternative way of doing basically the same thing is to use Trigger 2 of the Assault Rifle, but the danger here is that a shard or two of the grenade could bounce back at you. If you use rifle-launched grenades, angle the Assault Rifle downwards, jump and fire. You could do the same thing with the Shock Lance, but it might take quite a while. Anyway, once you hear the long growl indicating that the Skaarj is dead, go down the hole, duck and continue on under the floor. You’ll eventually find a gap toward the right that leads under the floor of the generator control room, with a Skaarj still there above you. You can shoot him through the floorboards with Trigger 1 of your Assault Rifle (firing Trigger 2 may result in an unexpected ricochet back at you), or just go straight up into the room through the gap in the floor. If you do the latter, be prepared for an immediate close-quarter fight; I’d suggest using Trigger 2 of the Assault Rifle. The control room contains the broken door from earlier on, a computer system on the opposite side of the room, and raised areas along either side of the room. On the area with the computers you’ll find an Assault Rifle, a box of Rifle ammo and an energy pickup. Grab them all. Then look for a health pickup on one of the raised side sections of the room. Grab it. Directly behind the health pickup is a switch labeled “Energy Override 1”. Hit it, then follow the same raised area further to find “Energy Override 2” and hit it as well. The computers will turn on, generating a holographic display. You’ll receive a message indicating that the main terminal is now online, that a “foreign object” and an “alien life form” have been detected in the generator and that if you want to terminate the shutdown process you can do so by hitting the generator restart button. A chamber near the computers opens up, revealing the button. Press it and the generator shield will open. Now retrace your steps until you’re back outside the power plant. In the hallway just after you pass by the broken door from outside the control room and go through the working door next to it you’ll run into 2 new Izarians. Further in, when you’re approaching the broken window that a Light-Armored Skaarj jumped through earlier you’ll be attacked by 1 more Izarian. Keep on going and eventually you’ll reach the generator, which is now online and open. With rotating plasma beams all over the place, the generator looks very menacing. Whatever you do, *don’t* try to jump straight down to the bottom of the generator. The plasma beams actually do very little damage, despite their appearances, and long falls are more likely to damage you than anything else here. You’ll notice that in addition to the rotating sets of 3 beams there are also hydraulic devices that move from the perimeter of the generator toward the core, pause, then return. Line yourself up with one of them, wait until it’s pushed against the core or above to reach that point, and walk off the top edge of the generator, dropping down onto the large metal contraption. From there, jump onto the ring of grating running across the perimeter of the generator just below you. Plasma beams will be moving right past your head once you are standing on the grating but they won’t quite touch you unless you jump. Now line yourself up with another hydraulic device and drop down again, then from there hop over to the next ring of grating. Repeat these 2 steps… dropping down to a piston-like thing, then hopping to a ring of grating… one more time, then jump down to the floor of the generator. Go over to Millers body and grab the artifact from him. In a few seconds you will find yourself forced to face the level’s "boss", a Heavy-Armored Skaarj. /-------------------------------------\ New Enemy: Skaarj (Heavy-Armored) Description: Slightly larger than normal Skaarj covered head to toe in metal armor, Heavy-Armored Skaarj are the premier Skaarj forces and are potentially much more dangerous than other Skaarj are. Unlike lighter Skaarj, Heavy-Armored ones are slow and tend to rely on brute force. Attacks: Heavy-Armored Skaarj have three attacks. They can fire blue energy bolts one after another rapidly for a string of five shots, each doing damage comparable to the shots fired by Medium-Armored Skaarj, although the shots are faster moving. They can also fire huge, red, slow-moving energy bolts that explode massively on contact, doing at least as much damage as an entire string of 5 blue energy bolts together would do (assuming that it hits you directly). They can also slash with their arm blades, but due to their lack of speed and inability to dive they rarely do slash and, strangely, their arm blades do no more damage than Medium Skaarj's blades do. Tips and Tactics: You absolutely cannot afford to be hit by red energy bolts. you can tell a Heavy-Armored Skaarj is about to fire one because he brings his hands together for about half a second in preparation. Keep some distance from Heavy-Armored Skaarj if possible or else it will be very difficult to dodge all of their blue bolts. Otherwise, just pound them with your heaviest weapons that are well-suited for your current range. Heavy-Armored Skaarj will not block Assault Rifle fire, but I assume that’s because it does so little damage to them that they could care less. Heavy-Armored Skaarj take about as much damage to kill as 3 Medium-Armored Skaarj combined; on Medium difficulty they take about 75 Assault Rifle hits or 5 direct hits with Fragmentation Grenades to kill. Some weapons that work particularly well include Toxic Gas Grenades, since Heavy-Armored Skaarj are too slow to get out of gas clouds until it’s often too late, the Magnum Pistol, since their speed makes them such easy targets at longer ranges, and Rocket Launchers, since you can directly hit Heavy-Armored Skaarj at medium to long range without locking on first. Heavy-Armored Skaarj are immune to the disorienting effects of Incendiary attacks. \-------------------------------------/ I’d suggest sticking close to the generator’s core and shooting a Grenade at the Heavy-Armored Skaarj, then ducking behind cover a and repeating the process. This will eventually kill the enemy, and if you run out of Frag Grenades you can substitute Rifle-Launched Grenades from Trigger 2 of your Assault Rifle. The best part is that the generator core is circular, so you’ll never get backed against a wall and have to quickly think of another strategy! Once you’ve killed the Heavy-Armored Skaarj, look for an opening in the column at the center of the generator and go inside. Use the lift to get back up to the surface. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Marines arrive, touching down in their dropship. After running to meet you, they commend you for your work and take the artifact, commenting that it doesn’t look like much. They then leave you with a warning that the area is “still plenty hot”. \-------------------------------------/ ----------------------------------------------------------- 6C: Swamp (Sanctuary Revisited) ----------------------------------------------------------- Mission Opening: You are informed that the marines you gave the artifact to at the end of your last mission were shot down while leaving the planet. They crashed in a forest on the far side of the planet. They still have the artifact and they have set up a defensive perimeter to hold their position. It is now your job to find the marines and escort them to a clearing big enough to land the Atlantis and evacuate. Beacons have been set up to help guide you to their current position. 6C-1: Speedship Crash Site -------------------------- The swamp contains numerous alien animals, such as Seagoats (small greenish hopping creatures) and Rammers (dinosaur-looking bipedal creatures). Although these animals are capable of hurting you, they won’t as long as you don’t hurt them first, so don’t. If you accidentally fire at one and engage it in a fight, the Dispersion Pistol is probably sufficient to kill it. None of the alien animals do very much damage and they all have to touch you directly to do any. Head forward from the front of your dropship and look around until you find the first beacon on the ground. Line yourself up with the beam that it casts and follow it straight forward until you see another beacon. Then line yourself up with that and go forward again. After the 5th beacon and final you’ll have to head off to the right a little from where it indicates to find the clearing the marines are in. Find it and talk to the marines there, saying anything you want (your choices won’t affect anything). Essentially you’ll end up learning that the Skaarj shot them down, that they already know where a larger clearing is and that they are all alive. You tell them that the entire Atlantis will be coming down, which surprises them. Pick up the powerups; there are a small treasure trove of them here, including: -An Assault Rifle and a box of ammo for it -A Shotgun and a box of shells for it -Two health pickups -Three energy pickups There are 3 Marines in the clearing: 2 Light-Armored Marines with Combat Assault Rifles and 1 Medium-Armored Marine with a Shotgun. Their armor doesn’t matter, though. The key to your strategies when fighting alongside these marines is realizing that they are invincible. No amount of injury will ever kill any of them. Follow them as they run towards the larger clearing. While you are approaching 2 boulders, positioned to the left and right of a strip of land, a marine will say to you, “Shhh… Something’s out there; get down.” I’d suggest taking this opportunity to jump up on top of the boulder on the left and look out for enemies. About 8 or so Izarians will soon attack you. Fight them with your Assault Rifle as usual while the Marines below tie them up on ground level. As you continue to fight Izarians throughout the level, if you are running out of Assault Rifle ammo, either get behind the Marines and just provide some “cover fire” with your Dispersion Pistol or switch to your Shotgun. The Shotgun is a bit overkill for Izarians, but you should have plenty of ammunition for it as long as you don’t use it very much. Continue following the Marines; you have a couple more encounters to go. The next one pits you against 2 or 3 Izarians while you’re under a rock formation forming a tunnel over you. Don’t stay fighting in this corridor for long; there isn’t sufficient room to maneuver. After killing them, you will soon be attacked by 8 Izarians at once, coming both from in front of you and behind. Just stay alive here and stay on the defensive most of the time; the Marines will take care of most of the enemies before they get to you. Continue fighting your way forward through one more major encounter with a good dozen or so Izarians. After that you and the marines will reach the second clearing. Grab the powerups in another little treasure trove of them here; you’ll find the following: -An Assault Rifle and a box of Rifle ammo -A Shotgun and a box of shells -Three health pickups -An energy recharging station. While you’re grabbing the goodies the Marines will start to set up a defensive perimeter. Basically the clearing is a curved area with 2 entrances, each of which has a boulder on either side of it framing a corridor to enter through. The Marines will block that corridor on each side with Plasma fields and set up Auto Turrets, one at each entrance, on the boulders. You won’t receive much of a description in-game about how these defenses work until a later level, so here’s a quick run-down of their features: The Plasma fields are generated between generator poles in the ground and absorb all damage from weapons fired into them for quite a while. It takes about 50 Assault Rifle rounds or 2 Fragmentation Grenades to break through a Plasma barrier. They can be destroyed a lot quicker with EMPs, but luckily the Izarians are too stupid to figure that out. If the generators were put into the ground by allies (as in this case), you can pass through them by walking up to the field, hitting the “use” button and walking through, and it will resume activity behind you. Enemies have to destroy the field to get through, though. Auto Turrets constantly scan for enemies in a 90 degree field in front of them. They fire what’s essentially a Trigger 1 Combat Assault Rifle at enemies, but they won’t fire at whoever set them up or on any of his allies. They take around 30 Assault Rifle rounds or 2 Fragmentation Grenades to blow up, and they’re also weak against EMP blasts (again, Izarians don’t know). You will receive a message from Aida telling you that her ship will touch down in 5 minutes. She’ll continue to warn you every minute, and then again at 30 seconds. All you need to do here is survive until she arrives. Keep in mind that the Marines never die! If you’re getting low on life, back away and let them pick up the heat. You have a few main options as to how you want to defend the clearing against the onslaught that will soon arrive. You could go to either entrance area, get up on one of the boulders and fire on anything that comes at you. Or you could stay somewhere in the middle and wait for enemies to breech the barriers and get to you (which is actually not a bad idea; remember, this is all about survival, not actually defending the area from intrusion). I’d suggest either the latter idea or going to the entrance to your right, relative to the direction you’d be facing if you went to the powerup area and turned facing away from the powerups. The other entry area has little room to maneuver if you get up on one of the boulders. On the opposite side, getting onto a boulder works to your advantage; you have a height advantage, and you can fall back to the edge of the boulder and duck when you need to reload and no enemies can hit you. Of course on either side you can also step through the Plasma barrier, fight enemies, and fall back through it when you need to, but you’ll have to face Skaarj head-on, giving them a chance to slash you with their arm blades, and you’ll have to turn your back on the enemy to pass through the plasma barrier. Make your choice as to where to station yourself and wait for the enemies to arrive. At first it’ll just be a few Izarians; nothing tough. But later Skaarj will come, first one, then a break, then one a while later, and eventually a couple almost simultaneously. The Marines will run around mostly in the middle area, fighting and shouting various battle phrases. If you need health or shields, you can return to the power up area for them. If you run out of ammo for the Assault Rifle, I’d use the Shotgun on Izarians. Frag Grenades are best against Skaarj, unless they get close to you… then just fall back while using the Shotgun. This whole fight shouldn’t be too tough. When the five minutes are up, the level ends. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Skaarj growl at the Marines and you from atop a boulder, having breeched your position, and Izarians swarm about. Suddenly, the Atlantis arrives, its thrusters blazing as it begins to touch down. The Skaarj fire on it innefectively, and the Atlantis returns fire, killing them immediately. Aida says, “Someone call for a taxi? More on the way, let’s get out of here. Move it, let’s go!” Dalton and the Marines begin evacuating… and the camera centers in on a lone Seagoat. \-------------------------------------/ ----------------------------------------------------------- 6D: Hell ----------------------------------------------------------- Mission Opening: Responding to a distress call from a group of scientists at a remote weapons research facility on the bleak ice-covered moon known as Hell, your dropship touches down. You have no information about what incited the distress call, but you do know that the research facility is underground with an entrance at the end of a long bridge. 6D-1: Descent ------------- As soon as the mission starts, the facility and bridge will be in plain view a fairly short distance away. Some of the alien animals on this planet are hostile, so don’t hesitate to waste them from a distance with your Dispersion Pistol. When you reach the bridge and start to cross it, after a short time a huge alien animal called a Mukhog will charge at you. It is the only Mukhog you’ll fight in the game. Although not seriously dangerous, it is probably worthy of fighting with your Combat Assault Rifle rather than your Dispersion Pistol; it can take a fair amount of punishment. Fall back as it attempts to charge at you and fire until it groans, slumps against the ground and dies. Advance to the end of the bridge and pass through the portal into an elevator-like chamber that will take you down into the facility. An automated voice message will tell you, “Welcome to Elysium research facility. Have your green identification badge displayed at all times.” Aida and Dalton will exchange a few snide remarks, in which Aida informs you that she’ll hack the security systems and you have no need to worry. When you arrive at the bottom, head through the door in front of you and keep going. Suddenly, plasma barriers will engage themselves, trapping you in a small chamber. A weapons scan will run, generate a 3-D hologram of your power armor, determine that you are carrying weapons and set off an alarm. Automated defenses will activate. Aida will end up hacking the security system just in time, though (huge surprise there). Continue forward through the circular door at the end of the hall. 6D-2: Discovery --------------- You will now be standing on a grated balcony in a huge room with 2 doors to your left and workstations, a huge but broken display screen and a large fire on the ground level of the room, below you. The second door on your left will not function (yet), so go to the first and take the lift behind it down to ground level. Among the wreckage and chaos on the main floor are 2 dead scientists and a dead Kai (a peaceful, nomadic race of intelligent humanoid aliens that become important toward the end of the game). You’ll also find your first Flamethrower, complete with 120 “rounds” of ammunition! Despite the fact that weapons are forbidden to non-scientists in the research facility, you’ll find that the scientists here are armed to the teeth. Grab the gun and head through the circular gate up ahead. Go forward through the hall, passing through 2 more gates and you’ll end up in a room with another gate on the left and your path in front of you blocked by another huge fire. Go through the gate, into a room with 4 medical stations. Two of the stations have dead scientists laying in them, and operating the stations with the “use” button will only play you the sound of a flatline heartbeat monitor. Another medical station has a dead Kai laying on it. The fourth station has a scientist laying on it who is only injured and still moving. Operate the medical station and a "healing light" of some sort will “scan” his body, reviving him somehow. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: After you revive the scientist, he and Dalton exchange words. John Dalton identifies himself and the scientist, whose name is “Jenson”, does the same. He informs you that all the other scientists are dead, that after an alarm went off he barricaded a door, and that there was an explosion that injured him and other scientists. He crawled back to the medical station but passed out before he could operate the "healing light" (see above). He says he can still walk and that he will help you get past the fire in the “ops area” that blocked your path towards the beginning of part 2 of the level (Discovery). He says to bypass it you’ll need to go through a control room, which he has the security code for. The two of you set off for the control room. \-------------------------------------/ Head back to the lift up to the second floor. When you are nearing the lift, you will receive a message from Aida that there are some sort of life forms up ahead. Go up the lift with Dr. Jenson and go through the second gate on that floor, which previously was inoperable. In the control room, you’ll find a box of Rifle ammo to your right and a set of audio log controls on the control boards. Run them. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: The last audio log plays. A distressed scientists says “Help, emergency! This is Elysium, we need military support. The experiments went bad; some of them got out and now they’re everywhere. We built a blockade but don’t know how long it’ll last. Please send help!” Another scientist than says, “They’re coming through!” “Those containers are flammable!” replies the first. The other one persists: “Come on, you bastards, eat flame!” An explosion and shouts can then be heard in the background. \-------------------------------------/ Keep going into the next area. Pass up the next door here and keep going all the way down the grated balcony. You’ll find another Flamethrower and some Shotgun shells at the end. *Now* go through the door that you passed up and down the lift behind it. Keep going through the next gate into the next room, with Dr. Jenson following you all the while. Just for the record, you don’t need Jenson anymore, so if you lose him somehow, don’t worry about it. This next room, however, has dead scientists laying everywhere, prompting Jenson (if he’s still with you) to be a whiny nuisance. You should be able to hear a creaking sound, foreshadowing danger in the next room. Continue on to the next room and watch the grating in the ceiling on the right side of the room. Before you know it, it’ll bust through and Araknids will start pouring out into the room. Here’s a quick rundown on Araknids: /-------------------------------------\ New Enemies: Light and Medium Araknids Description: Light Araknids are quick-moving and aggressive yellow spiders that tend to attack in huge hordes. Medium Araknids are colored in obnoxious neon reds and oranges, are much larger than Light Araknids (more along the lines of Skaarj in size), and are just aggressive as their smaller relations. Attacks: Light Araknids can only attack by crawling right up to you and stabbing you with their sharp-ended legs. This does almost no damage, but repeated hits by groups of Light Araknids can add up. Medium Araknids have two attacks. They can do a similar close-up attack that does more damage, or they can leap at you, cutting you with their legs on contact. Tips and Tactics: Light Araknids can be killed in one hit from any weapon. If they aren’t accompanied by Medium Araknids, the Dispersion Pistol is generally sufficient; its second trigger can even kill small groups of them in one shot. If you are being overwhelmed by Light Araknids up close, a jet or two of fire from the Flamethrower can do wonders to waste them quickly. Medium Araknids are tougher to put down; they take about 15 Assault Rifle rounds or a Fragmentation Grenade. A Flamethrower can do wonders on them, too, requiring just a couple quick jets of flame and some time. Also, a single Trigger 2 shot from the Shotgun at an almost close enough range to ignite yourself can put one down in one shot. This works well if they jump at you; if a Medium Araknid dies in midair, then crashes into you, you will not be harmed. In open areas, jumping lets Medium Araknids get close to you in a hurry, so once they spot you don’t get careless, even if they seem distanced. Also, if you can dodge a leaping Medium Araknid, they’ll take a second to recover and attack again afterwards, opening them up to a Rifle-Launched or conventional grenade or a Shotgun blast. Between the Light Araknid’s ability to climb over almost any obstacle and the Medium Araknid’s jumping ability, hiding or sneaking into an out of the way area usually won’t do much good. Falling back while firing is usually good, though; Light Araknids in particular can’t move any faster than you do. One last thing to keep in mind is that as mobile as they may be, Araknids are too stupid to open doors. You can occasionally use this to your advantage. \-------------------------------------/ Right here you’ll face 10 Light and 2 Medium Araknids at once. Against combinations such as this, the Flamethrower often works very well. Just make sure you only fire short, brief jets of flame so that you don’t eat through napalm too quickly. You have plenty of open space behind you, so you may want to run backwards while firing at the advancing Araknids. If you do this and react quickly enough to the onslaught, you may be able to pull this area off unharmed using your Assault Rifle. In any case, once you’ve defeated the Araknids in this area, go through the next hallway, past more dead bodies. You’ll hear a hissing sound coming from the next room. The next room will pit you in a very similar fight, this time against about 4 Light and 2 Medium Araknids. In fact, almost every encounter in this level will be pretty similar, and literally every one will be against spiders, so I sure hope you like ‘em! The next area has some Shotgun shells next to a grate. The next room after that has about 15 or Light Araknids and about 4 Medium ones; a fairly serious battle, actually. Note the explosive cylinder up ahead; it’s powerful and can easily take out a Medium Araknid and a couple Light ones as they pass by. After you’ve laid waste to all the Arachnids here (falling back while fighting is, again, very useful here, and keep moving!) you’ll need to go through another door into an area that has about 13 Light Araknids to face. By now you should generally be able to handle Light Araknids alone with your Dispersion Pistol, but Hell’s Rambo-scientists do supply you with plenty of ammunition so don’t sweat it too much. After they’re all done with, head forward more through a gate to enter the next area. 6D-3: Desolation --------------- You will arrive in a large room, dominated by a cylindrical industrial device at the center. Moving around it, you will see 2 doors- one opposite the entrance that can’t be opened and another to the right of it. When you open the door to the right a stream of 8 or 10 Light Araknids will attack. Stand your ground there and you should be able to pick them off before they reach you. A distance away you’ll see 3 Medium