StarCraft 2 Campaign Walkthrough

Zero Hour

Hold out until extraction

Achievements

Objectives

Main Objective  |  Hold out for evacuation

Get used to this advice: As soon as the mission starts, sick your SCVs on the minerals behind your command center and have one build a refinery on top of the vespene source. Use your early resources to quickly build a small group of marines—three should be good—and look for the marines already stationed at your base's two entrances. Select a group of marines and you can send them into the four bunkers in the base.

Bonus Objective  |  Rescue the rebels (3)

Soon you'll get a call from a rebel group that needs rescuing. They're to the northeast and aren't surrounded by too many enemies. Put together a small group and send them to attack the area. Let 'em clear out the zerg as you move through. When you meet up with the rebel group, they'll be added to your posse. Collect the resource cache behind them and head back to base.

As the zerg attack your base, monitor the health statuses of your buildings. You can task SCVs with repairing the bunkers and air defense turrets, so keep them in tip-top shape. Keep training marines and medics in your barracks (you'll need to upgrade at least one of the barracks to build medics) to form two companies, each guarding one of the two entrances to your base. With a couple of small companies backing up the turrets and bunkers, you shouldn't have any trouble fending off the small zerg charges.

Eventually you'll get a call from a second rebel group to the far north. Be quick about getting to them and you won't have to fight off that many zerg before rescuing the lot and adding them to your army. Return to base to keep beefing up your defenses.

A third group of rebel forces will ask for your help. Head northwest to find them and bring 'em back. Again, if you're quick you won't have to fight off many (if any) zerg. At base, keep building two sizable companies near the base entrances and build a third in the center to support your air defense turrets. There's nothing else to do but hang back and prepare for the zerg. When time expires, the mission is completed.

An Achievement challenges you to destroy four of the zerg hatcheries in the stage, and that's not easy. The hatcheries are all heavily guarded so you'll need to send in a sizable army to get to them. When you enter a zerg base, target first the spine crawlers as they'll kill you fastest.

And if that isn't difficult enough for you, there's a secret to be found in the stage. If you can get to the very far north border of the age—way behind enemy lines—you'll find what looks to be a friendly unit that runs into a port-a-potty. Click on the port-a-potty a few times and it'll blast off, awarding you the secret. May be easiest to get to on Easy difficulty...

After completing the mission, a cut scene will leave you aboard the Hyperion. As with the previous bar scenes, you can talk to folks or click on things for some story information. You can also head to the Armory to spend credits on tech upgrades. Talk to Tychus to earn the "Nice Suit" Achievement. When you're ready to progress to the next mission, click on the star map from the Bridge.