Araknids. They may be far away at the time, but remember that they can jump. I recommend that you start shooting them with either trigger of the Assault Rifle as soon as possible, assuming the small spiders have been taken care of. Advance and you’ll find yourself on another grated balcony above what is essentially a bottomless pit. Another cylinder-shaped device in the center (this time a laser-generator looking thing) forces the balcony to wind around in a circle. As you advance into the new area, Dalton informs Aida about the “high-energy ion beam”. She wonders why they’d need that much power and that she’ll see “what I can pry out of Axon” (a company allied to the TCA military that researches weapons and provides intel). The gate to the next area is to the right, but first go around to the opposite side of the room from the entry door and pick up an Assault Rifle and a box of ammo for it from next to a dead scientist. Then go through the gate and up a lift to an even higher balcony. This floor sticks to the same circular design and has 2 Medium Araknids to your immediate right. Take them out quickly with the Shotgun or Flamethrower and continue on forward, making sure to grab the health pickup and energy pickups. You can now go either left or right. To your left is a stream of “plasma gas” blocking your way, and if you go near it Aida will tell you that you need to find a way to vent it or blow it away from the grated path, which continues on behind it. Disregard the fact that the existence of “plasma gas” is a physical impossibility and head right. You’ll run into an odd opening in the wall that looks like a stationary airplane propeller. Crouch and begin crawling up the narrow corridor beyond it. As you start to reach the top, you’ll find yourself in an air duct with the path to the left blocked. You’ll be immediately attacked by 5 Light Araknids, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem. In fact, it would be no problem except that Dalton then has to go and say, “Heh. Little buggers… they ain’t so bad.” Of course this jinxes him, automatically ensuring that he will soon be attacked by an overwhelming swarm of them. I’d recommend dealing with the soon-to-arrive horde of 20+ Light Araknids in one of 2 ways: Either 1, line yourself up with the entrance to the duct and start firing Trigger 2 blasts from your Dispersion Pistol at the skittering crowd in the distance, then firing Trigger 1 and backing down into the previous room as they get closer. Once you’re out of the air duct entirely you’ll have all the space you’ll need to continually back up while firing. The other option, for those of you with a little less patience, is to bring out the big weapons; more specifically, your Flamethrower. In such a confined area the Flamethrower is extremely efficient against them. Once the Light Araknids are dead, continue forward and around the corner. You may soon be attacked by a stray Araknid or 2 in the next stretch of air duct but nothing significant is waiting for you… except for the solution to the “plasma gas” problem. A set of ventilation controls are located on the right side of the passageway. With the push of a button a fan will activate, sucking away enough of the toxic/caustic/fictional plasma gas for you to get by. To save some time, now you can just blast the glass in front of you and jump back down- it’ll shatter in one shot from anything. Carefully pass through the previously-blocked corridor. You’ll run into a scientist, who will say, “Thank God you’re here!” Those will be his final words, as a spofre pod fires out at him from a glob of slime and covers him in tiny spiders. Dalton than says, “Great, something else to look out for.” Indeed there is. The level will feature oodles of those things in it from now on. Luckily, whereas they instantly killed the scientist, they hardly do anything to you, and often miss entirely. Still, when you see them, give ‘em a pop of your Dispersion Pistol or Assault Rifle, and be aware that they’ll often be located in places that are tough to spot. I won’t point them all out because they’re a minor threat and there are LOTS of the little things. Head through the next door. You’ll run into 2 Medium and 3 Light Araknids here. Since it’s a narrow corridor as well as mixed enemies, the Flamethrower is a good choice of weapons for this conflict. There should be a crate around here with a napalm canister; grab it and round the corner. Down the hall, grab a Shotgun from next to another dead scientist. Then, before heading further down the hall, go through a door to your left. You’ll find a stockpile of weapons, some shelves and a huge number of slime pods in this room. Some of them will shoot spores at you while others will soon hatch and Light Araknids will emerge. Shoot every slime pod and Araknid you see until you feel safe traversing the room. Grab all the weapons now; they should consist of the following: -Two boxes of Shotgun shells -A Shotgun -Two boxes of Assault Rifle rounds (one is on a crate behind a shelf on the right side of the room) -An Assault Rifle -Two health pickups -Two energy pickups -A Dispersion Pistol. Why, I have absolutely no idea, but it’s there. Don’t expect anything to happen when you grab it. Grab your goodies and head back out into the hall. A jet of flame shooting out of a broken pipe somewhat blocks your path, but if you crouch down you can get under it. You might want to save first just in case because it will hurt you very rapidly. Don’t stop as you pass under it because an out-of-the-way slime pod will fire a spore at you but as long as you’re moving it shouldn’t hit you. Keep progressing forward; you’ll face a few more Araknids, both Light and Medium. Eventually you’ll reach a door leading out into another circular balcony area. As soon as you go through the door you’ll be attacked by a swarm of Light Araknids that seems to just keep coming and coming. About 16 total will attack; the trick here is to just wait at the entryway and not go out into the room, where you can be surrounded or overwhelmed with little time to notice the Araknids gathering. I’d start the fight using your Dispersion pistol and switch to the Assault Rifle or Flamethrower if you find it insufficient. Once those guys are done with, pick up the Assault Rifle ammo to the right and head through the next door. You’ll find more goodies here, specifically 2 boxes of Assault Rifle ammo, an energy pickup and another pointless Dispersion Pistol. Head up the stairway and you’ll find yourself in a huge room with more than a dozen slime pods on the ground. Several Light Araknids will come skittering towards you; a few more at least will hatch out of slime pods. Keep wasting ‘em, and start destroying all the slime pods with your Dispersion Pistol to make it safe to cross the room. As you’re doing this Dalton will say to Aida, “Good God, is this where they’re all coming from?” She replies that there aren’t enough pods and none of them are big enough for the larger Araknids. Sooner or later the 1 Medium Araknid in the room (which is toward the back and may be out of your immediate line of sight) will start heading toward you. It will probably leap at you, which causes a dilemma since you may still be dealing with Slime Pods when it does. My suggestion is to fire at him from across the room with your Assault Rifle and dodge if he jumps. When he lands he’ll be perfectly set up for the Rifle-Launched Grenade or 2 that will finish him off. However you go about clearing out the room, before you head up the stairs afterwards, check off to the side of them in the darkened corner of the room. Behind some crates are a box of Assault Rifle ammo, a box of Shotgun shells and a box of Frag Grenades. Also, be aware that a Medium Araknid may skitter down the stairs when you get close to them; whip out a Shotgun or Flamethrower and wax him. Atop the stairs you’ll encounter a few more Light Araknids and a few more Medium ones as well, so have your weapon of choice for mixed Araknid fights ready ahead of time. On the left side of the room is a gate, but before you head through it grab some Shotgun shells off the floor near the dead scientist (also near the gate). A Medium Araknid’s not far past the gate; have something ready for close-quarters combat. You’re now on a massive set of walkways. Head left first to get to several power ups and watch out for Light Araknids that might come at you from the right side of the walkways. To the left you’ll find napalm, a Shotgun, more Fragmentation Grenades and an energy pickup. To the right, after clearing out the few Light Araknids in your way you’ll find a box of Shotgun ammo, a box of Assault Rifle ammo and 2 health pickups. Get to the portal at the end of the right walkway and go through. After opening the portal, you’ll soon run into another Medium and a few more Light Araknids. As soon as you take them out Dalton says to Aida, “Damn, these things are tough. I’ve never seen anything like them!” Aida informs you that nobody has. Presumably from Axon, she found out that the Araknid’s DNA (I have no idea how she got a sample of it, but apparently she did) is unknown and new. Basically, you’re fighting a mutant species. Continue on down the hall, through the door to another elevator sort of device, like the one you took down to the weapons research facility toward the beginning of the mission. Go into it and on to the next part of Hell. 6D-4: Disclosure ---------------- The area you arrive in features 2 doors. One is a 3-sectioned electronic gate, which Aida will tell you has been locked and can be opened from “the control room” (she doesn’t bother mentioning where it is, but luckily this is a very linear level). The other door is the entrance to a lift. As you take it up you’ll receive a message that you’re entering the “Materials Laboratory”. To the right of this area is another lift, which leads into a shattered, impassible area that would otherwise enter the control room. Since that’s not an option, and the 3 gates in front of you are impassible, there is one other, rather obvious option: go through the huge hole torn in the wall in front of you and off to the right. Doing so will require that you duck down, so go ahead and do it. The next area is huge and rather bizarre. The hole room is a mess, filled with barely passable debris. To complicate matters further, a huge, activated laser is sitting in the room, firing a continuous laser beam that reflects off of certain chunks of debris and has burned straight through others. It criss-crosses through the room many times over, and it will drain away your health and energy very quickly if you touch it. I’d recommend that you save now and regularly as you traverse this room. There are specific paths you can follow to pass safely through the room, evading the laser, navigating the debris, grabbing powerups and eventually getting on a fallen beam that leads up into the control room. Before I explain exactly how to do all of this, there’s a secret to getting straight to the control room very quickly and with no risk. It’s up to you whether you want to or not; if you do, you can deactivate the laser from the control room and come back for the goodies, so it’s just a matter of whether you want the fun and fulfillment of doing it the “right way” or not. If you hate jumping puzzles and want to just get back to the shooting, try this: find the diagonally-tilted fallen column to the right of the hole you enter through that ends by passing through the glass viewing window of the control room above; the column obviously crashed through the glass when it fell. Once you’ve found it, find the point on it that you can see from where you’re standing that’s lowest to the ground. Get up alongside it, right up close, touching the crumpled black debris that the fallen column has crashed over. Jump up and hold the jump button to vault yourself up. It is possible to grab the edge of the fallen column and pull yourself up onto it. It may take several tries, especially if you’ve never done it before or seen it done before, but it’s definitely doable. If you can do that, head up into the control room and skip the next paragraph of this guide. If you don’t want to, here’s how to make it through the room the “right” way: I explain things step by step here rather than item by item or place by place how to get around here because, as you’ll soon see, there is a linear progression of places you can get to, a very specific path to follow to get to each next item or area within this maze of lasers. First of all, from where you come out after passing through the hole in the wall, head left as far as you can until you run into a few streams of the laser’s beam. To your right are 2 black blocks. If you advance between them, where you’ll see a yellow fixture on the ground in front of you that looks like a huge stand to put a Christmas tree in, just turn left and some Shotgun shells are waiting right in front of you. Now head back to where the first set of lasers were and hop the one in front of you (in front while you’re facing with the locked gates to your left) so that you’ll find yourself surrounded by lasers. Hop another one close to ground level and then duck under another; keep progressing forward. Once you get past the initial lasers, head off to the left, towards the wall with the locked gates, and around the corner created by a piece of metal stuck in the ground that previously blocked your way. There should be a health pickup next to a locked gate. Grab it. Now turn your back to the gate and advance forward, carefully, until you see a health pickup and an energy pickup just to your left. Grab them. Keep going forward (forward while facing with the wall to your left and gates way behind you) until the laser is visible to your right and there’s and oddly shaped grey block to your left and a bit in front of you. Jump and vault on top of it, continue forward and jump up to the next block and grab a pack of Frag Grenades. Turn to your right, so that walls are to your left and behind you and the laser’s in front of you. Hop down and advance forward, ducking under 2 lasers in front of you, until you get to the edge of a pit of molten metal. DO NOT touch the metal; it will kill you at least as quickly as the lasers do. To your left, you’ll see a black block up against the wall; hop onto it. From there (and you might want to save now), hop onto the shiny, silver block in the middle of the pit of molten metal. Hold the jump button in case you don’t quite make it and need to vault. Then, facing in the same direction, jump to the next block and the next after that. You’ll now be on a pale-colored block with a laser reflecting off of it. You’ll notice a huge number of criss-crossing lasers in front of you. Walk onto the greenish block to your right. Then turn left, facing the direction you were facing before. You’ll notice a gap in front of you, a safe-spot big enough to stand and not be sliced up by lasers. Jump in there. Turn slightly left, where there’s a brownish block with a laser coming through a hole in it. Duck past the laser, walk past another one, jump a ground-level one, and you should end up against a wall and next to a silvery or light grey reflective block. Vault onto that block, then head over to the energy pickup that you should now see. Next, turn facing towards the wall with the gates in it, the wall way in front of you that you entered this God-forsaken mess of a room through. Drop down to ground level. Jump over a laser in front of you and hop up onto a grey block laying on its side. Keep heading forwards, ducking a few lasers until you can get to you get to yet another health pickup. Still crouching, head around the grey monolith with no lasers touching it until you reach a block on its side heading up to the control room! There is one more powerup you can get before you head up though, if you’re interested, and it doesn’t involve lasers (unless you fall). Partway up the fallen column, turn right and move onto a black block. Keep jumping forward from here, heading to higher and higher blocks. You’ll have to make a right turn to get to the highest block; jump up onto it. Grab the napalm canister there, then head back to the fallen column heading up to the control room. And thank goodness that’s over with! In the control room, there are two switches you can hit. One shuts down the laser, and the other is a lockdown override switch that unlocks all the gates in the level. Although the laser control button is very useful, the lockdown override is absolutely necessary- don’t miss it. Head back down once you’ve hit them, grab any powerups you might not have gotten yet in the laser-jumping-puzzle-from-Hell room and retrace your steps back all the way to the room where you began the “Disclosure” phase of the mission (i.e. where the last huge elevator took you to, with one working door and one nonfunctional gate). Go through the newly unlocked gate. The next area presents you with 3 Light and 2 Medium Araknids; finally, some more fighting! You probably have tons of Fragmentation Grenades now, so use a couple of them, the Flamethrower, or whatever you deem appropriate- at this point you’re probably a master of fighting Araknids, given the repetition of the fights. Keep going down the hall and through the gate at the end. You’ll now be on a circular balcony over a gargantuan generator. Start heading right and you’ll get a message from Aida. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Aida contacts you to inform you of what’s going on at the facility with the ion beams and the artifact. According to her, a high energy ion beam has been passed through an artifact to test its properties. Now all you need to find out is how the spiders came about… \-------------------------------------/ At the end of the balcony is a box of Assault Rifle ammo, a box of Shotgun shells and a gate. Through the gate is a spacious hallway where you’ll encounter 2 Medium and 5 Light Araknids. Blast ‘em… you know how by now. As you advance down the hall, keep an eye out for slime pods; there are a fair number of them around. Pick up 3 boxes of Shotgun shells while you’re here and advance through the gate at the end of the hallway. You’ll now be in *another* cylinder or circle-shaped room. There are slime pods to look out for on the walls and toxic waste canisters set up against some of the walls. You’ll run into at least 1 Medium Araknid here. A note about the toxic waste canisters: setting them off basically generates the same kind of explosion as a Toxic Gas Grenade; it lingers for a while. Additionally, it will spill green waste out onto the floor around it that will last longer than the gas cloud but not forever, and will damage you or an Araknid if either of you step on it. Use the canisters to your advantage if you can (basically the exact same way as other explosives). When you’ve cleared the room out, ride the lift up. As you enter the next area, you’ll receive an automated message that you’re “now entering (the) atmospherics laboratory”. Grab the Shotgun shells in here. You’ll see a lift and 3 gates here, and the gates are sealed. They’re the only gates that couldn’t be opened from the control room you made your way into. Go up the lift and you’ll arrive in a new control room, complete with 5 separate buttons to control the chambers in front of you. A viewing window lets you see the chambers beyond the sealed gates. A plasma beam in the center chamber blocks a passage in the ground; Araknids are contained in all the chambers. Aida now tells you that to progress further into the facility you must now turn off the plasma beam and go down into the chamber in the floor that it is being projected through. The five controls are: -Bulkhead lockdown override: Opens all three gates on the lower floor. -Plasma beam controls: Shuts down the plasma beam in the center chamber. -Left side chamber pressure control: Causes the Araknids in the left side chamber to explode. -Center chamber pressure control: Sucks away what I can only assume is “plasma gas” left behind after the plasma beam is shut down. -Right side chamber pressure control: Has no useful effect. Hit all five buttons and head back down the lift. Enter the center chamber and drop down through the opening in the center of the room. You’ll now be in a very narrow corridor, a pipeline essentially. You’ll be forced to crouch to advance through it. Start making your way across. About a dozen Light Araknids will attack you along the way, but only about 4 at a time, and between that and the enclosed area they’ll be moving through they should give you no problems. At the end of the pipeline are left and right hatch controls. The left control is busted, so operate the right and go through the hatch. Drop down the hole here. You’ll be in another huge, cylinder shaped balcony. Advance right; you’ll soon run into a couple Light and a couple Medium Araknids. At the end of the balcony is a Shotgun and a box of Assault Rifle ammo on the ground. There’s also a dead scientist here, and if he didn’t try to load rifle ammunition into a Shotgun he might still be alive. Go through the gate here into the next area and enter a long hallway with more mixed Araknids. Through the next gate you’ll enter one last huge, cylinder shaped balcony. This one surrounds a huge device generating some sort of bubbles. Face another couple of Araknids and head through the door and up the lift at the end of the area. Arriving in the next room, you’ll be alerted by an automatic message that you’re “now entering (the) Biological Lab” and that there is a containment breech. There are 3 gates here, but like in the atmospherics lab they’re shut down. Head up a lift here into a control room almost exactly like the one in the atmospherics lab. A peak out the viewing window and a message from Aida now answer the question of how the Araknids came about completely. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Looking out the viewing window on the 3 chambers below you, you can see Light Araknids from the left chamber moving into the middle chamber, passing through the plasma beam, mutating into Medium Araknids and heading into the right chamber, where they drop through a hole in the ground. Aida confirms what is already apparent: the plasma beam, cast upon the artifact, created some sort of mutation field. How the Araknids got loose, however, will never be known. Aida is concerned because the beam in the center chamber has been split; it’s only a fraction of what the beam was like originally. To get the artifact back and correct the chaos here you’ll have to retrieve the artifact, but if anything got into the un-split plasma beam there, what would happen to them could only be speculated about. \-------------------------------------/ Hit the bulkhead override switch in this room. If you’d like, there are 4 switches that unlock cages containing alien animals who, when released, will run into the beam and mutate into much larger versions of themselves. They’ll then just dawdle about in the central chamber, occasionally picking a fight with a Medium Araknid (and always winning). Next, head back down and enter the right side chamber. You’ll notice a huge hole torn in the ground here. Go down it quickly or you’ll end up having to fight a potentially never-ending wave of Medium Araknids. You’ll drop down onto some pipes and see a walkway with powerups and Araknids below you and shallow, filthy water around the walkway (it’s not poisonous or harmful water, though it looks like it could be). There’ll be a few Light and a few Medium Araknids here and a few slime pods on the walkway. Start blasting enemies from the pipes, perhaps popping them with a Fragmentation Grenade or two, and continue down, finishing them off, and collecting the health pickup, 2 energy pickups, Assault Rifle and Shotgun ammo, and Toxic Gas Grenades. Follow the tunnel down here, which looks manmade, not artificial. At the end of the hallway will be a drop-off into a huge, circular room with a gigantic ion beam cast into the center of the room. Aida will now contact you, saying that “The artifact is in the beam, You’ve got to shut it down. Controls are right next to it, but be careful… something else is in there, something huge.” Enter the huge room. If nothings around, start running through it in one direction grabbing all the power ups you can find. If you do see something… /-------------------------------------\ New Enemy: Heavy/Boss Araknid Description: The Heavy Araknid is a yellow spider-like creature bearing exotic protrusions. It is significantly larger than Medium Araknids and about as quick moving. It has several attacks and abilities and takes an astounding amount of punishment to kill. Attacks: The Heavy Araknid can stab with its front legs like all Araknids (doing a few times as much damage as a Medium Araknid), but it can attack you at long range in several different ways. It can leap like a Medium Araknid, at equal speed and distance and a few times as much damage. It will sometimes spew out four slime pods in front of it and, though they can be shot out before they can hatch, they hatch after only a few seconds. It can also spew several spores at you at once, each mimicking the projectile attack that flies out of smaller slime pods. To directly attack you from long range, the Heavy Araknid can send a shockwave out all around it that blows back enemies (and its own offspring) and damages enemies as well, about as much as when he successfully jump attacks. Tips and Tactics: Try to keep a fair distance from the Heavy Araknid most of the time. The only way to dodge its shockwave attack is to put something in between you and the Heavy Araknid when it sends the shockwave out, so keep an eye for any such protrusions. The most difficult thing about fighting the Heavy Araknid by far is the insane amount of damage it can take. It takes roughly 600 to 700 Assault Rifle rounds or 40 Fragmentation Grenades to kill it on Medium Difficulty, making it about 4000% tougher than a Medium Araknid! Give the thing everything you’ve got. The 2 weapons that will damage it the most quickly, by far, are the Flamethrower and Toxic Gas Grenades (considering what your options will be when you fight the one and only one of these). When using the Flamethrower, maintain as much of a distance as possible while still being close enough to immerse the Heavy Araknid in flames and HOLD DOWN Trigger 1; do not fire it in short bursts. Fire Toxic Gas Grenades from as far back as you are accurate from, tapping (not holding) the trigger, and hit the Heavy Araknid toward the front or middle of its body. If you run out of those weapons, Fragmentation Grenades, the Shotgun and even Trigger 1 of the Shock Lance are good. \-------------------------------------/ The Heavy Araknid may encounter you right away. The room contains the following goodies: -A health pickup -Three energy pickups and an energy recharging station -An Assault Rifle and a box of ammo for it -Two boxes of Shotgun shells Grab as much as you can until you encounter it; if the room seems empty, go near the ion beam and head back in the opposite direction from where you were going. Once you find it, start unloading on it while moving away a bit. Have your Grenade Launcher or another powerful weapon ready. If it spits out slime pods, do your best to take them out before they hatch if you can, especially if you’re armed with your Flamethrower at the time, since you can just quickly spray a few jets of flame at them and continue fighting the Heavy Araknid. The reason this is important is that if they hatch the Light Araknids will head straight for the ion beam and turn themselves into Medium Araknids (apparently the beam can only create one Heavy one; go figure). This will be a long fight; if you’re running low on energy, maneuver away from the Heavy Araknid for a while (shooting at long range while doing so) and look for pickups; they’re everywhere. Be ready to dodge the Heavy Araknid’s jump attack at a moment’s notice and then retaliate. Don’t let too many Medium Araknids pile up, and when you take time off from your main target to fight them, make quick work of them so you can return to the real fight (I’d recommend Fragmentation Grenades against the Mediums). Keep an eye on the protruding metal machinery around the ion beam and any other potential cover; when the Heavy Araknid raises its’ front legs and motions to indicate that he’s about to send out a shockwave, get behind something. This will definitely be a drawn out battle. Updates: Evil Man clued me in on a foolproof way of defeating the Heavy Araknid if you're having trouble through conventional means. In the room you fight him in, up against a wall in one area is a large mass of wreckage and debris that is just short enough to jump onto with some difficulty. It forms a rough semi-circle against the wall with a space behind it you can drop into that will put you tightly between the wall and the wreckage. From here, after a short wait, the Heavy Araknid will approach and attempt to attack you, usually relying on his shockwave attack. As long as you stay back against the wall it will be impossible for him to hurt you at all! You'll have just enough space to lob grenades over into the Heavy Araknid. The only way you'll be prone to damage at all is that there is a small chance of a Medium Araknid jumping at you and landing directly on top of you, in which case you can blow him away with a single shot of your Shotgun. Getting back out is tricky and may take a couple minutes of jumping and carefully walking while crouched, but it's doable. If a straight-out battle isn't working for you, this technique is *the best* way of winning. Nemesis also recently informed me of another strategy that works nearly as well. After entering the plasma beam room and encountering the Heavy Araknid, try turning around and heading back up the pipes that you ran down to get into the room. Perched up there it's nearly impossible for enemies to hit you. The only things you'll need to worry about are Medium Araknids jump attacking and the Heavy Araknid launching slime at you from below, in which case some may go in between 2 pipes and hit you. Firing down over the edges or through the gaps in between pipes under you, though, you'll be able to easily pick away at your enemies with a bit better maneuverability than the wreckage "bunker" idea above allows. I still prefer the wreckage technique, but either of these tactics will turn this difficult battle into a cakewalk. When the Heavy Araknid dies, it will explode dramatically, allowing you to shut down the ion beam using the controls on the metal stations near it and grab the artifact. The spider killing is finally finished. Hell is through; on with the rest of the game! ----------------------------------------------------------- 6E: Acheron ----------------------------------------------------------- Mission Opening: Your dropship comes in for a landing on the planet Acheron, where an artifact is known to be located. Acheron is covered by a single gigantic alien organism, which is being methodically killed by terreforming machines set up by the Izanagi corporation. Your assignment is to gather intel only and avoid the Ghost Warriors who serve the Izanagi corporation as fanatical mercenaries. A Ghost Warrior on the surface is speaking to another about their plans to extract the artifact, which the alien organism is clutching possessively. They go down an elevator, down through a massive breathing tube into the interior of the organism. One other Ghost Warrior stays behind. As your dropship comes in for a landing, he spots it overhead and calls out to the other mercs in the area that an intruder has arrived. So much for gathering intel only. 6E-1: Outside the Terreforming Plant ------------------------------------ As soon as the mission begins, Ghost Warriors in the distance will be searching for you. If you stay where you are, you’ll soon be attacked at a distance by a Light Ghost Warrior. Since there’s little to no cover near your dropship, you may prefer to instead run forward to the yellow industrial vehicle fairly near to you, taking cover behind it. Let’s assume for a second you stay still. /-------------------------------------\ New Enemy: Light/Medium Izanagi Ghost Warrior Description: The Ghost Warriors wear red and grey power armor with generator boxes on their backs; Light and Medium Ghost Warriors look almost identical. They are relatively smart; they know to keep moving as they fight and to use available cover. They run at the same speed as you and can use a wide variety of weaponry, all of which you use also. Attacks: Light Ghost Warriors carry as standard equipment a Combat Assault Rifle and a Dispersion Pistol, and heavily favor the Assault Rifle. Medium Ghost Warriors use in place of that a Shotgun and a Magnum Pistol, and heavily favor the Shotgun. They can hit you with the butts of their weapons as well, but only do so as a last resort if you get extremely close to them. Occasionally Ghost Warriors (usually Medium ones) will instead carry either a Grenade Launcher or a Rocket Launcher, with no sidearm and no ability to hit you with the weapon. When they use Grenade Launchers they will be equipped with only one type of Grenade and will always “hold down the trigger”, giving the Grenades delayed fuses. When they use Rocket Launchers they will use both triggers, but will have no target locking ability, always firing Trigger 2 mini-missiles in “drunk” mode. (See section 4 for additional information about these weapons). Tips and Tactics: Don’t bother counting enemy Ghost Warrior’s shots and trying to attack them while they reload. Although they do reload from time to time, their “running out of ammo” happens at random; it doesn’t correspond to the number of shots they fire. Play on the ranges of enemy Ghost Warriors’ weapons. Attacking Medium Ghost Warriors at long range, where their Shotguns can’t reach or can hardly reach, gives you an advantage. Incendiary attacks work very well against Ghost Warriors since they can’t use their skill and intelligence against you while they’re running around on fire, screaming. Make sure that after you kill Ghost Warriors and the area is fairly secure you run over their bodies, “soaking up” leftover energy from their shield generators. After a while they will no longer be viable for getting energy from. Maintain your range from Ghost Warriors equipped with Missiles or Grenades if possible, since those weapons are very easy to dodge at longer ranges. If you find it helpful, Light Ghost Warriors take about 12 Assault Rifle rounds or 1 Fragmentation Grenade to kill, whereas Medium Ghost Warriors take about 20-25 Assault Rifle rounds or 2 Fragmentation Grenades. \-------------------------------------/ There is no boss enemy for this mission, so you can afford to use Rockets and Grenades from time to time against Medium or even Light Ghost Warriors. Just save some heavy weaponry for later when you start running into Heavy Ghost Warriors (which aren’t as enduring as Heavy Skaarj and not nearly as bad as the Heavy Araknid, but still worthy enemies). If you stay still, the Assault Rifle is probably sufficient for fighting once an enemy attacks. The Magnum Pistol is another suitable alternative. If you run forward to get behind the yellow industrial vehicle, head left around it and when you get to the end of the vehicle you can jump up onto it. On the opposite side is a Light Ghost Warrior; once you’ve jumped onto the vehicle he’ll soon be in sight. Blast him with something that will ignite him and then finish him off. From there, no enemies will attack you until you come to them. Head forward further; a stack of crates will be your next decent source of cover, so move towards them. When you near the crate, 2 Light Ghost Warriors will begin to attack you. These are unusual ones, though; one is armed with a Grenade Launcher and Fragmentation Grenades and the other has a Rocket Launcher! Don’t panic when they start to fire; from this distance you can easily dodge their attacks. Keep track of where the Grenades are going and keep in mind they won’t explode on contact. When you kill these enemies a garage-like area will open up with more Ghost Warriors inside. Therefore you have a couple of options here. One option is to take them out from a distance, while they will be having serious trouble hitting you. The other option is to advance on them, dodging as you go, and kill them closer up so that when the garage opens you can be standing right there with Flamethrower in hand (or another devastating weapon). To fight them from a distance, use weapons that are impossible to dodge such as the Assault Rifle and the Magnum Pistol. Grenades fired with a tap of the trigger actually work pretty well too, if your aim is good enough. When you take them out you can then head up to the next yellow industrial vehicle, wind around it to the left and run into the now battle-ready Ghost Warriors in the garage-like area. If you run forward to meet the 2 Ghost Warriors they may switch to more standard weaponry or fall back a bit as you get close. Once you get near enough to them you can take them out with the Flamethrower, Trigger 2 Shotgun, Grenades or something else. Then head left of the yellow vehicle they were stationed at and have a Flamethrower, Shotgun or Grenade Launcher ready immediately for when the door of the little nook there opens. Once you clear that alcove out, enter it. There are health and energy recharging stations, which you can come back to later for additional charging (until they run out of health and energy to give). There’s also your first Rocket Launcher (except possibly the one off the body of the Ghost Warrior that fired Rockets at you), Rockets for it, Shotgun shells and Assault Rifle ammo. Leave the alcove heading left in the direction of a big rock, following the raised, grey path. In the distance, below you and to the right, you’ll see crates with several explosive barrels against them. Three Light Ghost Warriors will soon attack you, foolishly running past the crates and barrels. Needless to say, Assault Rifle fire at the barrels will do wonders for taking them out. More Rifle fire from up where you’re stationed will do well to finish off any survivors. Head down to them to grab their weapons, then back up to where you were. Continue following the raised, grey-colored path to the left of the alcove. Up ahead you’ll see a huge pit with steam coming out of it; a metal ring runs around its perimeter. Further up ahead, elevated over the pit, is a Drone Rocket Launcher. It’s difficult to spot; it has a greenish color, and can be most easily found at a distance by running your Assault Rifle’s targeting reticule around and looking for it to change. Maintain your distance and once you’ve found the Drone, raise the reticule as high up on the Drone as possible without it changing back to indicate there is no longer an enemy in front of it. Now switch to your Shock Lance, keeping the reticule in the exact same place. You should now be able to fire an EMP from your Shock Lance that will hit the Drone, and not hit the platform it’s on first. The EMP will do serious damage but not quite destroy it; either quickly fire Trigger 2 or fire, switch to your Assault Rifle and launch a Grenade with Trigger 2 to finish it off. Once the first attack hits it, the drone will fire back, but from this distance it’s very easy to dodge Rockets. Head forward to where the Rocket Drone was (or at least right under where it was). You’ll see a ladder heading up to the platform the Drone was on. Slowly head up. As soon as you get to the top there’ll be 2 Light Ghost Warriors waiting for you. You can climb up so that just the top of your body is peeking past the edge and it’ll offer you some cover. Have your Assault Rifle ready and fire with Trigger 1 so you don’t risk accidentally hitting the edge of the platform and reflecting a Grenade back at yourself. Once you put them down, head up further, onto the platform. From here you can head left or right. Start out by slowly heading left out looking out further up ahead for a Medium Ghost Warrior stationed on a crate holding a Rocket Launcher. If you can spot him from afar, you’ll be able to kill him before he can figure out where he’s being fired on from. A Rocket fired at him should work well, as would headshots from the Magnum Pistol or Assault Rifle. Once he’s down, head to the right. Assault Rifle ammo, Shotgun shells and a clip of Magnum bullets are nearby. You will run into another Ghost Warrior or two around here as you continue around to the right; close combat weapons will probably do you good. Eventually you’ll reach a health recharging station. Use it and check the crate right next to it. There’s a radio sitting there. Use the radio. You’ll have the option of two things to say, but don’t choose either one yet. It won’t matter what you say; after choosing one, you’ll get another choice and after replying to that troops will be sent up after you from beneath the surface of the planet. This is necessary since it will make the elevator they come up through available to you so you can descend to the interior. But there’s a trick here that can make things a little bit easier on you. Without choosing either radio option, start running back around the platform and then back down the ladder. If you don’t answer the radio, it will just sit there, potentially forever. This allows you to get into a position where you can ambush the team of Ghost Warriors coming up to attack you before you choose what to say. They’ll be coming from the huge breathing tube that you saw them go down at the beginning of the mission. Head down there, get up pretty close and arm yourself with your Flamethrower or Grenade Launcher with Incendiary Grenades. Then answer the radio twice, wait for the Ghost Warriors to come up, and light them up as soon as they do, before they can fire their weapons. Grab their weapons and energy, head onto the “elevator” platform they arrived on and begin your descent into the interior of the planet. Begin heading forward from the elevator and you’ll soon run into a plant on the ground with two writhing tendrils rising up out of it. There are several of these in the interior; they’re Killer Sprouts. They can’t be killed and they’re only dangerous if you step on them. Then they’ll grab you, hold you in place, and slowly drain away your life. If this happens, aim toward the ground and shoot at the Killer Sprout and eventually it will pull its tendrils inside of itself and let you go; I’d recommend popping it with your Shotgun if this happens. Move around it and continue forward slowly through the fog. Look for a human-shaped silhouette in the distance. When you find one (the first enemy you’ll face down here), carefully aim and pop it with a burst of Magnum Pistol fire to kill the Ghost Warrior before it knows what’s happening (4 shots will do it). If your Pistol is out of ammo, use the Assault Rifle. Soon after he dies, another Light Ghost Warrior will start lobbing EMP Grenades at you. These can be serious trouble if one goes off near you; pay close attention to where they’re headed and avoid them. Return fire and kill the Ghost Warrior. Some time soon (it varies depending on how quickly you’re advancing) you will be attacked by a Heavy Ghost Warrior. Here’s some info: /-------------------------------------\ New Enemy: Heavy Izanagi Ghost Warrior Description: Heavy Ghost Warriors wear fuller battle armor then Light and Medium ones, with bubbled face guards and decorative fins on their backs. Their battle armor sacrifices speed (they can only walk, not run) for much better protection. Heavy Ghost Warriors are also entrusted with some of the Izanagi’s most dangerous weapons. Attacks: Heavy Ghost Warriors will attack at long range by firing a Rocket Launcher at you. When they get up to close range, they switch to a Flamethrower instead, which they fire in long, solid streams that are extremely deadly. Unlike Light and Medium Ghost Warriors, Heavy Ghost Warriors don’t bother hitting you with their weapons at close range and never carry alternate weapons such as Grenade Launchers. Tips and Tactics: Listen for Heavy Ghost Warriors’ crashing footsteps since you can sometimes hear them coming before you can see them. Don’t try to disorient Heavy Ghost Warriors with incendiary weapons; they’ll continue to attack you while on fire. Weapons that are difficult to hit with but powerful work well against Heavy Ghost Warriors; firing Rockets directly at them, for example. Toxic Gas Grenades are extremely lethal against them. It is imperative that you maintain a distance from Heavy Ghost Warriors. Rockets are never terribly difficult to dodge, especially at very long ranges. But when a Heavy Ghost Warrior gets in range to use its Flamethrower, you are in a crisis. It’s almost impossible to dodge their flames and Heavy Ghost Warriors will keep a solid flame running straight on you, blinding you and draining your life away extremely quickly. If this starts to happen, give the Ghost Warrior everything you’ve got and do anything necessary to get behind cover or retreat to a longer range. Heavy Ghost Warriors take about 45 to 50 Assault Rifle rounds or 3 direct hits with Fragmentation Grenades to kill. \-------------------------------------/ Once you have to face the Heavy Ghost Warrior, make sure you’re somewhere where you have room to maneuver. Use Rockets or Toxic Gas Grenades; among the weapons that you have right now, those (and possibly the Magnum Pistol, if you have any ammo left) are ideal. Up a little further, you’ll reach a certain point where you can hear a commander sending a message to Ghost Warriors to hold their positions and let you come to them. The enemy will do so after that. Slowly advance just a little further, looking out for silhouettes. You should find one enemy stationed on a stalk growing out of the ground on the right side of the passage; waste him with your Assault Rifle or another weapon. Somewhere to his left another Light Ghost Warrior will be strafing left and right at ground level, looking to fire bursts from his Assault Rifle at you. Take him out too. Continue onwards. You’ll reach a point eventually where the path bends around a corner to the right. As soon as you start turning that corner a Light Ghost Warrior will fire on you and you’ll have no cover nearby. Neither will he, though; I’d recommend being ready ahead of time to pop him with a Fragmentation Grenade or two. The Shotgun would work just fine also. Onwards from there, look out for some crates up ahead. As you approach them, another silhouette should become visible. Put him down with Assault Rifle fire, or whatever else you’re comfortable with. Next to the crates you’ll find 2 boxes of Assault Rifle ammo, some Rockets, 2 health pickups and an energy pickup. Grab it all and continue further. Past 2 huge, intertwined stalks and up ahead further is a huge, open area where your next encounter takes place. To the right is a Light Ghost Warrior standing on a stalk. Further past him is a Medium Ghost Warrior with a Rocket Launcher and a Light Ghost Warrior on a platform overhead “sniping” at anyone who comes near enough. Fire at the Light Ghost Warrior with your own Assault Rifle, taking advantage of his reluctance to retreat from his position to find some real cover or at least make himself a moving target. Once a rocket is fired at you, make the Rocket Launcher-carrying Ghost Warrior your top priority, using any heavy weapon you might have to take care of him. Those two should be your last Ghost Warriors to have to deal with. If you want to, you can get some more goodies by heading up to the platform where the Light Ghost Warrior was stationed. To do so, head to the far left of the open area and look for a gentle slope upwards. Follow it until it leads up to the platform and hop up onto that. Proceed over past the hole torn through it that you could drop down through and go to the side where the Light Ghost Warrior was. You’ll find around there boxes of Shotgun shells and health and energy recharge stations. Get all set up with that, then head back down and off to the far right of the huge area. Look under the platform area for a huge semi-circular glob of green ooze. Run over to the glob, which has three detonators set up on it. Run around it in a circle and activate all three detonators. Then step back a little bit and wait for them to go off. Green slime starts flying everywhere. As soon as it subsides, run into the center of that area and grab the artifact. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Having blown open the green secretion that Acheron’s organism formed around the artifact in its interior and having grabbed the artifact, the organism is infuriated. An animal groan can be heard all throughout its interior as its natural defenses kick in. Floating spores are released into the interior and slime starts spraying from its inner walls. The Ghost Warriors panic, screaming for all their men to head topside and evacuate immediately. \-------------------------------------/ Turn around and begin retracing your steps back to the elevator you took down to the interior. You’ll run into a few new hazards along the way. Mindless floating spores abound now, moving towards you and exploding on contact. An infinite supply of them will be continually created. The explosions do almost no damage, though; they’re little more than a nuisance. At full health and full energy on Medium difficulty it would take three or four hundred of them at the least to kill you. Rifle fire can pop the spores before they can reach you, so when it’s reasonably convenient, fire at them as you continue on. Slime spraying from the walls does more damage, draining your health away slowly. This should be a higher priority to avoid. Also, pools of slime on the ground drain health away just as quickly, so you’ll be forced to head around them. Don’t forget about the Killer Sprouts, either; they’re more of a problem now then they were before. Keep heading forward, and don’t panic; the risk level here is actually pretty low despite the sensational atmosphere. When you get to the elevator, take it up to the surface and start heading back to the dropship you started the mission at. There are a couple new hazards up here… green gas clouds and slime spraying from holes in the surface… but they’re not difficult to get around at all. A warning, though: Stay on regular paths that you had traveled through or near to earlier in the level. I’ve tried to avoid trouble by going back to the dropship in weird directions before, including along the edges of the level. There are glitches in certain spots where it’s actually possible to fall off the edge of the map, catch yourself in some clipping plane during your fall into oblivion and be stuck in place looking at skewed partial fragments of objects all across the map! Luckily, this is a rare and easily avoidable problem. On the off chance that you do run into this glitch, check out the cheats section of this guide (section 7A) to find an explanation of the no clipping code and the code that reverses it and use those to get back into the map. Arm yourself with a Grenade or Rocket Launcher or another formidable long-range weapon before you reach your ship. When it comes into sight, one last Ghost Warrior will be at its side, kicking it and shouting to be let in. Decimate him from a distance and he’ll get no chance to fire back. Head over right up next to the dropship and the mission is complete. ----------------------------------------------------------- 6F: Severnya ----------------------------------------------------------- Mission Opening: You arrive at the fortified Mynkovsky Dam on the Izanagi-controlled planet of Severnya, where a team of Marines are in grave danger following a botched mission in which they attempted to destroy the dam. As you emerge from your dropship and the mission starts, you immediately hear an Izanagi warrior shouting, "Give it up, Marine bastards!" "Never!", comes the reply. Gunshots then ring out. 6F-1: Waterfront ---------------- Head forward and around the hill near your dropship to the right. You'll see a pair of Marines soon, who are firing their weapons. One of them will take a hit and go down. Head up against the rock to your left up here and advance until you encounter 2 Light Izanagi mercs, one with an Assault Rifle and one with a Shotgun (strange for a Light merc). They're up ahead of you a bit and can be dispatched with your Assault Rifle, a Fragmentation Grenade or your Magnum Pistol. Once they die, the lone survivor among the Marines walks up to you. He lets you know he's OK and that his team managed to put 3 smart bombs in place within the dam, linked by shortwave radio. Apparently these "smart" bombs have to be manually activated one by one and then count down from a timer and explode, so Dalton volunteers to pick up the job where the Marines left off. The Marine also shows you where he left his EMP Grenades. Collect the 2 packs of grenades, the health pickup next to it and the Sniper Rifle (yes!) next to the dead Marine. Head further up the hill alongside the rocks (which will be to your left) until you reach a gap between 2 of them. This is a perfect opportunity for you to try out your new Sniper Rifle. Take aim at the base up ahead. An Izanagi guard is patrolling a bridge near the entrance. One headshot will take him out. Further up the hill is a second gap. From there, further left on the bridge where the first patrolling Izanagi was, another one is stationed who can also be picked off. Now head up all the way to the top and approach the bridge. There's one more merc who you'll run into up here. You can take him out across the bridge with your Assault Rife or Sniper Rifle, among other things. Continue forward alongside the yellow crane parked on the bridge but don't pass it. Just past the crane you will be exposed to fire by Snipers in a room above the gateway that enters the dam facility. Head to the far left of the crane and peek out to find where the firing slot is with the Izanagi snipers. Prepare your own Sniper Rifle and strafe out to counter-snipe them, then duck back behind cover. There are two Snipers up in the room you'll be firing into, both of whom will go down with a headshot. Once they're down, head up to the front gate, which you'll find is locked. Head down a ladder to either its left or right to get to an area where water is pouring through an archway and down below like a waterfall. Head slightly into the archway, against the current. Fire inside and withdraw; just get the attention of the Izanagi guard inside. He'll soon run out with Assault Rifle in hand; light him up with your Shotgun and take him out. Switch, then, to your Grenade Launcher and EMP Grenades. Just past the archway is a Drone Gun. Walk in partway and launch a grenade at it, aiming high to compensate for the arc. Walk inside now, around the edge of the platform to the right and around the corner to find a small ladder. Climb up it and cross the walkway. Go through the next door. It will lock itself and you'll receive an alert that you've been detected and must await the security detail and submit to them. While the alert is running, immediately head through the next door and left around the corner. Open and pass through a sideways-opening brown gate of sorts and get out your Shotgun or Grenade Launcher- then wait for the guards. Two Izanagi will come heading down the stairs here. Take them by surprise and kill them. Then turn back around, round the corner and go up the ladder here. At the top is your first shortwave detonator, attached to the side of a fuel tank. Activate it and Aida will send a frustrated message to you, insisting that you leave since the Marines have been taken care of as best as possible. Naturally, Dalton remains stubborn and stays. Turn back around, facing the ladder you came up. Head past it, into the right corner. Find the ladder up from there, climb it, head under the pipe in front of you by crouching, and head up another ladder. Go forward from where it lets out and head up one more. Crouch down to advance further; puzzled mercs underneath are trying to figure out what happened to you and where you are. Ready your Grenade Launcher with Incendiary Grenades (at least that's my recommendation) and head over to one of the ceiling grates up here. As soon as you open it the guards will wise up quickly, so be ready to fire a round right away. If you fire by tapping the trigger, be careful not to accidentally shoot the ground and ignite yourself! There are 2 Ghost Warriors below you, including one in green power armor (he's still the same old thing, functionally). Kill your foes and drop down into the room below. This room is a veritable arsenal. Take the guns off the dead Izanagi and grab the health and energy pickups near the computer screens. There are five lockers, here. Raid them for powerups and you'll find the following: -Two Assault Rifles and 2 boxes of ammo for them -A pack of Fragmentation Grenades -A health pickup -An energy pickup -Two Shotguns and a box of shells Next hit the door lock controls on the computers. Now the door nearest to the lockers here heads into a small, caged area in a huge room you'll have to visit later. You can use it as a way of sniping an enemy or two, but it's not essential (or even that useful). Use it if you choose, but if you just go the other way you're not missing out on much. When you're ready, head through the other door. Then head downstairs to the next available door and go through it. The area you're in now has a few things of interest in it. To your immediate right is a health pickup. Down and to your left you can grab an energy pickup. If you jump across the room from the right side to the platform in front of you there, you'll see another shortwave detonator. You may need to vault to reach it. Arm it and Aida will contact you again, even more frustrated. You have to do what you have to do, though, so jump forward again and continue onwards. There are 2 directions to go from here. Left will lead towards the next shortwave generator. If you want some goodies first, though, the right leads to the room that the Snipers were in who you killed from the bridge outside of the dam earlier. More specifically, it heads for the gate, but to the left and right of the gate are lifts that head up to the Snipers' room. You'll probably run into a Light Izanagi up there, so have your Shotgun ready. The Snipers' room contains health and energy pickups in addition to the Sniper Rifle. If you chose to go this way, you'll now need to go back to the hallway where you had the option of going left or right and go left. You'll end up, then, in the huge room that the optional caged area from earlier overlooked. When enemies see you here they'll scurry off and set up defenses, including Plasma Barriers and Drone Guns further into the room. Snipe at the enemy on a raised, railed platform here if at all possible. Otherwise he'll head down a staircase in the distance and possibly attack you. Once you feel secure enough to head further, go forward under some pipes and have your Shotgun ready. An enemy will soon run in from behind you and set up a Plasma Barrier to trap himself in a small, confined area with you. Blast him and head forward a bit more. You'll soon encounter a Drone Gun on a platform. Blast it with an EMP Grenade and then go forward further. Under a pipe up ahead is a health pickup you'll have to crouch down to get. Take out Plasma Barriers as you see them in this room. EMP Grenades are by far the easiest way, but if you are VERY patient and concerned with preserving ammo, use your Dispersion Pistol. Head up the stairs up ahead to the curved platform at the top. When enemies below you further ahead see you they'll run off to set up even more defenses. Follow the platform as far as possible and start coming down the stairs on the other side. As you start turning with the stairs and see a Plasma Barrier below, know that an Izanagi Ghost Warrior is behind it, though you may not see him immediately. This is a good position to strike from; the Grenade Launcher works well. Launch a couple over and behind the Plasma Barrier when you spot an enemy. Then continue down the stairs. Just slightly further ahead you'll come into range for a Drone Gun to hit you from another direction (away from the Plasma Barrier). Take it out with an EMP, then take the Plasma Barrier out and continue into the next segment of this gigantic room. Keep going forward until you hit a huge mass of pipes. Get between pipes and a huge fuel tank; there will be pipes all over the place around you. You can progress past the pipes by jumping and vauling up onto them, which you'll need to do a few times. Just keep making progress, winding further around the cylinder-shaped machinery at the center of the huge room. On the other side is an energy pickup... along with the last shortwave detonator! Save, hit it, and you'll get another angry message from Aida, telling you that you have 5 minutes to get out. She'll keep yelling at you as each minute passes, but if you know where you're going and keep a cool head you'll have plenty of time. Head forward further until you reach a series of three huge pipes, each higher up and further back then the last. Jump up them all and over to the opposite side. This is the side that you started out in. A new enemy may be just past here, though, so watch out. Go ahead and use your most powerful weapons in the near future... the level will be over soon, and you're in a hurry! Exit the way you came in and head down further, to the opposite end of the hall, where the gate entryway is. There's an "open" button for the gate on the side you're now on near it. Hit it and get your Sniper Rifle ready. On the bridge where the patrolling Izanagi you sniped toward the missions' start, new guards have taken up posts. Do NOT run straight out; the guards and Drone now out there will be difficult to maneuver past without killing anyway. Take them out now with the Sniper Rifle, except for the Rocket Drone. you can either approach it once the 2 Izanagi are dead and blast with an EMP Grenade or advance a little bit and take it out from a distance with Rockets, the Magnum Pistol or anything else fairly powerful). Head forward and turn left, retracing your steps toward the beginning of the level. Head all the way back down the curving hill and, if you're really low on time, save several seconds by jumping over the hill which was too steep from the side you started the mission on, taking you straight to your vehicle. Take off and watch the fireworks! ----------------------------------------------------------- 6G: Kalydon ----------------------------------------------------------- Mission Opening: It has become necessary for your ship to touch down at the Obolus Repair Facility on the planet Kalydon to fix problems caused by a stowaway Seagoat. Liandri Angel mercenaries are reported to be in the area and are expected to attack you soon after your arrival. It will be your job to defend your ship until the necessary repairs are made and the ship is fully operational again. At the beginning of the mission Isaac explains to you how to use Plasma Generators and Rocket Turrets. He informs you that a weapons cache is sitting in the hills nearby and suggests that you procure those weapons immediately. He then returns to the ship to get to work. 6G-1: Obolus Repair Facility ---------------------------- First thing's first: Finding the weapons cache. Head forward and to the right, as a hill as far as you can get until you hit a dead end. Then turn to the left to find a continuation of the path and go even higher up. Eventually you'll reach a valley with a long metal tube sitting around that you can crouch and enter. You should be able to find all of the following: -Two packs of Rockets for your Rocket Launcher -Two Rocket Drones -Eight Plasma Field Generators Head back to the ship area, where you started. Soon after your return the first dropship of Angels will touch down, so you'll have to work quickly. Given how varied the elevation of terrain around here is, how wide the paths to the ship are and other factors, I've only found one worthwhile use for the Plasma Field Generators, and that is setting up a barrier around the entrance to the ship. Work quickly while you do so; make it a complete and impassible barrier but otherwise don't concern yourself with how exactly to set it all up and don't worry if you have leftover Plasma Generators. Next up is setting the Rocket Drones in place. You have a few options here. Rocket Drones can be set up on ground level, or up on one of the boulders here. They'll have more immediate access to the enemies from the boulders, and they should last through at least most of the rest of the mission, but it's nice to have at least one near the entrance, too, to slow the enemies down additionally when they start to get close to your ship. I suggest going on top of the boulder to the left which has a large, flat area on top that you can get to by running up behind it. You can then set one Drone pointing at the path to the left and one to the right. That way between waves of fighting you won't have to switch them around to ensure you still have coverage of the relevant areas, enabling you instead to replace downed Plasma Generators or recharge health and energy at the charging stations. The third one can then be set up near the entrance for general coverage of any advancing enemies getting near to their goal. If you'd prefer to set them all to work together against the initial attackers and then reset them for each new wave, the first Angels will be coming from the right. Whether you're ready or not, you'll soon see a Liandri dropship touch down and a team of Angels jump out onto a hilltop and start to descend down the hill. /-------------------------------------\ New Enemies: Liandri Angels (Light, Medium and Heavy) Description: The Angels are the mercenary defenders of the Liandri mining and terraforming corporation. They are all female by tradition and Light and Medium ones wear power armor similar to Izanagi power armor. Heavy Angels have more exotic armor with a large, bubbled face guard and decorative curved spikes framing the head and face on either side. Attacks: The Angels use all the same equipment as the Izanagi: mostly Assault Rifles and Dispersion Pistols for Light Angels, mostly Shotguns and Magnum Pistols for Medium Angels and Rocket Launchers and Flamethrowers without exception for Heavy Angels. Tips and Tactics: Although I at first thought differently, tests of mine have come to prove that Angels are *identical*, in every way except appearance, to Ghost Warriors. As long as the two are in the same category of armor they have the same capacity for damage, the same intelligence and attack patterns; everything is the same. React accordingly; you already know how to fight Ghost Warriors. \-------------------------------------/ Once the Angels come, by the way, if they reach the door you won't lose the mission right away. Here's how it works: -When an Angel reaches the door, it begins overriding the security panel to open it. This takes about 25 to 30 seconds. -If an Angel is killed while operating the panel and another one reaches the door, she must start over and it will take another 25 to 30 seconds. -If the override process finishes, you will still have a few seconds to kill the Angel before she enters. If you do, though, the door will remain open for others to walk right into. -An Angel overriding the panel will stand perfectly still even when shot at. -All Angels override the panel at the same speed. The Angels you face in this mission will use their full arsenal of weaponry, except that the Light and Medium Angels will never be armed with Rocket or Grenade Launchers. The first wave of Angels will come from the right. There will be a total of 4 waves of Angels. You'll have about 30 seconds after killing the last Angel in a wave before the next dropship arrives, and around 20 or 25 seconds after that, usually, before they get close enough to start firing at you. That's enough time to either readjust Plasma Generators, readjust Rocket Drones, recharge your health and/or energy or *possibly* 2 of those. Think ahead of time which is your highest priority, and reload while running to a Drone or standing in a generator. Each wave will consist of 4 Light or Medium Angels dropped from a dropship as well as one or two Heavy Angels dropped separately. Heavy Angels are dropped straight out of the sky onto the battlefield, partway down the hill, so that they don't lag behind the other Angels. Here are some specifics about the 4 waves: Wave Side Main Armor Type # Heavy Angels ---- ---- --------------- -------------- 1 Right Light 1 2 Left Light 1 3 Right Medium 1 4 Left Medium 2 "Side" is the side they attack from; the left or right hill. "Main armor type" applies to all Angels that aren't Heavy. Note that the second Heavy Angel deployed in the 4th wave is deployed on the right, not the left like all the others. Finally, a few things to keep in mind: -Don't panic when someone reaches the door, especially if it's a Light or Medium Angel, and don't put yourself at huge risk to prevent them from reaching it. If someone does reach it, though, pay attention to the time that passes, counting off that 30 seconds and reacting accordingly. -As of this mission, your Rocket Launcher's second trigger can lock on. This makes it very useful against distant enemies, and you can occasionally even take out 2 Light Angels with 1 Rocket. -Start striking with Rockets or Sniper Rifle rounds as early as possible so you don't have to divide your attention too many ways when what's left of the wave draws near. -Don't waste too much ammunition since you won't get reloads, but also keep in mind you've only got 25 enemies to fight. -Use the tops of rocks for their high ground advantage and be ready to dodge off of them (or further to one side) when a rocket comes shooting at you. Hold your ground, keep your cool and save between waves and the mission's yours. ----------------------------------------------------------- 6H: Sulferon ----------------------------------------------------------- Mission Opening: You have been sent to the secret Sulferon Izanagi research center on Deltor Avior 4 to collect valuable scientific information for the TCA. Unlike on your trip to Acheron, your dropship manages to touch down undetected just outside the fortified base. 6H-1: Secret Izanagi Facility ----------------------------- When the mission starts, the Sulferon base will be in the distance in front of you and there will be 2 antennas coming out of the corner of the metal platform your dropship is on. Head behind that area for cover and look up ahead through your Sniper Rifle's scope. There is a Light Izanagi in the direction of the front wall of the Sulferon facility. There is also a Medium Ghost Warrior closer to you, behind a small wall very nearby with weapons and ammo stacked against the side of it. The Sniper Rifle will work well against him as well, or you could just lob a Grenade or 2 behind the wall. Once the 2 of them are dead, run over and grab the powerups against the wall that the Medium Ghost Warrior was stationed behind. This includes a Sniper Rifle, a pack of Rockets and a health pickup. Further up ahead, even nearer to the front wall of the Sulferon base than the Light Izanagi you sniped was, a Heavy Ghost Warrior *was* stationed- he'll now be nearing you. Using Rockets or another powerful weapon and not advancing just yet, take him out at long range. This will leave only static defenses for you to destroy before you can reach the entrances to the base. The front wall- which breaks into sections so you can enter and walk past it- has 3 Rocket Drones stationed to protect it: One on the far left, 1 in the center and 1 on the far right. Due to their distance from you, this is an excellent time to use your Shock Lance's 2nd Trigger. Once you take 1 one the Drones out- especially the far left or right ones- you can run forward until you're alongside the wrecked Drone and you'll be outside the firing arcs of the other 2 Drones. Then you can run up close and attack them from the sides with EMP Grenades, or perhaps the Dispersion Pistol to save ammo if you're that patient. Blast them all and you'll now have 2 ways of passing through the perimeter and getting access to an entrance to the Sulferon facility. The most obvious way of infiltrating the Sulferon base is to pass through the front wall(s) and enter through the front door. If you choose to do this, a Light Ghost Warrior will be on guard and will be likely to run into the base to go set off an alarm if he is fired at. You'll be at a slight advantage if you can quickly pop him with your Sniper Rifle before he can run away. The other entrance is from the left side of the base. Although upon entry to the facility you'll encounter less resistance at the left entrance, the resistance outside the facility around that door will be greater. A Heavy and a Medium Ghost Warrior will be in that area. Have heavy weaponry ready ahead of time; the Grenade and Rocket Launchers are good options. There is no boss in this mission so you don't need to worry too much about saving up ammo for your big hitters; besides, there will be plenty of ammo to pick up inside the facility. When they're down, right by the door is a health pickup and a Grenade Launcher (provides Fragmentation Grenades when picked up). Your goals inside the facility will be to kill all of its occupants and shut down a Distress Call signal on the second floor. There is a third objective to allow for information to be taken from a panel on the first floor, but don't worry about it (see below). Here is a crude diagram of the internal Sulferon facility, which all the rest of this missions' action will be based around. (Please forgive my elementary ASCII "art" skill.) First Floor: /-------------------\ __| >H< V |_________________________ Rear -> V + ![]>>M + | Entrance __ M _+__________+__ [] | | | | | | | | | | << | | [] | \------ ------/ | M | |V | | | ____ |V M | | [] *A* | |>H< | | | | | | |_______| |____________________/ M {P| | M *B* + << ![] + | | __________++++__________+___________+__________| | | |_XX_| Second Floor: /--------------------\ / \ / \ / _______ _______ \ / M / | | \ M \ / / \-XX-/ \ \ | |____________________| >H<| \ *C* / \ M /####\ / ---------------------------- Key: *A* = Goodies: 2 Assault Rifles and 3 Clips, Health Pickup, 2 Energy Pickups *B* = Goodies: 2 Shotguns and a Box of Shells, 2 Packs of Frag Grenades, Health Pickup *C* = Goodies: Assault Rifle, Sniper Rifle and 1 Clip, Napalm Canister, 2 Magnum Pistol Clips, Health Pickup ++ = Door XX = Elevator [] = Crate ! = Explosive Barrel << or VV or >> = Drone Gun ("Arrows" indicates direction it's facing) M = Mercenary {P = Panel #### = Distress Call >H< = Location of Health Charging Station (During "Defend" segment only) The Mercenary locations are merely likely locations; depending on where you go and what you do in the facility, they may run into other areas. The panel is tied to the optional objective here; when you enter the room, the Ghost Warrior next to the panel will attempt to blow it up before you can extract information from it. If you fail to stop him, you'll fail the mission objective... but the mission will continue and *nothing* negative will result from it. Note that the room with the panel in it is the control room (this is important later in the mission) and the rear entrance is open; it has no door. With this information, you should be able to plan out your route through the facility. You basically just need to slaughter everyone, but knowing where the explosive barrels are, where the enemies *probably* are etc. should aid you. 6H-2: Defend ------------ Once the Sulferon facility has been cleared out and the distress signal deactivated, Marines will arrive along with a technician who can extract the needed information. Important: These Marines are NOT invincible like the ones you fought alongside in the Swamp on Sanctuary. They'll die as easily as you. You'll start this part of the mission in the control room. New goodies will be here; grab them all quickly. You should be able to grab all of the following: -Two Rocket Launchers and 3 packs of Rockets -An Assault Rifle and 2 boxes bullets -Two packs of Toxic Gas Grenades -Two energy pickups -A health pickup You'll have 2 minutes and 10 seconds until a dropship arrives and deploys more Ghost Warriors who are after the technician. There are 4 Marines in the room who you can deploy. They are: -Private First Class Taba: Wears Light Armor, wields an Assault Rifle -Sergeant Easley: Wears Heavy Armor, wields a Flamethrower -Lieutenant Cosner: Wears Heavy Armor, wields a Rocket Launcher -Lieutenant Caruso: Wears Light Armor, wields a Sniper Rifle You'll have the option of sending them to guard the front door, back door, control room or front wall. I'd suggest using 1 of 2 strategies here: 1: Send one Marine to each location. I'd suggest Easley in the control room (his Flamethrower will be deadly in close combat and his Heavy Armor makes him a good "last resort" troop), Caruso at the front door where he'll have some good medium range sniper shots at people passing through the front wall, and the others divided up among the other 2 locations according to your personal preference. 2: Have all 4 Marines guard the control room. That's the ultimate area that can potentially lose you the mission. The Marines won't hurt each other if they accidentally shoot each other. I've found this to be surprisingly effective, as tactically foolish as it may sound. Like on Kalydon, there will be multiple waves of enemy dropships- in this case, 3. Each one will deploy 4 Ghost Warriors; a combination of Light and Medium ones, including 1 per wave armed with a Rocket Launcher. There will be no Heavy Ghost Warriors, though. The first wave's dropship will touch down right next to your own dropship. You should have time to get into a distant, open area where you can devastate them with Sniper fire before they can reach the base. However: These Ghost Warriors won't wait until a team of them is all dead, then give you a break and drop more off. Unlike Kalydon, around 30 seconds after a dropship starts to leave and its occupants start running towards the base, another ship will arrive. The second wave touches down near the front wall, and the third by the back door. At the beginning of the "Defend" segment of the mission, friendly Drone Guns will be set up inside of the Sulferon facility, as well as 3 health recharging stations that weren't previously there (marked on the map, above). Your only disadvantage here as opposed to on Kalydon is that the scientist is easier to kill than the gate to the ship on Kalydon was to override. If there's a control room breach, especially if you haven't assigned multiple Marines to guard it, go there immediately. Your ultimate goal is to keep the technician alive- as long as you can do that for a good length of time, everything else should be secondary. ----------------------------------------------------------- 6I: Janus ----------------------------------------------------------- Mission Opening: The Polaris research lab atop a cliff on the desolate ice planet of Janus has been invaded by mercenaries. They intend to abduct one Dr. Myer, a leading research scientist investigating the properties of the artifacts. The Polaris base contains 2 artifacts. Izanagi Ghost Warriors have flooded the base and the Liandri Angels aren't far behind. Your dropship will arrive just outside the base. Your mission will be to locate the bridge crossing into it, which will be heavily fortified; use it to enter Polaris, locate Dr. Myer and the artifacts and exit Janus with safely with everything you came for. 6I-1: Outside Polaris Lab ------------------------- As soon as the mission starts, a Ghost Warrior from a station atop a sky-high post will fire a Rocket at you. Although it probably won't hit, be ready to dodge immediately. Then use your Sniper Rifle or Rocket Launcher (Trigger 2) to take him out. In the distance in front of where you start you'll soon see a Heavy Ghost Warrior approach. From long distance and by himself he should be easy to defeat. Once he's dead, start heading forward. You'll notice hills to your left as you advance. From a break in 2 hills you'll soon take fire from a Light Ghost Warrior. He'll use fire-and-flee tactics, utilizing the cover around him. Take him out with a few bursts of Assault Rifle fire or a well-placed Fragmentation Grenade. Once he's dead, head left in between the hills yourself. Go behind the crate here and you'll find a Rocket Launcher, 2 boxes of Rockets and a health pickup. Now head over to the post where you were fired upon with Rockets at the beginning of the mission. Climb up the ladder here and continue forward at the top of the post, onto a narrow step. Then turn around and walk forward onto the platform. You should be able to find a Sniper Rifle, 2 clips of ammo for it, a pack of Rockets, a health pickup and an energy pickup. Grab them and head back down. Head now in the direction of the bridge. When you start to get near it, a Drone Gun will fire at you. When you get a little closer, Ghost Warriors will run out onto the bridge and set up additional defenses (a Rocket Drone and a Plasma Barrier). At the very beginning of the bridge there are metal objects off to either side that tether down cables. Use either them or the step up to the bridge for cover (the step up onto the bridge is only useful if you duck). Then repeatedly peek up to fire at the Gun Drone (and possibly a Ghost Warrior) on the bridge. Once the Gun Drone has been destroyed, you can get up on the bridge and run forward along the edge opposite the Rocket Drone, dodging the slow-moving rockets it fires. Eventually, when you're alongside it, you'll be out of the Rocket Drone's arc of vision so that it can't fire at you and you can easily blow it up with an EMP Grenade (or Dispersion Pistol blasts, if you have the patience). About the Plasma Barrier here... /-------------------------------------\ Tip: Using Enemy Plasma Barriers to Your Advantage Enemies will act differently when behind their own Plasma Barriers and you can take advantage of this. For one thing, you can't shoot them through the barrier and they can't shoot you either. However, you can fire over the barrier at enemies behind it and they'll be helpless. Launching Grenades so they barely clear the barrier gives you an advantage. Another thing to try is jumping up repeatedly, locking on to distant enemies with Trigger 2 of your Rocket Launcher (you can't lock on through the barrier, unfortunately) and releasing a Rocket straight up so that it bursts and the mini-Rockets clear the barrier. Also, realize that while enemies are separated from you by a Plasma Barrier you can forget about them, secure the area on your side of the barrier completely, then deal with the enemies behind it separately. \-------------------------------------/ Behind the crate on the right, just past the Plasma Barrier, is a Medium Ghost Warrior with a Flamethrower. Make sure you are well away from the Barrier before you blow it out. Up ahead in the distance, by the yellow industrial vehicle, is a Light Ghost Warrior with a Sniper Rifle. Be ready to counter-snipe him once the barrier is blown, also. Once those 2 are dead, head further up the bridge. Far up ahead is another Plasma Barrier, dividing the bridge once again into sections. Before you reach it you'll run into another Light, Medium *and* Heavy Ghost Warrior. Look for "foot shots" under the yellow vehicle with your Sniper Rifle. Don't hesitate to use some heavy weaponry here. There are also 2 Rocket Drones near the barrier, that you'll run into eventually. An enemy *may* fire on you from the snowy area off to the right of here, by a tree. If there is an enemy there, once you do kill him, put off collecting his weapon until the area is clear of enemies, including the Rocket Drones. Otherwise you'll be at risk of being blown off the edge of the "cliff". To make taking out the Drones easier, position yourself so only one is in your line of sight using the yellow vehicle. Take one Drone out that way, then rush forward until you're out of the arc of vision of the other so it can't fire at you. Destroy both Drones and the Plasma Barrier and press onward. Just up ahead is a Medium Ghost Warrior. Kill him and keep moving. You'll next encounter 2 Ghost Warriors within the opening to the upcoming tunnel. One will be a Heavy Ghost Warrior on ground level and the other a Medium Ghost Warrior on the raised platform to the right who will attempt to run forward and set up a Rocket Drone. Try to take out the Medium Ghost Warrior using your Sniper Rifle before he can set up his defenses. Then immediately turn your attention to the Heavy Ghost Warrior. Work quickly or you'll get blasted with a Rocket while lining up your headshot. Advance into the tunnel and go onto the raised platform. Further up ahead from there is a Drone Gun. Move forward and get behind a column near to the Drone. Peek out from behind it to fire an EMP Grenade and take it out. Then move around the corner, past the Drone, and grab the powerups there: a Shotgun, Shells, a health pickup and an energy pickup. Hit the lift button, enter, and ride the lift up. 6I-2: Polaris Entrance ---------------------- Head into the next room and talk with the Axon scientist in here. He'll tell you that the Ghost Warriors came through looking for Myer and that he had "hit the emergency locks on the umbilical doors". He reopens them for you. The next 2 rooms are empty. The next after that, though, has a Light and a Medium Ghost Warrior. Get close to the door, peeking out so the patrolling mercs will see you, and have your Shotgun or Flamethrower ready. Let them come at you, but the second the door starts to open, blast the enemy with an incendiary attack and dodge off to either side (in case the other Ghost Warrior fires at you from afar). Keep blasting them with incendiary attacks until they're dead. Move onto the next area. This is potentially a *very* dangerous area. It's a huge room with crates lined up, creating a grid of corridors. Once you open the door, back out again and try to get enemies to come to you. There are a Light and a Medium Ghost Warrior near the entrance that should be your first priority to take out. Once you get them, enter into the room again. If you look either left or right of the crate ahead of you you'll find yourself looking straight at a Drone Gun. With no mobile enemies around you should be able to take them out by repeatedly peeking out, firing and getting back behind the crate. Just don't move too far away from the entry door- yet... Now this room has a number of useful powerups in it in alcoves in the left wall. In the left near the entry side of the room are 2 Incendiary Grenades, a Napalm Canister, a health pickup and an energy pickup. A little further up ahead is an additional health pickup. The danger here is that once you move a little further ahead a Heavy Ghost Warrior will notice you and start coming after you. Heavy mercs are nothing you haven't deal with before, but the crates make it difficult to fight outside of a very close range, where he can dissolve you in napalm fire. You have 2 options here. One is to take on the Heavy Ghost Warrior, in which case you should utilize wall-bouncing weapons to avoid a face-to-face conflict (Toxic Gas Grenades are perfect for this since they're so powerful against Heavy mercs). Then you can grab the powerups, move to the back of the room and pass through the door into the next part of the level. The other option is to lure the Heavy Ghost Warrior toward the rear and right of the room. Then rush to the left side, grab all the goodies, rush to the opposite side of the room from where you entered and exit *without* having to confront the Heavy merc. The choice is yours. 6I-3: Polaris Geological Research --------------------------------- Head forward here until you reach the room with the metal examination table in it. On stands near the walls here you'll find Incendiary Grenades, and an energy pickup. In the next room is a Heavy Ghost Warrior, who you can see through an opening in the wall. For some reason he won't open the door himself. Wait until he's as far away from the door heading onward into the hall as possible, get your Grenade Launcher ready and open it. You'll be staring straight at a Drone Gun; blast it with an EMP. Then switch to Toxic Gas or Incendiary Grenades, get back and prepare to kill the Heavy Ghost Warrior when he reaches the doorway. You may even be able to hit him by bouncing a Grenade off the hallway wall after killing the Drone, if you're left with enough space to work with before he closes in. Kill him and enter the hallway. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Upon entering the hallway, you'll hear Myer being interrogated and tortured. "Just tell us where it is!" "I don't know!" The sounds of electrical shocks ring out. "We've got all night; you might as well tell us!" "He's a freakin' Kai! How should I know?" Clearly, Myer is nearby, and desperately in need of help. \-------------------------------------/ On the left side of the hallway is a door to a room with a Kai just beyond it. Unfortunately, the Kai won't respond to your attempts to communicate and the door won't open. Another unopenable door stands toward the middle of the hallway. To the far right, however, just past another Kai lying dead on the ground, is a door leading into the next room. This is a big room, with what appears to be huge egg sacks or other organic materials sitting in it. In here you'll encounter 2 Light Ghost Warriors and a Medium one with a Rocket Launcher. I'd recommend using your Flamethrower here and trying to immediately light up all three enemies with quick, sweeping bursts of napalm fire. The Rocket soldier is your top priority, though. If things start to get too hot to handle in here (no pun intended), back out of the room into the hall, trailing unignited napalm with Trigger 2 of your Flamethrower. Clear the enemies out of the room and enter it. You'll notice a small opening in one wall, a duct with a Gun Drone deep inside it. Take the Drone out with a held-trigger EMP Grenade, Trigger 2 Assault Rifle fire reflected into the drone from a safe area or whatever you prefer. A cache of weapons is available on the opposite side of the room. Run over to it and collect: -An Assault Rifle and 3 boxes of Rifle ammo -A Rocket Launcher and 2 packs of Rockets -A pack of Incendiary Grenades -Two packs of Toxic Gas Grenades -An energy pickup Now enter the tunnel that the Drone was in. Ride a lift up at the end of the tunnel, head down the higher tunnel and you'll reach a drop-down hole leading into the room where Myer is being tortured. Don't drop down yet. You actually might want to just sit and let the Ghost Warriors torture him for a bit; by the end of this mission you'll probably be wishing you could torture him yourself. When you are ready to face the mercs below, surprise attack them from the tunnel. The Grenade Launcher works well here; Incendiary Grenades are good. Use Trigger 2 so you don't accidentally shoot the ground in front of you inside the tunnel. Don't worry about accidentally killer Myer; he's invincible (for now). Once you launch your surprise attack, immediately back away to avoid return fire. Then return, do all the damage you can from there, and if necessary drop down and finish them off up close with the Shotgun. The room contains a Light and a Medium Ghost Warrior. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Myer asks you who you are and you tell him. He says that he'll get you the artifacts if you get him out. Accepting the deal, you follow him as he leads you back to them. And so the aggravation begins. For the remainder of the mission, Myer will repeatedly say a wide variety of obnoxious things to you such as "Do you have to make such a mess?", "Maybe if you didn't miss so much you'd have more ammo!" and "I should have called the Marines!". Meanwhile, you'll spend the rest of the mission risking life and limb to save him. Anyway, he'll lead you back to the locked room with the Kai in it and start shouting at it. At your request he'll eventually try saying "please" to it, which is all it will take to be let in. Once inside, Myer takes the artifacts himself, saying he needs them as "insurance" and he'll turn them over to you once he's safe. He'll tell the Kai to stay where it is. While heading back, you'll get a transmission from Aida telling you that the Liandri have blown up the bridge. You'll have to fight up to the rooftop, where she'll send Marines. The transmission then dies, indicating that the frequency is being jammed. Continue following Myer on to the next area. \-------------------------------------/ 6I-4: Polaris Geological Research Exterior ------------------------------------------ The second room you'll enter here will have a Light Angel and a Medium Angel with a Rocket Launcher. Take care of them with Rockets, Grenades or the Magnum, focusing first on the Rocket-wielding Angel. Just so you know, Myer will not be killed at this point in the mission either; he's invincible. Don't worry too much about protecting him. The next room after that is a strategic command station of some sort, with monitors, chairs and a high-tech looking computerized table. There are 3 Light Angels here; take them out however you see fit. Then grab the goodies in here: a Sniper Rifle and 2 clips of ammo for it, a health pickup and an energy pickup. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Myer now informs you that you'll have to go outside and work your way over to a maintenance rig to get up to the roof. Myer refuses to come, though, claiming he's "too valuable to risk". You'll have to clear the way for him, then signal to him using a long-distance communicator with a special frequency that can't be jammed. Myer opens a gate leading to the exterior walkway. \-------------------------------------/ Go outside and head forward. Around the first corner are a Light and a Medium Angel. While you're outside here, you'll be at a major risk of being knocked off the edge of the building. Crouch most of the time to stabilize yourself and regard any enemy with a Rocket Launcher as extremely deadly and high-priority. This is one of the very few places in the game where Concussion Grenades are useful. Consider using them from time to time. For these first 2 Angels, duck and fire under the protrusions from the wall alongside you in order to provide yourself with some cover. The next corner is clear, but the next one after that has a Drone Gun on a platform ahead of you that will fire at you once you start to round the corner. Unfortunately Angels will be coming at you at the same time; a Light one, a Medium one and another Medium one with a Rocket Launcher. Firing under the protrusions again, shoot the advancing Angels as much as possible with your Sniper Rifle before they can get close to you. If the Rocket Launcher-wielding Angel fires at you, get well out of the way and duck before it hits if it's headed for the ground near you (to reduce the chance of falling off the edge). If that Angel starts to come near you, use heavy weapons to eliminate the threat as soon as possible; incendiary attacks are good. Once the Angels are dead, take care of the Drone Gun. Use the crate next to it to help you get close to it (by making sure it is between you and the Drone) until you can destroy it with a well-placed EMP Grenade. Keep heading forward; the platform that the Drone Gun was on has a health pickup there. Around the next corner, tread carefully because you'll soon run into another Rocket Launcher-wielding Angel. Kill her in any way necessary and it will be smooth sailing from there onward. Eventually you'll get close enough to the maintainence rig that a cut scene will begin. You'll call Myer over and the 2 of you will head up to the rooftop. 6I-5: Polaris Geological Research Rooftop ----------------------------------------- /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Atop the roof of the Polaris research base, Marines rendezvous with you and Myer but tell you that their communications systems, too, are being jammed, so they cannot call down a ship. Myer says that there's a transmitter up there so old that the Liandri probably don't know how to jam it. He heads inside the small fortification on the rooftop to the room where the transmitter is located. There he explains that once he powers up the transmitter it will be detected and the Angels will come. You must now set up defenses, then tell Myer when you're ready for him to start powering up the transmitter. \-------------------------------------/ This final section of your mission will be very similar to Kalydon: You will set up perimeter defenses, assign Marines to defensive posts and defend the base against multiple waves of Liandri attack squads. Here is a map of the rooftop area (again, forgive the elementary ASCII "art"): ____________________________________________________ | !4! | | | | __________________________________________ | | | | | | | ______________ _____________ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ____ | | | | | | | _++++| |{M} | |++++_ | | | | |__| // | | | | \\ |__| | | // | | *C*| | \\ | | !3! -2- || | |++++| | || -1- !2! | | __ || | | | | || __ | | | | || | | | | || | | | | | | || | |-4- | | || | | | | | | || | | | | || | | | | | | || | | | | || | | | | | | || --- --- || | | | | | | ||>H< *B* >E<|| | | | | | | ||______ ______|| | | | | | | |_______\++++++/_______| | | | | | | *A* | | | | | | -3- | | | | | |_______________ _____________| | | | | | | | | | |__________________| |________________| | | ___ ___ | | / \ !1! / \ | |_____________\___/__________________\___/___________| *A* = Goodies: 7 Plasma Field Generators, 2 Drone Guns, 1 Rocket Drone, 3 Packs of Concussion Grenades *B* = Goodies: 2 Rocket Launchers *C* = Goodies: Health Pickup, Sniper Rifle, 2 Clips of Sniper Ammo, Shotgun Shells, 2 Plasma Field Generators, 3 Packs of Rockets -1- Left Wall Watchpoint !1! = Marker 1 -2- Right Wall Watchpoint !2! = Marker 2 -3- Front Entrance Watchpoint !3! = Marker 3 -4- Control Room Watchpoint !4! = Marker 4 +++ = Door >H< = Health Recharging Station ___ >E< = Energy Recharging Station / \ = Large Obstruction = Antenna \___/ {M} = Myer The watchpoints are where exactly troops will station themselves when told to guard various areas. If told to patrol the perimeter, they'll walk all the way around the outer rim of the rooftop. The markers serve no real purpose except to establish names for general areas so that troops can yell to each other that enemies are now around various markers. The antenna isn't important just yet. Myer is now susceptible to damage. Grab all the goodies, then tell the Marines where to go. Again, there are 4 Marines in the squad: -Sergeant Harrison: Wears Light Armor, wields a Shotgun -Private Sadao: Wears Light Armor, wields an Assault Rifle -Lieutenant Crable: Wears Heavy Armor, wields a Rocket Launcher -Lieutenant Chavez: Wears Heavy Armor, wields a Flamethrower In addition to the 4 checkpoints above and patrolling the perimeter, you can order troops to cover you, although I don't find cover to be that useful here. Also, having everyone cover the control room is less useful here than on Sulferon- you'll be facing Heavy Angels with Flamethrowers and Rocket Launchers, and there are 3 entrances to the structure at the center of the rooftop. I'd recommend stationing Chavez, with his Flamethrower, near the control room. As for the others, it's largely a matter of personal preference but I'd send each of them to guard one entrance to the interior building. Next you need to set up your static defenses. I find that a good way to slow enemies down with your Plasma Field Generators is to place generators behind the outer walls (on the side closer to the interior), creating an energy gate running past each of the 3 entry areas through the outer walls. Then I create another energy gate inside the center structure running past the front entrance (or either rear one). As for the Drones, since Rocket Drones are most effective up close where they're difficult to dodge I place the only available one in the center structure, usually right next to one of the recharging stations facing so that it covers the whole room. The other 2 I then place just outside the structure, facing to guard various entrances. As usual, there will be 4 waves of enemies here. Each consists of 4 Angels, except for the 4th wave, which is a special case I'll get to in a bit. A new wave won't come until the previous one has been completely eliminated. All of the dropships will deploy their Angels along the perimeter and the Heavy Angels are deployed along with the others, not air-dropped like on Kalydon. After the second wave you'll have to raise the antenna near marker 4 before the next wave will arrive. Here's information about the first 3 waves: Deployment Area: Angel Types: Wave 1: Near Marker 2 Light and Medium Wave 2: Near Marker 1 Light, Medium and Heavy Wave 3: Near Marker 3 Medium and Heavy Wave 4 is a little bit different. It consists of 2 dropships of Angels being deployed nearly simultaneously. The first comes near Marker 3, then a little under 30 seconds later the second wave comes near Marker 2. These will consist of Light, Medium and Heavy Angels, but a full 50% of them will be Heavy. Since your Drones will probably be wrecked by now, this is the time to unload all your heaviest weaponry. Through all of this battle, Concussion Grenades will be useful against Light and Medium Angels on the perimeter; try to make them go off as near as possible to the Angels and on the side of them opposite the "cliff" you want to blow them off of. This strategy will have no effect on Heavy Angels, though. Between waves, save, use the health and energy rechargers and reload your weapons *while* running to the rechargers. If you've beaten Kalydon and Sulferon, you're a veteran of this type of combat. Wipe out your enemies and the mission's all but over with. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Having succeeded in repelling the Angels, Aida finally links up with you. She passes on orders from General Drexler to kill all surviving non-military personnel (i.e. Myers) since they now know too much about the artifacts. This outrages Dalton, who pretends that the transmission is breaking up again and that he can't hear what Aida is saying. Since the Marine ship is already coming to pick you up, Dalton now shoots the transmission system with his Shotgun and tells Myers that if he hands over the artifacts then John will see to it that he is taken safely to another planet. Otherwise he'll be left with "a few good men". Myers makes his decision instantly; he lives, and the artifacts are yours. \-------------------------------------/ ----------------------------------------------------------- 6J: Na Koja Abad ----------------------------------------------------------- Your next mission brings you to Na Koja Abad, "The Land of Nowhere". This is a toxic wasteland of a planet whose only intelligent native inhabitants left it long ago in search of more prosperous frontiers. An alien structure known to contain an artifact is located here and the Izanagi have set up a research facility and an excavation site around it. You must infiltrate the facility and from there find a way into the alien excavation site, where you can obtain the artifact and escape with it. 6J-1: Na Koja Abad ------------------ (Note that the above name is not a mistake. If you save your game shortly after beginning the mission and then go to the load menu, you'll see that, like the mission, the first segment of this level is called "Na Koja Abad".) During the first part of your mission you'll be outdoors and will come across numerous snipes. Snipes are dog-sized, blue, dagger-toothed creatures with a nasty disposition. They'll attack you on sight, albeit not very effectively (contact attacks only and very little damage). Whenever you see one, take it out with some Assault Rifle or Dispersion Pistol fire; it won't take much. Head straight forward from where you begin until you hit a dead end, at which point you should be underneath a rock with bones and blood on the ground very nearby. Among the human remains you'll find 2 packs of Incendiary Grenades, a pack of Fragmentation Grenades, one of Smoke Grenades, and a Grenade Launcher. Grab them all and head back until you see another path to your right (what would be your left if you weren't heading backwards). Turn and begin following that path. "Scout" ahead through your Sniper Rifle's scope as you run. Eventually you'll come across 2 enemy Ghost Warriors talking about the excavation site. Take them both out with headshots and keep moving forward. You'll soon come across an archway acting as a gate, but it is blocked by an energy barrier. Above it are 2 Drone Guns. Move closer, pressing up against the rocky terrain to your left. Eventually you should be able to take shots at the Drones without them being able to fire back. Eliminate both of them. There should be some goodies to grab here; namely a pack of Fragmentation Grenades, some Shotgun shells and a Grenade Launcher. Get them and head off to the right. Up a hill nearby are 2 Medium Ghost Warriors who will attack you. Look out for them and lob Grenades up at them, or kill them in some other way. Then turn your attention immediately back to the road you were headed down, where a distant Light Ghost Warrior will attack. Use the boulders here for cover and snipe him or otherwise kill him. Now you should be free of enemies for the time being so turn your attention to the 2 structures up here. The one on the right is inaccessible, but the one on the left is open so head into it. Grab the Gun Drone- the only one you'll ever find outside of a "defend the base" mission- and use the health and energy rechargers if necessary. The Gun Drone is rather awkward to use offensively, and fairly unnecessary, but you may find it useful for setting up, running up to and provoking enemies, leading them back to it and then "teaming up" against them. See what you can do. Now open the fuse box on the wall and hit the control. This will deactivate the energy barrier blocking the archway a ways back. Head back to the archway and pass through to the other side. Scout ahead with your scope again and take out 2 more Medium Ghost Warriors. Then keep going forward past a box of dead snipes (!) and continue until you receive a message that one of your objectives has been completed. You'll soon see a distant rocket streaking towards you, which should be very easy to dodge. Use your Sniper Rifle or Trigger 2 of your Rocket Launcher to take out a distant Heavy Ghost Warrior; he'll be difficult to see in the mist, but those 2 weapons can both help you out. Keep going even further. Soon you'll be shot at by a sniper, so move erratically- zig-zag lines, perhaps- and be ready to slip behind one of the huge plant stalks for cover and then counter-snipe. Keep going and behind a boulder to your right you'll encounter 2 Medium Ghost Warriors. Wipe them out and continue until you get under the bridge that the last sniper was on. Under the bridge are a series of crates with lots of goodies around them, namely: -Two packs of Rockets -Two Sniper Rifle clips -Two boxes of Assault Rifle ammo -Two health pickups -Two energy pickups Once you have all that, continue further down the very linear path until you reach another archway blocked by another energy barrier. This time the switch to turn it off is right next to the gate so just hit it and proceed. As you pass on to the other side, walk backwards very slowly and look up. Above the archway there are 2 Drone Guns positioned to fire at you. Try slowly moving out until there's a line of sight between you and the Drones, popping one with an EMP Grenade or something else, then ducking back under the archway and repeating as much as is necessary until they're down. Then head towards the stream that should now be in view. On a bridge above the stream is another Ghost Warrior sniper (the last one) that you'll need to kill with your Assault Rifle, Rocket Launcher or Sniper Rifle. Then head into the big pipe in the stream and go up the ladder at the end of it to go to the next area. 6J-2: Na Koja Abad- Izanagi Xeno Research Facility -------------------------------------------------- Take the first right in the tunnel you end up in and head through the gate and up the ladder behind it. This leads to a balcony above a room where 2 scientists are conducting experiments. They'll argue about an alien device they're trying to make sense of. Guarding the room is a Medium Ghost Warrior. As long as you stay somewhere on the balcony he won't see you so it should be a piece of cake scoring a headshot on him. Then jump down onto the ground level. If you go into the middle of this room and face the hologram projection stations, there will be a door to your left that you need to go through next (there's another door besides that one, but it just heads back up to the balcony). Head forward here until you see a hall to the left with steam shooting from the walls in various places. Jump onto either side, holding the jump button in case you need to vault back up to one of the platforms on the sides of the room. If you accidentally fall, just turn around, head down the hall to the side you came from, go up the ladder and try again. Once you are on one of the ledges, watch where the steam comes from, wait for it to subside in the place closest to you, then pass by there. Keep going until you reach the other side, then go up the ladder there and into another tunnel at the top. Around the first corner in this tunnel is a long corridor with a Drone Gun at the end of it. Don't go in there until the Drone is down (using the Dispersion Pistol, Rocket Launcher, or something else; it's too far away for EMP Grenades). Keep progressing and around the next corner you'll find another Drone Gun, but it will be much closer to you, giving you a few more weapon options (EMPs, Shotgun, etc). Keep going until you reach the balcony of another science experiment room. Wait and watch the 2 scientists argue. Their experiment will eventually come to life, create a crisis situation, and get a scientist shot and killed (by the Ghost Warrior guard). Well, too bad for the scientist, but now the Ghost Warrior is every bit as vulnerable as the one guarding the first experiment room. Snipe him, jump down, and search the room. On a table you'll be able to find 2 Takkra, the same type of device that just came to life and shot at the scientist. As mentioned above (in section 4E), this is, in my opinion, a very fun weapon but not a very useful one by any means. Use them as you wish in the mission; they'll never give you a very significant advantage, but they're cool. Now get in the middle of the room and face the table that the Takkra were on. Behind your back is a door that progresses to the next part of the level, but first go through the one on your right. You'll find a large, twisting corridor that has a Medium Ghost Warrior patrolling it. Take him out and collect all the goodies here: Two health pickups, an Assault Rifle and 2 boxes of Assault Rifle ammo. Now head back and through the door opposite the Takkra table. This path leads eventually to the second floor balcony of a HUGE room, a much different room than the 2 scientific experiment rooms you've passed through so far. You'll see a big cylinder in the center of the room and the balcony will run all the way around in a square. Across the room on the same balcony as you is a Medium Ghost Warrior; he'll be your first adversary. Your Sniper Rifle should be handy for taking him out but notice that on the right side of the rooms' balcony is a fuel tank. In an alcove to the left of the entrance you can find a box of Assault Rifle ammo, a pack of Rockets and a health pickup. On the right side of the room, also on the balcony, is another alcove with a Drone Gun right inside it, fuel tanks right alongside the Drone, and a health recharger behind that. The second-floor balcony also has a crosswalk heading into the cylinder-shaped area in the center of the room. As for the ground floor, this is a huge area, full of crates and other obstructions, with a health pickup and a Heavy Ghost Warrior. I would recommend leaving the ground floor alone, not facing the Heavy Ghost Warrior. If you do go down, keep a distance and stay very aware of the cover around you: have a plan for how to utilize it when a rocket comes flying straight on a collision course with your face. If you avoid him, though, he's still a potential danger. Try to keep in mind where he is (if you can tell) and do what you need to do on the balcony quickly since you may come under Rocket fire. When he's been taken care of and you've gotten your health pickup (on the opposite side of the room from the entry door), on the right side of the room is a ladder heading back up to the second floor balcony. And what do you need to do here? Well if you're in good condition and don't need much in the way of health and energy then just get to the cylinder in the center of the room, which actually has both a health and an energy pickup in it. Otherwise, get into both alcoves first, taking out the Drone Gun with heavy weaponry. From the third floor, pass over another crosswalk onto the balcony of a third (and final) scientific experiment room, this one involving the testing of a laser weapon of some sort. Like the last experiment, this one will go awry if you just wait. This time it will go so far as to kill the Ghost Warrior guard so you don't have to! After that happens jump down to ground level. On the same side of the room as the way you entered from is a ground level door that leads back to where you came from; ignore that. The way to the right of that door heads back where you've already been, so go for the left. That leads through a hallway, toward the end of which you'll hear 2 men talking behind a door. It's 2 Medium Ghost Warriors, so get ready for a close-combat confrontation. Waste them with Shotgun fire before they can do the same to you. Further in is a platform that heads down a floor to the ground level of that room. DON'T go down it. Drone Guns are set to fire on people at ground level, but if you head around the narrow balcony of the second floor you can get to where you have a clean shot at the Drone Gun and it can't shoot you. Take it out, *then* go down the lift (or just jump). Along the sides of the room you'll find the following: -A Shotgun -Two boxes of Assault Rifle ammo -Two Fragmentation, 2 Incendiary and 2 Smoke Grenade packs -A health pickup -An energy pickup There's a door down here, and behind it (a distance away) is a Heavy Ghost Warrior. Have your Sniper Rifle or Rocket Launcher ready, then open the door and go in to waste him. A crate in this hallway has a pack of Rockets in it. Cross the hallway, go into the next room, grab a pack of Fragmentation Grenades and a health pickup on a crate and go down a lift into the excavation site. 6J-3: Na Koja Abad: Excavation ------------------------------ The lift drops you off at a platform overlooking the gate into the excavation site. Before you turn around to head down to it, wait until you can see the guard patrolling the platform leading up to that gate. His patrol route will take him out of your line of sight at times, so wait several seconds if he at first doesn't appear to be there. When you find him, snipe him. Then head down. From the bottom of the ladder and back of the platform, it would now appear that the thing to do is grab goodies off the platform and head straight to the gate. However, there are lots of additional items on the ground level as well as an additional guard, and from the back of the platform (out of the way of all that fencing up ahead), you can find him patrolling and easily snipe him, too. Now head forward to the middle area of the platform area and get everything- between the items on the crates and the items in the fenced-in areas to the left and right, you should be able to find: -A pack each of Smoke and Incendiary Grenades and 2 packs of Fragmentation Grenades -Two Magnum Pistol clips -An Assault Rifle and 2 boxes of ammo for it -A pack of Rockets -Two health pickups Once you have all of those, you'll notice there's a ladder heading down to ground level. DON'T go down it. The area it leads to will bring yo6u under fire from 2 Drone Guns. Instead, head up the slanted part of the platform leading up to the gate into the excavation site and jump off the side toward the top. Below you'll see a smaller platform positioned underneath the slanted part of the larger platform above, and this smaller platform has 2 Drone Guns on it. You can now take them out safely from the sides. Then climb up the ladder onto where the Drone Guns were and collect a Shotgun and 2 boxes of shells. Also, there's an energy recharging station here if you need it. Now go onto the area that the ladder you ignored before leads down to. It's fenced off on most sides and the Drones were pointing straight at it.In there you'll find a Grenade Launcher and 2 packs each of EMP and Fragmentation Grenades, as well as another Assault Rifle and 2 boxes of ammo for it. Once you have all that, go back up the ladder and proceed to the gate leading into the excavation site. Activate the outer security hatch to the right of it and pass through. A small intermediary room seperates the exterior and interior of this new complex, leading into a huge, circular room. It's clearly alien in design, and absolutely stunningly rendered. In this huge circular area there are 3 Medium Ghost Warriors walking around as guards, although none of them will see you immediately. Start out by staying toward the outer walls of the room and circling through it, searching for distant enemies with your Sniper Rifle and picking them off if possible. If you end up in a firefight, just keep it at long range and you should be fine. With so little available cover you may take a couple hits, but Shotgun hits at long range are no big deal. Once you've cleared out the room, find the area where there's a recess in the wall, a mini-hallway of sorts. It may look like there's a dead end at the end of it, but if you walk to the end the coolest-looking door I've ever seen in a video game will open up. The door leads into a cylinder-shaped room which has a Medium Ghost Warrior in it. Sometimes when I've entered the room he's been on a platform at the top of a ladder, while other times he's been on ground level. I don't know why this is, but have your Shotgun ready just in case because the ground level is very small and provides you with no cover at all. Kill the guard there (if he is there), then head up the ladder and if the guard is in fact *there*, kill him then instead. There are three more ladders heading further and further up after that. At the top is a platform overlooking another huge, circular room with 2 guards below you chatting about the artifact. If you fire a single Incendiary Grenade down right in between where the two are standing, it will kill them both. Then head down into the room. This circular room is protected with a very intimidating but actually fairly harmless security system. The artifact is on the opposite side of the room (with the center blocked off) and both sides of the room are blocked by numerous laser barriers. What makes them ineffective is that going through them does so little damage that you could just run straight through them all and suffer little injury. You have all the time you need to make it through, though, so do your best to evaluate each laser and jump it or duck it as needed. On the other side, a strange, shimmering station cradles the artifact. Grab it. This deactivates the security system; the lasers disappear. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: Although the laser security system has powered down, the removal of the artifact causes energy to start flowing through tubes in ceiling as if the room were coming alive. Izanagi Ghost Warriors enter the room; the squad leader shouts, "secure the area!" and they spread out and take aim with their guns. Slowly and silently, Drakk Sentries- bizarre alien biomechanical creatures- float down from holes in the ceiling and attack the Ghost Warriors, shocking them with electricity. From the device in the center of the room, a Drakk Overlord rises and begins to approach you! \-------------------------------------/ /-------------------------------------\ New Enemy: Drakk Overlord Description: Drakk Overlords are biomechanical creatures with bodies divided into 2 segments connected by an artificial spine. The top is vaguely insectoid, with several tentacles and 4 glowing eyes, and the bottom contains a glowing crystal that supplies it with power. Overlords float through the air extremely slowly, constantly scanning for enemies with a laser. They can take a lot of punishment before going down, and even when they are defeated, their shells will remain on the ground awaiting repairs from a repair droid and giving off smoke like a smoke Grenade. Attacks: A Drakk Overlord has 2 attacks. One is with its Laser Cannon, which is fairly damaging. It can kill you in about 14 shots if you're at full health and energy and playing on Medium difficulty. Laser cannons have unlimited range and fire instantaneously. If they get close enough, they'll extend a tentacle out to you with a strange device on the end that damages you steadily. Overlords can use both attacks at the same time. After killing a Drakk Overlord, it drops an ammunition pod you can pick up and use for your own Laser Cannon (once you've gotten it). Tips and Tactics: Drakk Overlords follow certain very uniform rules about how they fight. They must contact you with their targeting lasers before they can shoot you with their Laser Cannons. Their targeting lasers change color right before they fire. After firing, an Overlord has to wait for a second or so before its targeting laser turn on again and starts scanning. Once the Overlord "locks on" to you, he *must* fire. When Overlords are broken and giving off smoke, they take about 30 seconds before exploding. They can also be destroyed by doing the same amount of damage to their smoking shells as it took to break them in the first place, which is about 35 or 40 Assault Rifle rounds or 3 Fragmentation Grenades. You can't combine those 2 properties; in other words, you can't shoot an Overlords' smoking shell with 2 Fragmentation Grenades and then expect to only have to wait 10 seconds or so for it to explode. An EMP Grenade will kill an Overlord in one direct hit (since it runs off of electrical energy), and an Incendiary Grenade usually will also. So the best way to kill an Overlord is this: Find some kind of cover to get behind that's far enough away that you don't have to worry about the Overlord using its tentacle attack, but close enough that you can use your Grenade Launcher. Peek out from behind the cover and let the Overlord lock onto you, then return behind cover and let it fire and miss. Then peek out and fire at him while he is motionless and waiting for his scanning process to restart. If you encounter an Overlord without any cover around, or little enough that he'll get at least one good shot at you before you can reach it, wait until the scanning laser stops on you and listen for the sound of the laser powering up just moments before it fires. It is possible to dodge to either side right before the Overlord fires and avoid taking damage, despite their perfect aim. When I say dodge, I mean it literally; you must have dodging activated in the options and hit left or right twice. Simply jumping to the side won't move you quickly enough to avoid being hit most of the time. \-------------------------------------/ This Overlord is a little different from ones you'll face later on; it takes about twice as much damage to kill. It's essentially the boss of the level, so use 2 EMPs to take it out. Afterwards, don't bother shooting at it; there are no repair drones around so it will die by itself in time. After it goes down, start retracing your steps back out of the excavation site. You won't have to fight any Overlords or Ghost Warriors (although you'll see Ghost Warriors being killed by Drakk Sentries), but there are numerous Sentries to fight. /-------------------------------------\ New Enemy: Drakk Sentry Description: Drakk sentries are biomechanical creatures that resemble scarabs or trilobites in appearance and see through 4 glowing red eyes. They have energy crystals on their undersides that provide them with power and they hover in the air. Their bluish, reflective exteriors act as a very effective armor against attacks. Attacks: Drakk Sentries will float towards you at the speed of a running Light or Medium Skaarj. Once they get about as far away as the maximum effective range of the Shotguns' second trigger they unfold several electroconductive tentacles and begin shocking you. Their attacks are not very effective; if you had full health and energy and were playing on Medium difficulty, it would take a little over a minute of nonstop shocking to kill you. Also, they slow down to about half speed while their tentacles are extended, giving you a chance to escape. Tips and Tactics: Although they don't damage you too quickly, Drakk Sentries' attacks can add up and killing them can eat up a lot of ammo. It takes about 20 shots from an Assault Rifle or 2 Fragmentation Grenades to kill one. Since Drakk Sentries are only partially living and "run" off of electricity, they are weak against EMP Grenades. Although an EMP will kill one in a single hit, you should probably save EMPs for facing Overlords (except in Na Koja Abad, where there's only one Overlord to face). Try to damage them at a distance while they approach you. They move in very straight paths, with no way of dodging or blocking your attacks, so you can really tear them up with any weapon in the 2nd trigger group, or with the Magnum Pistol, when they come after you. You may then want to switch to the Shotgun or another close-combat weapon right before they unravel their tentacles and attack so that you can finish them off. \-------------------------------------/ Unlike the Overlord, the Sentries here are the same as the ones you'll face later, and the same as they are described above. Although you won't be facing 2 Sentries at once, they will keep coming until you escape. When you finish fighting one, keep moving as quickly as possible. Note that you won't have to go back all the way through the "excavation" level. You'll just have to get back to the entrance to the alien site, beyond which the walls stops looking alien and start looking manmade again. Once you reach the gate leading to that point again, your mission is complete and you're one artifact closer to your ultimate goal. ----------------------------------------------------------- 6K: The Drakk Hive Planet ----------------------------------------------------------- Your next destination is the planet NC962VIII, an alien hive planet occupied by the Drakk, the alien race you fought in the excavation site on Na Koja Abad. Little is known about them except that they are biomechanical creatures that build their own bodies and that killed the species that created them long, long ago. Your dropship begins to touch down outside their hive complex, deep inside of which an artifact is known to exist. The entire area is engulfed in intense radiation. Aida is fearful of this mission, while Ne-Ban finds it fascinating. Dalton requests intel and finds that there is none available. After some difficulty on Ne-Ban's part keeping the dropship under control, you touch down. As you walk down the path to the main entry gate, Aida warns you not to go outside of contact range for your communication equipment. Your connection quickly breaks up, though, forcing Dalton to enter alone. 6K-1: NC962VIII Scrutiny ------------------------ Once through the door, head down the large hallway in front of you. Three Drakk Sentries will attack you, one at a time. Back away as each one approaches and fire with your Laser Cannon. There will be plenty of reloads for your Laser Cannon throughout the level, so it's the perfect weapon against Sentries. The hall leads into a large room where you'll make a disturbing discovery. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: The room contains 2 rows of transparent containers filled with water and live, intelligent beings of various sorts. A mercenary, a Marine, a Skaarj and a Kai are all visible. Dalton has to question why the Drakk would be keeping prisoners, and what purpose the strange containers serve... \-------------------------------------/ The room also contains a large number of goodies, including: -Three packs of Rockets -Three boxes of Assault Rifle ammo -Three boxes of Shotgun Shells -Three packs of Fragmentation Grenades -A pack of EMP Grenades Also, there are 4 health pickups. For segment of the mission, they'll be the only health pickups available, so if you get hurt later on come back here to heal. Keep going forward now, heading through 2 more gates. You'll now be in a large room with 2 Overlords in it, as well as a transparent chamber with a live Drakk creature inside that you haven't yet seen. The creature is a Repair Droid and the chamber is indestructible. When one of the Overlords is broken, though, the chamber will open, allowing the Droid to scurry out. /-------------------------------------\ New Enemy: Drakk Repair Droid Description: Repair droids are small, many-legged insectoid creatures who lack any weapons but can repair damaged Overlords. Although biomechanical, Repair Droids are not very similar to other Drakk. They run across the ground rather than hovering in the air, and they have very little capacity for damage. They are capable of returning a broken and smoking Overlord to its full original damage capacity and level of combat capability within only a second or so of making contact with the Overlord. Attacks: Drakk Repair Droids cannot attack in any way. Tips and Tactics: The best weapon to use against Repair Droids is the Laser Cannon: it takes out a Droid in one blast, and Repair Droids only appear in the Drakk Hive Planet, where Laser Cannon ammo is abundant. You'll only get one shot at the Repair Droid, though, since if you miss the Overlord will have been repaired before your Laser Cannon charges up again. The best time to fire is usually as soon as the Droid reaches an Overlord: They are quick-moving, but must stop in one place to perform a repair. Since they always move in straight lines, you'll know where that one place will be and can have your crosshairs over it ahead of time. Another option that is often good is to shoot one as soon as it leaves its protective chamber; you can usually take a second shot if you miss before the repair will have been completed. If you screw up and the Repair Droid brings back an Overlord, try again to shoot the Repair Droid as it is returning to its' chamber. \-------------------------------------/ The 2 Overlords here both slowly rise out of holes in the ground. The best thing to do here is to rush forward, getting right up close to the Overlords before they have completely risen from the holes and started scanning for targets with their lasers. Then you can EMP one of them, duck behind a column for protection from the other one, wait for the Repair Drone to come and shoot it. Then to kill the other Overlord, peek out from behind cover, draw fire from the Overlord, return to cover, let the Overlord shoot and miss and finally kill it while its Laser Cannon is busy recharging. Don't forget, throughout the level, to collect Laser Rifle pods from destroyed Overlords and regularly reload the Laser Rifle so you'll have it ready when Droids and Sentries come around. Once the 2 Overlords have exploded, the gates on either side of the room will open. You'll find that in various parts of the Drakk Hive Planet the Overlords act as guardians for "locked" doors. Once one is destroyed, it is likely that a door somewhere will become functional. Each of the 2 now open doors leads to the same thing: a curving path, the 2 of which converge into the same ledge. Go either way. In the hall (whichever you choose) 2 Sentries will attack you. The Sentries have trouble passing through open gateways; they tend to get stuck in place. Try to back away through the gate and away from them and fire at them while they struggle to shift from the hallway into your room. Once the Sentries are down head through the gate onto a balcony. As soon as you get onto the balcony, the door behind you closes and locks, stranding you on a precarious ledge without cover. An Overlord will attack you soon, so have your Grenade Launcher or Shock Lance ready. As soon as the Overlord is broken, jump down to the ledge below where a Repair Droid is waiting in a chamber. Destroy it and go through a narrow hall you'll now be next to. The hallway heads into a second, perpendicular hallway. From the first hall, you'll see targeting lasers scanning through the second hall, foreshadowing an upcoming conflict with more Overlords. Peek into the hall where you see the lasers and figure out where the Overlords are, then quickly duck back away. You can now either take them out with the peek-and-fire method or by bouncing EMP Grenades off of the wall into them. Be careful, though; in the second hallway are a couple points where there are breaks in the ground with air and bubbles of some sort rising out of them. These are intended for carrying you up to a higher level later, but they'll also push Grenades off-course. They won't completely fling them up a level, but they'll make them hit higher up then they otherwise would. Choose your method and kill the 2 Overlords, and be ready for up to 3 Repair Droids also. Now go into the second hallway. At each end of it is a button that you'll need to press. To traverse the full length of the hallway, when you reach an air gap in the floor, walk across as if the floor was solid and you'll just end up on the other side, unharmed. If you try to jump over the gaps, though, you'll be propelled up to a higher level, which you should stay out of for now. Also, at one end of the hall, once you get near the button at the end laser defenses will power up in the walls. Be ready to jump and duck as necessary to get past them; once you reach the button, the lasers will turn off. When both buttons have been pushed, "ride" the air gaps in the floor up to another hall higher up by jumping into one. When you get to the higher level, head further along on either side, both of which wrap around and end up reaching a platform with an Overlord in front of you. Waste him and quickly cross over the bridge here. Then head through 2 gates into the next area. K2: NC962VIII Subjugation ------------------------- At the beginning of this new segment of the Drakk Hive Planet, you'll run into another frightening display. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: This room contains more water-filled containers with partial (but live) test subjects trapped inside. In one is a human head, in another a Skaarj arm and in another a Marines' torso and head. They are all hooked up to electronic tubes and there are buttons on the tanks that make the body parts in the containers do strange things that deeply disturb Dalton. Additional body parts (and an entire Skaarj body) litter the floor around you. Dalton says out loud, "What in God's name did they do to these people?" \-------------------------------------/ Like the last living experiment room you came across, this one contains numerous power-ups. You should be able to find the following: -Three packs of Shotgun shells -Two packs of Rockets -Two plasma canisters for your Shock Lance -Two boxes of Assault Rifle ammo -Three packs of Fragmentation Grenades -A pack of EMP Grenades. Now head through the tube-shaped corridor up ahead into a new room, and from there continue straight forward through a second corridor. You'll now encounter an Overlord, who will rise out of the circular portal in the ground in front of you. Take him out as he rises since there's no immediate cover. You can now either head forward again or to the right. Both paths lead to the same area, but the one on the right has a Sentry in the hall. Either way you'll end up in an area with another portal in the ground containing another Overlord. Kill it and progress forward again, being sure not to go in the direction that takes you back to where you were. You'll end up heading through another tunnel, facing a Sentry, and then finding another experiment room. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: In this Drakk experimentation room the bodies and body parts on display have been recombined, mixing different species! One container holds a Skaarj torso with heads coming out of the knees, one contains a partial Skaarj, and one contains a Marine with a snoring head for an arm and a hand emerging from its head. These experiments make the last set look humane... and there are undoubtedly more still to come. \-------------------------------------/ On the ground here, once again, are powerups, this time: -Two Magnum Pistol clips -Two Assault Rifle clips -Two Rocket packs -Two health pickups -Three energy pickups Now keep going down the hall, and when you come across an entryway blocked by a Drakk energy barrier, make sure to grab the 3 Laser Rifle pods sitting next to the wall in front of you. Soon you'll reach a huge circular room with a cylinder-shaped tower in the center and columns in the ground arcing up into it. This room contains 2 Overlords. The columns are great cover against them. Hunt down and kill both Overlords and the Repair Droids who will come to them. Once both are dead an entry hole will open in the side of the cylindrical structure at the center of the room. Circle around until you can find it. Jump in and the rushing air inside will carry you up to the next area. K3: NC962VIII Subordination --------------------------- As this section of the level begins, an Overlord will immediately rise out of the ground nearby. Take him out immediately since there is so little cover in the room. There are 2 Repair Droids you'll have to tend to, then go through the door that opens into the next room. This is a *HUGE* area with a much bigger cylinder in the center than you've seen before and electrical bolts arcing into it from the walls. Go forward and you'll reach a fork in the path heading left and right. On each side is an Overlord concealed in the ground that will rise and attack you as soon as you go near it, so make sure to only take one at a time. Start with the right side, since the left heads to the next area and you'll need these guys dead first. Past the Overlord on the right side are 4 Laser Rifle pods. To the left is a tunnel with a huge array of laser defenses. They constantly go on and off, sweeping from the end of the tunnel towards the side you're on. This is the first (and only) set of laser defenses you've seen that is likely to kill you so save first. Basically there are safe spots in various places where you can stand (or crouch) and no lasers will touch you while they're active. It would be impossible for me to create a diagram, but you'll just have to watch the lasers course through the tunnel, look for a spot that they neglect to guard, run to it when the lasers power down and wait. Then search ahead for another one, studying the positions of the lasers, and rush up to it after they pass you by. You may want to save after each successful advancement down the tunnel. From the other end of the tunnel, go up a ramp leading to the edges of the room. Head in the only direction here that isn't blocked. Eventually you'll reach the last piece of the puzzle regarding the activities taking place in the Drakk Hive Planet. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: You stand before one last transparent container, bigger than any previous one. A hybrid creature dwells inside, a final product of previous experimentation that seems to have worked out quite well. The container gives him room to walk around in. It seems the Drakk are trying to create some sort of scientifically enhanced slave race; there are now 2 reasons why you must defeat them. \-------------------------------------/ Just past the container are 2 boxes of Shotgun shells, 2 packs of Rockets, a pack of EMP Grenades and 3 health pickups. Grab all of them and keep going. Up ahead is a huge ramp that heads up into the cylinder in the center of the room. Go inside to face the Drakk's leader. K4: NC962VIII Solitude ---------------------- You'll now find yourself in a very large, circular room with a walkway running all the way around, 2 transparent ramps heading down to ground level, columns heading from the elevated edges up to the ceiling, and the artifact at the other side of the room, radiating energy from inside a crystalline chamber. A huge hole opens in the floor in the center of the room, through which a gargantuan Drakk creature rises up to "greet" you. Prepare yourself for one of the 2 most difficult battles in the game. /-------------------------------------\ New Enemy: Heavy/Boss Drakk Description: The Drakk Hive Queen (as I refer to it; the actual name is never given but it *is* the boss of a hive) resembles a Drakk sentry but is of a size that, so far, has been matched only by the Heavy Araknid at the end of Hell. It has 8 arms with Laser Cannons on them and, if damaged heavily enough, will temporarily break apart into 2 sections: a top section with an enhanced Laser Cannon and a bottom one that clutches an energy crystal in it. The top section moves quickly but only in short, sweeping movements in between shots most of the time whereas the bottom section is slower but moves continuously. Attacks: The top section of the Drakk Hive Queen has 2 different attacks. Most of the time it attacks by rapid-firing 8 times with its Laser Cannons. Each shot does between a third and a fourth as much damage as a Laser Cannon shot from an Overlord, and the Queen can only slightly readjust its aim as each successive shot is fired. While the top and bottom sections are separated, the top section will switch to a different attack that fires with more time in between volleys, but that is more powerful. It is a more or less solid stream of energy that sweeps back and forth very quickly, attacking a general area of the room. The bottom section is basically powerless; it can arc electricity out to shock you when it is very nearby, but this does almost no damage and the bottom section constantly tries to stay away from you anyway. Tips and Tactics: Battling the Drakk Hive Queen works like this: Damage the Queen badly enough (roughly 50 Assault Rifle rounds or 5 EMP Grenades, for example) and the top and bottom sections will break apart. Then you'll have about 60 seconds to fight the two seperately. As you damage the bottom section, the game will keep a running tally of how much you've damaged it. Once that reaches a certain point, you've defeated the Queen. At the end of the 60 seconds, the top section will start shaking as it sets itself to self-destruct. You'll then have about 10 seconds before it will launch itself at you and try to explode near you (the explosion has the effect of a Fragmentation Grenade, even though it looks like an Incendiary Grenade going off). If you destroy the top section while the 2 are separated, you'll have the rest of that 60 seconds free to fight the bottom section and you won't have to deal with dodging the kamikaze attack. Regardless of whether you destroy it or not, at the end of that time, the bottom section will somehow grow a new top section and go back to fighting in its original fashion until you do enough damage to force it to separate again. Use of cover is the only way to avoid getting torn to pieces by the top sections' attacks. Always keep track of the cover around you. Make especially sure not to take any risks with the sweeping laser attack employed after the sections separate. It's up to you whether or not you want to bother destroying the top section after separation; it uses up time and ammo, but prevents damage and lets you more efficiently spend the remaining time hunting down the bottom section, so it's an even tradeoff. As for weapons use, I'd suggest using your EMP Grenades on the top sections. After the top fires it is vulnerable for just long enough that if you quickly lob a Grenade at them you'll be able to hit them it before it moves again. Incendiary Grenades work just as well, by the way. Fragmentation Grenades, though, are pretty weak. Guided Rockets are a good attack to use against either section, and non-guided ones sometimes work just as well against the top section. If you have any ammo left for it, the Shock Lance's second trigger is very effective against the top section. The bottom section is kind of tricky since it's so agile and constantly tries to escape from you. Aside from Rockets, instant hitting weapons like the Laser Rifle and Assault Rifle are moderately good. Grenades are nearly impossible to hit with most of the time. If you can get close enough, the Flamethrower and Shotgun are great options. If you get close to it and it starts shocking you, just let it. It does negligible damage. When the top section prepares to launch itself at you, get behind a column and then, when it launches, move around to another side of the column (besides the side it's launching at, of course). This is a LONG fight; it takes about 250 Assault Rifle rounds to destroy the bottom section, if that gives you an idea of how long. If you can just keep fighting for a while and making progress without getting seriously hurt, I'd strongly recommend saving. \-------------------------------------/ On the ground level, underneath the elevated rim, there is a huge wealth of powerups, including: -Seven health pickups -Six energy pickups -Four Magnum Pistol clips -Four plasma clips (for the Shock Lance) -Five boxes of Assault Rifle ammunition -Six Fragmentation Grenades -Four boxes of Shotgun Shells -Six packs of Rockets The powerups are in many different places, but there's good cover while you're going from place to place. The problem with repeatedly going down for health or energy, though, is that on the way back up a ramp you're a sitting duck. Try to only take one visit down, when you're in severe need for health, energy and ammo. And definitely don't go down using a ramp... either start using a ramp and drop down the hole towards the top of each one or jump off the edge of the second floor. After a long and difficult battle, you'll eventually destroy the bottom section of the Drakk Hive Queen. It will explode, sending out a spherical wave of energy that passes through the entire room. Now go and pick up your hard-earned final artifact! ----------------------------------------------------------- 6L: Avalon ----------------------------------------------------------- Having acquired all of the artifacts, you are headed to the TCA headquarters on Avalon, where your Odyssey began. The plan is to for you to touch down and talk to General Drexler in person about the artifacts so that you won't have to worry about your conversation being intercepted electronically. As your dropship heads down to Avalon, energy bolts from the TCA's planetary cannon are fired at you! Your dropship takes a hit and crash lands. The Skaarj already intercepted some conversations, it turns out, and overtook the planetary cannon's control tower so that they'd have a cunning trap waiting for you. There is no sign of Drexler, although Commander Hawkins escaped to his flagship, the Dorian grey. You'll have to retake the tower and deactivate the Planetary Cannon before the Atlantis will be able to pick you up. 6L-1: Avalon ------------ Note: Like Na Koja Abad, Avalon is both the name of the mission and the first (and only) level of the mission, as evidenced when you save a game and select to load it again. From your dropship, head straight forward and ready your Sniper Rifle or Rocket Launcher. At the bottom of the hill in front of you is a dead Marine with a Sniper Rifle and a clip of Sniper Rifle ammo next to him. There is plenty of Sniper Rifle ammo in this level so don't be afraid to use it wherever it's useful. As you continue on you'll hear a whistle of some sort call out and as you head up the hill further in front of you you'll be greeted by a Heavy Skaarj. I'd recommend fighting him at long range with your Sniper Rifle or Rocket Launcher, and definitely fall back as you fight. Your next enemy is atop the hill; a Medium Skaarj will approach. Many weapons work well here, and against most Skaarj you'll face in this level. You have plenty of weapons and plenty of experience killing Skaarj, so you should generally have no lack of effective strategies to employ. From the hilltop, head right onto the paved area near the tower. You'll soon face 2 Light Skaarj. Consider using the Laser Cannon on them; 1 first trigger shot downs them and they can't block or dodge it. Further along the paved area, toward the railing, is another Medium Skaarj, but also note the 2 dead Marines around here. One is slumped against a wall alone. The other, off of the paved part of ground a bit, has an Assault Rifle next to him that you can grab. Once you have cleaned out this area, head around the tower to the left, along a path with railing at the edges. You'll soon find an elevator heading up the tower. Go in- you'll hear human screams as you do- and activate the elevator. At the top, after getting out, you'll see a Medium Skaarj dangling a man over the edge of the railing. He'll drop the man when you exit the elevator and charge at you instead. I'd recommend either having the Flamethrower ready and backing away while immersing him in flames or, better yet, take him out in one hit with a well-placed Incendiary Grenade. Don't bother with lighter weapons here; the confined space is highly dangerous. Once he's dead, head left onto an open platform where you'll find a Sniper Rifle and 3 clips of ammo for it. Grab all that you can hold. Then turn around and progress in the direction the Skaarj was and run up the curving stairways onto a large platform. A Light Skaarj will run down some stairs to meet you at the platform; blast him while dodging his attacks. Be ready for opposition when you head up the next set of steps. It leads into the tower control room, which is guarded by both a Light and Medium Skaarj. I wouldn't recommend entering the room; you might want to fire a couple Grenades or other weapons from the doorway and then back out as they chase after you. Once you kill both Skaarj, investigate the room. You'll find the following powerups: -A Rocket Launcher -A Grenade Launcher -Two Sniper Rifle clips -A health pickup -An energy pickup Also, towards the center of the room is a very slightly elevated station with the planetary cannon's controls. Operate them and the cannon will recede into a silo in the ground and a protective sliding gate will close over the top. The Marines will message you, informing you that they've set up a perimeter at another building. Also, the Atlantis is now heading down. You must now find and meet up with the Marines. Head back to the elevator and hit the controls again. This time they won't work. It turns out that the Skaarj have sabotaged the power to it. A Marine is soon sent to the power station to repair the damage so you can safely return. Your job is to cover him with your Sniper Rifle. Position yourself on the open ledge where the Sniper Rifle and 3 clips were. He'll soon run out into the open and shout things to you to guide your scope to him. Activate your Rifle's scope and find him. You'll soon begin a sequence in which a series of Light Skaarj (each killable in one shot of your Sniper Rifle) will run out and attack the Marine, first one at a time and eventually rapidly from multiple directions. You'll notice there are explosive barrels lying around in various places. Toward the end of this conflict 2 Heavy Skaarj will come marching out. You should probably save the clusters of barrels until they walk near them. The one inside the fenced-off area (which the Marine will soon break into to patch up an electronic board) is useful as a sort of last resort in case any Light Skaarj get that far. If Skaarj do manage to reach and attack the Marine, he's far from helpless- he'll probably even blast a couple of Light Skaarj to death before he goes down. But if you play your cards right that should never be necessary. Monitor large areas of ground using a slight zoom, identify Light Skaarj targets, zoom in further to pick them off and repeat as necessary. There are about 2 dozen Light Skaarj as well as the 2 Heavy ones that will come later. Eventually the Marine will finish up and you can ride the elevator back down. As soon as you exit it the Light Marine, armed with a Shotgun, will be waiting to lead you to the rendezvous point. Follow him and be prepared for a surprise attack from a single Skaarj as soon as you start moving. After him, no Skaarj will attack you from behind, above, or anywhere else that's unusual. Scout ahead now with your Sniper Rifle's scope (or start locking on Rockets with trigger 2) because your next conflict will be with 2 Light Skaarj who you'll spot in the distance long before they can attack you. As you approach a hill a Medium Skaarj will run down to attack you, and as soon as you start heading up 2 more will follow. You might lose your Marine ally around here, but he's not essential. If he dies just keep heading up the hill. Toward the top you'll have to face a Heavy Skaarj. Lobbing Poison Gas Grenades up at him or immersing him in Flamethrower flames are effective strategies here, but don't do so for too long before you fall back and switch to ranged tactics. Once this guy starts attacking you he won't fool around. Finish him off by whatever means are necessary and continue to ascend the hill. You'll now meet up with a Medium Marine armed with a Rocket Launcher and a Light Marine with an Assault Rifle. They'll greet you briefly, but soon give a "heads up" that more Skaarj are coming. Follow them as they run down a hill. Run ahead of them in the direction of 2 large rocks with a gap in between them and a pile of powerups visible. To be specific, the powerups are: -An Assault Rifle and a box of ammo for it -A Magnum Pistol clip -A Rocket Launcher -Two health pickups -Two energy pickups Make sure to save health and energy pickups if you're very near to full health or energy and wouldn't be getting the full effect from the powerups; you'll need them soon. The Marines will set up 2 Drone Guns on the outside of the 2 rocks and a Plasma Barrier between the rocks. While they're heading out to do that, I'd recommend running through the gap between the rocks, in an arc toward the left side from there and jump on top of the left rock. It will make a very effective perch to fire from in the upcoming battle since it gives you great visibility and you can dodge backwards to drop off it and behind cover when powerful projectiles are fired at you. Ready your Sniper Rifle, Rocket Launcher, Magnum Pistol or another very powerful weapon and watch atop the hills to the left of the 2 antenna far out in front of you (you'll see them rising from behind a hill). Your enemies here will be large numbers of Heavy Skaarj, the first 2 of which will come from this hilltop and drop down to ground level as they slowly approach you. Your Marines will back you up here once the Skaarj are in their line of sight, but you should start shooting as soon as you see them. After the 2 first Heavy Skaarj have come, start keeping an eye on the path to the right, where 2 more Heavy Skaarj will soon approach from far away. Once all 4 are firing you'll be dodging some massive firepower. Don't stop hitting with everything you've got; once the Skaarj get close enough, try switching to Toxic Gas and Incendiary Grenades to do some REAL damage. If either pair of Skaarj die so that all your enemies are now coming from one direction, you may want to jump down and get a little bit closer so you can have more room to maneuver, since it will be easier to dodge now. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: As you fight you'll start to hear speech transmissions from the crew of the Atlantis. Someone is firing on them and they seem to be in dire trouble! It has taken hits from a powerful weapon and can't take much more before it will be destroyed. Dalton tries to get Aida to explain what's happening but she's too busy on board the Atlantis, trying to manage the ship as it takes considerable damage. \-------------------------------------/ After a brief break, 2 more Heavy Skaarj will attack from each of their 2 entry points, just like before. Keep fighting as you have been, using any powerful weapons you still have ammunition for. Once you've killed these 4 Skaarj as well, you'll be done with your fighting for this mission... but the crew of the Atlantis just isn't that fortunate. /-------------------------------------\ Plot Point/Spoiler Alert: With the Atlantis teetering on the brink of destruction, Aida sends a burst transmission into your Power Armors' computer system. This coded transmission will require a special station to decode, but contains a lengthy audio recording that will be vitally important. The Atlantis circles around, dodging repeated energy blasts from an unknown source. After successfully dodging several blasts, one hits and tears the ship to pieces, all of which hurtle into hilltops and explode. The full crew of the Atlantis is now dead beyond any doubt. Commander Hawkins sends an immediate request to evacuate you and the surviving Marines from the planet and bring you onboard his starship, the Dorian grey. \-------------------------------------/ ----------------------------------------------------------- 6M: The Dorian Grey Starship ----------------------------------------------------------- Coming Soon \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ 7: Cheats /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ Cheat codes for Unreal 2 are entered into the console, which by default opens with the ~ key. Before entering any other codes, activate cheat mode by typing “BeMyMonkey” into the console (no quotes, of course). ----------------------------------------------------------- 7A: General Cheats ----------------------------------------------------------- I don’t provide every cheat I can find here because some don’t work very well at all or are not useful compared to another cheat I’ve provided. I want to present one huge cheat separately from all of the below ones. It activates the Debug Menu, which lets you do dozens of different things, most of which have their own separate codes as well. That cheat is: SendEvent ToggleDebugMenu Try to keep track of what you activate in the Debug Menu because some of it is cool at first but distracting later and may need to be disabled. You can really go ripping into the rendering system for the game with this! Other codes: AllAmmo- Maximum ammunition for all of your weapons Amphibious- Underwater mode- you move as if you were constantly underwater. BehindView (number)- Using a value of 1 sets the view to third person. Using a value of 0 sets it back to first. ChangeSize (number)- Changes your characters’ size. One is standard size, 2 is double, etc. Difficulty (number)- Replace “number” with a value from 0 to 2. 0 sets the game to Easy difficulty, 1 sets it to Medium and 2 sets it to Unreal. Fly- Flight mode; you can use the jump and duck buttons to “fly” Ghost- Ghost mode (basically no clipping mode) GibHitNPC- The NPC under your crosshairs gibs. God- Toggles God Mode; nothing can hurt you. Goodies 0 100- Gives you every weapon, including the Singularity Cannon and Weapons Group 5 static defense systems. Other number combinations can be used but I find that 0 100 works best. Invisible 1- Toggles Invisibility. "Invisible 0" then returns you to normal. KillHitNPC- The NPC under your crosshair dies. Mancannon (number)- Does the indicated number of damage to all visible enemies. NextLevel- Skips to the next level. Level, for this purpose, is defined as a map… there are 3 maps, for example, in Sanctuary: Outside Mining Complex, Mining Complex and Power Plant. Phoenix- Enables the Phoenix Power Suit. I’m still figuring out what this does… PO- Toggles Players Only mode, where there are no enemies or NPCs. SetFOV (number)- Replace “number” with a value from 1 to 360 and that is the number of degrees your field of vision encompasses. 90 is the default; 360 lets you see in all directions at once. SetMyHealth (number)- Replace “number” with a value from 0 to 100. That becomes your health total. SetSpeed (number)- Sets your running speed, as well as the distance (not height) that you can jump. One is the standard speed, 0 is a standstill. Fractions (i.e. 0.5, 0.75) can be used. Two is double speed, 3 is triple and so on. SetWeaponTick (0 or 1)- Setting this to 1 freezes an image of your hands and arms holding the weapon you’re using in midair. When you fire, switch weapons or reload, the floating arms mimic your movements. Setting it to 0 goes back to normal. ShowViewLine- Indicates where you are looking with a red line. Teleport- Teleports you to a point in the distance indicated by your crosshairs. ToggleHUD- Removes the HUD from the screen. ToggleImpacts- Turning off impacts makes it so that weapons don’t knock people out of place when they hit. ToggleInfiniteAmmo- Provides infinite ammunition for all weapons. ToggleInvisibility- Makes you completely invisible to other enemies and characters. ToggleReloads- Sets whether or not weapons need to reload. ToggleScoreboard- Shows lots of technical information pertinent to the level you’re in. Most of it is difficult to decipher the meaning of. Walk- Normal walking mode; negates the effects of ghost, fly or underwater modes. I’ll continue adding more cheats in future updates; I want to personally test and confirm everything I list first. ----------------------------------------------------------- 7B: Summoning Cheats ----------------------------------------------------------- These cheats allow you to summon power ups, actors and enemies. There are two ways of doing summoning cheats. One way is to enter the following code to bring up a menu that will let you summon any creature or character in the game with a click of the mouse: SendEvent ToggleSummonMenu The other way is to type into the console “sum” followed by a space and then any of the following names. This lets you summon weapons, ammunition and powerups in addition to characters and creatures: 7B-1: Item Summoning Names -------------------------- (Information in parenthesis are not part of the codes): ammoAssaultRifle ammoEnergyRifle (Shock Lance) ammoFlameThrower ammoGrenadeConcussion ammoGrenadeEMP ammoGrenadeFragment ammoGrenadeIncendiary ammoGrenadeToxic ammoLaserRifle (Drakk Laser Cannon) ammoPistol (.50 Magnum Pistol) ammoRocketLauncher ammoShotgun ammoSmokeGrenade AutoTurretPickup FieldGeneratorPickup ProximitySensorPickup (Special, albeit not very useful, static defense system that cannot be found in the normal game!) RocketTurretPickup weaponAssaultRifle weaponEnergyRifle (Shock Lance) weaponFlameThrower weaponGrenadeLauncher weaponLaserRifle (Drekk Laser Cannon) weaponLeechGun (Spidergun- the Leechgun was changed to the Spidergun before the game was released, but retained the same technical name.) weaponPistol (.50 Magnum Pistol) weaponRocketLauncher weaponShotgun weaponSingularityCannon weaponSniperRifle weaponTakkra 7B-2: Character and Enemy Summoning Names: ------------------------------------------ These will spawn enemies or characters directly in front of you but facing away from you. U2Pawns.U2AraknidLight U2Pawns.U2AraknidMedium U2Pawns.U2AraknidHeavy U2Pawns.U2Izarian U2Pawns.U2MarineLight (Friendly Marine allies) U2Pawns.U2MarineMedium (Friendly Marine allies) U2Pawns.U2MarineHeavy (Friendly Marine allies) U2Pawns.U2MercFemLight (Liandri Angel Merc) U2Pawns.U2MercFemMedium (Liandri Angel Merc) U2Pawns.U2MercFemHeavy (Liandri Angel Merc) U2Pawns.U2MercJapLight (Izanagi Ghost Warrior) U2Pawns.U2MercJapMedium (Izanagi Ghost Warrior) U2Pawns.U2MercJapHeavy (Izanagi Ghost Warrior) U2Pawns.U2SkaarjLight U2Pawns.U2SkaarjMedium U2Pawns.U2SkaarjHeavy U2Pawns.U2Tosc U2Pawns.U2DrakkDroid (Repair Drones. Invincible but harmless when summoned singularly using a cheat.) U2Pawns.U2DrakkLight (Sentries) U2Pawns.U2DrakkMedium (Overlords) U2Pawns.U2DrakkBoss U2Pawns.Aida (Just walks around, doesn’t do anything) U2Pawns.Isaak (Just walks around, doesn’t do anything) U2Pawns.Neban (Just walks around, doesn’t do anything) U2Pawns.U2KaiClothed (Harmless NPC) U2Pawns.U2CivilianScientist (Harmless NPC) U2Pawns.U2ColonistHumanFemaleA (Harmless NPC) U2Pawns.U2ColonistHumanMaleA (Harmless NPC) U2Pawns.U2SpecialCivilian (Armed with a Dispersion Pistol) U2Pawns.RaffTrainingBot (From training prior to the first real mission) U2Pawns.U2Cockroach (harmless decorative entity) U2Pawns.U2Cyprid (harmless creature) U2Pawns.U2MegaParata (harmless creature) U2Pawns.U2MegaSnipe (Alien animal that can be a minor threat) U2Pawns.U2MiniMukhogg (huge alien animal that can be a minor threat) U2Pawns.U2Seagoat (harmless creature) U2Pawns.U2Parata (harmless creature) U2Pawns.U2Rammer (Alien animal that can be a minor threat) U2Pawns.U2Snipe (Alien animal that can be a minor threat) U2Pawns.U2FlyingSnake (Harmless alien animal) U2Pawns.U2Hummer (Harmless alien animal) U2Pawns.U2Spore (From Acheron mission) U2Pawns.U2Diver U2Pawns.U2Bellowfish U2Pawns.U2KillerSprout (Mildly harmful plant from Acheron mission) U2Pawns.U2KillerTadpole U2Pawns.U2PinwheelFish U2Pawns.U2Schoolfish U2Pawns.U2Uglyfish U2Pawns.U2WaterDipper U2Pawns.U2Bat U2Pawns.U2CleaningBot U2Pawns.U2RepairBot U2Pawns.U2IceWorm U2Pawns.U2ShianWarrior (Bizarre floating cube) U2Pawns.U2ShianWorker (Bizarre floating cube) U2Pawns.U2Jellyfish U2Pawns.U2TubeWorm U2Pawns.U2NStriderSmall U2Pawns.U2NStriderLarge U2Pawns.U2Forager U2Pawns.U2Chiton U2Pawns.U2SentryBot ----------------------------------------------------------- 7C: Secrets and Easter Eggs ----------------------------------------------------------- Secret Nali Shooting Range Location: Avalon Training Mission During the training mission, when you are being shown how to jump and mantle, get up on the high block and then leap over the fence to your right. Look through the crates until you find one with a bizarre-looking head inside. Pick it up and you’ll get a message saying that “You unlocked the secret shooting range”. Later, when you’re testing weapons, to the left of the hallway where you’re supposed to test the grenade launcher on three giant bug-like creatures you’ll find another miniature target range. The targets will be depictions of Nali, from the original “Unreal”. Balloon Party Location: Any Time, Anywhere Save before doing this because it will essentially freeze the game, making it impossible to return. Enter the following code into the console after activating cheat mode (see above): open atlantis?missioncompleted=110276. This will load up a scene in Daltons’ living quarters with several balloons with pictures of Seagoats and other weirdness on them. Seagoat Party Location: Any Time, Anywhere Save your game before doing this because it will essentially freeze it, making it impossible to return. Enter the following code into the console after activating cheat mode (see above): open atlantis?missioncompleted=83. A new level will load displaying a bizarre scene which you, unfortunately, cannot move around and interact in. Six Seagoats will be jumping around doing little tricks. There will be 3 balloons floating in the air with pictures of Seagoats on them and a chromed Unreal logo spinning around in midair. Seagoat Holographic Display Location: On the Atlantis, Any Time Go to the briefing room, where the holographic display is that Aida uses to show you 3-D maps of levels prior to your starting a mission. Look at the far right side of the keyboard arrays surrounding the holograph area. All the way to the right of the keyboards is a tiny, orange button that will be labeled “secret button”. Press it to give a rather frightening holographic display of a Seagoat that will cause Dalton to shout, “Jesus!” Isaak’s Flashbang Location: On the Atlantis, Any Time Go to Isaak’s room, where he tells you about your new weapons. Just past the entrance to the room, examine the desk along the edge of the room. Duck down and carefully look around, up close, for a tiny orange secret button. Press the button and Isaak will say, “Flashbang.” Then an EMP blast will go off, centered on the secret button. It won’t hurt you, but it will cause Dalton to say, “Jesus!”, like the Seagoat holograph (above) does. Seagoat License Plate Location: On the Atlantis, Any Time Go into Dalton’s living quarters on the upper deck. Your living quarters are the room where pieces of dark greenish brown battle armor (such as boots and a helmet) are scattered about and there is a locker with military uniforms in it. Activate no clipping mode using the “Ghost” code (see above). Then go through your uniform locker, turn around, and look at the back of the locker. A Virginia license plate is attached to the back of the locker, and it reads “Seagoat”. Level Photo Album Location: On the Atlantis, Any Time Enter your living quarters and immediately turn left. Look at the computer screen above the table with computer disks and a paper target for target shooting laying on it. After each level, a new photograph appears, pinned up on the computer screen, of the last level that you beat. Abe Lincoln Distress Call Location: On the Atlantis, Prior to the First Mission After the training mission is finished and you’ve gone back to the Atlantis and talked to Aida, head to the upper deck, where Isaak is, prior to heading to the briefing room. Turn left and head down until you find a hatch. Open the hatch, revealing a Seagoat inside. “Use” the Seagoat to “talk” to it. Choose on the talk menu to reply to it by saying “Spam”, then “Spam”, then “Spam” a third time, then “Humbug”. You will receive a message that “Lincoln is Pleased”. Head to the briefing room now and receive your briefing. When Aida shows you the distress call she received from Sanctuary, rather than a mining personnel civilian showing up on the screen you’ll see “Lincoln, A.” \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ 8: Appendices /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/ This section will consist of information not important to beating the game but that is simply interesting, as well as collections of information mentioned earlier in the guide being restated in different ways (see 8B). If anybody has an idea for an appendix similar to 8A (below), please let me know and I'll consider doing it. Just keep in mind that if it involves information that's already in the instruction manual or that's given to you very early in the game, I probably won't be interested in including it. ----------------------------------------------------------- 8A: Organizations and Alien Races ----------------------------------------------------------- This is all information that can be obtained after beating Hell, while talking to Ne-Ban on the Atlantis. I included it so that anyone earlier on in the game who finds this kind of thing interesting can read it ahead of time. I wouldn't consider any of it to be spoilers; it's background information, but none of it alludes to future parts of the plotline. Everything here is copied out of the game exactly, in John Dalton's own words. TCA (Terran Colonial Authority): As earth expands in this sector of space, different corporations are establishing colonies on uninhabited planets. They do everything from creating vacation resorts to mining exotic ores to terraforming. We in the Terran Colonial Authority patrol between the planets to keep the peace. The corporations try to get away with a lot out here and they hire mercenary forces to help them get their way. We often find ourselves fighting the mercs to defend civilians who work for their own corporation. If we run into something we can't take on alone, we call in the marines. Axon: Axon is on our side. They're a private company that works hand in hand with our military to research and develop new weapons. The Liandri Corporation: The Liandri Corporation is a heavy industrial and mining combine with installations on dozens of planets. They defend their interests with an army of genetically engineered female warriors who have been raised since birth to be fighters. The Liandri Angels are cold, dispassionate and highly efficient. They are among the elite of industrial mercenary forces. The Izanagi Corporation: The Izanagi is a broad-based conglomerate modeled on the ancient Japanese Kereitsu. They're into whatever makes money, and they protect themselves with an elite corps of merc soldiers, fanatically loyal to the corporation, who call themselves "Ghost Warriors". The Skaarj: The Skaarj are a power-hungry race who have been trying to expand into this sector of space. Normally their highly tribal social structure prevents them from working together. But recently we have seen unusual examples of cooperation between the clans, which can only spell trouble for us. Their warriors are all highly independent, intelligent and very dangerous fighters. The Izarians: The Izarians are borderline psychotic aliens who seem to live to fight. They had conquered a small area of space and subjugated a few minor races. Then they ran into the Skaarj and became slaves themselves. With their sadomasochistic tendencies, we're not at all sure they mind. The Kai: The Kai are an old semi-nomadic race that has spread from from planet to planet, taking a keen interest in the archeology, folklore and traditions of each. They stay on the fringes of society, however, and make their way by performing menial tasks wherever they go. The Araknids: They are not a known aggressor race and they're not indigenous to hell. We think they're just creatures who were important from off-planet to the labs, and then mutated under the influence of the energy beam and the artifact. ----------------------------------------------------------- 8B: Collected Enemy Strategies ----------------------------------------------------------- This section is on hold until I release version 1.0 of my guide. I'm putting this in as a heads-up and placeholder. What it will be is every indented section describing a new enemy during the guide, collected, alphabetized and restated for easy reference. ----------------------------------------------------------- 8C: Questions and Answers ----------------------------------------------------------- These mostly aren't things people have asked me, but I think they're useful; most of them are things I've wondered myself at one point. Almost all the below information is somewhere else in this guide as well. If you have a question yourself or think one of my answers is inaccurate, by all means, E-Mail me (LunarZenith@hotmail.com). 8C-1: Weapons and Atttacks -------------------------- Q: What exactly are the effects of incendiary attacks? A: Incendiary attacks, in addition to the damage they do, cause the enemy to run around helplessly for about 4 seconds after the flame attack stops hurting them. They do not suffer extra damage continuously while they're on fire, though; incendiary damage is all dealt when the flame attack hits. Note that any heavy enemy (Heavy-Armored Ghost Warrior, Heavy Araknid, etc.) are immune to this, as are Drone Guns, Rocket Drones, Tosc and all Drakk. Q: Does the Drakk Laser Cannon have an unlimited range? A: Laser Cannons do not have an unlimited range, although the maximum effective range is very far. After a certain point, though, the laser beam just stops in the air. Q: Do EMP blasts from the Shock Lance do as much damage as EMP Grenades? A: EMP Grenades actually do a bit more damage than Shock Lance EMP blasts. I'd estimate that they're 30-50% more powerful. Note that Shock Lance EMP blasts won't take out Rocket Turrets in 1 shot whereas EMP Grenades will. Q: Do EMP Grenades do any damage to enemies' health, or are they only effective against power-armored, drone or Drakk enemies? A: EMP Grenades do reduce enemies' health, but not by much, only a little bit. Q: Do Concussion Grenades do very slight damage, or none at all? A: Concussion Grenades do no damage. Try using codes to summon a Seagoat and then shoot it with about 20 Concussion Grenades some time. Q: How do you use Smoke Grenades? What do they do? A: To the best of my knowledge Smoke Grenades do absolutely nothing. Enemies will not hesitate to fire at you through them (accurately) or run through them to attack you. If anyone thinks differently and can explain how to use them even semi-effectively, PLEASE E-Mail me (LunarZenith@hotmail.com). Q: Does the Spidergun's first trigger do any damage? What exactly does it do? A: The Spidergun's first trigger does no damage. Anyone hit by it suffers the exact same effects while covered in spiders as they would suffer while covered in flames, but that's it. The same enemies who are immune to the disorienting effects of fire are immune to being covered in spiders as well. Q: At what point will my Rocket Launcher get a target lock for the second trigger? How about the activation of the second trigger for the Laser Cannon? A: Kalydon is where your Rocket Launcher will first start working completely. The Laser Cannon's second trigger doesn't kick in until Avalon. 8C-2: Enemies ------------- Q: Do both kinds of Drone Guns take the same ammount of damage to destroy? A: Rocket Drones take about 50% more damage to destroy than standard Drone Guns. Q: Is there any difference between Ghost Warrior mercs and Angel mercs? A: As long as they're in the same level of power armor, only their appearance differs. Q: Do enemies use Drone Guns and Plasma Barriers the same way I can? A: They use Drone Guns the same but not Plasma Barriers. Enemies don't know how to pass through their own barriers like you can, nor can they think of the idea of firing over the barriers by jumping or using Grenades. They often strand themselves away from you with their own barriers. Q: Will shooting the posts of a Plasma Barrier destroy it more quickly than shooting the plasma? A: It makes no difference. Q: In Janus: Polaris Entrance I keep getting killed by the Heavy Ghost Warrior in the room full of crates and Drone Guns. How do I get through here? A: First take out the Drone Guns without progressing too far into the room. Then once you encounter the Heavy Ghost Warrior, lead him to the back of the room (the side you entered from), run across the room and go through the exit door without killing him. As soon as you're through the door you'll go on to the next level. See section 6I-2 for more information. Q: What alien animals do I need to worry about? A: On Hell you'll have to kill the Mukhog blocking the bridge at the beginning of the mission. On Na Koja Abad, almost everything (except flying creatures) is hostile and you might as well kill anything that moves. Other than that, alien animals (such as Seagoats and Rammers) won't hurt you unless you hurt them first. Q: All Drakk (except Repair Droids) have energy crystals in them that appear to be their energy source. Is this a weak point that I should specifically shoot at? A: Other than humanoid creatures' heads, there are no weak points in any enemies. Shoot Drakk anywhere convenient. Q: How on Earth does the Drakk boss work and what am I supposed to do to kill him? A: The Drakk Hive Queen must be attacked in the form she starts out in and will eventually break into 2 sections. Attacking the top (which fires its Laser Cannon) will eventually destroy it temporarily, but when you damage the bottom section (that floats around trying to get away from you) it adds up. Keep forcing the Queen to break apart and then hurting the bottom section and eventually you'll win. For more information, check section 6K-4. Q: I'm stuck on the Heavy Araknid. How the Hell do I beat this thing (no pun intended)? A: Check the updates at the end of section 6D-4 for 2 foolproof strategies, either of which will tremendously reduce the difficulty of the fight. 8C-3: Levels and Strategies --------------------------- Q: After Miller dies in Sanctuary: Power Plant I'm told that I've failed one of my mission objectives. Is there something I'm doing wrong? A: That mission objective is impossible to complete. There was no way to save him, and failing to save him won't negatively affect you. Q: Can I get hurt or die from being underwater for too long? A: Thanks to your power armor you can be underwater for any length of time safely. Q: Is it just me or are the Marines in the Swamp level invincible? A: They are, completely. Don't get too used to it; after the Swamp all your Marine allies will be mortal. Q: The laser room in Hell: Disclosure is a mess! Is there are shortcut to get through it? A: When you enter that room, find the diagonally-tilted fallen column to the right of the hole you entered through. Get on the side where it comes closest to the ground, jump up and vault onto it. If you do it right, from atop there you can walk straight into the control room and shut the lasers down. Check section 6D-4 for more details. Q: Are there any huge and dangerous bugs in the game I ought to watch out for? A: When returning to your ship on Acheron, stay away from the edges of the level. It's possible there to fall out of the level and get stuck in a clipping plane, looking at chopped-up fragments of the whole level and unable to move! Q: In Acheron, is there any way over the radio not to get Ghost Warriors called to the surface to attack me? A: Dalton is incapable here of coming up with anything clever and tricky to say. You'll have to fight the Ghost Warriors. Q: I accidentally let the panel in the wall in Sulferon get blown up and failed a mission objective because of it! What effect does that have? A: No effect, no harm done. Don't worry about it. Q: My God, Myer (the scientist you rescue on Janus) is a jerk! How should I deal with all that aggrivation? A: I enjoy shooting him with the Spidergun's first trigger. Doesn't really hurt him and the gun's useless anyway. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Once again, feel free to suggest a new appendix, like something along the lines of 7A, that you'd find interesting. I'll credit you in the Contact Information section if I use the suggestion. /----------------------------------------------------------\ | That's all for now. Much more to come later! | | -Jonathan "LunarZenith" Soule | | (LunarZenith@hotmail.com) | \----------------------------------------------------------/